<p>Yes, Penn is by far the most popular choice here, although there are some students who will take an “anywhere but Penn” attitude. So it’s really hard to compare Penn to any other college here. Lots of people apply to Penn ED and are thrilled if they get in, and never apply anywhere else. Others, for whom Penn would be a logical top choice if they lived 50 miles away, refuse to apply there at all. That second group is a much smaller one, but it tends to include a bunch of top students.</p>
<p>Penn’s Philadelphia preference has a long and complicated history. Its charter obligates it to provide free education for a certain number of Philadelphia students. That provision has been reinterpreted judicially to mean that it must award an equivalent amount of financial aid to students from the area (not just within the city limits). But there’s no question that good students at the city’s academic magnet public schools and high-quality private schools have an easier time getting accepted at Penn than students from New York or Chicago. Some of that may be due to their ties to the university – research projects, dual enrollment classes, faculty brats, admin brats, double- triple- quadruple-legacies, names on buildings, all of which are found much more frequently here than elsewhere – rather than to any regionalism on the university’s part.</p>
<p>I am someone who got deferred from columbia ED and just applied to penn regular and i honestly would say that although i would rather be at columbia, i would definitely not be disappointed if i ended up in penn</p>
<p>Actually, I was waitlisted, and then super-waitlisted - but let’s not split hairs here. Needless to say, they passed up an opportunity to beef up their grad-school admissions stats. I wonder if that bi-sexual transfer from UVA with a 1380 on his SATs is up to snuff? Probably not…</p>
<p>Penn is in motion, and Columbia ain’t. In 10 years, if Guttman has her way, we’ll cement ourselves as a research powerhouse that matches any other university on the East coast.</p>
<p>I don’t want to get involved in a Berkeley/Stanford imbroglio, though - those places are really unbeatable (perhaps not Berkeley for much longer, but Stanford - whoever planned the development of that institution knew what he/she was doing).</p>
<p>And JHS, thanks for the clarification vis-a-vis the Philadelphia school system and Penn admissions.</p>
<p>It’s certainly true that Philadelphia-regional admissions are slightly more lax with qualified applicants, but isn’t that only true of the city limits? I know kids from the 'burbs who claimed that at their high schools, Penn remained extremely competitive. Students from that magnet high school - Central, is it? - come in droves, however. Well, relatively. They’re all still very smart.</p>
<p>I think they are more lenient toward students within the city limits. (As in schools whose addresses are actually Philadelphia, PA 191xx rather than something like Ardmore, PA 19xxx.) Quality of education can be, and usually is, vastly different between public schools in Philadelphia and public schools in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Plus I notice that a number of Lower Merion students with amazing SATs/ECs who get deferred/rejected while a number of students from such schools as Masterman & Central get in with good ECs and below average SAT scores. However, I’m not complaining here because that worked out for me.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong, I would love to go to Penn, but I love Columbia too much to say no to them. I doubt I’ll get into both but I have to say I would rather go to Columbia.</p>
<p>Harvard and Princeton must be shaking in their boots. Ironically, since Guttman studied at one and taught at the other, if either came calling, she’d run back faster than you could say “Philly Cheesesteak.”</p>
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<p>I agree. Penn will never catch up to Stanford. In less than half the time, Stanford has accomplished more than twice as much.</p>
<p>As any experienced Gutmann-watcher knows, she is much more excited by her zealous mission to move Penn “from excellence to eminence,” than she would have been by being merely the latest in a centuries-old line of presidents of long-eminent Harvard.</p>
<p>But fortunately for Harvard, a woman who earned her graduate degrees and taught for 25 years AT PENN, was available to become its first female president. :)</p>
<p>I am “not interested” in starring in a major motion picture. But then again, no one’s formally offered me a role either even though technically speaking, I have been among several dozen “potential candidates” because my agent has sent me out on auditions.</p>
<p>In the meantime, I have said repeatedly that I intend to remain in school…</p>
<p>Gutmann was, according to many sources, easily on the short list for the Harvard presidency. Obviously, they were looking for a woman, and she was already an Ivy League president of high regard, the former Provost of Princeton, a Harvard alum (a 350-year-old tradition for Harvard presidents only broken by the current president, Penn grad Drew Faust), and a highly-respected scholar in her academic field. Your analogy to your own potential starring role in a major motion picture is hardly apt.</p>
<p>Amazing mix of largely irrelevant information on a site oriented towards undergrad education. Penn is a great university (disclosure: I did my graduate work there), but its research and grad programs, the Med School, Wharton, Annenberg, Physics, anthropology etc are the basis of its strength. Columbia is actually underrated by most people. The massive biomedical programs at Penn and Columbia don’t look up to anybody, not Harvard or Stanford, certainly not Princeton. This has nothing go do with the admissions preferences of undergrads.
Penn’s campus went downhill for decades until the recent renewal. which made a big difference. Bad slums are still just a few blocks NE of campus. I was there a couple of months ago, so this is up to date info. At least you don’t have to pass through a semi-slum to get downtown, as at Columbia. Places like Brown and Dartmouth are not in the same class as Penn and Columbia as universities. Undergrads flock to Brown because Brown has few requirements, and they believe they are qualified to design their own programs (hahaha). Students are reluctant to go to Cornell because its is in Ithaca, and they are smart.</p>
<p>Heck, soon the spot between Penn and Center City be a lovely green gentrified park area.</p>
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<p>Glad I’m not the only one who can point out that 18-year-olds aren’t nearly as smart as they think they are. No curriculum is just a silly idea.</p>
<p>In the last 10 years, Penn alumni and affiliates have won 10 Nobels. Stanford has 14. Hardly a significant difference… I’d say we’re catching up.</p>
<p>Prodigalson, do you have a bee in your bonnet?</p>
<p>Uggh why do these threads often become a mixture of Penn bashing/Penn ■■■■■■■■? It’s really hard to measure ascendancy by # of nobel prize winners, or to deride a school because it’s not as strong as Stanford. Just stop with the bickering.</p>