<p>I have sent around three emails to the admissions office and it has not answer even one of them. Is that happened to someone else?</p>
<p>Have you emailed your Regional Admissions Officer?</p>
<p>[Penn</a> Admissions: Regional Admissions Officers](<a href=“http://www.admissions.upenn.edu/current/regional.php]Penn”>http://www.admissions.upenn.edu/current/regional.php)</p>
<p>To the OP, are you emailing about admissions related materials? They are readin the mails and processing them and will reply once they are finished with your stuff.</p>
<p>^ I’m reading through your old threads to understand better what your issues are with the school.</p>
<p>I do hope that things get better or at least your perspective of things and I’m glad to hear that you have close friends. They can make all the difference in the world.</p>
<p>I guarantee you that admissions responds, even after you got in. I’ve e-mailed my Regional Director 2-3 times post-acceptance, and she always replies back within 48 hours.</p>
<p>To be honest, I too was not terribly thrilled with Penn overall. My course of study was excellent; my friendships are bound to be lifelong; the experiences I had were extremely unique. Yet I cannot say that I loved Penn as a whole.</p>
<p>Especially freshman year, I saw many of the negative aspects of Penn: a significant number of students are sheltered children with too much money for their own good, which makes it hard to really get to know them; the bureaucracy is staggering (when I graduated and stayed on as a researcher for a few months, it took two weeks, four forms, five face to face conversations, eight emails and four phone calls just to get a new PennCard that reflected my status as a temporary employee); many of the facilities are lacking, to say the least. Especially living in Hill, which has been SIGNIFICANTLY rehabilitated in the past four years, things were not very fun.</p>
<p>After freshman year, it all got better. Once you see past the nonsense, learn which professors really care about teaching, take upper level courses, get involved in campus leadership and find your niche, you will be able to really make a mark.</p>
<p>Also, to address two points that legendofmax made… laundry at Penn is free as of fall, 2008, and the weather is pretty comparable everywhere along the Northeast Corridor, from DC to Boston, and there really isn’t much anyone can do about that.</p>
<p>Thanks, 45 Percenter. I visited Penn and spent the day shadowing a current student and friend of mine. I really enjoyed myself and that day really did move Penn to the top of my college list. I won’t find out if I got in or not until March 29th. I believe that if it’s the right school for me and I’m meant to go there, then I’ll get in and everything will work out. I want to become a veterinarian so I’ll definitely end up at Penn for vet school some day but my hope is to be able to attend Penn for my undergrad education as well.</p>
<p>I normally don’t put comments on post like these, but some folks just don’t get how lucky they are. Some of you are going to one of the finest institutions the country has to offer. Founded by none other than Ben Franklin, probably one of the most visionaries if not the most visionary of the founding fathers of USA. Yet, you complain and still stay there. I am sad to see such attitudes. Granted everyone doesn’t like everything, but you have a choice, no one is forcing you to stay at this university. </p>
<p>As a full disclaimer, my son applied and got deferred, its OK, since he did ED here for me, but he got into his first choice and is happy. Nonetheless, if he still gets in I am sure he will re-look at the university. I have spent considerable number of years in Philadelphia, I have had good experiences and some bad in the city. But my love for the city and the variety of activities available for any one curious enough to enjoy the culture and food are amazing. It’s a historic city and a historic university. All I can say is, it’s up to you, your experiences are of your own making. You can choose to make the best of it or make it a miserable experience. But please don’t discourage others, as I am sure that for every negative comment there are many positive ones.</p>
<p>I haven’t sent Penn any e-mails. Am I supposed to be sending e-mails?</p>
<p>guptamuifir,</p>
<p>I think we need more posts like yours on this site. And as I was reading your post, something came to mind. If people like hafsarox and crisp really disliked Penn that much, why don’t they leave? I have been dreaming of going to Penn since I was little and I am currently waiting for my admission decision to come on March 29th. </p>
<p>If I don’t get into Penn, I’m going to regret not going there. Maybe all those ungrateful negative nellies who are displeased with the school should leave and open up the spots to kids who really want to go to the prestigious institution.</p>
<p>
Keep in mind that, at the moment, we’re dealing with only one ungrateful negative nelly out of 10,000 current undergrads and tens of thousands of alumni.</p>
<p>Also keep in mind that Penn has some of the highest admissions-yield, freshmen-retention, 4-year-graduation, and 6-year-graduation rates among all the top schools.</p>
<p>And keep one more thing in mind: in any large group of people you’ll encounter in life, there will almost always be at least one negative nelly. ;)</p>
<p>Wow, how time flies.</p>
<p>I made that post a while back, and while it was admittedly quite emotionally-charged, I still stand by my opinions (with minor exceptions).</p>
<p>Penn is a fantastic school if you’re decently well-supported and you’re studying what you love. I unfortunately was disillusioned with Wharton because I had serious gripes about the way things were handled, and I felt like I was <strong>constantly</strong> battling bureaucracy (and usually losing) all four years I was there.</p>
<p>To be fair, laundry did become free later on (I made that post prior to this), and the weather is more or less comparable. I’m used to it now, having stayed in the NE. As a cash-strapped student, though, the laundry issue was an obstacle.</p>
<p>This isn’t the thread to discuss this, though. All I know is that the Penn bureaucracy is overwhelmingly fragmented, slow, and oftentimes unfair. You have to go through a lot of work and due diligence to get things done.</p>
<p>
Higher education is, in general, notorious for this, and especially at universities the size and complexity of Penn. Remember that these places are run essentially by academics (often via committee), and not professional managers (ironically, even Wharton).</p>
<p>However, it is good training for dealing with the corporations, governments, and other institutions that you’ll be encountering the rest of your adult life. ;)</p>
<p>I should add something, though:</p>
<p>"Maybe reading through legendofmax’s (a ‘legendary poster’ ) would enlighten you on why so many Penn students abhor this school. "</p>
<p>I’d say that this is pretty misleading. Most kids who attend Penn like it quite a lot.</p>
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<p>Very true (although my situation was quite a bit worse than most). That being said, when it comes to an Ivy League education that costs tens of thousands of dollars, the difficulty should be coming from the material of the classes… not the bureaucracy.</p>
<p>
Were you trying to do something out of the ordinary (vis-a-vis, e.g., curriculum)? Why did you have such extraordinary difficulty (if you don’t mind saying)?</p>
<p>And how’s your job going? :)</p>
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<p>Again, this really isn’t the thread for discussing such things (as it’d require a length explanation that’d hijack the thread and involve many personal matters), but long story short: A lot of really, really awful things happened, and Penn didn’t seem to really bat an eye at any of it. It made things very, very difficult. My story could probably be made into a movie… it’s so ridiculous. </p>
<p>I’ve got $(xx)k left in undergrad loans now and a lot of psychological trauma to try to move past. My experiences those were very atypical, but I do think my points about certain living conditions and educational problems have merit. On the upside, life is better now and the job’s going fine.</p>
<p>You can’t really escape bureaucracy, but eh, you gotta learn sometime, I guess.</p>
<p>^ Glad to hear the job’s going well. :)</p>
<p>Yepyep, thanks.</p>
<p>To address the OP, though, sometimes you have to email a couple different people, and it may require multiple tries (with reasonable time in between each attempt, obviously). </p>
<p>Sometimes your questions can be answered online (especially here at CC) if you search around a bit.</p>
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<p>This could be said about any large university and has been said about every large university at one time here on CC.</p>
<p>Penn is great for a lot of things, but it is really tough to defend its bureaucracy. Although it is an enormous institution with 60,000+ students, faculty and staff (a hearty portion of which comes from HUP), the red tape you need to cut through in order to do really anything is brutal. That said, it really is training for life.</p>
<p>Take SAC, for example. The Student Activities Council is a phenomenal organization. It doles out $2.4 million (at least it did a few years ago) annually to any recognized student organization. This money allows nearly every undergraduate to participate in some activity without sacrificing personal funds to do so. That said, consider this: SAC has had a longstanding policy of “use it or lose it.” That means that if you are a fiscally sound organization and have a year with very few expenses, you will almost definitely lose funding the following year; on the flip side, if you are a fiscally irresponsible organization and end every year with budget deficits, you will almost definitely gain funding the following year. Within each little arm of SAC, as well, you need to go through some silliness. For example, the Performing Arts Council has four sub committees, in which all 43ish performing arts groups are put together. In order to maintain SAC recognition, representatives from the groups must attend monthly meetings for the sub committee and the general body. Failure to attend a single meeting results in disciplinary action against the group, yet the meetings provide no incentive to attend aside from “you have to attend” since the meetings themselves are only to meet bureaucratic rules set forth by SAC.</p>
<p>Navigating that bureaucracy for four years was surely a pain, but I will say this… It has, like many other things at Penn, been excellent training for life. In the real world, you need to deal with nonsense like pointless meetings and backward logic. You need to have the patience to accept the things you cannot change, the strength to change the things you feel you must and the wisdom to know the difference, lest you go insane. For example, a few weeks ago I got a parking ticket in the mail. Now, I deserved the ticket, but I never saw it on my windshield, so I had no way to pay the fine until I got a notice in the mail. Because I had not paid the unpayable ticket within 15 days, I was charged a penalty worth almost as much as the ticket itself. Obviously feeling cheated, I immediately contacted the Parking Authority, and after speaking to three people and emailing two, I set up a hearing to determine whether the ticket and penalty are valid. I’m going to need to take half a day to do the hearing, and it’s likely that I won’t even win. All for 20 bucks (ticket should be $26, but the penalty is +$20)… that is bureaucracy, folks.</p>