Do students work together much? My oldest is at MIT and collaboration is the name of the game. It’s been such a great experience for him. Just wondering about the atmosphere at Penn in that regard.
Thanks.
From what I have seen, Penn has its ups and downs in that regard. It is certainly competitive in that it is incredibly pre-professional, but it is also highly social, which helps ease out the competition. You could certainly do worse in terms of atmosphere in my opinion.
My son would be in the College. Maybe that’s less competitive and more collaborative. He’s possibly going to be a Fine Arts major or DMD.
I can’t speak to pre-med, but Wharton and SEAS are both quite collaborative. The “big gunners” in Wharton get ostracized really quickly. There are sufficient As to go around in the core classes such that the expected value of making friends and studying with them is higher than trying to do it by yourself.
Thanks for posting @Keasbey Nights. Can you explain that last sentence a bit more clearly?
Sure! The Wharton core classes usually curve to 33% As, 33% Bs, and 33% Cs. I think there’s technically room for Ds and Fs, but you have to either get a 0 on every exam or get caught cheating on one to get one of those grades in Wharton. Honestly, in my experience, the big Wharton classes divide really nicely into 33% bright students that study hard, 33% students that are bright but won’t try too hard (aka me in ACCT 102), and 33% students that struggle hardcore with the material or just don’t care one bit. The Wharton core classes require learning a lot of small details, so it benefits you to study with a friend or two. You will all do better, but there’s enough natural division in the course such that you aren’t affecting your own chances of getting an A by helping a friend study.
Institutionally, yes, Penn is one of the most collaborative universities in the world. Its emphasis on interdisciplinary research and boundary-breaking education requires interdepartmental, inter-school, and interpersonal collaboration unlike at another other university in the world.
On an individual student level- it will really depend on the students themselves. As an English major, among other things, most people I met were extremely collaborative. Class was a veritable marketplace of ideas that students were eager to share, critique, expound upon, etc. In other classes where group projects or class conversation is not as central to the course material, collaboration may be less frequent but not impossible to find or cultivate. I took geology (which is definitely NOT “Rocks for Jocks” at Penn) to satisfy a requirement and I found 4 other students interested in forming a study group that we used to study for tests and to work on homework assignments together. If you are the type of student that attracts other students who are interested in working together, then there will be plenty of opportunities to collaborate. If you are the type of student who is interested in a more solitary academic experience, that’s also an option. Classrooms and peers, however, respond a lot more to the energy you are putting out into the world than on the preconceived notion of whether or not they should be competing with one another.
In sum, is Penn the type of place where students are ripping pages out of library books? Definitely not. But for a student who is not interested in being part of a larger academic community, it may be hard for them to find opportunities to collaborate. However, one of my closest friends was a pre-med student who found a group of like minded kids with whom to study and vent about the pressures they faced in notoriously difficult classes. Their support of one another both socially and academically helped each of them excel and now they’re all in Med School (and one is in dental school). So even in subject areas where students are more known for their distance from one another, community is not difficult to foster.
I think @Keasbey Nights has an excellent perspective. First, Penn tends to attract a high proportion of students who are sociable and collaborative by nature. Second, there are enough As and Bs available to allow them to feel that it they work together they may all be more successful.
My personal observation is that this tends to fall apart at certain top schools where the average gpa is below a 3.0. It forces a level of competition that becomes destructive and unhealthy.
My view is that collaboration is a hallmark of Penn. Even the libraries have a lot of rooms meant for groups of people to work together.