<p>I know a handful of students at Penn that as freshmen were already talking about their starting salaries that they were expecting to have once they were leaving Penn... these students were in wharton, the College and SEAS. Similarly, I know students who started out in fields in the humanities or social sciences and by the time they graduated, they were leaving with finance/econ degrees and going corporate. </p>
<p>I'm starting to wonder if the Penn environment is TOO corporate. Any thoughts? How strong is the influence of wharton? Do students care more about what they're learning or just how it translates into money afterwards?</p>
<p>despite my disappointment at the value judgments you make in that post, i'll throw in here that no one's making penn students do anything. it's a big place, and you find all types.</p>
<p>The vast majority of Penn undergrads--over 6,000--are in the College of Arts and Sciences. And while economics is a popular major, so are English, history, psychology, etc., as well as the many interdisciplinary majors like Biological Basis of Behavior, Cognitive Science, and Visual Studies (Penn has long been a leader in interdisciplinary programs):</p>
<p>The liberal arts are very much alive and well at Penn, and are a MAJOR force on campus--in fact, quantitatively, THE major force. Even Wharton students take at least 1/3 of their courses outside of Wharton, and are encouraged to take up to 43% of their degree requirements in the arts & sciences:</p>
<p>As mattwonder points out, there are many different types of students at Penn and, in absolute numbers, there are as many--and in several cases significantly MORE--liberal arts majors at Penn as as there are at any of the other Ivies.</p>
<p>There certainly are a lot of pre-med, pre-law and pre-i-banking students here. There's also plenty of intellectually stimulating classes available if you want learning for its own sake.</p>
<p>it's the worst part of the school if you ask me. people are just too professionally driven. . .there's a huge variety of students for sure, but this whole obsession with future prospects and job placement probably descends from wharton and infects much of the other schools & students. it's not just finance/consulting jobs, but grad school, med school, just peoples' futures in general. no one's to blame, it's only natural, and it's not strictly a fault for someone to think about their future, but it's annoying to me. I'm not sure how it is at the other Ivies but that's just how I feel. of course there are definitely intellectually stimulating classes around</p>
<p>i think quite a lot of ppl at penn are pre-professional/pre-career, but i also have a feeling that that is just the most visible stereotype. there have definitely been tons of times when i ask ppl doing science research for science and i assume its pre-med, where it turns out they're researching...because they like it. i'm not sure about the other ivies, but i know that at stanford it was reported that half the undergrad population was pre-law or pre-med or something close to that.</p>
<p>Once you expand your definition to include pre-med, pre-law, and pre-business - heck anyone who's got their 5-year plan laid out - it can definitely seem like a tough place. Everyone's on their way to something bigger and better, and its a rare chance to talk with a peer about a subject that hasn't already been decided. I wouldn't say penn is too "corporate" but I would say that most of the student body has plans for post-graduation and god help you if you get in their way.</p>
<p>It's hard to say why the culture is like this - why a fried of mine asked me, on the first day of classes freshman year, where I planned to go for grad school. Maybe it's the 200k+ expense, or maybe it's the high expectations of parents that drives us to live according to a plan like that.</p>
<p>It's hard to say why the culture is like this - why a fried of mine asked me, on the first day of classes freshman year, where I planned to go for grad school. Maybe it's the 200k+ expense, or maybe it's the high expectations of parents that drives us to live according to a plan like that.
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<p>Isn't this basically true at all top schools? It's difficult to believe that kids who've pushed hard all their lives to be able to get into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. have suddenly STOPPED thinking about their futures once they get into college, or that they do so less than kids at Penn. That just doesn't make sense.</p>
<p>Well I would think that most kids at most of these top schools have plans for post graduation. Matt, you said it yourself, if you're paying 200k to go to a school it's only natural that you'll want to make money.</p>
<p>There are real mixed messages coming from the administration, job market, parents, etc. Their lips say "college is for exploring and stretching your limits, study what you love, blah, blah, blah", but the checkbook says "major in finance and go to Wall St. or go to med school and become a surgeon". Truthfully, the market demand for poets has always been quite low in relation to bankers/surgeons so thank goodness most people are sensible and listen to their wallets and not their inner poets. The idea that college is a bunch of scholars in robes debating the meaning of life and that you should do what you love regardless of whether it is in demand by society or not stems from another age when rich men sent their sons to college to become clergymen or inherit the family business. Most other young people were out earning a living long before they were 18 - everyone assumed that "doing what you love" was for leisure time, if any. Work was not what you loved, it was what kept you from starving. In today's society the idea that you should spend the 1st 4 years of your adult life learning nothing of any practical value is STILL an unaffordable luxury for most people. Should you take some courses outside your major? - of course. Should you major in some obscure field that does not put you on a career track - no unless you have inherited wealth and don't plan on working or you are prepared to live a life of poverty as an eternal grad student or waiting on tables.</p>
Actually, you CAN do this if you plan to go on to professional school, as long as you also fulfill any distributional requirements of the professional school (e.g., premed requirements). Few of the 6,000+ kids in the College will ultimately build careers based solely on their undergraduate majors.</p>
<p>@ 45 Percenter. I'd definitely say it's true at all the Ivies, etc. ( I apologize for not specifying in my earlier post. ) Is Penn more pre-professional than the other Ivies? Probably. The culture at Penn encourages private industry, and practicing law and medical degrees. I contrast this with the schools of government and policy at Harvard and Princeton - you just don't see as many kids at Penn wanting to go into government and politics. It's definitely more of a "business" environment. Maybe this is due to Wharton, or maybe it's due to Ben Franklin's old "vocational" ideas. </p>
<p>Is Penn more pre-professional than the other ivies? By a hair. Are the ivies more so than a liberal arts college or state school? Definitely.</p>
<p>Let me just add that there are many routes to the Meaning of Life. Sometimes discussing corporate strategy gets you closer than yet another discussion of Kant or any other philosopher du jour.</p>