<p>What the heck? Ignorance from calling it by a different nickname? That's stupid in itself. There's no shame in calling something by a different nickname. I mean, if your stance is "call it what you want" than why argue for calling it Penn in the first place? All this talk of ignorance gives a bad name to the university: it makes us sound like pompous jerks who get ticked off by something as stupid as adding an acceptable letter to the beginning of a name. If somebody calls it UPenn and you disagree, let it slide. It's not some huge deal to get angry about.</p>
<p>I agree that if upenn.edu and penn.edu both direct to the University of Pennsylvania website, the university itself has recognized that UPenn is an acceptable nickname. If it wasn't, they wouldn't have gotten upenn.edu in the first place. No big deal.</p>
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The school has also endorsed UPenn as an acceptable nickname by making it their URL.
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</p>
<p>You sound even more uneducated now because you obviously haven't read the entire thread. You most likely saw the title and decided to put your two cents in without even reading what others have said.</p>
<p>If you would have actually read the entire thread you would have seen why the university uses the upenn.edu address and why Penn is not changing it. </p>
<p>Please, read the entire thread before posting.</p>
<p>eh, ignorance is a tad strong. however, people wanting to call it "UPenn" would probably have a little more support if people associated with the school called it "UPenn" more often than in conversations with people who think it's Penn State.</p>
<p>I'm really amazed at the depths of the high-schooler egotsim here. This thread can be summed up as follows:</p>
<p>OP: Hey, which nickname is more common?</p>
<p>HS students: I say UPenn because I like two syllables and the website, and don't want people to think I would even consider applying to Penn State.</p>
<p>Current/former students: Guys, everyone involved with the school calls it Penn, it's the officially trademarked nickname, and people will look at you weird if you say 'UPenn' on campus.</p>
<p>HS students: I'll say what I want even if I look like a fool!! Fight the machine, man!</p>
<p><em>shakes head</em></p>
<p>And actually, I think it entirely appropriate for the current/former students to call the high schoolers 'uneducated.' It's strictly accurate, no?</p>
<p>Biochem8: Perhaps if YOU had read the entire thread you would have seen that I had already made a few posts throughout the thread and was not just throwing my two cents in.</p>
<p>I understand that Penn/UPenn/University of Pennsylvania chose the upenn.edu adress because of the precedent set by the University of Delaware, but they still had the choice of any address they felt suitable and they ultimately settled upon UPenn.</p>
<p>The argument for using Penn exclusively ultimately boils down to the fact that it is some people's personal prefrence, and a few of those people are attempting to force others to use the name they prefer simply because they are not open to other possibilties, no matter how reasonable they are. These people are childish and narrow-minded, and I sincerely hope they are not representative of the student body and faculty at the University of Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>I will continue to refer to the school by whatever nickname I choose, most likely several of them, depending on the context of the usage and my own whims at the time. I will not, however, continue this silly argument by adding new posts to this thread.</p>
<p>ahh, the classic 'i will spew sanctimonious rhetoric and leave the thread so i can pretend like I had the last word'</p>
<p>The fact is, this is not a case where the 'Penn' nickname is 'some people's personal preference, and a few of those people are attempting to force others to use the name.'</p>
<p>The fact is, current students are attempting to educate high school students to the reality that should they ever be in the fortunate position to attend Penn, all of their peers/professors/official document letterheards/etc. will refer the the school as 'Penn,' and that a number of people explicitly dislike the 'UPenn' moniker because its primary use is to differentiate Penn from Penn State, and for its general lack of euphony.</p>
<p>Saying to all of these people who actually HAVE ties to the school that you will continue to refer to their school by whatever nickname you so choose is not only rude, but immensely arrogant, and I think if you paused to think about the situation for ten seconds, you would probably realize that. Most likely, you have already and are now simply continuing this argument in an attempt to 'win' the thread, which is just sad.</p>
<p>Maybe we should send the admissions office an email suggesting they reject anyone who applies and refers to the school as 'UPenn' in their essays in an attempt to weed these types of applicants out; clearly they did not do much research on the school before applying.</p>
<p>^ Wow there are really some nothing-to-do-after-supper people in this university who deeply care ABOUT WHAT THE NICKNAME OF THE SCHOOL SHOULD BE!!!! This is unprecedented!!</p>
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Maybe we should send the admissions office an email suggesting they reject anyone who applies and refers to the school as 'UPenn' in their essays in an attempt to weed these types of applicants out; clearly they did not do much research on the school before applying.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is the most supercilious post I have ever seen in my life. Reject someone who loves University of Pennsylvania and has excellent academic credentials just because he refers to the university as UPenn? Well, it's its loss then :D. Admission should be based on the nickname a person gives to a university, eh? How interesting.</p>
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Saying to all of these people who actually HAVE ties to the school that you will continue to refer to their school by whatever nickname you so choose is not only rude, but immensely arrogant...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is a very ironic statement.</p>
<p>I'll rethink whether I should apply early to UPenn. I don't really wish to study with these types of people who are nitpicky just about everything. This argument over NICKNAME is just silly (and sissy).
May wish you all have fabulous summer.</p>
<p>Clearly you don't have much love for Penn if you refuse to refer to it in the manner that the students, faculty, and administration wish it to be. Don't worry, if you don't apply, someone else will get your rejection letter.</p>
<p>Please Shifu, timbers, and anyone else to whom this applies, if you're too thickheaded to understand my attempt to help you, do not apply to Penn.</p>
<p>Penn doesn't want people with academic credentials. They want smart students who have taken the time to learn about the university and will contribute to the community. I was trying to help teach you about the university and the community. Note that this tidbit isn't a nuance that you get from visiting campus (like loving Wawa, eating from a cart, or calling buildings nicknames like "steiney-d") but the most basic fact about the university that you can pick up from reading a single brochure.</p>
<p>I guess you could say this is a case of different opinions, if the group of people whose opinion it is to call the school "Penn" is the official school administration, faculty, and students, and the group of people who choose to call the school "upenn" is uneducated high school students. Penn's not a "nickname", it's official branding.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Clearly you don't have much love for Penn if you refuse to refer to it in the manner that the students, faculty, and administration wish it to be.
[/quote]
Speak for yourself. Not all students refer to it as Penn.</p>
<p>It's really not a big deal, and just because people choose to refer to it as anything other than Penn does not imply that they somehow do not love the University, are uneducated, or moronic.</p>
<p>No, it just indicates that they are not familiar with or sensitive to what virtually all current students (i.e., those who have already spent time on campus), faculty, staff, and alumni call the school, or what the university itself wants to be called. For example, Penn has spent millions of dollars branding the school, and that branding does NOT include the use of "UPenn":</p>
<p>Just something to be aware of if you want to sound like someone who is really familiar with the school, as opposed to an uninformed prospective student or "outsider." And I offer this friendly advice as a loyal alum who has been following the school closely for decades.</p>
<p>It's sort of disheartening to see people get so snippy and worked up about this silly nickname argument. I'm attending the university soon enough, and it's disappointing that people get into gripes so easily and debate how much somebody "loves" or "knows" a body of people. It's cool to stand strong for things you believe in and everything, but I think there's a lot more worthy causes than calling names or debating intelligence over something as trivial as this.</p>
<p>Chill, guys. You're scaring prospective students (and also me!). Of course they aren't going to know how fiercely people apparently advocate the usage of "Penn". It doesn't make them any less intelligent than the other student who does. They're simply uninformed upon the matter. Maybe only a real visit to the university or an interview, as people have said earlier, (or some hardcore Googling) might enlighten them upon this fact. And many students only visit after they've actually been accepted, so they might not even be aware of any of this until after they've submitted their essay. I don't think that this whole ordeal is something that's punishable by disqualification from admittance, as phillySASer08 suggests. And if some futures applicants DO decide to find out more about the University of Pennsylvania in their research and somehow stumble upon this thread, sure, they'll discover that the appropriate name is "Penn" and might use it in their essay. But they'll also think us to be spiteful and rigid people with all this name calling here. Nobody wants that, right?</p>
<p>Now, calling it Penn State... :D (I have actually seen this done in a fellow student's essay.)</p>
<p>As a Penn student, I'm honestly a little shocked at how some people have treated this subject in this thread.</p>
<p>There's no need for you guys to bash each other with poorly-veiled insults and namecalling.</p>
<p>All that really needs to be said here is that the school calls itself Penn. Everyone on campus calls it Penn. Therefore, if you wish to fall in line, you should probably refer to it as Penn, too. If you don't, it's likely not a big deal. It's not going to keep you from getting accepted or anything. It just sounds a little peculiar. It'd be like if your name was Alexander but everyone calls you Alex, but someone comes along and insists on calling you Alexander anyway because "It's still your real name." It just seems out of place.</p>
<p>In the end though, there are more important things to worry about/focus on. Just accept that Penn is really what you should be calling it if you don't wish to sound unusual, and move on!</p>
<p>For some reason, I came upon this thread and read it. I am not a Penn student, but I visited over spring break. The woman giving the presentation greeted us. First thing she said:</p>
<p>"Okay, first things first. This is Penn. Not UPenn. It's Penn." </p>
<p>I crossed out the "U" at the top of my notepad. I can't really speak because I'm not a student, but I really think that it's Penn. You can call it whatever you want, but you can also say whatever you want (that doesn't make it right). The adcom who was giving the presentation seemed to feel pretty strongly about it, and indicated that calling it UPenn really did indicate a lack of research and knowledge. So from an essay/interview standpoint, they seem to have a clear preference...</p>
<p>I'm actually a Penn senior and just take my word for it an entire thread bickering over whether it's "Penn" or "UPenn" is kinda ridiculous... The simple answer is that on the Penn campus it's pretty much unequivocably referred to as "Penn," but when you're referring to it in any case where it could conceivably be confused with Penn State, refer to it as UPenn... At the end of the day no one here really cares so long as we're not mixed up with Penn State and it's realized that we're not them, and I'd be shocked if it made any difference to your application at all....</p>
<ol>
<li><p>In the college business, reputations have a self-fulfilling aspect. If prospective students believe a school is excellent, it will attract excellent students, and this itself will contribute to making the school excellent. A college wishing to develop or maintain an excellent reputation needs to first and foremost work on the fundamentals like attracting outstanding faculty, etc. But it also helps to manage the expectations game in its favor. It needs to promote its excellence to outstanding high school seniors who then come and add to the school’s excellence. (As aside, this positive feedback loop also works in attracting excellent faculty.)</p></li>
<li><p>In promoting a reputation, it is helpful for a college to have a brand, a single name that all recognize. Let me illustrate with an extreme example. Suppose school x is sometimes called xprime. Suppose an outstanding high school student talks to four people and gets the following four messages: (1) “Go to x.” (2) “Go to y.” (3) “Go to xprime.” (4) “Go to y.” If the student does not know that x and xprime are the same (and if the student has no other info to go on), the student will go to y because there are two votes in its favor. You might think, “If this student can’t figure out that x and xprime are the same, then he can’t be that smart.” But even it this student is fairly certain that x and xprime are the same, it is not worth checking out because at best it is a tie, 2 votes for each school. With even a little uncertainty, the best strategy is to go to y. </p></li>
<li><p>OK, this brand dilution issue is probably small potatoes. It can’t be that big of a deal or Penn would have switched the domain name. Still, the point should be made in this thread that an individual’s choice of language potentially has practical impacts. In economist’s terms there is an external effect. Some of the writers in this thread argue that they should be free to call things whatever they want in they same way they should be free to pick whatever they want to eat for dinner. I don’t care what others eat, but I do care what words they use. It is a good thing, for example, that we coordinate and use one primary language for classes at college. It is also good to coordinate on the nickname of the school.</p></li>
<li><p>The University of Deleware, which started this problem by choosing the udel.edu domain name, seems to have escaped this controversy. No one seems to want to call it UDel.</p></li>
<li><p>When I was at Penn, some entrepreneurial student made some money selling “Not Penn State” t-shirts. Looks like there might be an opportunity to sell “Not UPenn” shirts!</p></li>
</ol>