<p>What about Penn can you not discover by looking at information given out by the college (website, brochures, etc.)? How are students at Penn similar to/different than students at other Ivy League schools? What is Philadelphia like compared to other major cities in the country? I know these are the kind of things a college visit would answer, but my family can't afford to fly across the country right now. Anything you could tell me would be appreciated. Thanks!</p>
<p>Take some initiative and search the forum. There is plenty of information on CC.</p>
<p>I too can not afford to fly to philly and visit the campus but I can tell you from what I have read off this board. The campus is absolutely beautiful with a lot of beautiful old buildings and some new ones. Going to Penn is kind of liking being in a bubble, it is a self-contained 260 acre campus. There is a lot of stuff to do on campus. The food gets a C+, and every freshman and I think transfer student has to get a meal plan. The food is pretty average. Most freshman live on the Quad, and it is the best place to socialize as a new freshie. There are also high rise buildings you can live in. The elevators are really slow though. You need like an extra 15 minutes to use them and get to class. Students at Penn like to work hard, and play hard, as in they study but they like to get drunk on weekends. The biggest party scene in the Ivy League is here, perhaps besides Darthmouths. A sizeable percentage of the student body goes greek. Students are pretty preppy but not as much as Princeton, and there are people here for everyone. You just have to find your own “niche” so to speak. A good percentage of the study body is Jewish, Asian is 18 %, 7% African American, and 6% hispanic. There is a strong pre-professional atmosphere at Penn, which means that people are there to build their careers, be it doctor, lawyer, ibanker. But there is a still a strong influence of the liberal arts thru the general education requirments in seven sections. Philadelphia is a great cosmopolitan city with many cultural amenities. It is comparable to NYC or Boston in terms of what it has to offer. But keep in mind Philly has the highest crime rate in the country. So you shouldn’t hang out by youself late at night.</p>
<p>UPENN campus is extremely safe. I go into the city all the time at very late hours and never have trouble. The campus is amazing and the people are very smart. There is a huge party scene which includes other local schools. The rivalry with Drexel is crazy, since its only 3 blocks away. It was probably the nicest campus I have ever seen and I am probably applying early just because it has a great campus, great people, and great academics. If you have any questions about it just message me.</p>
<p>To what DSI said, I have read through the posts on the forum and a number of outside sources, but more information never hurts.</p>
<p>Jeepers! Philly does NOT have the highest crime rate in the country. It may have the highest crime rate among the 10 largest cities, but there are plenty of slightly smaller cities (starting with Detroit and Baltimore) that have much higher crime rates. And in any case, the crime rate in North Philadelphia (which is awful) has nothing to do with Penn. As is true everywhere, the really terrible crime tends to be poor people victimizing each other in settings where they are isolated from the rest of society. Penn’s campus and the surrounding area is not Disney World – bikes do get stolen, and sometimes people are mugged at night – but actual injuries are infrequent enough to be big news when they happen. (And, remember, the Penn community, with 20,000 students and even more faculty, administration, and employees, is large enough to be a small city unto itself. A population that big and that young is always going to have some crime going on, even if you hermetically seal it off from the rest of the world.)</p>
<p>Philadelphia is actually a great place to be a college student. It’s big enough to offer a ton of things to do, and to have pretty good public transportation. It is second to Boston/Cambridge in number of college students, but it has a lot more than almost anywhere else. But it’s not as big as NYC, Chicago, LA, where people don’t care about students that much because they don’t need 'em. Students are really important here, and are catered to. It’s also a much, much cheaper city than any of those or Boston. You can have a great time here on a student budget. And if you want to spend a day or a weekend in New York, it’s an $11, two-hour bus ride.</p>
<p>Three things that are especially great in Philly:</p>
<p>Music. The indie-rock world here is almost entirely all-ages, which is a big difference from other large cities, and you can go to a lot of shows for $10-$15. There is a great local hip-hop scene, anchored by The Roots and more commercial people. Classical music is everywhere, starting with Curtis, which is walking distance from Penn. And Philly is one of the few places where there is still a vibrant jazz scene.</p>
<p>College basketball. If you are really into college football, you may be disappointed, although Penn turns out pretty hard for its team. But the local college basketball scene here is probably the best in the country. Villanova, Temple, Penn, St. Joe’s, LaSalle, and Drexel all play one another frequently (except I think Villanova doesn’t schedule Drexel) and recruit against one another. The games are tough, lots of upsets. Big crowds, lots of noise. Really fun.</p>
<p>Food. From the highest end – Philadelphia has its share of the best gourmet restaurants in the country – to the lowest end – the great lunch trucks around Penn, hoagies and cheesesteaks in South Philly – Philadelphia is a great foodie city, and at lower prices than almost anywhere. A feature here that I haven’t seen anywhere else is the huge number of small, ambitious BYOB restaurants. An up-and-coming chef will open a 30-seat restaurant in an out-of-the-way location, with no liquor license, to establish a reputation that will ultimately attract investors for the $2-3 million it takes to do a big, fancy restaurant. The great ones aren’t dirt cheap, but it’s completely possible to have a really special meal for $30-$40 all in, which is something college students can swing for special occasions. And there’s a full range of ethnic cuisines – every corner of Asia, Brazil, Eastern Europe, the Hispanic world, Iran, the Middle East, Africa.</p>
<p>Thanks- it’s good to hear from people who know the area.</p>
<p>Sophie, </p>
<p>Where would you be moving from? I was in Philadelphia for one year, I moved there from Fl. I had to move back because the weather was unbearable for me. You should take that into consideration too. </p>
<p>Karenin</p>
<p>Good point- luckily, my area is better for skiing than surfing.</p>
<p>@ DSI- don’t be mean
@ sophie- don’t worry about philly!!! the campus area is completely safe and the campus is GORGEOUS!!! also, the city is a great resource
this is pretty good info for u tooooo: http://**************.com/university-of-pennsylvania/</p>
<p>[YouTube</a> - Penn Traditions](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBVmRr09iOk]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBVmRr09iOk)
[YouTube</a> - “True Learning” - University of Pennsylvania](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGpOizUIY60]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGpOizUIY60)
[YouTube</a> - “Before I covered the White House…” - Andrea Mitchell](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWGd--fhkBs&feature=channel]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWGd--fhkBs&feature=channel)
[YouTube</a> - “Imagine the game of football without the forward pass…”](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqsq8FuCd9A&feature=channel]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqsq8FuCd9A&feature=channel)
[YouTube</a> - “Before I worked with Kanye West…” - John Legend](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rGEWrvBZrE&feature=channel]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rGEWrvBZrE&feature=channel)</p>
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<p>Actually with the acquisition of the Postal Lands, it’s closer to 300 acres now…an unheard of amount of space for a university that is IN a major American city.</p>
<p>By way of comparison, Columbia’s campus is 32 acres. Harvard’s is bigger but it is not <em>in</em> Boston the way Columbia and Penn are <em>in</em> NYC and Philadelphia</p>
<p>And yes Northeast Philadelphia is bad, but Penn is nowhere near it.</p>
<p>[File:WPhilaDistrict.PNG</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WPhilaDistrict.PNG]File:WPhilaDistrict.PNG”>File:WPhilaDistrict.PNG - Wikipedia)</p>
![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WPhilaDistrict.PNG]File:WPhilaDistrict.PNG](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WPhilaDistrict.PNG%5DFile:WPhilaDistrict.PNG){kind=link}
<p>If you look at this map, Penn is in the easternmost part of the yellow West Philadelphia, immediately adjacent to Center City, the ritzy, Manhattan-esque part of Philadelphia. Northeast Philadelphia is, well, in the Northeast…</p>
<p>^ Actually, it’s not Northeast Philadelphia that’s bad, but rather North Philadelphia (the so-called “Badlands”).</p>
<p>But what do you expect from a guy who still refers to Mumbai as “Bombay.” :p</p>
<p>Depending on how you measure crime, the Great Northeast may look worse than the Badlands, because lots and lots of people live in Northeast Philadelphia, and many of the worst parts of North Philadelphia are significantly depopulated. If a burglar breaks into a building, and it turns out to be abandoned, is it a crime? (Well, yes it is; the law is not big on Zen koans. But it is unlikely to become a crime statistic.)</p>
<p>That Wikipedia map is pretty funny, because it mushes together very dissimilar neighborhoods into chunks. No one would call Northern Liberties and Fishtown (the current epicenters of Hipster Philadelphia), or the ritzy Art Museum - Fairmount neighborhood, “Near North Philadelphia”.</p>
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<p>But in terms of violent crime, it’s definitely North Philadelphia (as generally defined in Philly), and not the Great Northeast, that is the violent crime hot spot (hence, the local moniker “Badlands”). The Great Northeast, along with the far Northwest (Chestnut Hill, West Mount Airy, and Roxborough), are actually among the safest areas of Philadelphia in terms of violent crime rates.</p>
<p>Just to make sure that we’re clear on crime rates and dangerous areas… The map in that picture shows the official separations by the Philadelphia Dept. of City Planning. The Lower Northeast (aka Near Northeast) is Northeast Philly excluding Kensington which extends north until Pennypack Creek. Northern Lower Northeast Philly is a great place to live with a lot of working class families; Southern Lower Northeast Philadelphia, near upper North Philadelphia, has slowly become part of the Badlands. Crescentville, Lawncrest, Juniata, all of those places were amazing neighborhoods ten years ago but are deadly now.</p>
<p>Southern Lower North Philly is pretty much an extension of Center City (at least it is now), but as you get further from CC, it gets progressively more dangerous until you’re at around, oh say 25th and Allegheny, where it’s more dangerous than Baghdad was in 2006.</p>
<p>With all of that said, North Philly, Lower Northeast Philly and Kensington are nowhere near Penn, and Penn students have no business in those areas, so no worries. West Philly is dangerous at places like 50th and Market and such, but also Penn students have no business going there, and inside the Penn patrol zone you’re covered by three layers of security, including two civil police forces. In other words, you’re safe.</p>
<p>Also, for the record, upper North Philadelphia is more densely populated than any part of Northeast Philly. Unfortunately southern NEPhilly is getting close to as bad as North Philly. 
But hey the far Northeast is still great, except for the Russian mob, but they haven’t been bothering anybody recently.</p>
<p>the point is, it’s in a safe pt. of the city and you’ll be fine :)</p>
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<p>And I always will. Renaming Bombay is the work of the Shiv Sena, a loathsome grouping of far-right xenophobes and nativists who hate not only foreigners, but their fellow Indians who happen to fall outside their preferred geography and religion (heaven help you if you’re a Muslim from northern India). I hate them and everything they stand for and I will never call the city by the name they have tried to paint upon it in blood.</p>
<p>Foreigners are welcome in Bombay, not Mumbai.</p>
<p>^ So why the move from Bangalore? Transfer? New job?</p>
<p>Inquiring minds want to know! :)</p>