Hi guys! I’ve heard at Ivy League schools sometimes it’s hard to make friends because the students there are so competitive with one another. Are people at Penn nice? My biggest fear is going to a school where you have “fair weather friends” and everyone is constantly trying to “1 up you.” By the way, if I apply to Penn I’d love to be in their nursing school. 
Thanks!
im probably applying to the nursing school too and im worried about the same problem but most people i know at penn say that the environment is friendly
You will find all types of students at Penn, but in general most people find that Penn students tend to be more sociable than at most schools. Penn has a strong reputation for this and students select Penn for it. Students are competitive in the sense that they work hard to do well, but they tend to be collaborative with one another in that effort.
Often homework or problem sets are done by a group of students or projects are assigned to a group. Overt cutthroat behavior is not the approach many Penn students would take, but if it occurs, it is likely to be punished and eliminated via the unusually strong social network. There is a lot of social incentive to play nicely.
Also, at Penn the social interaction is not by college. DD is in SEAS but she socializes with students from all 4 colleges. Students tend to group up with friends that are more like them, and not by college.
I’m entering my junior year at Penn. Freshman year fall was rough to some extent, but I think it is for everyone, especially if you aren’t that into parties. All my friends say they were lonely at first. But I think that’s the case no matter what school you go to. I haven’t had a problem making friends though. I also don’t think Penn is as cutthroat as people say. Maybe that’s just a Wharton thing. I started Penn in the college and then transferred into engineering school. I haven’t found classmates in either school to be cutthroat or overly competitive. In fact, people often help each other out. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
Penn is friendly. Wharton isn’t cutthroat.
Penn people are super nice. I graduated from the College in 2005. My friends were all super busy but found time to read over drafts of my paper because I wasn’t confident in my writing abilities back then. Even after 10 years, I talk to my best friends from Penn daily. Like any college, you will run into some arrogant folks who are that way because they are insecure. But you don’t have to be friends with them if you don’t want to. I’ve met so many multi-talented and kind people during my time there. Don’t let people’s generalizations misdirect you. I went to Columbia and Cornell for graduate school and there too, folks were more collaborative than you would think.
My D chose Penn because everyone was so friendly! Stick to your interests and you’ll find like-minded others.
I always found my classmates at Penn to be friendly and generally warm. It sometimes takes a while, but typically people develop their core groups of friends by late freshman year or early sophomore year.
Typically your closest friendships are made in the groups that you decide to join - I’m not friends with anyone that I just took a few classes with or saw at parties.
Cutthroat is hardly a word I would use to describe people at Penn. Early in freshman year there was a decent bit of competitiveness, mainly because so many people are experiencing real academic competition for the first time. When half the class came in as number 1 at their high school, it means that chances are pretty good that a high school number 1 is below average at Penn. It takes some longer than others, but eventually most people stop caring about how others are doing relative to themselves. For the most part, my friends and I didn’t discuss school except insofar as we wanted to have academic conversations.
An interesting phenomenon I can state retrospectively is that a good number of people, especially in Wharton, fully embrace cooperation around the time OCR starts junior year. Once you realize that basically everyone has a chance to get a good job, and it’s just a matter of which job you wind up getting, you start thinking (often unintentionally) about the future. For example, let’s say somebody asks you for help preparing for an interview. Even if you are technically competing with them for the job, you’re going to say yes. It may not seem to make sense, but there’s a healthy realization that the first job out of college is a starting point. Five years down the road, you’ll remember the person who helped you prepare for your interview when you are looking to hire somebody from another company…and you’ll remember the person who refused to help you, too.
Penn is incredibly friendly! No matter where you go to college, those first few weeks/months are going to be challenging. Everything is different and new-- everything is hard and unfamiliar. But with time you settle into a routine and you find likeminded people with whom to grab lunch or with whom you’ll go to a movie on friday night. If you are patient and open to the kindness of others, you will definitely find your circle! I still regularly (like, daily) communicate with my friends from my first day of freshman year and I’ve been graduated for a little while. If you are friendly to others then you won’t have a problem at Penn. And that is true for nursing students and wharton students alike.