<p>I find it very funny that people jump on me for saying that you miss out on a lot by going to Penn. You do! For that matter, you miss out on a lot by going to ANY school!</p>
<p>Lord, if you’re looking for a PERFECT school, you won’t find it. It’s just not there… there is no school which offers everything for everyone. Nobody can say that Penn is the best fit for every single person. If you abhor competition, you shouldn’t be at a school as pre-professional and competitive as Penn.</p>
<p>in_rainbows, I don’t cite large classes as a problem. Many people prefer large lectures to small classes since they can do the work for each class on their own schedule. If you get behind, you can take a week to catch up before the midterm and not worry about your grade. There’s a lot to be said about large classes. Heck, the class I’d say was second best out of my 20 so far was a class of 180. However, for some, large classes ARE a problem! And though upper level courses, especially in the social sciences and humanities, become much smaller, the fact is that you are, more likely than not, going to take at least a couple courses with over 100 students at some point. If you HATE that kind of environment and feel that you would be much better off in small classes with a lot of individual attention, your first year at Penn could prove to be rather difficult.</p>
<p>Now, to you, Rudess.</p>
<p>I don’t know of any rising juniors who have gotten internships at the major banks or hedge funds, but I’ll take your word that they can. And, I wasn’t trying to say that Penn State is as prestigious as Penn. It’s not. However, I WAS trying to say that prestige does not guarantee powerful internships, nor does the lack of prestige place powerful internships out of reach. </p>
<p>But seriously, don’t kid yourself by saying that the “prestige” of undergraduate institutions is that big a deal. Okay, granted, if there are two people applying for the same job; one graduated from Penn, the other from PSU; if they have the same major and GPA and the HR person didn’t go to either school, then the Penn grad would have the advantage. But prestige doesn’t matter in an undergraduate institution anywhere near as much as it matters for a graduate or professional institution. I mentioned this before, but for law students, prestige matters a LOT. When applying to a major Philly law firm (i.e. one with a $140k starting salary), if you want to be seriously considered, you need to be in the top 10% of graduates from Temple or Villanova, or you need to graduate from Penn. THAT is where prestige matters. However, if you take a kid who has a 3.8 as PSU and someone who has a 2.2 at Penn and hand their otherwise comparable resumes to a recruiter, you’d have to be dreaming to think that the 2.2 would trump the 3.8 simply because that degree is from Penn. You’d be dreaming!</p>
<p>As I said to the earlier poster, missing out on things is not equal to Penn not being a good fit for everyone. I have a few friends who go to Loyola College in Maryland. They can’t even conceive a class larger than 40 people, and they would honestly hate it any other way. I don’t think that sticking them in ECON002, MATH104 or PSYC001 would be a very good idea! It’s just not! Like I said, though, that’s not a problem Penn has; it is something that students either enjoy, adjust to, or avoid. It all goes to fit, and Penn isn’t the best fit for every student.</p>
<p>“Not like having professors that are not the top leaders in their fields and care A LOT about teaching is any better.”
I mean, honestly, I beg to differ. Having a professor who is a top leader in his field is great, but as a student I prefer professors who concentrate on teaching. It really depends on one’s view of the purpose of education. At Penn I believe the prevailing attitude is that education prepares one for a place in the working world. That is absolutely not without merit; I am more of the mind that university education teaches students a way of thinking and that a liberal arts education is at its best when students challenge themselves to learn for the sake of learning rather than to learn for the sake of gaining credentials to take to a recruiter. I see the latter as the job of graduate/professional school. So feel free to disagree, as I’m sure about 6,000 Penn students disagree with me, but I stand by all of my statements.</p>
<p>Alright I should’ve been more clear; I know three people who TRIED to transfer into Wharton and fourteen people who TRIED to transfer into the College. Yes, you need upwards of a 3.8 to transfer into Wharton, but I’ve found that overall more people are satisfied with the CAS than with Wharton. The thought of the Wharton curriculum being too difficult, however, makes me want to laugh. The MGMT and LGST courses are obscenely easy. MGMT100… come on now… I took LGST210 last semester, and that was wildly interesting but also rather easy; this semester I’m in LGST220 (crosslisted with LGST820) and that is, also, not exactly labor intensive. Granted, STAT and FNCE are tough subjects, and some of the upper level requirements are pretty tough, but of the people I know who are doing dual degrees, I don’t know a single one who would even try to say that Wharton is tougher than the College. </p>
<p>… seriously… this semester I’m in three political science courses, which give me a total of around 600 pages of reading a week on average; compare that to two legal studies courses which give a total of 75 a week; and the course I’m taking to fulfill my language requirement (GRMN104) has to be taken for a grade, not pass/fail.</p>
<p>Now, to be clear, I’m not “bashing” Wharton by any means. Wharton is professional. It is practical. It teaches students how to effectively work in the business world, and so people who are interested in this kind of thing and who want to take these kinds of courses which help to mold them into leaders in industry should absolutely want to be in Wharton. But that isn’t everybody! The freedom you get to pursue your interests is so vast in the college that some people spend three years looking and never actually finding anything they want to major in; but other people enjoy this freedom… you don’t have anywhere near as much freedom in Wharton. You just don’t.</p>
<p>But honestly, if someone tries to tell me that they will be more successful in life (in the long run) because they went to Penn, and they then show me a transcript full of Cs, they are in for a RUDE awakening. If you excel at Penn, you can use that to get your foot in the door, and if you take advantage of the top professors you see at Penn, you can use that experience and knowledge to excel in your field of choice. However, if you spend four years partying and sliding with mostly Bs and Cs, but more importantly if you go your four years without really learning how to think in a manner which will advance yourself, you will have just as much trouble as anyone else.</p>
<p>Penn’s great, I like it, I’m glad I go there. But don’t fool yourself by saying it’s perfect for everybody. It’s not! It shouldn’t be! It’s not perfect for me by any means, but it’s a tremendous FIT for me.</p>