<p>Hi, i'm currently an undergraduate at Imperial College thinking of going to UPenn for graduate school. I was wondering, what the social atmosphere is like? I know Penn is known to be the most or one of the most sociable ivies with lots of parties etc. however, i'm not sure whether that applied to the graduate school as well?</p>
<p>For those of you that know about the social life at grad school, do grads still have as much fun as the undergrads? Or is it a lot more serious with a more limited social life? i.e. Do graduates still go to frat parties, or is that a strictly undergrad thing?</p>
<p>I think you will find that it’s universal, or nearly so, in the US that graduate students spend a lot less time partying than undergraduates. </p>
<p>To some extent, though, it varies based on the person and what sort of graduate school they are in. Graduate students range widely in age and life circumstances. (My mother, for example, entered at PhD program at 50, and received her degree at 61. That was a little unusual, but it’s not unusual at all for entering graduate students to be in their late 20s and married, sometimes with children already.) They range widely in personality. And some graduate programs are a lot less demanding than others. MBA students, and students in other two-year terminal master’s programs, seem to have a fair amount of time for socializing. Medical students and PhD students, not so much. Law students start out overwhelmed, but usually wind up with time on their hands in the later years of their programs.</p>
<p>In fact, I don’t know how universal it is, but it is often the case at places like Penn that the older undergraduates party a lot less than the younger ones. Even hard-core frat boys tend to start backing off before they finish college.</p>
<p>Anyway – I am old, not a current student. I know a couple of Penn PhD students pretty well, one in Biology (MD/PhD) and one in a social science. Their lives are very not-social, much less social than when they were in college. Their work level is overwhelming at times. Still, one of them has managed to fall in love and have the first really serious relationship of her life, so things aren’t all grind-grind-grind. But it wasn’t anyone she met at a party or a bar. I also know some current or recent public policy, law, criminology, and social work students. They have more reasonable lives, but no interest at all in participating in undergraduate socializing. They do/did go to parties within their own schools, which were not as frequent or as frenzied as the undergraduate parties are reputed to be.</p>
<p>As a gross generalization, at American universities, graduate students are not in the same social circles as undergrads. There are always exceptions, of course, but in general, the graduate schools and students have their own social networks which–to a greater or lesser extent–are generally centered around each particular school (law students socialize with each other, medical students with each other, etc.). Of course, as I said, there are exceptions, both for individual students, as well as for certain cultural and religious centers on campus.</p>
<p>But in general, as in the real world, 20- and 30-something grad students (and even older, as JHS points out) don’t typically spend much time hanging out socially with 18-21-year-olds, and especially at raucous frat, dorm, and house parties. ;)</p>