<p>What is it about our Penn board that seems to attract Stanford trolls like fresh meat enticing a pack of hungry wolves? ;)</p>
<p>something...something....sour grapes....something...something
is that how that expressions went? :-P</p>
<p>Can you guys think of anything more insightful than "trolls", "sour grapes", "excuses"? Instead of having an honest discussion on the methodology like people on Yale/Pricenton/Stanford/Duke board did, most of you just dodged the issue and resorted to name calling [edited out by Moderator]. None of you wrote even one sentence on why UPenn should be ranked above Stanford or why the methodology was perfect. In a sense, it's understandable. It's difficult to argue against the obvious after all.</p>
<p>Penn, IMO, is a better school because:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The students are more well rounded. I spent a considerable amount of time at Stanford and can tell you that the student body at Penn is much more well rounded, diverse, & interesting. Stanford was full of nerds, no offense if you go there.</p></li>
<li><p>From stuff that my friends at Stanford have told me it seems that here at Penn out faculty is more accessible...</p></li>
<li><p>there is a greater chance for UG research at Penn than at Stanford.</p></li>
<li><p>Penn has better industry placement than Stanford and a higher average salary upon graduation (I haven't seen alumni data at Stanford but knowing that the average Wharton alum is making $450k 10 years out it quite comforting...)</p></li>
<li><p>Personally, as a Wharton student, the network is better. Just in business.</p></li>
<li><p>The social life at penn is a million times better than stanford's...our parties are amazing compared to Stanford parties (or at least the ones I've been to). Plus at penn we can actually get into exclusive manhattan clubs without getting rejected at the door. </p></li>
<li><p>The realistic, pre-professional education at penn actually prepares it's students for the real world. Thus, there is better industry placement at penn.</p></li>
<li><p>Penn allows you the option of a dual-degree in 4/5 years. </p></li>
<li><p>The career services at Penn is considered the top UG career services office. </p></li>
<li><p>Penn offers more diverse majors when compared to stanford, not only does penn offer most of stanford's majors but it offers two other full UG schools that Stanford doesn't have.</p></li>
<li><p>There are more international students at Penn leading to a more diverse campus. </p></li>
<li><p>Penn has much more history than leland stanford junior college.</p></li>
<li><p>Our founder is a bad ass playboy. Props to BFranklin for hooking it up with the ladies.</p></li>
<li><p>Our women are much hotter...</p></li>
<li><p>Quakers chop down trees</p></li>
<li><p>Penn students dominate the invesment banking industry which essentially dominates silicon valley and the rest of the world's economy</p></li>
<li><p>Most of our programs are top notch, just like Stanford's, however all other aspects of Penn top Stanford (social life, faculty accessibility, students, career placement, etc. everything except athletics). </p></li>
<li><p>Plus we're ivy league which inherently makes us more ELITE.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I can keep going but I'm getting bored and depressed listing all of stanford's defects. :(</p>
<p>You did pick on the spelling of squishy and you didn't let it slide. </p>
<p>Does it occur to you people can have typos on CC board?</p>
<p>I didn't take any class at Stanford's English department. Attack the message, not the messenger.</p>
<p>Anzanar,
I gave reasons. But you failed to discuss them. Let me reiterate:</p>
<p>Financial resource is very misleading when it includes the money for medical research which has no undergrad program and got nothing to do with undergrads. The amount is usually substantially larger than that for other schools. Schools with big medical center, like Penn, are disporportionally favored.</p>
<p>Selectivity rank is totally subjective. There's no logical reason why SAT ranges and admit rate aren't as important as class rank. Stanford is 40-50 points higher in SAT range and significantly lower admit rate. Yet, its selectivity rank is lower than Penn because of lower % of students in top-10% in HS. Penn's ED admits have SAT average of 1381. That's even lower than averages for schools like JHU and Northwestern which are never comparable to Stanford in selectivity.</p>
<p>Faculty resource: there's no reason why the rank appears very sensitive to % of class > 50 students but rather insensitive to % professors being full-time. Penn is pretty good in the former but not #1 and not better than most by wide margin; its the lowest in the latter among its peers. Yet, it's #1 in this category.</p>
<p>Predicted graduation rate: it is puzzling to me that US News has been so stubborn to keep this one. How in the world does someone come up with this objectively?? Penn was predicted low and the actual rate is higher--got bonus on this one.</p>
<p>bern700,</p>
<p>That's definitely much better than other responses. I'd probably disagree with many of them though. But it's pointless to argue the subjectives.</p>
<p>Sam Lee:</p>
<p>You just dodged my question. Did you really expect coming into the Penn board and claiming the #4 spot wasn't justified given "XXXX" (even though by the formula in US News, it obviously is) would garner positive responses?</p>
<p>There's plenty of threads in the generic "US News Rankings" threads located in the college selection forums. Why choose to post in the Penn forum? It's like going to a pro-life community to argue why abortion is justified (or vice versa). It's not productive in any way (especially regarding subjective issues like this).</p>
<p>And I never called you a liar. I said you were a liar (or ignorant!) if you denied trolling this forum.</p>
<p>Anzanar,</p>
<p>Apparently you don't know this. The super moderator censored all discussions about whether Penn's ranking is justified or not in the public forum. He/she told people to go to Penn's forum for it.</p>
<p>While I didn't expect positive response, I actually thought some people would at least agree the rankings have flaws. I also expect there would be some responses to counter what I said about the methodology and some intelligent debate/discussion. Obviously, this hasn't been the case. The lack of discussion about the methodology seems to suggest people on this board are insecure about it and want to avoid looking at it closely. That the US News has flaws is not subjective; it's pretty obvious. I am merely pointing out how many measures by US News are subjective and seem arbitrary. I don't consider going to other boards to give unpopular opinion as "trolling" as long as the person offers sound arguments.</p>
<p>Everyone, </p>
<p>I think we can all agree that there are major flaws with any list of colleges. It isn't an exact science. Ok, so let's take a look at this, I was admitted to Penn RD, I was Stanford deferred EA, then rejected RD (so I'm obviously partial to both schools.) I'm enrolled at Penn, though I applied EA to Stanford despite its lower US News Ranking. Coincidentally, in "Toughest to Get Into" lists the past 2 years the Princeton Review, Penn has ranked a bit above Stanford. Obviously that wasn't the case for me. I guess my point is, who cares? I got waitlisted at Harvard, a more favorable result than an outright rejection, which I received at Columbia and Stanford, ultimately. I was also waitlisted at Brown. And Pomona. And I got into Duke. So, using this "data:"</p>
<p>Stanford>Harvard?
Columbia>Harvard?
Brown=Harvard=Pomona?
Penn=Duke=Aurora Community College=University of Making Awesome Pancakes?</p>
<p>And on and on, ad nauseam. What difference does it make? I know someone who got waitlisted at Duke and got into Brown. I was the opposite. In the above scenarios, admissions officers saw the exact same application, essentially, and there was no apparent consensus. I was good enough for Harvard if some room opened up, but not good enough for Stanford under any circumstances? That's ridiculous. Admissions Officers will be the first to tell you that 80+% of applicants would succeed academically at their schools, so it is something of a crapshoot at some point. It's really not worth getting worked up over. We're all students at elite institutions, and we're all awesome. How's that?</p>
<p>Let me introduce an alternate viewpoint:</p>
<p>US News and World Report has over the years become THE college ranking. When a college ranking is quoted (apart from department specific rankings) it is usually US News and World Report ranking. To some extent, it has become the measuring stick for colleges. Hence, according to the commonly accepted measuring stick Penn is the number four school in the country. By which commonly accepted measuring stick are you, Sam Lee, able to deduce that it is not the number four school in the country?</p>
<p>On another topic:
To me, it is easier to understand why smaller class sizes provides better education than why full-time professors provides better education. In many fields, I would actually prefer a part-time professor who is also practicing in his field. In most practical fields of study, such as business, architecture etc, I would actually prefer this. A course that comes to mind off the top of my head is the mayor of philadelphia (or was it the governor of Pennsylvania?) teaching political campaigning.
Perhaps the %f ull-time professors as part of faculty resource ranking should be removed entirely?</p>
<p>snipanlol,</p>
<p>Thanks! Finally, someone started addressing the issue. One can argue the part-time professors tend to be less accessible because many of them are rarely on campus. But you have your point also.</p>
<p>What you cannot argue is this: Ben Franklin > Leland Stanford.</p>
<p>My response to bern's points:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Stanford, full of nerds? Caltech, maybe, but Stanford? Stanford has arguably the best athletics program in the US. It's just as diverse and well-rounded as Penn.</p></li>
<li><p>It depends on the faculty member. There will always be a few who are never accessible, but that's a universal phenomenon, not just at Stanford. The majority of professors have defined office hours in which students can set appointments or just pop in. They also check their email very frequently; I've heard of students getting responses from professors in minutes.</p></li>
<li><p>I highly doubt this. Stanford is one of the premier research universities in the world. Sure, most of it is done by grad students, but trust me, there are more than enough projects and resources to fully accomodate the undergrads.</p></li>
<li><p>This statistic is skewed by Wharton. Penn has a tremendous number of students who go into i-banking and management consulting, which skews the salary statistic upwards. If you compare school by school, I'm pretty sure that Stanford engineers have better industry placement than Penn engineers, and Stanford Humanities and Science students place better than those in Penn College.</p></li>
<li><p>Like you said, just in business. What about for pre-law, pre-med, engineering, etc? I'm pretty sure that across the board, Stanford's network is better.</p></li>
<li><p>You're probably right about this. From what I heard, Penn is quite a party school. But Stanford parties can also get pretty wild. Keep in mind that Stanford has a very strict policy against underage drinking.</p></li>
<li><p>Once again, only for Wharton. Stanford doesn't have such a high percentage of i-bankers and consultants. Many of them move onto grad school after college. To get true industry placement, you have to take that into account.</p></li>
<li><p>Stanford also allows dual-degrees, as well as combined degrees, as well as co-terminal degrees.</p></li>
<li><p>Once again, probably only for Wharton. Keep in mind that there are many students who don't enter the workforce right after college; I'm pretty sure that Stanford has better grad school, med school, and law school placement. Look at the WSJ feeder ranking.</p></li>
<li><p>I give you this one. Although Stanford doesn't have an undergrad business program, there is a major called Management Science & Engineering which is very similar. It requires courses in econ, finance, investment science, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>The difference in diversity among the top schools is negligible. Every top school makes sure to take a wide variety of students (which is why admissions depends nowadays on hooks), so nitpicking about this is pointless.</p></li>
<li><p>I give you this too. That doesn't make Penn a better school though. If anything, it makes Stanford look more impressive in that it was able to become a top-tier school in a much shorter time period.</p></li>
<li><p>Comparing between founders doesn't mean anything.</p></li>
<li><p>I dunno...those CA girls aren't bad to look at either :)</p></li>
<li><p>Um...ok...Stanford could still cream Penn at any sport</p></li>
<li><p>Once again, this is skewed because of Wharton. I wouldn't go so far to say that Penn dominates Silicon Valley. I mean, come on, that's definitely Stanford's turf. Stanford practically created Silicon Valley. Yahoo, Google, HP, SUN Microsystems, etc. There are articles about how much of an impact Stanford had on the rise of computers, the dot-com boom, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>What about engineering (besides bioengineering)? Science in general? We've already been through the student body and career placement.</p></li>
<li><p>Come on, you don't seriously mean this, do you? There is a noticeable disparity in prestige within the Ivy League. You can't seriously say that HYP and Brown are at the same level. To say that Stanford's a lesser school because it's in a different athletic conference is....I'm sure you know where this is going.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>So there you have it. Note: I'm not trying to bash Penn or hype up Stanford. I'm merely posting my responses to these 18 interesting points that were posted some time ago.</p>
<p>"While I didn't expect positive response, I actually thought some people would at least agree the rankings have flaws."</p>
<p>Nah, I'd expect people to agree that rankings are rankings, and they mean little. The rankings don't have "flaws", but judge the school in accordance with what US News is measuring. If you are truely concerned about the "flaws" in the rankings, don't take it to the Penn forum (which, regardless to your "true" intentions, would not go over well), but send a letter to US News! You are arguing that certain parts of the formula is flawed, which means that you could have taken this argument to the main forum, as it applies to more schools than just Penn. However, your choice to single out Penn (and of course, use Stanford as a counter-example) and bring it to the Penn forums leads me to believe that you were just trolling.</p>
<p>So get that letter written!</p>
<ol>
<li>Once again, this is skewed because of Wharton. I wouldn't go so far to say that Penn dominates Silicon Valley. I mean, come on, that's definitely Stanford's turf. Stanford practically created Silicon Valley. Yahoo, Google, HP, SUN Microsystems, etc. There are articles about how much of an impact Stanford had on the rise of computers, the dot-com boom, etc.</li>
</ol>
<p>Yeah if there weren't investment banks then there wouldn't be a silicon valley ergo if penn didn't exist neither would silicon valley. Penn dominates silicon valley. :) You like how I just pulled that out of my ass??</p>
<p>And if there were no computers and no Internet, then i-banking as we know it would crumble. LOL :)</p>
<p>ForeverZero:</p>
<p>Saying things are "skewed because of Wharton" doesn't change anything, as Wharton is part of the University of Pennsylvania. You can't seperate them arbitrarily to strengthen your argument, because it's all part of a single university.</p>
<p>I don't get #62</p>
<p>Yes, but it's still unfair to compare industry placement when only taking into account students who get jobs right away after undergrad. To get a true sense of the success of alumni, one has to take into account those undergrads who move on to professional or grad schools. That's what I meant by Wharton skewing that statistic. And it's also useful to compare between individual departments, such as engineering. Stanford shouldn't be unnecessarily penalized for not having an undergrad business program. That just means that more students enter the workforce later on.</p>
<p>Hazmat: bern and I were submitting hyperboles of these schools' strengths. He kidded that the entire i-banking industry is dependent on Penn alone, to which I replied that the entire computing and dot-com industry depends on Stanford.</p>
<p>but Forever the first computer (ENIAC) was invented at Penn! So hence without Penn the computer wouldn't exist and thus the internet wouldn't exist...however, ibanking is not dependent on the computer as it is an industry that began in the late 1800s with Mr. J.P. Morgan.</p>
<p>Overall, then without Penn Stanford would be nothing as Stanford's claims to fame - Silicon Valley and the Dot-Com Industry - are solely dependent on Penn's invention of the computer & Penn's domination of Investment banking.</p>
<p>:) This is fun.</p>