Penn Is Still, Reportedly, The #4 School In The Nation

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
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<p>I can't believe I'm siding with ASalientOne here, but I will say this: while phillySASer08 you personally seem to be clearly very qualified, I have met a handful of students from Philly whom I could not believe made it into an ivy, and who were not URM/athletes. There was an article in the DP about a certain quota of students that Penn has to accept from Philly every year, as well as certain number of scholarships they need to award to Philly students (like the Mayer scholarship or something). I'm not saying that all Philly kids are less qualified than their out-of-state peers (I've met a handful of really smart Philly kids as well), just that you have to admit that on average Philly students have to have less to get in. The 15 kids from Masterman/Central that made it into Penn: were they mostly at the very top of the class? My guess would be no, but I could be wrong. This is something that should be fixed, as well as the engineering acceptance rate being too high as well.</p>

<p>But the main problem with Penn is, their class size is way too freakin' big! 2468 students is just too much!!! Decrease this to half, and Penn will be able to claim the HYP^2 acronym :)</p>

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<p>shrek2004,</p>

<p>Maybe you need to chill. All I did was giving you 2 links that seemed to contradict your statements. You don't need to worry about me taking what you wrote personally.</p>

<p>
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stanford's recruitment process is one of the most lax and least rigorous (academically speaking).

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</p>

<p>Do you mean that relative to Ivies? Sure, I believe the Ivies have more stringent academic standard for the athletes. However, when comparing to other Div-I programs, numerous stats/articles suggest Stanford's athletes have top-3 highest SAT scores among Div-I teams (Ivies are not in D-1 if I am not mistaken).</p>

<p><a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/05/30/SPGR36U72J1.DTL&hw=stanford+athletes+SAT+scores&sn=006&sc=729%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/05/30/SPGR36U72J1.DTL&hw=stanford+athletes+SAT+scores&sn=006&sc=729&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Please don't take it personally. I am not gonna just take what you said as fact when numerous published articles/stats (including player profiles on Stanford athletics website) say otherwise.</p>

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<p>Average philly student inferior to average New Haven student? How do you figure that or even try to quanitfy it?</p>

<p>Inever mentioned or referenced any law suit of any sort.</p>

<p>You were speaking of students you had interacted with while at Penn, i.e. Philly Penn students, don't try to twist what you wrote. Even if you thought you were talking about students not attending Penn, then that demonstrates your statements to be even more baseless and unfounded.</p>

<p>By taking students from the better schools, they take better students because in this case the better schools are magnet schools that draw the best students from all over the city.</p>

<p>There never was any deal that gave Penn land to admit students from philly, Penn has bought up the land for the most part all on it's own.</p>

<p>tax break=giving them money, sort of, but that's not what you said in your initial post that involved a lot of asterisks</p>

<p>Yale is a much smaller school, so of course they would take numbers less than that of penn, new haven is also a much, much smaller city.</p>

<p>I never denied that there was an advantage for philly students, but then there's also an advantage for people who apply from Idaho, New Mexico, etc.</p>

<p>Since most of the applicants from philly who attend Penn that I know personally have been performing above average in comparison to their peers in their time there, I'd say they don't diminish the quality of the school at all, but this is of course my personal experience, not your "logic."</p>

<p>and my "spotlight" fallacy is still more concrete evidence than you have turned up, period.</p>

<p>Which hurts a school more, a few students admitted with average (for the school) credentials but without the stellar EC's and other bells and whistles who go on to become perfectly functional members of the Penn community, or a program that is consistently cited as dragging down the University as a whole, both in terms of it's admission percentages and the quality of the program when compared to others of its type?</p>

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<p>actually, most of the Masterman/Central kids were in the top portion of their class (that 15 students were just from Masterman, btw), not all, but most. The Central valedictorian from 04 went to penn, and about 3/4 of the Masterman students were in the top twenty (students, not percentile, but in a graduating class of 100 it's the same thing). and knightmare, you're an incoming freshman, I would not put too much wait on your personal experience at this point (once you get on campus, you're going to meet people from all over the place that you'll be surprised got into an ivy, that's just the way it is).</p>

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<p>on a further note, many of these students, particularly from masterman applied ED and also had legacy status, two qualities that give you a boost at Penn no matter where you are</p>

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<p>Yea i meant ivies, sry i didnt take anything personally, ive just read a few posts before from stanford kids (mainly zephyr) who takes everything personally. i just didnt want you to think this was a personal attack on stanford or anything =P. just clearin up things.</p>

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<p>I'm not an incoming freshman, I'm a rising sophomore (c/o 2008), but alright.</p>

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<p>Anzanar,</p>

<p>All I can say is I am not gonna waste more time to defend agaisnt your speculation. I don't usually care about people's intention, as long as he/she is making arguments based on sound stats/observations. I don't think people feel the need to explain why they are saying what on discussion board. 1sokkermom was posting how Penn deserves its rank above Stanford in a thread where many felt otherwise. Did I ever question about her intention? I could have kept thinking all she was doing was to annoy those who weren't satisfied with the ranking. I could have said to her things like "shouldn't you spend more time to take care of your kids?"...etc. LOL! Instead, I don't really care about that because it's completely irrlevant. I just countered her arguments with my arguments.</p>

<p>
[quote]
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.

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</p>

<p>
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snipanlol,
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.

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</p>

<p>Contrary to what you insisted, I do acknowledge good points from my opponents.</p>

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<p>sorry, i was confusing you with another poster, my apologies</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Average philly student inferior to average New Haven student? How do you figure that or even try to quanitfy it?

[/quote]

Come on. Are you being difficult? Are you honestly doubting that the average Philadelphia student is less qualified than the average New Haven student? I suppose we could do a case by case comparison of the schools and the students in the area (also comparing the percentage of students that go onto college), but we both have lives and I think it's kind of obvious (and no that doesn't make me right, but I think someone would have a tough time proving me wrong). Maybe the reason you're disagreeing with me is because you thought I was saying the statement viz. penn? I was speaking of the population of students -- not necessarily penn admits (although i'd think you'd find the effect even among penn admits, but to a far lesser, yet still substantial, scale).</p>

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Inever mentioned or referenced any law suit of any sort.

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Did you or did you not mention criticism of Penn? That law suit was one of the major criticisms for your side.</p>

<p>For someone who reads the inquirer so much, you sure seem to have missed a big law suit and the land-for-students deal I was talking about. Check this puppy out, <a href="http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12095307.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12095307.htm&lt;/a> .
I really think this shows a lot about the way you argue. It seems that nothing exists outside of what you had heard of (some short research or even a question posed to me could have prevented you from denying the land deal) and everything exists inside the realms of what you have heard.</p>

<p>The simple fact is that if these students were so great, they wouldn't need any help from the city to let them in. Your comments about kids from rural states getting an advantage (not entirely true) has no bearing on the discussion whatsoever, as other schools empart the same advantage. We're talking about the effect of force-admits on Penn's numbers. I also addressed your New Haven's numbers in my previous post. You have some better objections than what you raised (which I already responded do). Proportionally, are you claiming that Penn is 11 to 12.5 times bigger than Yale?! I also don't know what asterisks you're talking about, but the simple fact is that it does apply. I said that penn gets from the city to admit from the city. I also think it's really funny you put my logic in quotation marks and you left your personal experience naked. All this while you dismissed knight's personal experience! As someone in high school (or recently graduated), I think he knows a at least a few people going to penn and the options available to highschoolers. I don't really know how you can discount that. As for me, logic sure sounds like a better method for argumentation than your anecdotal evidence (especially considering the fact that you might just have smart friends, you're lying, or you're making your friends to be smarter than they are in actuality. Honestly, we have no way of knowing!). Rereading your post shows me that I'm not even sure you read mine. We weren't talking about diminishing the quality of the school. It is apparent from context we were talking about their artifically low (and honestly, they aren't that low at all. at all.) numbers. In fact, I never even mentioned (and am not affiliated with) the engineering school in any way!</p>

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<p><em>hands out lollies</em> Play nice!</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Anzanar,</p>

<p>All I can say is I am not gonna waste more time to defend agaisnt your speculation. I don't usually care about people's intention, as long as he/she is making arguments based on sound stats/observations.

[/quote]
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<p>Not going to waste more time, eh? When you're arguing against someone, you should always try to know their "intention" to see if the debate is worthwhile. Do I really want to waste time "debating" someone who's only intent was to cause some controversy (as you said yourself)? No. Would I like to debate someone who was truely interested in the aspects of Penn that makes it #4? Sure!</p>

<p>But as I already pointed out previously, your original post was not a question, but an opinion being brought forward as a statement of "fact". When opinions are stated as truthes, it insults people who believe differently (as you are implying their belief is wrong) and will never lead down a road to "healthy debate".</p>

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<p>I'm growing rather tired of this, but whatever, I'm not going to sit here and let you take baseless shots at my peers from high school, and myself by extention. I in fact WOULD like to see the numbers proving that the average New Haven studentis better than the average Philly student, as both are poor struggling cities with struggling educational systems (New Haven more so for the former, Philly for the latter).</p>

<p>I did mention criticism of Penn, but not specifically the lawsuit, nor did i reference it, as Penn has been attacked by the city papers ad nauseum for years, so I honestly felt I didn't need to go into specifics.</p>

<p>My comment about rural states was perfectly relevant and factual. Schools give advantages to certain geographic regions in order to diversify their student body, this is common knowlege. Philly is a region just like Idaho or another rural state, just of a different sort.</p>

<p>I did not imply a direct ratio describing the number of students admitted to Yale from New haven compared to those admitted to Penn from Philly, I merely stated that a smaller school in a smaller city would take in a smaller number of students than a bigger school in a bigger city, which i think is common sense.</p>

<p>I love how you keep accusing me of lying, it shows just how sparse your stance actually is.</p>

<p>In the one line of that article where it mentions land for students, you left out a very important word: "qualified". Furthermore, the article YOU cited states that Penn was sued over failing to give agreed-upon scholarships to qualified applicants from philly, not for admitting them.</p>

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<p>This is why an incoming freshman from LA shouldn't comment on people at a school he has yet to attend.</p>

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<p>only in terms of sports, but still...
word</p>

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<p>Uh... Athletic conferences have nothing to do with Academic achievement.</p>

<p>I love our sports teams as much as the next person (in fact, much more than), but that doesn't make them smart. (and I'm not saying they're all dumb either... but some of them really are)</p>