Penn v Stanford

College Search & Selection
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<p>Stanford. Much more academic flexibility. Better academics (HYPS ftw), especially in engineering. Generally more impressive peers. Much more school spirit. Unbeatable if you want to go down the entrepreneurial path.</p>

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<p>Really? Stanford is consistently ranked first in all major engineering rankings (sometimes ties with Caltech and MIT). Has Wharton ever been ranked first, or ever been considered even the second best business school?</p>

<p>Go to Stanford. Great weather, great social life and unbeatable academics. There is nothing you can get from Penn that you can’t from Stanford.</p>

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Yes.</p>

<p>Wharton Undergrad has consistently been ranked the #1 undergraduate business program by US News since it started ranking business programs. And it’s safe to say that most knowledgeable people consider it to be the best undergraduate business program in the US, if not the world.</p>

<p>The Financial Times has ranked the Wharton MBA program #1 in the world for almost all of the years it has been ranking MBA programs.</p>

<p>And Wharton is the oldest collegiate school of business in the world, with the largest, most published, and most cited business school faculty in the world.</p>

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<p>^It’s obvious you work at Penn admissions btw.</p>

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<p>That’s only because none of HYPS have undergraduate business programs. What’s funny though is that even without them, HSP, do just as well as Wharton, barring one firm (SL). There is no reason in this world that you can give to anyone to choose Wharton over HPS, unless that person just wants to study the same business fundamentals all their life from undergrad to B-school.</p>

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<p>Right. So apparently GSB at Stanford and HBS are worse than Wharton lol… HBS only competes with GSB for cross-admits. Their rejects end up at Wharton. Good luck getting VC or PE out of Wharton MBA lol.</p>

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<p>Seriously, choose Stanford. The campus life is amazing. I visited in January, and did not want to leave. The campus is gorgeous, and extremely laid-back. Generally, Stanford’s undergraduate experience blows Penn’s out of the water.</p>

<p>Hope to see you in the Fall! :)</p>

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As obvious–and accurate–as many of the other things you post here about Penn (and Wharton). :rolleyes:</p>

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<p>“On the one hand, Penn is the better personal fit”</p>

<p>I think you kind of answered your own question. Both great schools, but the student sensibilities are different. Again, I think you sort of answered your own question. You are talking about 2 superlatives among many superlative schools–go for subjective fit, and I say that as a mother of a son who just picked Tufts over Penn, Brown, Pomona, etc., because it felt like the better personal fit, and it is, and he hasn’t looked back, and his picking a school that is a personal fit will account for his doing his best work because he will be most happy, there.</p>

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<p>Haha, right! If you’re referring to my comments about Penn’s institutional social hierarchy, then there is no way I was wrong. Penn is just messed up. I don’t even understand why CAS and SEAS kids pay as much as Whartonites, when they get next to nothing come recruiting season.</p>

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<p>^ I rest my case.</p>

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<p>To the person who said that Wharton is one par with HYPS in selectivity: Maybe in domestic admissions, but not for internationals.</p>

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<p>PrincetonDreams, your posts are a bit too vehement for a thread in which you are not personally invested. The statements you’ve made about Penn and Wharton come across as bitter and- in my mind, at least- the bitterness detracts from their value. I’m very happy that you’ve found a school that you love; you are absolutely entitled to stick up for Stanford, but denigrating Penn (as I said to phantasmagoric) is unnecessary. The OP does not have to share your opinions on Penn, about its students social lives or otherwise.</p>

<p>I completely agree with the posts of powerbomb (#19) and ANTIDRAMAQUEEN (#26). Both Stanford and Penn/Wharton are well respected, and for good reason. The OP cannot make a poor choice, but s/he should choose the school that feels like the best fit.</p>

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<p>*students’</p>

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<p>Thanks for the responses, everyone!
They’ve been really helpful :)</p>

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<p>travelbug,</p>

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<p>Where have I denigrated Penn? Please point out specific instances, since you seem to take anything that isn’t explicit praise of Penn as anything less than an attack on it. I’ve praised Penn and M&T plenty in this thread, but realize that there may also be better options and want the OP to know that (rather than just accept the rabid fanboyism of some of those who support Penn). Clearly that’s taking it too far for you?</p>

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<p>^ I wasn’t referring to you in that post, but I’m sorry to have offended you! I’m just of the opinion that CCers frequently champion their own causes (or schools) to such an extent that their posts read offensively. You are, of course (as I’ve also said), entitled to think and say whatever you wish.</p>

<p>I’m glad you’ve found this thread helpful, OP :slight_smile: I have several friends who are still choosing between schools, as well; it seems like a very stressful process!</p>

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<p>The fact that you think this loses you all credibility. The M&T program is two separate degrees a degree in business from Wharton and a full engineering degree. MS&E at Stanford is a pseudo-engineering major, which schools like Columbia, Princeton and CMU all replicate. It is an offshoot of industrial engineering, focusing on statistics, management and applications in finance. You are not prepared to create a tech company after (unlike a CS or EE major at Stanford) and you are no more desirable to Wall Street than an Econ major at Stanford with a few stat classes. Stanford is amazing, but you degrade the M&T program by comparing in to an MS&E program.
MS&E is for an engineer who does not want to pursue hard engineering and for a wall street person who wants a slightly more quantitative background.</p>

<p>The M&T program is unique and not replicable at Stanford because Stanford has no undergrad business school. M&T is an elite program tailored get people into top tech companies, investment banks, hedge funds, consulting firms and to encourage them to start their own businesses. For investment banks, hedge funds and consulting firms there is no real equivalent to the M&T pedigree.</p>

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<p>travelbug,</p>

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<p>Oops, sorry I thought you were referring to me as well.</p>

<p>confidentialcoll,</p>

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<p>No it’s not, or else it would have been called that. Stanford created MS&E to fulfill the need for the overlap between business/engineering.</p>

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<p>This shows how little you know about MS&E, which does indeed prepare people for creating tech companies. There’s even a concentration in MS&E for entrepreneurship. Please educate yourself before making erroneous claims:</p>

<p>[Department</a> of Management Science and Engineering - Academics](<a href=“Management Science and Engineering”>Management Science and Engineering)</p>

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<p>Uh, neither does Penn. It has an undergrad business program within its business school. But you don’t need an undergrad business program to be able to give the students the offerings of the business school. Indeed, MS&E students, among many others, take classes at the Graduate School of Business. Undergrad business programs are largely considered to be unnecessary, which is why so few schools offer undergrad business. The others, like Stanford and Harvard, manage to do just fine without such a program.</p>

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<p>phanta, go look through the MS&E section of Stanford’s engineering bulletin where it specifically lists classes that students must take and then elect to take</p>

<p><a href=“http://ughb.stanford.edu/[/url]”>http://ughb.stanford.edu/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“SoE Undergrad Handbook”>SoE Undergrad Handbook;

<p>you’ll find a few things:</p>

<p>1) There isn’t a single business school class that counts as a requirement or elective</p>

<p>2) the core coursework revolves around stochastic modeling, probability, operations management, optimization, production planning and with basic programming. Essentially nearly identical to the Engineering and Management Systems major at Columbia, similar to the industrial engineering coursework at most engineering universities and nothing like the M&T program.</p>

<p>They tell you about entrepreneurship in your entrepreneurship class but they do not give you a grounding in technology. i.e. you are not given the grounding to create a more powerful search engine, a smaller microchip, a new medical device or a more efficient solar cell. </p>

<p>You’ll notice that Page, Brin, Gates, Zuckerberg etc. all had zero classes in entrepreneurship, because classes in entrepreneurship do not give you the basis to find a new and revolutionary technology, and in short without a strong engineering background (like CS, EE, BME) they do make you a tech entrepreneur. Stanford has had success with tech entrepreneurs, none of them came through a channel like MS&E and I’ll bet that MS&E is not going to produce much of them going forward. MS&E graduates go on work in supply chain and logistics, finance, consulting.</p>

<p>have you met MS&E majors?</p>

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<p>That’s because it’s not part of the standard program, and Stanford’s “business requirements” for MS&E are done through over avenues. But students can and do take business school classes, which will count toward their major. They can also design their own major in engineering or concentration in MS&E and tailor it with more b-school classes.</p>

<p>Either way, not being officially in the business program does not harm its quality, since you don’t need an official affiliation to be able to offer students more opportunities. There’s a reason that the MS&E program is ranked #1. You go on to say things which you could not possibly know much about: “they do not give you a grounding in technology” and “the grounding to create a more powerful search engine, a smaller microchip, a new medical device or a more efficient solar cell” (you learn all that by taking additional engineering classes! Just like at Penn). Have you ever attended Stanford to know any of this? Are you basing all of this on your own judgments and hunches?</p>

<p>I know *many *MS&E majors, and I’m certain that they would agree that you know very little about how the MS&E program works. MS&E is very much the embodiment of business+engineering at Stanford and stacks up pretty well against M&T.</p>

<p>Even if MS&E isn’t what the OP wants or is nothing like M&T (untrue, but go with it), the opportunities that M&T affords students pale in comparison to what Stanford affords students in Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship, tech, startups, etc. Business/engineering is such an important activity at Stanford that it exists far outside MS&E as well (that’s just the academic program for it) and really does reach every corner of the university. That is why Stanford would be a better option here than M&T. The OP can do MS&E (or any other major–students are not bound to anything, unlike in M&T, and they can even design their own major) and reap the benefits of business/engineering at Stanford and in SV, whether those benefits are present within MS&E or not.</p>

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<p>2005 - 2006 Starting Salaries for Engineering Graduates At Stanford </p>

<p>[Mathacle’s</a> Blog: 2005 - 2006 Starting Salaries for Engineering Graduates At Stanford](<a href=“http://mathacle.blogspot.com/2009/06/2005-2006-starting-salaries-for.html]Mathacle’s”>Mathacle's Blog: 2005 - 2006 Starting Salaries for Engineering Graduates At Stanford)</p>

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<p>Please update us when you’ve made a final decision, ohgosh! We’d love to know where you’re headed next year :)</p>