<p>i think at the end of the day, you should take anything that anyone says on CC with many grains of salt - particularly on threads like this
people tend to disparage schools that rejected them, exaggerate the merits of their own schools, and occasionally just make things up.
visit both - you will probably have a gut feeling about where you want to be. both will offer a similarly excellent education.
the existence of many graduate schools will neither enhance nor significantly detract from the quality of your education at penn. i’m a resident advisor to undergrads at harvard where we have grad students (including IR, law, medicine, business, etc.) living and dining with the college students. college students at harvard can also enroll in classes at the other schools. despite this, college students hang out with other college students because that is what they are there to do. college students prefer to take classes at the undergraduate college that are exclusively geared towards them, because that is what they are there to do.
also, in full disclosure ilovebagels appears to have a problem with brown. he/she has popped up on other X vs. brown threads that have nothing to do with penn, advising students to choose X over brown because “X is a real school”.</p>
<p>@dcircle: very sound advice, and absolutely agree.</p>
<p>Naturally, since we’re students/alumni of Penn who really loved the place, we want to promote it as much as possible. I assume (since I don’t look at any of the other boards) that the students/alumni of the other schools do the same. It’s all , ultimately, about thinking critically about what you read on here and, as dcircle sagaciously writes, making up your own mind based on your gut. Unless you’re getting an answer to a specific question here that can be independently verified, the bias is pretty obvious 
.</p>
<p>Although, to be fair, let’s not assume anything about ilovebagels’s (or anyone else’s) past. We might similarly read between the lines in your recurrent Harvard-basking that perhaps you are a bit bitter that you weren’t one of the undergraduates there yourself and are now having the chance to relive that vicariously (not that I actually think it’s true). I was rejected from Yale for college, for example, but I still realize it’s amazing; let’s not ascribe the worst to others.</p>
<p>I don’t have a problem with Brown so much as I don’t take it seriously.</p>
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<p>Really, dcircle? I’ve seen you show up to many a “Penn vs. Brown” thread, dropping your 2 favorite, outdated and, frankly, highly flawed “statistical studies” (feeder schools and revealed preference) in order to convince the student to enroll in the competing university. And yet for schools like Duke or Dartmouth - schools that Penn and Brown both beat handily in revealed preference (for Duke), or at least tie with (for Dartmouth) - you’re suddenly a dispassionate observer, arguing for fit over “insignificant differences” in prestige. You’ve made inroads towards a more impartial stance over the last few months, but I’m watching you…</p>
<p>Where is it shown that Penn significantly beats Duke in cross-admits? I doubt it is that significant considering the number of students I’ve encountered who have turned down Penn here.</p>
<p>66/34 split to Penn, according to the revealed preference rankings, although, in your favor, I don’t really trust them.</p>
<p>But, certainly in the Northeast, Penn is favored. Check this out from a recent New York Times article, regarding a kid who got into Duke but is on Penn’s waiting list:</p>
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<p>from: <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/education/14waitlist.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/education/14waitlist.html</a></p>
<p>That revealed preference thing is old and flawed, yeah.</p>
<p>If you look at the south, it’s probably Duke. West coast and middle US seems to be split, from the kids I see here…</p>
<p>You would really like the PPE major. You could double major in that and Latin American Studies.</p>
<p>susiebra, it does sound interesting but i’m kind of worried about the economics part. i’m pretty horrible in math, so i’m a little afraid of getting too heavy into economics. however, i am interested in globalization and development and things of that nature.</p>
<p>My personal take is at the undergrad level there isn’t going to be any difference between these in terms of how it places you into grad school or the job you’ll get. I’ll personallu never understand why undergrads care about a couple classes they can take at a graduate school. Personally I would choose the school I like the most, and for you that seems to be either Penn or Brown.</p>
<p>picking a school based on one having a few more faculty you deem esteemed or because one particular graduate program has a slightly better reputation despite the student body quality being equal (for all intents in purposes) is a really BAD IDEA. most students don’t end up majoring in what they thought they would as high school seniors – even those that were adamant about it. you should focus less on the particular major or program you are interested in and more on the school as a whole. i planned on doing ir and a foreign language double major in high school and i actually started off as an english major, switched to cinema studies, and then moved to political economy, and then ended up just majoring in history (fyi), and i was pretty sure about what i wanted to study before college.</p>