Penn vs Georgetown Social Experience

Hello. I am trying to figure out the difference between Penn and Georgetown socially. Penn being in the city while Georgetown being its own little bubble, I thought maybe Georgetown would be a little more close-knit. Can anyone give me some insight into the two?

@NeedInfo1244 Penn is more diverse. Georgetown is very white, preppy and can get quite exclusive. Penn is relatively big so you need to make an effort to find your community on campus. However there are many clubs and organizations to choose from they are a central part of the Penn social experience. Many/most Penn students find their social communities on campus though those organizations.

Greek life at Penn is big, while at G’town it isn’t a big focus of the social scene. But with the proximity of the Gtown neighborhood, a lot of social life does take place off campus which can make building and finding community a slower process for first years

What about Penn being right in the middle of a city?

@NeedInfo1244 Penn is not really in the middle of the city. It is very close to the city center but it has its own distinct campus, we call it the Penn bubble. So you get both the campus experience and the offerings of a big city.

@NeedInfo1244 You can take a look at the Niche ranking on student life. Obviously take it with a grain of salt but it can give you a basic idea.

Hey if you want to see what penn life is like. check this vid out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVuMN2_p8ts&t=5s

So this video is kind of out of date at this point because the campus is so much better than it was 10 years ago. since it was created they’ve added Penn Park, New College House, Perry World House, and the new Economics & Political Science building is nearly done (among other additions). That being said, I think this video gives you a little peek into a more formal/balanced vision of what Penn looks like from the student perspective:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGpOizUIY60

Georgetown and Penn are both in their own respective bubbles, yet both have easy access to DC and Philly respectively. Socially at Georgetown, there is no greek life, so social life revolves more around clubs and sports. If you are into the party scene, you should take that into consideration when applying to Georgetown. Also the actual Georgetown neighborhood is fantastic–there is great shopping, restaurants, and cafes only a few blocks from campus. Penn has less of a campus, so it is more integrated into the neighborhood than Georgetown. There is greek life at Penn, so the option is there. But you don’t necessarily have to be involved in greek life. I don’t know if one or the other is more tight-knit; it just depends on the group of friends you make, how great your dorm floor is, and other factors.

@NeedInfo1244 I don’t see any value in parsing differences between schools that are on different levels like Penn and Georgetown. I think it is only helpful to look at differences in social and student life between schools that are on the same level. If you hate Penn and cannot see yourself there, then you should instead look for another ivy or ivy-caliber school that is a better fit for you. Why would you be applying to Penn n the first place? But if you like Penn, there is not much chance you would end up turning it down for a place like Georgetown even if you thought Georgetown was a slightly better fit.

I have to disagree with @ivyoxbridge1 insofar as the comment, “not much chance you would turn [Penn] down for a place like Georgetown.” We know MANY students at Georgetown who selected Georgetown over Penn. The stats show that approximately 1 in 3 choose Georgetown over Penn. Yes, Penn may have higher prestige as an Ivy, but Georgetown is not a second tier school as ivyboxbridge1 seems to suggest. The social life at Georgetown is vibrant and the campus is filled with energetic, smart, and highly talented individuals. It is a very welcoming place where anyone will find a great social group.

@northstarfx I agree that if someone really fits very well at GU and dislikes Penn it would make sense to go with GU. That said I also agree with the person above that most of these people wouldn’t be applying to Penn to begin with. What stats show 1 in 3 choose GU? This is definitely way too high. The only cross admit data I have found is on Parchment and they seem to suggest that 85% of cross admits choose Penn, which is much more in line with what one would expect. GU is a great school. In the grand scheme of things of course it is a top school, but when compared to the top 10 schools it is not exactly on par, it is a few notches below.

I would strongly caution AGAINST using cross admit data to help make a decision, for two reasons:

1.) The data can be suspect, and the sample size is often quite small; and
2.) All they reveal is student preferences, which are incredibly whimsical.

Here’s more analysis:

According to Parchment, currently, UPenn wins 85% of the time against Georgetown (and, for reference, UPenn wins 63% of the time against Brown, 69% of the time against Dartmouth, and 50% of the time against Duke).

If you go back just ten years, though, the numbers are completely different, even though all these schools haven’t really changed that much (in terms of outcomes, culture, standing, etc.)

In 2006, for example (when Penn, btw, was ranked noticeably higher than it is now - #4), look at the cross admit data:

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/09/17/weekinreview/20060917_LEONHARDT_CHART.html

The numbers are drastically different - Brown won 65% over Penn, Dartmouth took 54% over Penn, Duke only took 35% over Penn, and Georgetown took considerably more over UPenn - 35%

But I think even @Penn95 would agree - 10 years ago, the experience and exit options at Brown, Dartmouth, etc. were NOT better than what you find at UPenn, but these schools were winning the cross admit battles. This despite the fact that Penn was ranked considerably higher than these other two schools! (Penn was #4, Dartmouth #9, Brown #15.)

Similarly, I don’t think Duke has done so much to make up ground since 2006, but it now wins noticeably more cross admits with Penn than 10 years ago (it won 35% in 2006, 50% now).

(Frankly, if you go back another 10 years to the mid-90s, when Penn was ranked like #13, Brown, Dartmouth, etc. ate Penn’s lunch - I’d imagine Brown took like 70-75% of cross admits at that time. Yet, again, as @Penn95 would correctly argue - that really wasn’t that much difference in quality between these schools in the mid-90s, no matter what the stark disparities in cross-admit data at this time would suggest.)

In reality, after HYPSM, there are about a dozen colleges that offer comparable exit options, a wealth of student resources, and the like. Georgetown and Penn are peers in this sense (as colleges, not as research universities), as are Northwestern and Duke, Hopkins and Dartmouth. Schools have particular flavors and cultures, but, outside of HYPSM, choose for fit.

Ignore the student preferences data. 10 years from now, they could look markedly different, even though all these schools will likely all be just as strong.

The NYTimes data are not particularly useful. They’re based off an estimate which is in turn based off of a survey of 3200 high school seniors during one year in the mid 2000s. Even assuming those data were in any way helpful, at that point in time, Penn had only been ranked in the top 10 for about 8 years and it had a lot of ground to make up regarding its reputation and the reputation of America’s urban cores as violent, dangerous places in the eyes of potential matriculants. For those same reasons, Columbia struggled to win cross admits from places like Dartmouth and Brown too. Times have changed over the last two decades however…

In any event, I’m not saying that just because parchment relies on 1,000,000 data points across multiple years that its revealed preferences are any more sound than the NYTimes’ revealed preferences based on 3200 data points from one year. I am, however, saying that the NYtimes data are not valuable.

I’m also curious which “exit options, resources, and the like” set HYPSM off from schools like Penn and Columbia that would have any impact on the average student at any of those 7 schools… I’m aware of some recruiters in the business world that only seriously recruit at HYPS and Penn (sometimes Columbia as well)-- setting those schools off from a school like Georgetown. But I’m not sure HYPSM have a lock on any exit options that P&C couldn’t get as well… always interested in new info that might show otherwise though

@NeedInfo1244 As for the social life at these two schools, I think students are generally pretty happy at both. As has been mentioned, Penn has greek life and approximately 25-30% of Penn students are part of greek life there. However, a much larger percentage of the student body does attend their parties and socials so it will be available to you regardless of your affiliation. That being said, Penn is also a 15 minute walk from the heart of one of America’s best & cheapest cities. The food culture in Philly is AMAZING and Penn students often go out to dinner downtown without breaking the bank (something that is more challenging to do in pricier Washington DC). Philly also has BYO restaurants which are very popular among Penn undergrads because they turn a blind eye to underage drinking… for better or worse ;). Penn is also closer to more of Philly’s most exciting attractions but Georgetown is connected by various bussing systems to parts of downtown DC so you’ll still have access to the best DC has to offer.

I would say the average Penn freshman who doesn’t join greek life would go to a couple of frat parties during their first semester and eventually make friends with people they like in those fraternities and then they’ll continue attending those frats’ parties for the next three years if they enjoy that environment. Penn juniors and seniors usually go to bars around campus if they like nightlife or they continue more lowkey activities like movies with friends (there is a theater close to campus), dinner, etc. etc. For most students at Penn, social life revolves around the extracurriculars you join and the college house you’re part of. So if you join the debate team, you’ll probably hang out with them and the friends you make in your college house, in class, etc. Penn is a very social place and so even studying is often part of your social life. Penn students often book Group Study Rooms (GSRs) in Huntsman Hall and Van Pelt Library so that they can hang out in more private spaces where they can talk while they study as opposed to super silent libraries. Though Penn has those too (Fisher Fine Arts Library). Penn’s social life is largely what you make of it though. If you want to be a hermit, you can be. I just don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want to hang out with all of the amazing people you’ll meet!

@PennCAS2014 - my point is that student preferences are flimsy - they change over time, sometimes quite quickly over time. What the preferences look like NOW could be completely different than what they look like in 10 years. (We see that when we compare 2006 to 2016 - and btw, the NY Times data was based on an academic paper by Avery and Metrick - it was considered to provide fairly good data, but, just like Parchment, is imperfect).

A students college decision will most likely stick for many decades - so why base even part of it on something flimsy like student preferences? I’m not sure why you and others point to parchment - who cares what students are picking now? These choices could change over time, and in fact, over the years, there has been considerable change here. I suspect you’d agree - the preferences in the 90s (where many of these schools ate Penn’s lunch), the 00s, and now are considerably different. At the same time, the strength of schools are quite constant over time - Penn in the mid to late 90s was actually quite safe, and it certainly was quite safe/stable in the 00s. Even though the ranking has fluctuated considerably during this period (#13 or so for much of the 90s, top 5 for much of the 00s, #8 or #9 recently), the school’s actual standing is quite consistent - same with Brown and Dartmouth and others.

Who’s to say that in ten years things don’t flip again - that Penn once again loses 60-70% of cross admits to Brown or Dartmouth or some other school? Moreover, who cares?

I think if you look at education/outcomes/standing - they are quite constant over many decades. So if Penn wins 65% from Brown (as it supposedly does now), or it lose 65% to Brown (as it supposedly did in 2006), what difference does it make?

Finally, I’ve separated HYPMS for reasons that aren’t worth going into again - but these are more or less the standard bearers amongst top US unis. That’s not to say people choose other schools (as I believe you did), but these are the only five schools where I’d even consider “prestige/standing” as a POSSIBLE factor. When deciding between Penn and Georgetown - it wouldn’t even be a factor - fit would rule.

Funny that the Penn advocates feel the need to bash GU when replying to the OP which neither required nor presupposed a value comparison between the schools. But anyway, I guess it is safe to say that posters whose handles include 'IVY" and PENN don’t care about the social differences between the schools. C’mom Penn supporters, no need to be defensive!

For my part, I have no rooting interest in either school: undergrad from Cal a million years ago.

@Cue7 I didn’t point to parchment- I specifically said that I am not saying that Parchment’s much larger sample size, spread over several years, are necessarily better. And no, I don’t agree that Penn’s relative strength to schools like Dartmouth hasn’t changed since the 90s and I think student preferences could be partially responsive to that-- though I don’t know if the data would actually be telling. That’s why I WISH we had an actual revealed preference information and I wish we knew if it actually was meaningful. But, as I said in my post, the NYTimes data is bad and I didn’t say Parchment was good.

But as I was saying, the relative strength of Penn vs. (let’s say Dartmouth), has not been constant over time.

If you’re a loyal follower of Dartmouth and Penn, then you know that the 90s was a period of great power for Dartmouth and a period of enormous and inconsistent transition for Penn. Dartmouth had been under outstanding leadership for several decades at that point and enjoyed massive fundraising success. They were having enormous success with faculty recruitment and retention. They had a streamlined admissions process that kept the best and brightest heading north.

By contrast, Penn was struggling in the 90s, to put it lightly (Also, as a side note- Penn in the mid 90s doesn’t seem like it was quite safe. According to wikipedia, Philly’s homicide rate in 1990 was 41.7! By 1995 it was still 37 and by 2006 it was 27.7 and it reached a low of 15.9% in 2014). Penn was just initiating the College House system in the 90s, they were having massive issues retaining top faculty members, partially due to the pervasive crime that was still an issue for West Philly and partially due to an inability to invest in the resources the best teacher-researchers needed, the hospital system was near bankruptcy and the university’s finances were generally a mess across the board (It bears repeating, Penn Medicine, which wasn’t Penn Medicine back then, lost nearly $300,000,000 in just 2 years and nearly bankrupted the entire system. in 2000, the system was still $800,000,000 in debt. There wasn’t spare cash lying around to get an extra professor so that your intro to english class would only have 25 students). Programs were being cut prior to the 90s but that slowed after Judith Rodin took over. Student housing hadn’t been renovated in a generation and no new dorms were on the horizon-- they wanted to build them and even had plans for them! They just didn’t have the cash. Penn professors were not required to teach undergrads and class sizes were consistently larger across the board. Frequently, Penn classes were characterized by the horror stories you hear about the “stereotypical” ivy league universities with professors more interested in research than undergrads. That wasn’t a problem at small, intimate, agile Dartmouth. Dartmouth’s undergrad product was solid while Penn’s was still recovering from decades of mismanagement and neglect. Penn always benefited from the strength of its grad programs which largely carried the university through the toughest years.

Today the story has changed markedly. Dartmouth has not had the same massive fundraising success and it has had a string of leadership challenges. Jim Kim, who took over in 2009 seemed less interested in Dartmouth than in setting himself up for his next role at the World Bank. Alumni giving at Dartmouth has decreased markedly. They haven’t been able to renovate their failing student housing. The fraternity experience at Dartmouth was exposed for its… shall we say, less than wonderful treatment of its student participants. Dartmouth has actually reversed some of its financial aid policies because it was unable to sustain them. It has also struggled to keep up the strength of its entering class profile and it hasn’t been seeing the major increases in applications that its peers have seen. Dartmouth has had trouble raising funds for new housing and it is even considering enlarging its entering class to distribute costs more effectively as its tuition dependence remains a challenge.

In contrast, Penn has enjoyed enormous success since the 90s onward that have truly translated into a better undergraduate student experience/education and relative improvement as compared to its peers. Penn’s fundraising has been insanely successful. Penn was able to thus invest SUBSTANTIALLY in the student experience, especially in the college of arts and sciences. So today, 75% of the classes in Penn’s College have 25 students or fewer and 95% of classes are taught by full professors. Penn built the Penn Alexander school in West Philly and invested a LITERAL ton in improving the area around it which has increased home ownership rates and which has led professors to come en masse to Philly (and stay!! something that just didn’t used to happen before to the same degree which made it challenging for students to build relationships with faculty back in the day). Penn has also created the Penn Integrates Knowledge program which has helped with faculty retention and recruitment as well- allowing Penn to poach professors that they never could have dreamed of nabbing even 10 years ago. As a consequence, by almost every measure, Penn’s faculty has improved at a pace that Dartmouth has not kept up with. Penn has not only built a new College House and renovated almost every one of its older college houses, it’s building another new college house by 2021. And that’s not even to list the other enormous improvements Penn made to its campus with Penn Park, the Perry World House, renovations to Van Pelt Library, etc. Penn also streamlined access to its One University Policy through the Penn in Touch system which gives modern Penn students access to the faculty in the graduate schools and in its professional schools which have also improved markedly since the 90s (see e.g. Penn Law’s improved standing and its vastly improved faculty recruitment and retention).

All of which to say, yes, the NYTimes revealed preference info is not pertinent. But revealed preference information COULD be helpful if it were actually responding to the changes in genuine quality that have happened at some schools and less so at others. Penn not only wasn’t what it is today back in the 90s, it wasn’t what Dartmouth was back in the 90s either! Nearly 3 decades of dynamic leadership at Penn have turned the tides and Penn has outpaced schools that were once outpacing it.

Penn is a great school. GU is a great school, What about the differences in social life between the two? Yeesh.

@Collegedad2020 did you read my first post? I already discussed the social life at Penn. Was there something about it I didn’t cover that I can discuss more thoroughly for you?

also you’re right- Penn and Georgetown are indeed both wonderful schools. People make a lot of peculiar comparisons on this website but if I had to compare Penn to any non-ivy, it always reminds me quite a bit of Georgetown.

also @Cue7 you didn’t just say prestige/standing. You said there are “exit options, …resources, and the like” for which students would justifiably (in your opinion) pick HYPSM over places like Penn/Columbia. Yes, Harvard has more name recognition than everyone else. I’m wondering what job opportunity you have in mind that a Yalie can get and a Columbian can’t. Cause I know ibanking and PE firms that are recruiting more seriously at Penn and not Georgetown. But I don’t know any organization going all in at Yale that won’t consider a Columbian too.