<p>
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u mad that u go to cornell (lulz) and not a colonial college?
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<p>Hardly. Instead I'm amused by those colleges who think that an earlier founding date is important enough to bend history.</p>
<p>Who will feel worse?</p>
<p>A Wharton graduate when people think hes from Penn State.
A Penn State football player when people think hes from U Penn.</p>
<p>I bet it is the football player.</p>
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"please there is a difference between knowing Penn, an elite ivy league institution and Carleton a small good LAC. I would expect people to know Rice and Vanderbilt, but honestly if you don't know the ivies, HYPSM and a few others for their excellence then you are unsophisticated in my book."
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<p>That is not fair, I mean in the northeast there is probably more focus on top schools, but where I live UT and A&M are what people are more concerned about. The Ivies have regional reputations as well, like I did not know about Dartmouth until the college admission process started (oh and it was mentioned in Jarhead and I was like what?)</p>
<p>LOL @ golacs. So true. </p>
<p>I think U of Penn has quite enough prestige as it is. Look at its US News ranking. It is number 6 right after HYPSM-Caltech. </p>
<p>The problem with U of Penn is that it is stuck in limbo. It feels that it is too good for the other lower ivies but feels insecure about the fact that it cannot join the HYPSMC club. The underlying reason is that there is a definite gap between HYPSMC and Upenn but no such gap separating Upenn from the other lower ivies and Duke. </p>
<p>Once Upenn gets settled with the fact that it is a great school, just not HYPSM caliber, all these prestige issues will be gone.</p>
<p>leek, I think you need to cut back on the leet. You sound utterly ridiculous.</p>
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I was surprised to find out that U of Penn is older than Princeton!</p>
<p>If this is the case, how did that young whippersnapper Princeton become a higher ivy and U of Penn a lower ivy?
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<p>There are reasons for this. </p>
<p>SCHOOL MISSION
Once upon a time, Philadelphia was the industrial capital of the United States, and not far behind NYC in finance and shipping.</p>
<p>Penn was funded in no small part by the industrial giants who wanted the supply of top-notch engineers (and later, financiers and businessmen) to power their companies. In short, while Princeton was founded in the mold of Harvard and Yale (a residential, ecclesial institution gradually developing into a liberal arts-centric secular institution, attracting the moneyed elite and building up its endowment), Penn spent much of its existence as more of a preprofessional commuter-school. Like Cornell (but less lame ;)), it was an Ivy for the working man (and, like Columbia, a home for the Jews rejected from HYP). At the turn of the century, when MIT and Stanford were the whippersnappers, Penn had a reputation for being among the finest engineering schools in the nation. Penn's formidable strength in the professional fields of medicine, vet, business, dental, etc (and the fact that it built ENIAC, arguably the world's first computer) are legacies of this.</p>
<p>Then at some point at the turn of the 20th century, Penn made a self-conscious decision that it wanted to be more like the "proper" and "gentlemanly" institutions of Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, and The College of New Jersey (that had just rechristened itself as Princeton). It built its first real student dormitories (the first segment of what is now the Quad), the nations' first student union building, rebooted its law school with what was at the time the largest law school building ever built, and devoted its resources to playing catchup in the liberal arts, while letting its "improper" and unfashionable engineering school languish. </p>
<p>LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
Additionally, Penn has always been the middle of a big, bustling, dirty, at-times dangerous city. The idea of cities being a widely desirable place to go to college is a fairly new development (witness the recent rise of NYU from commuter school to one of high schooler's "top dream schools") that only came about with deindustrialization and gentrification of cities.</p>
<p>Before that, Princeton's place in the "proper" Oxbridge-esque bucolic setting, isolated from the physical (and spiritual) dirt of the real world, was seen as appropriate. Penn itself didn't even have a central "College Green" until it managed to close off Locust Street (hence Locust Walk) and Woodland Avenue in the late 1950s/early 1960s</p>
<p>So that is why Princeton today is more like Harvard and Yale--even though Princeton and Penn are roughly the same age, Princeton had a 150-year head start on emulating Harvard and Yale.</p>
<p>Whether Penn would have been better off or not as an institution had it chosen to continue "doing its own thing" is a question for another day. But I doubt it. Penn is a unique institution of the top tier of education and I wouldn't have traded my time there for anything.</p>
<p>lower ivy. Is that like a small mansion?</p>
<p>I'm currently abroad right now, so as an experiment I asked a few of my local friends here if they were familiar with Penn (i used different versions too). The majority were not. By comparison, when I was introducing myself and saying I went to to Cornell, they would respond saying "Oooh Cornell! The famous one!"</p>
<p>this is obviously isn't at all enough to make any sort of conclusions, but its interesting. The school I'm at has a strong business school, so I wonder if I used Wharton instead of Penn, they would recognize that.</p>
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at-times dangerous city
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Translation: dangerous at night ;)</p>
<p>^^ and sometimes in the day. :)</p>
<p>Penn is as prestigious in Pennsylcania as Rice is in Houston and Emory is in Atlanta.</p>
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Penn is as prestigious in Pennsylcania as Rice is in Houston and Emory is in Atlanta.
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<p>poor comparison, these schools are incomparable for prestige. While Rice and Emory are more regionally known, Penn is a nationally-renowned University. Whatever anyone says there is a difference between Rice, Emory and Vanderbilt and the Ivy League. It may be a sports conference, but the schools in it are amazing and the name is synonymous with excellence.</p>
<p>the people that you're going to need to know it... will know it
the people that you want to brag to about going to an ivy... won't</p>
<p>deal</p>
<p>Penn is somewhat less prestigious in PA because it's not uncommon for PA people to go there....it's the same thing with Harvard around Boston. some kids from Boston Latin think "it'd be sooo cliche for me to go to Harvard like the rest of the top 5% of my class." i'm sure it's the same way in philly area privates that send 10% of their classes to Penn every year.</p>
<p>"the people that you're going to need to know it... will know it
the people that you want to brag to about going to an ivy... won't"</p>
<p>yes, i think we can all agree. now just stop arguing about this.</p>
<p>^ is it really necessary to put "Wharton 2013" as your location when the actual institution you will be attending is the university of penn?</p>
<p>Bescraze,
I think that the analogy of U Penn in PA to Rice in Texas or Emory in Atlanta is very good. All are very good schools and all are strongest in their own backyard. I would agree that U Penn’s national rep is slightly stronger, but think about why. If you mention U Penn on its own, most folks outside of the Northeast would not know that it is an Ivy. If you then mention that U Penn is an Ivy, then they would assign it high marks/prestige. Rice and Emory would not have the benefit of athletic conference affiliation with HYP and thus their national recognition is driven by their single school reputation.</p>
<p>you have obviously never been to houston or atlanta.</p>
<p>in atlanta EVERYONE of all ages knows about Emory and how selective and impressive a degree from there is, including random immigrants who don't even know English.</p>
<p>Choklit, I tried to PM you but your inbox was full. If my location bothered you so much, why did you have to post it in this thread? Completely unnecessary and you my friend, are wrong. I can put anything I want as my location. If I wanted to make it "Sticking my foot up ChoklitRain's ass," I could.</p>
<p>And I don't think the analogy is that great because the caliber of the schools is completely different. Personally, I think that a student looking at prestigious universities from any part of the country would most likely recognize Penn over Rice or Emory.</p>
<p>^ okay? it's still tacky to try to separate yourself from the rest of the school. oh, and call me when you hit it rich with an investment ba....oops, it's 2009, that doesn't happen anymore.</p>