<p>I applied RD for Wharton, which I understand is the best (or at least most highly regarded) school at Penn... but I've recently been considering branching out into engineering/science, especially computer science.</p>
<p>So what is the quality of SEAS and CAS vs Wharton? I always thought they were good programs (not MIT or Stanford great, but still pretty good), but an alum said that SEAS and CAS pale in comparison to the quality of Wharton.</p>
<p>Any opinions?</p>
<p>That might have been the case when the alum attended Penn in say the 80’s or 90’s, but CAS is now on par academically with Wharton, and SEAS is not too far behind them.</p>
<p>Full disclosure: PABank got accepted into CAS and I got accepted into Wharton, therefore both of us are biased.</p>
<p>That being said, the consensus view is that Wharton is one of the premier, if not the best, undergraduate business programs in the world. I have never heard someone make a similar claim that Penn SEAS is as good as MIT or that CAS is equal to Harvard.</p>
<p>Imho, your prior views and the alum you spoke to were correct.</p>
<p>I was also accepted to Wharton and I would absolutely disagree with you enigma. The simple reason being, CAS is not THAT far behind the likes of Harvard and Yale. </p>
<p>In some department - i.e economics, CAS beats or is equal to Yale. In others, like anthropology it comes at the very top. If you look at the National Research Council rankings, many of CAS’s departments are in the top 10. The only thing pulling CAS’ reputation down is its percieved selectivity. That is changing drastically this year now that Furda in charge, he did miracles for Columbia. As soon as CAS starts posting sub 10% acceptance rates, its reputation, which is already great, will be further augmented. I know that they don’t release seperate acceptance rates - but these things do leak out. Bottom line is, CAS is definetly NOT “vastly inferior,” it is middle ivy, roughly on par with Columbia. </p>
<p>Remember the one university concept guys; we are not here to tear down each others schools. That only hurts Penn and chases talented students away; therefore, such actions make for a self fulfilling prophecy. </p>
<p>Now while it is true that probably a majority of the students at Wharton would, and probably did if they did not apply ED, turn down every school on earth, including the likes of Yale, Princeton, and Stanford to attend Wharton; and far fewer would do so for CAS, the point remains that the two schools are roughly comparable. </p>
<p>Wharton places more kids onto Wall Street than any other school in the world, Harvard included. Wharton is at the top of the top Wall Street recruiters list; some top firms, such as Silver Lake, recruit ONLY at Wharton because that is where they can get the best talent. At almost every bulge bracket firm, Wharton is the most represented undergraduate institution. Wharton rocks, we know all that already. </p>
<p>But the aims and aspirations of Wharton and CAS differ so much that it would be unfair to compare the two head to head. Wharton is the best institution in the world at what it does hands down. CAS, is an ivy league institution and is one of the best in the world at what it does. Arguing that one is better than the other is comparing apples to oranges: both are tasty fruit and make for great smoothies but they are fundementally different.</p>
<p>P.S: this topic has been done to death, use the search function next time.</p>
<p>Well said, kafkareborn.</p>
<p>To the OP: why don’t you worry about getting accepted first ;)</p>
<p>In addition to the good point made above, you might be surprised to find the attitudes within Penn are usually quite the opposite: engineerings are usually seen as the most legit by virtue of sticking out the most difficult majors, whereas CAS kids (humanities/social science majors at least) and Whartonites are seen as softer. The fact that Wharton has the most competitive admissions is in fact part of the reason Whartonites get a lot of crap, because once people actually witness how they have things much easier in several regards (many never take more than 4 classes/semester after freshman year and have Fridays off, can take ridiculous classes to fulfill their non-business requirements like criminology for science), they get a little resentful. Or maybe that’s just me…</p>
<p>^^ those who you are describing aren’t the true “wharton kids.” Those are the recruited athletes, super legacies, etc. The ones who got in on merit tend to be rather bright. There’s very few of them though so they don’t really negate the damage done to the Whartonite image by the bozos. </p>
<p>OP: You can go to CAS and Engineering and still end up in business. The fact is that Wharton attracts the most desirable firms to campus for recruiting. Beyond that, there is no restriction on which school you’re from to mingle with the recruiters. In fact, they are always very excited to see an engineer because quants / techies are all the rage.</p>
<p>Thanks everybody for the opinions.</p>
<p>And trust me - I am worrying about getting in. I would laugh at anyone who thought they had a great chance at getting in, but I think I’m definitely in the running. I think I stand out in the crowd (even the Penn crowd) but who knows… I’ll probably end up with a rejection lol. Don’t want to get my hopes up just to be disappointed on April 1.</p>
<p>And sorry if this post repeats the Wharton vs. CAS vs. SEAS argument. I wasn’t trying to pit the schools against each other, but rather the reputation of CAS/SEAS programs vs. peer institutions. I know they’re high-quality (it’s the Ivy League… everything is really good) but the alum’s comments just alarmed me.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say that CAS pales in comparison to Wharton. Many CAS departments are in the top 10 or top 5 of their respective fields (English, econ, psych, sociology, linguistics, history, anthropology, architecture, neuroscience, and so on). SEAS similarly has a number of highly regarded programs (bio-engineering and nanotechnology in particular), although I know much less about that school. It is a boutique program compared to the size and research prowess of CAS, the medical school, or Wharton.</p>
<p>What the alum might have been trying to communicate is that Wharton has achieved <em>unquestioned</em> supremacy within the business world, akin to Stanford and Harvard’s supremacy in nearly all academic fields, while CAS’s reputation has not reached that level. It is better compared to the departmental offerings at Columbia or Yale: largely phenomenal, but a few weak areas.</p>
<p>Should this deter you? Not really. Places like Brown or Dartmouth can’t hold a candle to their Ivy League counterparts in terms of research or pure academic reputation, but they still do a fine job in educating our country’s best minds.</p>
<p>And if CAS’s or SEAS’s reputations do give you pause, consider this: it is Amy Guttman’s explicit goal to transform Penn from a “one of the best” kind of school a la Columbia or Brown into a school that defines the elites, like Harvard or Stanford. I believe the phrase that Penn’s leadership officially employs is “from excellence to eminence.”</p>
<p>Witness, to this end, 1) the recent capital campaign that plans to pump billions into our faculty hiring, financial aid packages, endowment and physical campus, 2) the plummeting admissions rate (should be around 13% this year), 3) the high yield and generous financial aid (free for families making under $90K, something that only HYPSM can compete with), and 4) the audacious new campus expansion to the east, which is just underway.</p>
<p>In other words… any reputational discomfort that you have is either residual zeitgeist from the '80s channeled by some disgruntled, misinformed alums OR is soon to be a distant memory. Don’t worry about it.</p>
<p>I am dual Wharton + SEAS (comp sci)</p>
<p>Wharton’s lectures and classes in general are better than in SEAS. The profs are really good and add to the business aura that surrounds wharton.
SEAS is a bit informal and the classes are somewhat unorganized as well. In some majors, there are a lack of electives. </p>
<p>About the students…wharton students have it easy…fridays off, unless you want to attend recitations, low courseload, etc.
SEAS classes are the hardest I’ve ever experienced. I had the displeasure of taking 3 comp sci courses last semester along with 3 wharton courses. The comp sci courses had hw amounting to 40 hours a week.</p>
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<p>I’m pretty sure that’s the goal of Columbia, Duke, UChicago, etc…</p>
<p>I will take the rather unpopular view and argue that yes, there is indeed a gap between Wharton and CAS. Instead of deriding CAS to demonstrate this point, however, I’ll take an alternate route:</p>
<p>In this thread, many of you have pointed to the NRC rankings to argue that CAS is, actually, a top-class college with numerous top-5 departments. I agree with this assertion, but I offer the counterpoint of my own undergrad institution, the University of Chicago, as a reason for why, in fact, CAS is not as close to the very top tier of colleges (i.e. top 3-4 in the country) as is argued here. </p>
<p>My argument here is that, if you compare Univ of Chicago to Yale or Princeton in the NRC rankings, the schools actually compare quite favorably. Moreover, while Yale and Princeton are undoubtedly more selective, the gap has closed of late (Y and P should be around a 7% accept rate this year, Chicago will be around 19%). Nevertheless, it is my contention that there is NO COMPARISON between HYP and Chicago. It’s not even close. Please note, I say this as a proud, proud U of C alum, but I have no problem deferring to the top 3 or 4 in this case. </p>
<p>Academically, certainly, Chicago compares quite favorably to HYPS, just as Penn CAS actually compares quite well to the top 4. In all other ways that measure the strength of a school, however, it’s not even close. In terms of networks and connections to avenues of power. resources at the disposal of a school, number of Rhodes Scholars, Fulbrights, etc., it’s just not close. As a quick point of comparison (and I know this is not a way to establish rank in colleges, but this illustrates the gap), here are the total number of Rhodes Scholars per school:</p>
<p><a href=“Office of the American Secretary | The Rhodes Scholarships”>http://www.rhodesscholar.org/assets/PDF/2009/Institutions_for_Website_7_30_09.pdf</a></p>
<p>Chicago performs perfectly well with 45 winners, Penn is solid at 19, and Yale has… 217. </p>
<p>Contrast this with Wharton’s current standing. W undoubtedly resides as a competitor to Harvard, Princeton, etc. for those that seriously want to do business. So Wharton is in that group, whereas Chicago and Penn CAS are right outside that coveted first circle. The gap between a Chicago and Yale, or a Penn and Princeton, however, remains quite considerable. In terms of numerical rank, I have no problem asserting that Penn is probably one of the top 6 or 8 colleges in the nation. The gap between a Penn and a Yale though, is still, well, huge. Meanwhile, Wharton is right up in the group with HYPS for business-minded students.</p>
<p>More than anything, I think that the Rhodes scholar metric illustrates that until quite recently, there truly were only 3 “elites” that sent students to Oxford in reliable numbers. After HYP, the gap to Stanford and MIT is over 100 Rhodes scholars, yet those schools are still considered on par academically and selectively.</p>
<p>The fact that Penn, Brown and Columbia have only sent between 19 and 22 students probably has more to do with institutional bias than anything else. Witness the US military academies, which have together sent more than Stanford - it is well-known that the American Rhodes scholarship committee favors servicemen. UChicago has long been known as a bastion of scholarship, so its showing (more than each of the non-HYP Ivies and MIT) is unsurprising. </p>
<p>A better metric would be the more-recently endowed (and thus less “old elite” prejudiced) Gates Foundation Scholarship, which has proven far more equitable between the middle Ivies and HYP. This year, in fact, Penn won 3, more than YP and only 1 fewer than H (and none were Wharton students).</p>
<p>Muerte - agreed, the Rhodes scholar metric was not the best to use. It was simply the statistic I had closest to hand. My general point though, is that I still think there is a gap between colleges at Penn, Columbia, Chicago, etc. and the colleges at Yale, Harvard, etc. Meanwhile, for business placement, I think there is NO GAP in reputation or standing between Harvard and Wharton, or Wharton and Princeton. With that in mind, I’d then see a gap between Wharton and CAS (to a degree that’s similar to the gap between, say, Princeton and CAS).</p>
<p>Again, I say this with no disrespect to CAS - just as I would never argue that there is a gap between Chicago and Yale to disrespect my own alma mater. I just think this is an accurate statement to make at this time. CAS is a very very good college, but Wharton is, to us Gutmann’s words, preeminent.</p>
<p>The gap exists, that I can’t deny, but it’s far smaller than most people realize. In general the <em>average</em> aggregate talent at both schools is the same; they only separate at the highest levels, where Harvard undeniably has a slightly larger portion of “geniuses” than, say, Brown - but not by much! All the schools have a pool of star students in each discipline.</p>
<p>CUE 7, Im not sure that you are entierly right. There IS a gap between Wharton, Harvard, and Princeton when it comes to job placement and reputation in finance: Wharton comes out on top - particularly when compared to Princeton. Wharton sends the most kids directly into Private Equity of the three. The preference fo Wharton kids is so strong that some firms recruit exclusively at Wharton - Silver Lake for instance. Out of the firms that do recruit at all three, based on the figres i’ve seen, Wharton almost always comes out on top. PE firms don’t have the extensive trainng programs BB firms do; so, ceteris paribus, such firms would prefer a Wharton kid over an equally intlligent Harvard or Princeton kid because the Wharton kid would have a far deeper knowledge of finance than a kid from the other two schools. </p>
<p>The same is true for IB; Wharton sends the most kids to just about every single bulge bracket firm followed closely by Harvard. These two schools make up the top tier. Princeton and the other HYPSM schools not already mentioned come in after that. If you are looking solely at business placement, then Wharton is hands down the best institution on the face of the earth. It is the absolute pinnacle in recruiters eyes. Wharton alone has poduced more billionaires than all of Yale Univesity combined. It also out does Princeton, and MIT in that regard.</p>
<p>For kids, like me, who are absolutely sure that they want to get into the financial industry; Wharton or Harvard are their top choices. Between the two, it just comes down to whether they want to study business or have a more liberal artsy experience. But, at least among all of the kids I know who got into all of them, Wharton is the clear favourite between Yale and Princeton simply because Wharton opens more doors than any ohe school. My general perception is that Wharton’s only true peer school is Harvard. I’m basing this on inference and just what i’ve gathered talking to people in the industry so it may not be entirey accurate.</p>
<p>kafka - well if what you say is true, that Wharton’s only true peer is Harvard for business placement, this only strengthens my initial point - that there IS indeed a GAP between Wharton and Penn CAS. </p>
<p>If most kids prefer Wharton to Y or P, and Y or P is stronger than Penn CAS, I’m assuming then, that a considerable gap exists between Wharton and Penn CAS. What you say only really strengthens my initial point. While UPenn CAS has improved of late, there’s still a significant gap between CAS and W.</p>
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<p>LOL</p>
<p>Biology UPenn ranked #21
[Rankings</a> - Biological Sciences - Graduate Schools - Education - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-biological-sciences-programs/rankings]Rankings”>http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-biological-sciences-programs/rankings)</p>
<p>Chemistry UPenn is #20
[Rankings</a> - Chemistry - Graduate Schools - Education - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-chemistry-schools/rankings]Rankings”>http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-chemistry-schools/rankings)</p>
<p>Computer Science #20
[Rankings</a> - Computer Science - Graduate Schools - Education - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-computer-science-schools/rankings]Rankings”>http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-computer-science-schools/rankings)</p>
<p>Mathematics #18th
[Rankings</a> - Math - Graduate Schools - Education - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-mathematics-programs/rankings]Rankings”>http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-mathematics-programs/rankings)</p>
<p>Economics 9th
[Rankings</a> - Economics - Graduate Schools - Education - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-economics-schools/rankings]Rankings”>http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-economics-schools/rankings)</p>
<p>Political Science #28
[Rankings</a> - Political Science - Graduate Schools - Education - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-political-science-schools/rankings/page+2]Rankings”>http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-political-science-schools/rankings/page+2)</p>
<p>Roughly UPenn CAS rank is about 20th…</p>
<p>1) Computer science isn’t even in CAS
2) The rest represent 5 departments out of what, 60? Nice try. I guess you must have glossed over the part where U.S News said English was #4, History was #9, Psych was #11, and nevermind the tons of other departments that U.S. News doesn’t even rank.</p>
<p>^ Not to mention Sociology at #11</p>
<p>And, if you want to go back to the highly respected–albeit dated–National Research Council (NRC) rankings:</p>
<p>Art History–Penn #9
[NRC</a> Rankings in Each of 41 Areas](<a href=“NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas”>NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas)</p>
<p>Classics–Penn #13
[NRC</a> Rankings in Each of 41 Areas](<a href=“NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas”>NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas)</p>
<p>Comp Lit–Penn #11
[NRC</a> Rankings in Each of 41 Areas](<a href=“NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas”>NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas)</p>
<p>French–Penn #5
[NRC</a> Rankings in Each of 41 Areas](<a href=“NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas”>NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas)</p>
<p>Linguistics–Penn #5
[NRC</a> Rankings in Each of 41 Areas](<a href=“NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas”>NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas)</p>
<p>Music–Penn #7
[NRC</a> Rankings in Each of 41 Areas](<a href=“NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas”>NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas)</p>
<p>Religion–Penn #10
[NRC</a> Rankings in Each of 41 Areas](<a href=“NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas”>NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas)</p>
<p>Spanish–Penn #6
[NRC</a> Rankings in Each of 41 Areas](<a href=“NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas”>NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas)</p>
<p>Neurosciences–Penn #10
[NRC</a> Rankings in Each of 41 Areas](<a href=“NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas”>NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas)</p>
<p>Anthropology–Penn #6
[NRC</a> Rankings in Each of 41 Areas](<a href=“NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas”>NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas)</p>
<p>And several others in which Penn is ranked well above #20.</p>