<p>I just thought we should mark this as the first time a Penn student admitted that Penn has a culture of pre-professionalism, and that this culture does, in its own way, permeate the campus.</p>
<p>So many UPenn people will fervently deny the existence of this culture, despite countless observations that this is the case.</p>
<p>Not that there’s anything wrong with those who are pre-professional, but I’m certainly pleased to hear it straight from the horses mouth, even if I feel I was better equipped to make that claim as an outside observer.</p>
<p>^I don’t think I’ve ever said Penn was outright not preprofessional and I have even complained about it before. That isn’t to say, you can’t find an intellectual atmosphere at Penn and Penn can’t prepare you for a top PhD program (or Rhodes, Gates, Marshall, Fulbright, etc.). We have a lot of people who want to be bankers, lawyers, and doctors, probably moreso than Chicago and Brown. However, there are also students like me looking to get a PhD and maybe become a professor when I grow up. I’m in the minority, but I’m certainly at no disadvantage compared to students at Chicago, Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia, or other schools.</p>
<p>Here is PhD productivity ranking. Penn is not in top 20. I will be surprised if Penn is in the top 50. Top research universities that are on the top 10 list are:</p>
<p>CalTech
MIT
UChicago</p>
<p>on the top 20 list:
Yale
Princeton
Rice
Harvard</p>
<p>I don’t see Penn’s name on the top list of any discipline, including economics, bioology where Penn is relatively strong.</p>
<p>The are overwhelming evidence to show that Penn is not a top 4 university in the country, from student quality, fculty quality, academic reputation, to placement to top PhD or professional programs. Penn is nowhere near MIT, Stanford, CalTech, UChicago, or Columbia.</p>
<p>Do you really expect those useless rankings to be indicative of department quality? The College of the Atlantic places 4th for anthropology PhD production. It has a grand total of one anthropologist on staff and offers less than a dozen courses.</p>
<p>Suggest that students are better served by studying anthropology at COA than Penn, which has a world-renowned anthropology faculty and the largest anthropological museum in the US, and I will laugh extremely hard and long.</p>
<p>PhD productivity provides no information regarding the quality of the school. It may simply indicate that the students from those institutions can’t find work, and or want to prolong their academic experience, and may not be ready to look for employment. ;)</p>
<p>This ridiculous “ranking” routinely rears its useless head.</p>
<p>If you think Penn is top 4, then there is standard for top 4. I’m not comparing Penn with an community college in Philadelphia. I am comparing Penn with colleges that are in the top 10 or top 15. If Penn’s student selectivity is top 6, then there should be top 6 placement or at least top 10 placement record. That is not too demanding for Penn. Is it that students at Penn are so used to easy work, and can not meet the top 10 requirement? If Penn can not meet the top 10 requirement, then it does not deserve top 4 ranking in US NEWS. CalTech, MIT, Stanford, Chicago, Columbia, Duke, Dartmouth, or Brown all have better performance.</p>
<p>^Why are you so against Penn being ranked #4 on US News? There are plenty of people who aren’t happy with a specific school’s ranking (WashU too high, Brown too low, etc.) but there’s no reason to get nitpicky. I’ve said in other threads, HYPSM are the best schools in the country. You can include Caltech in that list if you want depending on your personal beliefs (I mean, it’s great for what it offers, but doesn’t offer much in terms of humanities and soocial sciences compared to MIT, let alone HYPSM). I’d put Penn with Columbia, Chicago, Duke, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, and Northwestern in US News 7-15 range. The way US News does rankings, Penn is a little overestimated and Brown is a little underestimated. Take it with a grain of salt like most educated people. Why are you so obsessive with putting Penn down? You can’t deny that it is arguably one of the ten best research universities in the country in terms of academics.</p>
<p>Y7ongjun, I’m sorry Penn somehow wronged you whether that was in admissions or elsewhere. Move on with your life. kthx… Though your arsenal of rankings and lists are quite entertaining :)</p>
<p>who really cares about Rhodes scholarships? can anybody name one Rhodes scholar besides Bill Clinton? </p>
<p>these people aren’t exactly finding the cure for cancer or developing the next generation broadband network… if you look at what 90%+ are planning to study next year, it’s pretty much utter triviality…</p>
<p>^^^^Thank you cmburns14 for stating the obvious. There are so few of these given out each year, I really don’t see the emphasis on it’s importance. I think that’s why schools like Michigan are more concerned with getting their students scholarships like fulbrights. More fulbright scholars have won nobel prizes than those from any other academic program.</p>
In addition to undergrads, Fulbrights are commonly awarded to graduate students and faculty for research purposes. Is it any wonder Michigan likes them so much?</p>
<p>After all, Rhodes scholarships don’t benefit Michigan that much. Those students go off to study at Oxford.</p>
<p>When the dust settles at the end of the day, the world comes down to competancy, how well you can use your brain, influence others, and implement the incentive to change or make things better.</p>
<p>No secret that the “Big 3” service academies find themselves in the top 15.</p>
<p>You’ve mysteriously overlooked Reed College. This excellent small liberal arts college has produced thirty-one (31) Rhodes scholarship winners. I’m sure you’ll want to change this.</p>
<p>This ranking is actually a LOT better than the Nobel Prize list…but be careful. This ranking can get out of hand. I prefer to stick with the actual USNWR anyway.</p>
<p>^ Why do think this ranking is so much better? Some schools produce more Nobels, some produce more Rhodes, but both distinctions are very rare. So it’s not as though you’re very likely to get either one, or even get to know someone closely who gets either one, no matter where you go. </p>
<p>The Nobel does have the advantage of being a distinction you can count among current faculty members. It is related to the academic work they do. If a department has had several Nobel laureates on its faculty in recent years, that department almost certainly has felt their impact.</p>
<p>Something to consider: the Air Force Academy is (I believe) the only school on that list founded in the 20th century (1959). That’s a pretty amazing number of Rhodes in a comparatively short time.</p>
<p>HYP seems to be the indisputable leaders. Followed by Dartmouth, UChicago, Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, etc. if the sizes of school are factored in. MIT, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, etc. doesn’t seem to be doing well when their sizes are factored in.</p>