Hey guys, I’m a rising senior and I have my sights set on Penn. However, I’m a bit scared that I won’t make any true and lasting friendships there. Not the occasional grab-a-lunch friendship, but a genuine, deep, philosophical friendship. Are there people with whom you can stay up late talking about deep, random stuff with or are people generally more cutthroat, shallow, and unapproachable? I have a lot of friends right now, but I have only about 3 friends in high school that I consider to be these true friends. I’m really scared that Penn is a school where I’ll have no one I can count on and relate with.
Can anyone help?
Thanks so much.
Yes, you’ll make true friends here. There were very few people at Penn who I actually considered “shallow and unapproachable,” and they were pretty quickly ostracized for being not terribly nice people. Not promising that you’re going to come out of Penn with hundreds of best friends, but you definitely make closer friends in college than in high school; people are more open minded, and you spend more time around them.
I wouldn’t worry- you probably will come out with true, life long friends but only if you are friendly and make yourself open to the friendship of others, Penn is an incredibly social place which can of course lead to some ‘superficial-just-grab-lunch’ friends but that also makes for a fertile environment in which deeper connections can grow. I still talk to my best friends from Penn every day even though we all live in different cities and countries. We check in, text, call, video chat, gchat, etc. at least once a day and usually more often than that. Two of us actually chose to find jobs in the same city because we wanted to stay together after college and take on a new challenge. In college, we were the exact same way except we lived down the hall from one another so we could just pop over to each other’s rooms whenever we wanted. It takes a little time to build those friendships, of course. So you won’t walk in on day one of freshman year and automatically have that level of comfort and depth that you probably appreciate in your home friends. But over time and through common experiences and shared interests, I am sure that you will be able to connect with other people in the way that you would like. Plus Penn does a great job of making a medium size university feel very small through the College House system, small classes/seminars, an abundance of extracurriculars and clubs, traditions, sporting events, and other opportunities to meet people and make friends.