<p>Can anyone speak to the social scenes at Penn APART FROM GREEK LIFE?</p>
<p>Penn seems to be an increasingly good choice for me in terms of academics/ athletics/ location, etc. However, fraternities and sororities are really not something I've been looking for in a college- in fact its kind of off-putting. </p>
<p>I realize there's no denying that Penn's social scene is Greek-centered, but what else is there? To give you an idea, I identify best in terms of social life with schools like Oberlin.</p>
<p>Social life at Penn is going to be very different from social life at Oberlin, because of (a) size, (b) urban setting, (c) diversity of people and interests, and (d) where people live (on campus at OB, largely off campus for upperclassmen at Penn). If you define “social life” as “parties with hundreds of people drinking beer on campus”, then, yes, Penn’s social life may be fraternity-centric, although not completely so. But at any particular point the people doing that are probably a fairly small slice of the Penn undergraduate community. The others, if they’re not studying or sleeping (and they’re probably not), may be at house parties off campus, or at a party at Drexel, or at clubs around the city, or at the orchestra, opera, or rock concert or something like that, or out to dinner somewhere, or at some coffee house poetry slam, or at the movies, or at theater (on or off campus), or at some anarchist meeting. There are limitless options, and people taking advantage of all of them. Students at Penn can have great social lives and hardly pay attention to fraternities/sororities at all. Or they can join fraternities/sororities and have great social lives there. Or, even, join a frat but not make it the center of their social world. It really depends on who you are.</p>
<p>I know a bunch of kids who are (or were recently) at Penn. Some of them complain about things there, and others love everything. But I have never heard anyone complain about his or her social life. There are so many things to do, and so many people to do them with, that you can usually find stuff you want to do and people to do it with. The only ways to be unsatisfied are to be completely anti-social (and unhappy about that), or to have some sort of need for EVERYONE to be doing the same thing at the same time in the same place. That only happens once in a while at Penn, while it’s the norm at small, isolated LACs (which is not exactly Oberlin, but Oberlin is closer to that than to Penn).</p>
<p>To add on to that, the most important thing you can do as a freshman at Penn is join groups. At the end of NSO (orientation week) there is a huge activities fair, where every university-funded organization is present. Penn gives something like $2.3 million annually to the Student Activities Council, which then gives the money to organizations. There are literally hundreds of groups on campus (there are 43 performing arts groups, not including any of the ones which are associated with the music department!). Freshmen typically put their names on the lists for around 6 or 7 groups… they go to the first meeting or audition for the group, and as they see what makes them happiest, they slowly drop other groups.</p>
<p>As an idea, my freshman year, I joined club swimming, the Glee Club, Pennchants, Penn Libertarians, the Daily Pennsylvanian, Civic House and the Fox Leadership program. Since then I have dropped all of those things except Glee Club, and I have added a job, gotten active with the Newman Center and joined a fraternity. The result is a large social network such that if I reeeally want to go out and do stuff, I will have no problem doing so. The story is basically the same for all of my friends.</p>