<p>Mom of Wild Child is a long-term poster on CC and has contributed much valuable information on many fora. She is just providing an honest assessment of her son's experience at Penn which may be different from those of other posters and their children (my daughter loves Penn for example). One of the best things about CC is it is place where responsible posters can share accurate information about their experiences good and bad. She is not a troll like PosterX.</p>
<p>what is a troll mean?</p>
<p>I mentioned crime a few weeks ago in a thread about a spectacular carjacking that occurred on campus a few weeks ago, one which ended with a pedestrian seriously injured on Spruce St. and the carjacker shot to death by the Penn Police, and I got the same defensive response - why are you knocking the school, how dare you mention this, this is not in Penn's control, Penn is overall safe, what do want me to do about this, etc. I'm not suggesting that people flee to Dartmouth in terror, but it's not wrong to bring these incidents up on CC - the crime problem on campus is not overwhelming (and it won't be because Penn puts a tremendous amount into security) but it's not non-existent either and you do have to watch your back. In general, it's true that the murders rarely spill over into campus (rarely but not never) but the murder rate is usually a barometer on the overall crime rate so that as the violence level rises in the surrounding city, more rapes, robberies, etc. to spill over into campus. I'm not sure what we can do about this except for watching in horror, but shouting down anyone who brings up this subject as a "hater" doesn't strike me as constructive either.</p>
<p>I agree, Percy. And aside from the bubble of defensiveness around Penn, I am being honest when I say that most people view the situation in that city as a national crisis.</p>
<p>I can understand MomofWildChild's comments to some extent but some have me puzzled:</p>
<p>I can think of many schools where fraternities dominate the social scene more than Penn, where only a relatively small % of the kids are affiliated with a frat.</p>
<p>What aspect of living at Penn has been a hassle due to city campus" and how was this different than what you expected - did you think Penn was in a wheat field in Kansas?</p>
<p>As for "dominated by the famous B-school" it seems strange to me that the 2000 seat Wharton could dominate the 8000 seat College = isn't that the tail wagging the dog?</p>
<p>As for size of freshman classes - Penn is not the only Ivy school to do this and 150 is not the biggest class size you will find - I think at Harvard they put 700 people in a single intro economics lecture. Guess what - teaching freshman survey courses is usually (but not always) not the 1st choice of top professors. If you hang in there and begin to specialize in your major it gets a lot better.</p>
<p>If your son lacked the self control to balance partying and work this was his problem. Again the fact that Penn is the "social Ivy" is no secret,</p>
<p>Nor was Penn ever the place for airy headed intellectuals disconnected from society - Franklin's vision was always as a place that would impart skills that would have real world applications (the very first US med school for example), not where you'd study the "classics" for their own sake (though you can do that too, just not ONLY that). If that makes Penn a "trade school" then so be it. Again, this should have been no surprise. As you say, this really sounds like a mistake in the amount of research that you did and not any "secret" flaw of Penn that your son managed to discover. </p>
<p>Also your experience in a place as vast as Penn can be like that of the blind men and the elephant - each person can have a totally different experience - you can go to Penn for 4 years and never set foot in a frat or attend a party - you can spend all your evenings studying Talmud at Hillel if that's your thing, or doing yoga, or at the mosque, or at the gym or the substance free dorm or whatever is your thing. You can pick some obscure major (the history and sociology of history and sociology) and have no contact with the filthy world of money (how dare they throw all that money at Penn grads!) and small class sizes. Penn (any U. of this size) is what YOU make it.</p>
<p>mowc, is your son cas or wharton? i'm thinking cas because of the complaints about pre-professionalism but the comment about i-banking is throwing me off. </p>
<p>anyway, i'm guessing a greater proportion of complaints come from cas than wharton. no surprise, with huntsman hall and all its goodies.</p>
<p>Better a "once-great city" with plenty to show for it than a "never-great" city like New Haven. Go away, Yalie.</p>
<p>
[quote]
anyway, i'm guessing a greater proportion of complaints come from cas than wharton. no surprise, with huntsman hall and all its goodies.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I fear you are in for a rude awakening upon your arrival. I've been listening to my wharton classmates complain about how much they hate it for the last 3 years. No amount of personalized study rooms can make up for the far less fulfilling and enriching training that wharton kids get.</p>
<p>"I've been listening to my wharton classmates complain about how much they hate it for the last 3 years."</p>
<p>Sounds like it's time to trot out this again to back that up: <a href="http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/2005/04/27/Opinion/Look-Before.You.Leap-2148060.shtml?sourcedomain=www.dailypennsylvanian.com&MIIHost=media.collegepublisher.com%5B/url%5D">http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/2005/04/27/Opinion/Look-Before.You.Leap-2148060.shtml?sourcedomain=www.dailypennsylvanian.com&MIIHost=media.collegepublisher.com</a></p>
<p>"I've been listening to my wharton classmates complain about how much they hate it for the last 3 years."</p>
<p>The advise to "do what you love" is wonderful but what if what you love and what the market rewards are 2 different things? Remember the story of the grasshopper and the ant? The grasshopper spent her college career going to English classes cause she really loved and enjoyed poetry. She looked forward to waking up each morning so she could drink in more of that poetry - going to school was so fulfilling! No dull equations to solve, no balancing debits and credits, and the professors gave mostly As and Bs no matter how bad your papers were. The ant read boring accounting and stat books all week and then got drunk on weekends to ease the pain, and when he got drunk he would confess to his friends that he really didn't have a deep spiritual love for accounting and statistics was no fun at all, especially with that brutal curve. After graduation, the grasshopper got a job working at Starbucks 'cause no one will hire poetry majors. Once she sent a poem into to a poetry magazine and she got $20 for it. The ant got a job with a hedge fund and made a zillion $. On weekends, he still got drunk (not as much as in college) and whined to his friends at the country club how he felt like a "sell out" (BTW, did anyone notice the keychains the sent to the accepted Wharton people in the shape of game tickets that were stamped "SOLD OUT" - was there a double meaning there?) Boo hoo. After a few years he didn't have to work as hard and he joined a jazz band that played clubs on Saturday nights which was his true love, so he was both rich and fulfilled. The ant is still working on her PhD. thesis and is the world's oldest grad student. </p>
<p>For 99% of history, people have accepted that what you have fun doing (which we call "leisure" or "recreation") and what you have to do in order to feed yourself and your family (which we call "work") are usually 2 separate things. Part of the time we work, which may be no fun at all, and part of the time we do the things we enjoy the most. This can work out fine - William Carlos Williams (a Penn grad) was a physician and in his spare time he wrote poetry. The only people who didn't have to do this were the children of the ultra-rich, who could do whatever they fancied. Today we have lots more rich people then ever, so more people have this idea that they should do what they love. I guess it really depends on how long your parents money will last or whether you are willing to accept a lower standard of living as a trade off.</p>
<p>"(the very first US med school for example)"</p>
<p>Actually, most people would argue that Columbia or Johns Hopkins had the first medical schools -- in the modern sense of the concept. I believe Hopkins was the first to have full time faculty. Prior to the mid-1800s, medical schools did not really exist because the profession was considered a trade, like carpentry. In terms of stuff on paper that doesn't really mean anything, like a supposed "founding date", Yale awarded the nation's first M.D. degree in the 1720s -- before UPenn was even founded.</p>
<p>
Not exactly: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Pennsylvania_School_of_Medicine%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Pennsylvania_School_of_Medicine</a></p>
<p>"Actually, most people would argue that Columbia or Johns Hopkins had the first medical schools -- IN THE MODERN SENSE OF THE CONCEPT."</p>
<p>Once you start qualifying your "firsts" they are not "firsts" any more. I didn't say "first med school in the modern sense" , I said "first med school" (in the US) period.</p>
<p>"Most people" would agree with me:</p>
<p>Wikipedia, etc.</p>
<p>Obviously Penn could not have had a "med school in the modern sense" in 1765 because medicine itself in the modern sense didn't exist - no germ theory, no antibiotics, no lab tests, etc. But, for 1765 it was the only thing you could call a medical school in the Colonies. Granting an MD degree as a one off is not the same as having a med school.</p>
<p>When could you stop calling "medicine" a trade? What is the bright line between "trade" and "profession"? People keep criticizing Penn for being too "professionally" oriented. What is the opposite - "un-professional"? In England, there was (and to some extent still is) a class distinction between the gentry who had inherited wealth and so didn't have to work for a living and could educate their sons to be "gentle men" and everyone else who had to dirty their hands with trade. To some extent the rich in America tried to copy this system but it really never caught on fully because Americans are anti-elitist by nature and hate snobbery. All these efforts to label any major that might actually result in a job after college as a form of "trade school" reek of snobbery to me.</p>
<p>By the way, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine wasn't founded until 1893, whereas the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania--the first medical school teaching hospital in the US--was founded in the 1870s, at a time when Penn Med was already well-established and over 100 years old. See the Wikipedia article above for more info.</p>
<p>Honestly, they are two totally different things. Having a few medical lectures for the general public is not the same as a real medical school that awards M.D. degrees. It's like calling a one-room schoolhouse a University.</p>
<p>I gather that the original Penn med school went way beyond "a few medical lectures for the general public." but I'm not old enough to remember 1765. Perhaps you were there, posterX. </p>
<p>A lot of things from 1765 would not be very impressive by 2007 standards - Independence Hall is just a little brick building that would fit on the basket ball court of the Wachovia Center. But from little acorns mighty oak trees grow. Again, the claim is "the first Med school in the US", not the first med school that would be suitably impressive to PosterX. Even if Penn Medical school is not the "first" in your book, it is considered the first by many notable sources.</p>
<p>BTW, having the med school is what made Penn "the first University" (a U. being a college with more than 1 school or faculty). Penn was the first to consider itself as such and was chartered in 1779 as "The University of the State of Pennsylvania". They must have thought they had a med school (and a college) or they would not have called themselves a "University".</p>
<p>Professional schools for tradesmen don't count, especially when they give out degrees that other people could just buy off the street from one of 52 medical schools that existed at the time and eventually went out of business. They weren't medical schools in the modern sense of the term, no matter how you look at it. There were also many "law schools" out there at the time, which consisted of a judge who would occasionally talk about his feelings on the law. These places either went out of business or were ultimately absorbed into a "real" law school, like Harvard's. </p>
<p>Regarding your other claim, most people would consider "the first university" in the country to be the oldest (Harvard, in 1636), the first to found a graduate school that wasn't professional (Yale and it's graduate school of arts & sciences), or the first to award the Ph.D. degree (Yale, in 1861). Incidentally, these were the first two schools to have an intercollegiate sports competition - a Harvard/Yale rowing race. Just the name "University" doesn't mean anything to most. Unless they were drinking the kool aid.</p>
<p>posterX--no offense but you sound like an idiot.
There is a distinct difference between UNIVERSITY and COLLEGE. Look it up yourself, I am too lazy to explain. Harvard was the first college not university.</p>
<p>agree.</p>
<p>but people dont care about university vs. college concept.</p>
<p>harvard is the first...</p>
<p>posterX, can you read? This is from the Wikipedia article I linked to above:</p>
<p>
[quote]
The school's young founder, John Morgan, was among the school's Edinburgh, Scotland educated faculty. In the autumn of 1765, students enrolled for "anatomical lectures" and a course on "the theory and practice of physick." Modelling the School after the University of Edinburgh, they emphasized the need for supplement medical lectures with bedside teaching, which they had made available to them at Pennsylvania Hospital by the practitioners there. The University and Pennsylvania Hospital were both founded by Benjamin Franklin.</p>
<p>The School of Medicine's faculty was nationally renown: Benjamin Rush (medicine), Philip Syng Physick (surgery), Robert Hare (chemistry) and, around the 1850's, William Pepper (medicine) and Joseph Leidy (anatomy). In 1847, the group of physicians who organized the American Medical Association effectively gave recognition to the School's fame by naming the AMA's first president Nathaniel Chapman, Professor of Medicine at the School.</p>
<p>In the 1870's, the School of Medicine's faculty persuaded the University's trustees to build a teaching hospital along with the newly moved campus, from downtown Philadelphia to its current location just west of the Schuylkill River. At the Hospital, the faculty of the School played an integral part in promoting and implementing an important aspect of the Flexner Report of 1910: to have a bedside teaching program specifically conducted by appointed clinical faculty. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the School of Medicine was one of the earliest to encourage the development of the emerging medical specialties: neurosurgery, ophthalmology, dermatology, and radiology. Between 1910 and 1939, the chairman of the Department of Pharmacology, Alfred Newton Richards, played a significant role in developing the University as an authority of medical science, helping the United States to catch up with European medicine and begin to make significant advances in biomedical science.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And remember, Johns Hopkins medical school wasn't even founded until 1893.</p>
<p>And if reading isn't your thing, then take a look at the picture here:
<a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/kjohnso1/eakinsconcert.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/kjohnso1/eakinsconcert.htm</a>
It's a famous painting from 1889 by renowned artist Thomas Eakins, showing a celebrated Penn medical school professor teaching surgery to Penn medical students. By the way, the painting was commissioned by 3 Penn medical school classes to commemorate Dr. D. Hayes Agnew, a professor who was retiring after serving 26 years as a professor of surgery at Penn medical school. Incidentally, Dr. Agnew acted as the chief surgeon when President Garfield was shot in 1881, and he was the author of the 3-volume "Treatise on the Principles and Practice of Surgery". <a href="http://www.ajronline.org/cgi/reprint/160/5/936.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.ajronline.org/cgi/reprint/160/5/936.pdf</a>
So you see, Penn medical school already had a long and distinguished history by the end of the 19th century, when Hopkins was just getting started.</p>
<p>You really oughta check your facts before you spout off gross generalities with no basis in reality.</p>