<p>So, i got into Penn, but have also been accepted by Stanford. I enjoyed visiting both campuses last summer, but am slightly worried by how large the student body is at UPenn. I feel like it will be difficult to deeply connect with any group of people or professors in such a large enviroment. Any thoughts or comments?</p>
<p>Isn’t Stanford really big…?</p>
<p>Honestly, if you make an effort, connecting with a group of people is not really that difficult. Often, you’ll connect with your hallmates (I’m in one of the few legit residential programs), or people in clubs. There’s also always the option of a sorority/fraternity/professional fraternity.</p>
<p>As someone who actually had a problem with ‘connecting deeply’ with a group of people in high school, I haven’t had that problem at all here at Penn. Maybe I’ve been lucky, but I have a great group of friends (plus I’m pledging a business frat, and the brotherhood is an amazing addition as well).</p>
<p>Stanford’s the largest campus in the U.S. (something that bothered me when I was deciding between Stanford and Penn.) Even though there are a lot of students at Penn, everyone still manages to know everybody. I can guarantee you that there’s never a time that I’m walking on Locust Walk, and I don’t see someone I know.</p>
<p>As for connecting with professors, a lot of times we all HAVE TO meet with professors after or before papers. There’s tons of professor/student bonding. We also have a “Take your professor to lunch” program where we get to take a current professor to the University Club and Penn foots the bill. I once had five kids in my class, so there are a lot of small classes too. I wouldn’t go by the numbers because we’re all spread across so many fields and disciplines that we get as much attention as we need. I’m personally very close with a lot of my former professors from last semester.
I think Stanford’s a great school too, and I was really happy to have gotten in, but they have really annoying core requirements AND the quarter system, in my opinion, makes it more difficult to you to really connect with professors, since you have more of them but for a shorter period of time.
Best of luck with the end of your senior year!</p>
<p>Penn does a good job of merging small school intimacy with large school facilities. As Susie said, there are programs that allow professors to buy you stuff, and especially in upper level classes, you get a lot of one on one interaction with professors. It isn’t so much that way in hard science classes (like the pre med ones) since they are mainly lab/lecture courses, but in just about every other discipline, your upper level class sizes are unbelievably small. Right now I am in two German classes, a 400 level political science seminar and intro psychology… class sizes are, respectively, 13, 7, 11 and 350. I have had one-on-one meetings with every one of my professors, and my polisci professor is actively helping every student conduct original research on the legislative process. </p>
<p>As for meeting people, Penn is very large, and you can’t expect to be friends with every single individual person in your class… that’s beyond the capabilities of a human being. But that said, everyone has their niche, and Penn is great at helping people to find it. You come to campus and join clubs, teams and groups, and there you find your friends. Greek life is big on campus, and a lot of people develop lasting friendships through it. Performing is also big, with 43 performance groups on campus – my best friends come from the Glee Club. In my experience, the size of Penn is much more of a benefit than a drawback. You can explore a wide range of people and really find ones who are “your kind” of people, with similar interests and upbringings yet with really diverse backgrounds at the same time. And should, God forbid, you and a friend have a falling out, you can know with relative certainty that it will not automatically give you a reputation on campus. In fact, it’s very difficult to get a widely known reputation throughout the student body, good or bad.</p>