<p>Thanks for the help guys. I would have ended up choosing Tufts, but it ended up being more expensive than I anticipated because I realized they wouldn’t reduce my EFC from an outside scholarship. So the difference ended up being between $10,000 and $16,000. Penn was significantly cheaper, so I picked Penn. Thoughts?</p>
<p>Penn is a great school. </p>
<p>Congratulations on your choice!!!</p>
<p>Thanks! I’m still a little disappointed about not being able to afford Tufts/nervous about going to Penn. Any words of advice/comfort? (PS I’m a ‘her’)</p>
<p>Sorry about the gender-bender in the earlier post – I think I realized I had probably goofed after I read it over.</p>
<p>Disappointed – it’s understandable if you turned down your first choice for financial reasons. But it is a lot of money. Making the right decision based on finances is a sign of maturity. However, you’re in a better position than many who are forced to go to ‘worse schools’ (whatever that means) for financial reasons. Penn is clearly as good as Tufts, and if anything has a better reputation. (not meant as a knock on Tufts, which also rocks).</p>
<p>Nervous – if Penn accepted you, you are qualified to go there. I’m sure you will have a great 4 years there.</p>
<p>Wise choice. </p>
<p>With interest, 10-16 K is a whole lot of money to pay back. Was that the yearly difference or the total difference? </p>
<p>You/your family will be in a much better position for non-profit work or grad school without the debt.</p>
<p>U Penn is a fine school. Go to Boston for a few weekends if you like.</p>
<p>That was the yearly difference.</p>
<p>So, for clarity it would have cost $10,000 a year for Penn or $16,000 a year for Tufts. Although aid is reevaluated every year I suppose. I thought the same thing. Especially if I want to do the Peace Corps after graduation, I guess its better not to take out loans, which my mother says I might have to do if I pay $16,000 a year. I think Tufts is a little better for what I want to study, but Penn’s cost is better for what I want to study.</p>
<p>(That’s taking into account loans and work study and everything that was awarded. That’s just straight cost, I got scholarships to cover work study/loans)</p>
<p>$24K expected four-year difference: a modest priced new car.</p>
<p>For the same money you take Tufts.</p>
<p>I had the same two choices 40 years ago, but everything was different then. Best thing about Penn’s location is that it’s near the train station.</p>
<p>I mean my mom has said that she can’t afford $16,000 a year, I would have to take out loans at some point. Which school did you end up choosing, and why was it different?</p>
<p>What I can say is that 40 years ago Penn was in a very very bad area. There were racial tensions in Philly, and the air quality sucked - no catalytic converters on cars and lack of control on industrial emissions. I thought that Tufts was too much of a Harvard back-up for New Englanders. However, I think Tufts was a more likable place.</p>
<p>I can only add that Tufts did nothing to help my son get a job in Economics when he graduated. I won’t give them a penny when they call every year. Case Western we do give to every year as it was a great experience for son #3. Son#3 went into a PhD program at Ohio State, where he has full funding.</p>
<p>Well I can attest that neither of those are true. I’m a Philly native and the city is great, and a lot of kids I talked to at Tufts turned down Ivies or Ivy equivalents - one girl even turned down Harvard.</p>
<p>I also went to Penn almost 40 years ago. And I was there just a few days ago :), visit quite frequently, and am very familiar with what Penn and Philly are able to offer to undergraduates these days. The Penn campus, its surrounding neighborhood, and Philly in general are light years away from how they were four decades ago. All three contribute to a terrific undergraduate experience, and explain why Penn is such a popular school these days with one of the largest applicant pools, highest admission yields, and highest retention and graduation rates among its peers. I’m confident that you’ll find your place there, and have an enjoyable and fulfilling 4 years.</p>
<p>I’ve also visited Tufts fairly recently and, personally, if I had it to do all over again (a middle-aged guy can dream, right? ;)), I’d pick Penn over Tufts in an instant. Tufts is a great school, and I can understand why many would choose it. But Penn offers a breadth and depth of academic excellence and opportunity that you just can’t find at Tufts, including many top-10 and top-20 liberal arts departments, as well as the opportunity to augment the traditional liberal arts curriculum as an undergraduate with courses in the top-ranked Wharton School, Law School (yes, Penn undergrads can take courses there), Annenberg School for Communication, Graduate School of Education, and so on and so forth. I also prefer Penn’s campus–newly expanded to 300 acres with the addition of the wonderful Penn Park–and its close proximity to Center City Philadelphia and all of the cultural attractions and night life it has to offer. And, as others have pointed out, Penn is only minutes from Philly’s 30th Street train station, which now hosts $10 (and cheaper) bus service to New York City (2 hours away), DC (2 1/2 hours away), and even Boston, in addition to Amtrak train service.</p>
<p>Bottom line: you made a great decision (you really couldn’t go wrong either way), shouldn’t look back, and should just look forward to a wonderful 4 years and an exciting future beyond. Congratulations!</p>
<p>“Tufts is a good school but Penn is in a different league altogether IMHO. Choose UPenn and don’t look back.”</p>
<p>I agree with this 100%. These are not peer schools.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say the two schools are in way different leagues of one another. Clearly the OP was struggling because both schools are both highly respected. They aren’t alone in this respect. </p>
<p>The two institutions have similar test scores for incoming students, kids that were in the top of their high school class, etc. (so the kids going in are smart at both institutions). Interestingly, despite not having a business school, Tufts ties Upenn for the number of undergraduate alumni that are Fortune 100 CEO’s ([Where</a> CEOs at America’s Largest Companies Went to College - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/mba-jobs/articles/2010/11/15/where-ceos-at-americas-largest-companies-went-to-college]Where”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/mba-jobs/articles/2010/11/15/where-ceos-at-americas-largest-companies-went-to-college)).</p>
<p>The list could go on. That’s why a lot of people view Tufts and Upenn as comparable schools (Brown, Dartmouth, and G-town tend to also be on this kind of comparable list). So let’s be real here.</p>
<p>Honestly, the OP had a good tough choice. Way better than a bad tough choice. Congrats on your decision and enjoy Upenn. It’s a fantastic place and I hope you enjoy your time there.</p>
<p>LOL, Tufts is not comparable with Penn. But I can see by your post history that you are either a student, parent or alum of Tufts. It’s a good school and you should be proud of your degree, but it is NOT a peer to any of the Ivies.</p>
<p>Tufts is still the third best thing happening in Boston after Harvard and MIT.</p>
<p>If OP likes Philly, why bother with Boston anyway?</p>
<p>So informative you want to give me any examples instead of straw-man arguments?</p>
<p>To quote you: </p>
<p>“It’s a good school and you should be proud of your degree, but it is NOT a peer to any of the Ivies.”</p>
<p>Here are sites that have the various overlap schools of Tufts with other ivies:</p>
<p>U nigo: Brown, Cornell, Yale - <a href="http://www..com/tufts_university/%5B/url%5D">http://www..com/tufts_university/</a></p>
<p>College Pr owler: Brown, Cornell, Upenn - http://**************.com/tufts-university/</p>
<p>College Parchment: Brown - [Parchment</a> Student Choice College Rankings 2013 | Parchment - College admissions predictions.](<a href=“http://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-rankings.php?page=1&perPage=25&thisYear=2012]Parchment”>Parchment Student Choice College Rankings 2013 | Parchment - College admissions predictions.)</p>
<p>Princeton Review: Brown, Cornell -
[Tufts</a> University](<a href=“http://www.princetonreview.com/tuftsuniversity.aspx]Tufts”>Tufts University - The Princeton Review College Rankings & Reviews)</p>
<p>NewsWeek (DailyBeast): Brown, Cornell, Upenn - [25</a> New Ivies - Newsweek and The Daily Beast](<a href=“http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2006/08/21/25-new-ivies.html]25”>http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2006/08/21/25-new-ivies.html)</p>
<p>Obviously rankings are silly because they are pretty subjective. And obviously you are right to question each and everyone of these methodologies and how they came up with their overlap schools. But if you are going to assert a truth at least provide a rationale for why you believe a certain perspective. </p>
<p>The OP did have a tough choice (a good tough choice). They should be happy in their choice and enjoy their time at college. And Philly is an awesome city!</p>
<p>@buzzers</p>
<p>Just because you found some ‘rankings’ that put Tufts as a peer of Penn doesn’t mean it’s true.</p>
<p>For example, let’s take that “new Ivies” list you have there - NYU is a “new ivy” but I don’t kid myself into thinking that the NYU brand names means as much or is as prestigious as an ivy league degree. Does that mean that I wish I had gone to an ivy league school or didn’t enjoy my time at NYU? No. </p>
<p>What about the Princeton review link you posted? It doesn’t claim Tufts is a peer school of the ivies, sorry. It just gives some links to other schools you might be interested in.</p>
<p>The parchment ‘ranking’ has nothing to do with being peer institutions, it just ranks when students choose a particular school if they’re a cross-admit to other schools. </p>
<p>Tufts is an excellent school, but it’s not a peer of UPenn.</p>
<p>I also think you need to try rehashing the meaning of ‘straw man fallacy’. Structure of a straw man fallacy:
(1) Person 1 has position X.
(2) Person 2 disregards certain key points of X and instead presents the superficially similar position Y.
(3) Person 2 then attacks position Y
(4) Person 2 then asserts that X is incorrect based on his attack in (3).</p>
<p>Informative’s post didn’t do any of that.</p>