UPenn Engineering

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
1

Hey guys!

I’m strongly thinking of applying for UPenn’s SEAS. However, I’m pretty curious as to what their unique aspects are. I know that UPenn doesn’t have the strongest engineering but I’ve been told that anything in the top 25 or under is about the same (UPenn is 26, so basically top 25). I’m thinking about taking some business classes or something at Wharton, since many people think that someone that has both engineering and business background is really strong, and I’m quite interested in that. I heard that it’s fairly easy to get access to classes over at Wharton from SEAS due to the One University policy, and I was perhaps thinking of dual degree?

I also heard that UPenn is one of the universities that has a lot of research funding, and I’m pretty interested in research as well.

I guess my questions are: is it realistic to try for a dual degree at UPenn / is it plausible to get one? What unique aspects of UPenn make it something to choose over other schools with better engineering such as CMU or Columbia?

Thanks in advance for the responses guys. It’s really appreciated.

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"I’m strongly thinking of applying for UPenn’s SEAS. However, I’m pretty curious as to what their unique aspects are. I know that UPenn doesn’t have the strongest engineering but I’ve been told that anything in the top 25 or under is about the same (UPenn is 26, so basically top 25). I’m thinking about taking some business classes or something at Wharton, since many people think that someone that has both engineering and business background is really strong, and I’m quite interested in that. I heard that it’s fairly easy to get access to classes over at Wharton from SEAS due to the One University policy, and I was perhaps thinking of dual degree?

I also heard that UPenn is one of the universities that has a lot of research funding, and I’m pretty interested in research as well.

I guess my questions are: is it realistic to try for a dual degree at UPenn / is it plausible to get one? What unique aspects of UPenn make it something to choose over other schools with better engineering such as CMU or Columbia?"

  1. Don't put too much faith in rankings.
  2. Be careful who you believe on cc:. There are a lot of Ivy haters here. Penn SEAS is and outstanding engineering school. Cornell and Columbia are excellent too.

Here is a good example: http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/09/20/the-college-degrees-with-the-highest-starting-salaries/

Penn SEAS comes in at #5 and Cornell engineering is #10. I am a little surprised that Columbia SEAS is not on the list too.

  1. Yes, it is plausible to get a dual degree. Penn has coordinated or uncoordinated dual degree programs, but you will have to apply for them.
  2. Yes, you can take classes in Wharton. DD is in SEAS and taking a class in Wharton now.

Penn programs are more flexible than Columbia’s. Columbia has significantly more core requirements. I wouldn’t claim either is better, it depends on what you want. DD attended admitted student days for both. She felt that the Penn students she met seemed less stressed and more positive than their Columbia counterparts. More flexible requirements also mean that It is easier to double major at Penn.

Penn has more dual degree and special programs available.

All three schools have amazing students. However, Penn students also tend to be very sociable. DD is in a sorority and really enjoys it. There is no hazing, at least in her sorority.

Penn has lots of research, but Columbia and Carnegie Mellon do too. By second semester of freshman year at Penn, DD was working as a research assistant to a professor.

A lot of Penn students are interested in engineering and something else. Many engineering majors compete with Wharton students for jobs, and they don’t need a dual degree from Wharton to do so. DD is in a special cross functional degree program. She also like to take Classic Latin when she can slip a class in.

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I recently posted this on another thread. Just another perspective on the way Penn compares to other outstanding engineering programs:

"Yeah the two programs have pretty similar outcomes for students as well. Comparing the career services reports for only Cornell Engineering and only Penn Engineering for the class of 2014:
http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/resources/career_services/students/statistics/upload/2014-COE-Overview.pdf
http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/files/SEAS_CPSurvey_2014.pdf

Average Starting Salary:
Cornell: $72, 263
Penn: $75, 003

Top Employers:
Cornell: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Accenture, Workday
Penn: Accenture, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Google, Microsoft

Top Grad School Destinations:
Cornell: Information Unavailable
Penn: (in alphabetical order) Caltech, Columbia, Cornell, MIT, Penn, Stanford

Of course Cornell Engineering is much larger than Penn engineering (Cornell graduated 728 students while Penn graduated 363 students), which is always something to keep in mind.

But in general, I think students going to either Penn Engineering or Cornell Engineering are able to find the opportunities on campus and afterwards for which they’re looking. Penn’s starting salary is a little higher but the top five companies at which students are employed are almost identical- the only difference being Workday at Cornell and Goldman at Penn. I think both would provide a pretty outstanding education!"

Also, yes, doing a dual degree requires a little bit of planning but it’s totally plausible at Penn.

4

@TheKamesStory Penn Engineering is ranked 19 on US news. In any case Penn SEAS is an outstanding school and offers many unique opportunities. In terms of career statistics, there are few undergraduate engineering schools that do better than Penn in terms of salary and also in terms of sending their students to a variety of industries, not just engineering. This is because Penn undergraduate as a whole is probably the most targeted college by firms. I wouldnt say that Columbia has a better engineering program at the undergraduate level, like there is not much of a difference. Although Penn has a bit employment statistics than columbia. On the graduate level it depends in the specific department and Columbia has some departments that are better and Penn has some departments that are better. Rankings are an indicator but a difference in quality from number 14 (Columbia) to number 19 (Penn) is not really telling of anything. Also Penn was ranked number 4 on the best colleges ranking until us news stopped using yield rate as a metric and then Columbia went to number 4 (Penn has a higher yield rate than Columbia). Carnegie Mellon is definitely a better engineering school than both but the disadvantage is that it is not as strong across the board and your education will be more limited to just engineering. I think for undergraduate it is better to go to a school that has a good engineering program but also has many other good departments and has a bigger more prestigious name than to go to a school with a great engineering program but not much else. Save that for your masters/phd in engineering. Also at Penn the curriculum is flexible so you can take liberal arts or business classes and even have a double major with economics in CAS or a dual degree with business in Wharton. Also there are many exciting things going on at Penn such the the Penn Apps Hackathon, amazing research in nanotechnology and robotics amongst other things.

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@Penn95 “Penn Engineering is ranked 19 on US news.”

Keep in mind that that is based only on a survey with no hard metrics. If they used similar criteria to what they use for universities overall only for engineering schools, Penn would be ranked significantly higher. If they base it on outcomes, then Penn’s high salaries with 90% placement by graduation, and the average SEAS grad having more than 2 offers, would put them well into the top 10.

Carnegie Mellon an excellent engineering school. However students tend to be very focus. CS students for example, are likely to be hard core programmers. They are less likely to be interested in broader classes than Penn students. If you are 100% focused on CS, then CM is the best of the three. Penn students tend to have some level of broader interest.

6

If one is interested in engineering + business combination, how about Northwestern? Together with a fairly high ranked engineering program, one can do a Kellogg Certificate, where they get to take a certain no. of MBA-level business courses (from a very highly ranked MBA program). This can also be done comfortably taking only 4 classes per quarter.

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I think the 40 courses required for a degree is too much. Heard the dean of engineering speak and he focussed on the masochism of he program to the point of being scary. This program is structurally brutal.

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@classicrockerdad
Well, @ClassicRockerDad “This program is structurally brutal.”

It is definitely a challenging program, and not for the average student. DD1 spends about 40 hours per week on homework and projects, if there are no tests. She spends another 20 hours in class, recitation, and labs. Then there is the research she is involved with, Clubs, and her sorority.

The fact is that only at a few top engineering programs have a student body where the average student could handle the challenges thrown at the Penn SEAS students. In return for their efforts, they get an amazing education, research opportunities, great job prospects, and graduate opportunities. I am have frequently pointed out the difficulty of the engineering programs at Penn, but it does not fit the narrative that many believe that all engineering programs are the same.

Having said all of that, it comes down to the student, and there are a few critical traits that DD1 has that I think you will find are common to many students at Penn SEAS, other than being bright.

  1. Focused
  2. Long attention span
  3. Naturally curious
  4. Loves a challenge
  5. Prefers to be one of many amazing students over being a stand out in a less competitive environment
  6. Has broad interests, and wants to understand how he major relates to other majors
  7. Is sociable and likes to have fun. When she is not working, she will be out with friends, at the gym, or maybe at a party with her sorority sisters
  8. Determined

She loves her classes and her experience at Penn. I think you will find that she is not unusual and that many of these traits are common to Penn SEAS students. It is an amazing opportunity for the right candidate.

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@classicrockerdad “Heard the dean of engineering speak and he focussed on the masochism of he program to the point of being scary.”

Can you be more specific? I am interested to hear what he said that caused you to feel that way. I only know my daughter’s experience. While challenging and stressful, she has not felt overwhelmed often.

10

My D did a summer program at Penn that awarded college credit. At the end, the dean spoke at the banquet about how the students should be proud of how much they suffered, and how as engineering students they should expect to pay this kind of price and get this kind of reward. The tone was more about being macho and foregoing sleep then about doing good interesting work. Given how overstressed our HS students are, this seemed to me to be exactly the wrong message to send to encourage students to do STEM.

The intense summer program was healthy for my D,. She enjoyed it for 3 weeks and was glad she did it because she smoked the class, it gave her some mojo that she had lost after getting a low grade in a related AP course even though she got a 5 on the AP exam. But she didn’t think she could handle the intensity of the level of that summer program for 13 weeks at a time, and that knowledge was extremely useful to her.

As a result, she chose her engineering school carefully, made extensive use of AP credits and took a summer course after Freshman year to get ahead so that she never has to take 5 full classes. Having to take 5 classes every semester seems masochistic.

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@classicrockerdad “But she didn’t think she could handle the intensity of the level of that summer program for 13 weeks at a time, and that knowledge was extremely useful to her. As a result, she chose her engineering school carefully, made extensive use of AP credits and took a summer course after Freshman year to get ahead so that she never has to take 5 full classes.”

I think it is great that she learned something valuable about engineering programs and about herself. Your daughter sounds similar to my second daughter. She works hard, and is a very good student, but is more balanced in her approach to school, social life, and sports. Our second daughter would not enjoy Penn Engineering’s workload either. We are working to find a school that if challenging and fits her, but that is also toned down just a little bit when compared to her sister’s experience. If she can find a school where typical homework is more in the 25-30 hours per week range, I think she will be much happier.

Managing the engineering workload at Penn SEAS, enjoying it, and thriving in it, really takes a certain type of student.

12

Employers know how strong Penn SEAS students are, and they consistently receive some of the highest salaries from amazing companies, but the academic rankings continue to show rank SEAS lower in Engineering based on surveys of academics.

Perhaps the academics who complete these surveys don’t like that the percent of Phd.s coming out of Penn is not nearly as high as it is from some schools. That is true, but it is partially caused by the high level of demand for grads. Many Penn students plan a Master’s or Phd. , but decide to defer that idea when they realize that they have multiple offers at generous starting salaries without it.

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@Much2learn Awesome! I think I embody those traits pretty well. How’s the safety at UPenn, though?

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We just visited. I didn’t feel unsafe at all. Lots of campus police around. Not saying crime doesn’t happen, but it seemed ok for a campus in a large urban area.

15

Parts of West Philly have higher crime levels, but Penn is quite safe. The Penn campus is probably one of the worst places possible to commit a crime. It has its own police force, hundreds of emergency phones, and hundreds of video cameras around campus. Most crime that does occur on campus is petty crime: stealing a bike or iPhone. Even then there is a good chance that the thief will not get away.

This summer one of DD’s sorority sisters had a kid (13 or 14 yr old) walk up to her right on campus, while she was texting (shock). The kid grabbed her phone and ran with it. She was not very scared by this development because she chased him initially, (do not do this) but gave up. Being a college student without an iPhone, she did the only possible next thing (lol) and caught a cab to the apple store to get a new phone, and lock the old one, before going to the police station. By the time she arrived at the Penn police station to report the crime, the police already had caught the suspect and had her old phone. Gotta love Penn Police.

When we visited for admitted student days, I stayed downtown. I wanted to see how safe it was, so I walked the half-hour from Penn to the hotel, and then back to Penn. It seemed safe to me. The only thing that you may not want to do is wander 10 blocks or so to the west of campus, at 3am. Basically, don’t be an idiot and you shouldn’t have any problem.

16

Penn’s campus AND surrounding area are exceptionally safe. I never felt unsafe in University city nor in West Philly. The stories people might tell about Penn being in a disproportionately unsafe area compared to other urban universities/cities are outdated and inaccurate to put it lightly. For better or for worse, Penn purchased all of the land in the surrounding area and either developed it or leased it to other organizations for commercial or residential use. Even if you were to walk around late at night west of campus, you would probably still be safe, especially considering that Penn Police patrols well beyond Penn’s official borders and the Philly PD has a heavy presence as well. Furthermore, West Philly (even as far as 20 blocks west of campus) has tons of restaurants. bars, coffee shops and cafes frequented by Penn students and Philly residents from all over the city. The most ‘dangerous’ (a very loaded term that I’m disinclined to use…) part of Philly is in North Philadelphia. And to the West and the North, several other college campuses and a river separate Penn from where actual crime occurs. As has already been stated, students at Penn most frequently deal with the standard petty crimes that happen even on the most rural of college campuses. Having lived both on and off campus and having explored Philly pretty extensively, I can confidently say that it’s just like living in any major urban center in the Northeastern US.