<p>I'm an international student with admissions both to Upenn engineering school and Swarthmore, but recently I found my passion for engineering with an economics minor is decreasing, however not reaching zero:), as I am more fond of math with a minor in economics, and I realize that to change a school in Upenn requires me two years study in one, engineering school in my case. Therefore after 4 years a swarthmore math student will be compared with a Upenn engineer, both acquiring degrees of economics.
I'm now wondering if, as the future career (for me, wall street is my dreaming destination after university study) concerns, Upenn engineering will provide me better than Swarthmore college will?</p>
<p>If Wall Street is your dream, Penn Engineering will provide better opportunities for jobs than Swarthmore. Swarthmore is an amazing school with a great reputation, but there are many more financial companies recruiting at Penn.</p>
<p>You are incorrect, however, in saying that you will need to spend two years in the engineering school. If you want to transfer into another school, you are allowed to apply after only one semester.</p>
<p>Thank you cwmpenn09, you definitely have a better insight to these schools.
I hope that you can give me some suggestions about the courses to choose in order to get in wall street.</p>
<p>Well well well destination Wall Street, eh? The one reason I’d go ahead and suggest Swarthmore over Penn is if you may ever consider actually doing math with a minor in economics you’ll have a much better opportunity at Swat. The marvelous thing is that Swarthmore is one of the few liberal arts schools that does Engineering well and provides a BS in the field, ABET accredited and all. A good friend and Engineering classmate of mine is at Morgan Stanley now, and enjoying it a lot. Another graduated the year before mine and also worked in Wall Street. There’s a certain benefit to having a BA and a BS, in my opinion, but you have to make an effort there too.</p>
<p>If you find some courses at Penn that aren’t offered at Swarthmore you can also end up taking them there, including some odd Engineering class. I ended up taking a class in computational linguistics there and the class was mildly easier compared to Swat.</p>
<p>The thing is, if midway through Penn you realize Engineering isn’t quite what you wanted to do, you would probably find fewer options to pursue at an in-depth level than you would at Swarthmore. If Engineering <em>is</em> what you want to do, or you know that there are certain things you <em>really</em> want to do, UPenn is likely a better bet. There were plenty of recruiting events (though not specifically targeted at Swarthmore) but I wouldn’t go into a school just for the recruitment. </p>
<p>Did you visit both? UPenn and Swarthmore have radically different environments too, which is a surprisingly big factor for me.</p>
<p>thanks riverguardian, it’s a great pity that I haven’t visited either of these two for I’m an international student who currently can’t leave school for a visit. I’ve heard about the hard courses offered at Swarthmore…, hoping they couldn’t be too hard for me.:)</p>
<p>I’d say you should first ask: do I want to go to a small college or a very large, research-oriented university. UPenn and Swarthmore are very, very different. Decide where you want to spend four years, not where you want to work some day. University will not guarantee you a particular job, especially not in this climate.</p>