@Mastadon - Not one word in your reply to me has anything to do with the OP’s choice of UPenn or Tufts so I’m not sure why you felt a need to put it on this thread and I have no interest in commenting on it here. I only wanted to give the OP some anecdotal information about Penn.
If your son thinks the fit is better at Tufts, then he should go there, but I respectfully disagree with the posters who say that it has greater opportunities than Penn.
Just FYI, my daughter at Tufts, who BTW loves it there, consistently is unable to get into classes she wants/needs - even in her major!!! Unbelievable considering the cost.
Your son has been accepted to several fantastic schools. Honestly, his future depends on him and him alone. These schools are all more similar than they are different.
Why not let him take this very special moment in his life and let him make his first really big decision. The consequences of this decision being imperfect are inconsequential and educational benefits of actually making a big decision that impacts the future course of one’s life is empowering. Don’t rob him of that!
People who will confuse Penn and Penn State will not have heard of Tufts at all.
These are both great schools (as is Wesleyan–I’m perplexed by the idea that it was anybody’s safety). I think Penn has the overall edge in terms of options, so unless he has a strong preference for Tufts, I’d suggest Penn. Let me add, though, that I personally would prefer Wesleyan to Tufts if I had to choose between the two, so I wouldn’t dismiss Wesleyan without some more thought. (I’m assuming you mean Wesleyan University.)
Penn
If Tufts is a better fit than UPenn, then Tufts will offer more opportunities for OP’s son than Penn.
If UPenn is a better fit than Tufts, then UPenn will offer more opportunities for OP’s son than Tufts.
It is as simple as that.
Successful people make their own decisions - they don’t chase other people’s perceptions.
Tufts will in no way limit your son’s opportunities:
One of the most accomplished young science students in America is attending Tufts for pre-med:
http://as.tufts.edu/news/2015WhiteHouseFair.htm
Four of Forbes “30 under 30” movers and shakers are Tufts Alums
http://as.tufts.edu/news/2015Forbes.htm
Tufts, Wesleyan and NYU are on the list of 10 schools visited by Malia Obama. Penn, Dartmouth and Cornell are not.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2015/03/26/malia-obama-spotted-touring-harvard-tufts/NU7CrGqEoXQRUZWRIofDJL/story.html
In terms of USNews rankings, even academics don’t believe in them:
A prominent Med School (Yale) dean says he bases his USNews Rank input on 30-year old data.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/WorkForce/29333
Clemson explains to the highered community how they enhanced their rank (they made the top 20 last year)
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/03/rankings
College professors prefer to send their kids to undergrad/teaching focused schools (i.e. NESCAC = Tufts, Wesleyan) rather than graduate/research focused schools (i.e. Ivy).
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/where-professors-send-their-children-to-college/
Getting caught up in the notion that the college selection process is a competition with a prize to be won and some sort of “level of prestigiousity” at stake is like choosing a trophy wife. It usually doesn’t end in up in a happy marriage.
This is a good time for your son to reflect on what is important to him, gather data (not perceptions), exercise critical thinking skills and make the choice that best fits his personality and interests.
Tufts, Brandeis, Wesleyan, and UPenn are all good schools worthy of consideration and none of them is “absolutely a level above” any of the others.
Penn is superior on every dimension related to biology, and more broadly, to all the sciences. For interdisciplinary scientific fields like neuroscience and bio-medical engineering, Tufts doesn’t hold a candle to Penn. Same too across the broad landscape of healthcare. Penn is in a league by itself, not a peer to Tufts. Tufts and Wesleyan are peers.
For context re: any GreenIndian comment on Tufts, look at his history on CC. Disgruntlement abounding.
And my D has had NO trouble getting into desired classes at Tufts.
I am curious to hear your reasoning…
I would venture that there are thousands of people in Massachusetts and Rhode Island that confuse Penn and Penn State but have heard of Tufts. Tufts is a major health care plan provider in these two states, so there are literally thousands and thousands of people who see the Tufts name every time they go to their doctor, the hospital, or pay their insurance premium.
Then there are all the families and patients of the Tufts teaching hospitals…
Then there are all the patients of the thousands of Tufts trained doctors, dentists and veterinarians across the country…
Then there are all the inner city kids (17,000 per year) that have been helped by Tufts community service programs…
Then there is the thousands in the K-12 engineering education outreach community where Tufts created both the national scope Nerd Girls programs and the international scope Lego Mindstorms programs.
Then there are the millions of people from around the world who have watched the Boston Marathon over the last decade and cheered on the 100-200 Tufts runners (each year) who have raised raised $4.5M for health and medical programs and research as well as the hunreds of Tufts volunteers (each year) manning the water stations along the route.
Then there are the millions of people who have watched the TV program Glee, where the Beezelbubs provide the background vocals and arragements.They had sold over a million copies of their CD as of 2011 and they perform around the world.
These are all communities that would have little to no interest in USNews rankings and College Confidential and therefore unlikely to have even heard of Penn.
Of course there is a corresponding “world of Penn” where people will have have heard of Penn and not Tufts.
If you look at the big picture, the world is much much bigger than Penn’s sphere of influence and within it’s sphere of influence it shares almost the same name with another bigger, more visible University that industry prefers for recruiting and academics rank more highly for engineering disciplines. If you go back and read the articles, you will also see that even within Penn’s Sphere of influence, “well educated” journalists also confuse the two schools.
Of course this is no big deal - unless Penn is attempting to brand itself as being “a level above everybody else”.
@wespath Haven’t heard from you in awhile, your last post was May 2011 asking if Tufts was going to go to draw from it’s waitlist. What is your daughter’s major? Neither my daughter nor any of her friends has had any trouble signing up for classes in their major - and my daughter had to do it from abroad one semester.
I did hear of issues with the intro computer science courses recently, but that is a country- wide problem. Harvard’s intro CS course has an enrollment of about 900 students (Berkeley is about 1000) and lecture attendance is optional (you can watch it over the Internet) . Tufts doesn’t have any classrooms that big. Yale has similar issues and is thinking of outsourcing its intro class to Harvard and having their students watch the lectures via the Internet. Not sure what Penn is doing. Some LACs are just capping the number of majors.
You know, Tufts is a great school, like its peers (more or less) in NESCAC. But nationally, it simply doesn’t have the stature, and certainly not the name recognition, of Penn (or Penn State, for name recognition at least). It has a lot of regional appeal. It has some real strengths, and there might be many reasons that a student would choose it over Penn (or Wesleyan). But if a student is undecided about majors, and has no strong reason to prefer Tufts to Penn, I still think Penn is likely to be a better choice. This should not be interpreted as a slam on Tufts.
I was just suggesting, somewhat facetiously, that deciding not to attend Penn because people might confuse it with Penn State would be silly if that was what was pointing to Tufts as the alternative.
But Master, was it not you who warned that preoccupation with stature could impede logical reasoning and prevent one from discovering truth?
I see no logical path to the conclusion that Penn has national name recognition, when, in fact, knowledgeable people within it’s local region have trouble distinguishing it from Penn State.
This would suggest that deciding to attend Penn based on the perception that it has “name recognition” is the silly activity. In fact, there is strong anecdotal evidence that those who attend Penn for “name recognition” end up frustrated and disallusioned.
Penn has the potential be a great school, if you choose it for the right reasons, but I see no evidence of such reasons in your post.
-Grasshopper
UPenn is not only an incredibly prestigious Ivy League university with an acceptance rate of 9.9% with approximately 38,000 applicants in 2015, but it is also extremely strong in business, biological sciences, and medicine. Its medical school ranks higher than the other Ivies’ including Yale, which is also notable for its medical school. UPenn may be confused with Penn State, but UPenn still holds its prestige and the resources it offers will truly benefit much more than those at Tufts because it has so much history and many world renowned alumni, including Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Tufts is a great school but UPenn is definitely better in my opinion. It has consistently ranked is one of the best universities in not only the USA (AT ITS LOWEST top 8 or 9)but also the world(Really at least top 20). UPenn is also very preprofessional and practical and so it teaches students how to apply academics to the real world. This is partly the reason why UPenn has the most billionaire alumni among all universities in the country. It’s prestigious and he should definitely go there if he has the chance.
Tufts is ranked 27th nationally while UPenn ranks 8th according to USNews. I also personally never heard of Tufts until now but that of course doesn’t mean it isn’t a great place to be. I would say that UPenn is confused with Penn State because Penn State used to be a football star but confusions aren’t as common now and are dying down as UPenn implements its Compact 2020 plan to spread its influence and name across the globe.