UPenn v. UChicago

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
21

<p>People know Penn? Really? Don’t they still sell “Not Penn State” shirts?</p>

<p>If I had to take a guess on what distinguishes Penn and Chicago, I’d say that Penn (as a university) likes ambitious, focused kids with long resumes and Chicago goes for more thinker-types. This I impression is based on Penn’s setup, with business, engineering, and nursing schools along with the college, and their minimal supplement, as opposed to Chicago’s only undergraduate college and extensive application </p>

<p>Visit both, read college newspapers, get to know what people are saying about leading campus administrators and where they want to take the school. Make a choice and don’t have regrets!</p>

22

<p>Also, take name recognition/curbside appeal/employability with a grain of salt. There are some variations by industry, but a distinctive resume with significant contributions or potential in the field is going to offset a no-name school and a blingy school on a resume is worthless if it’s combined with a bad interview/bad professional judgment.</p>

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<p>I am actually having this exact same problem - trying to chose between Penn and UChicago. I’m worried that I may want to go into business school and that anyone who sees I went to Penn but not to Wharton is just going to dismiss me.
Secondly, can anyone speak to the atmospheres on these campuses? I hear Penn is much more of a party school and it’s hard to make friends if you’re not a big partier, especially because of greek life. Obviosly, UChicago has the whole “fun goes to die” maxim that’s also worrisome. I think I fall more in the middle of these two schools in turns of my social life. If anyone wants to shed life on this topic, it would be greatly appreciated.</p>

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<p>this has been discussed ad nauseum. It’s tongue in cheek. The only way this is actually becoming worrisome is if your idea of an ideal college life primarily consists of getting hammered four days a week, tail gate parties throughout the year, and becoming part of the greek scene that completely dominates the whole campus culture. If you are not in this extreme, and would like to learn, think, and PARTY (YES!), you won’t have any problems. </p>

<p>Check some past threads. This has been discussed millions times by now.</p>

25

<p>Neither has much lay prestige. I’d go to the cheaper school. A large debt is not worth it for undergrad.</p>

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<p>In a whole bunch of ways, the two colleges are extremely similar, and in another bunch of ways they are at opposite ends of a spectrum. OK, it’s a very limited spectrum in the grand scheme of things, the colleges of elite American universities, but there are some real differences. On the whole, though, you can’t really make a wrong decision. Both colleges are strong across the board, both offer more opportunity than one person could begin to take advantage of, both actually offer a range of lifestyles and social groups. If you are like 90% of the people admitted to either (in this case limiting it to Penn CAS), you will do fine and be happy either place.</p>

<p>Cities: Chicago is much, much richer than Philadelphia (and much, much more expensive, too). More beautiful, more inspiring, more cutting edge, way less student-friendly. College students are a drop in the bucket in Chicago, and really important in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is the home of the $15 all-ages big-name rock show, which in Chicago will cost $35 and be 21+. Philadelphia is also the home of high-quality BYOB restaurants and gourmet food trucks, both things students like a lot. You can get to NYC in under two hours for $10 or less from the Penn campus, and New York is even richer, hipper, and more expensive than Chicago.</p>

<p>My kids, with extensive knowledge of both, prefer Chicago, but are in awe of how well you can live in Philadelphia on not much money. And they liked Chicago a lot more after they turned 21.</p>

<p>One subtle difference: The University of Chicago is pretty far from anything else in Chicago that interests students, and has a real lack of amenities in the immediate area. Penn is literally walking distance from downtown Philadelphia (about 1-1/2 miles from City Hall), has an edgy, hip, happening neighborhood around it (much more so than Hyde Park), and is 15 public-transit minutes away from the other such neighborhoods. There has been lots of development of student-oriented retail around Penn and practically none at all around Hyde Park. </p>

<p>On the other hand, that means Penn feels – and is – a lot noisier and traffic-choked. Chicago is quiet and leafy. Penn has quiet, leafy nooks and crannies.</p>

<p>In general, Penn is a place with a lot of conspicuous consumption; Chicago is a place where conspicuous consumption would be a huge social faux pas. Even kids from well-to-do families and private schools here tend to experience a little shock when they go to Penn and see how willing some people are to throw money around. That’s not a worry at Chicago.</p>

<p>To this aged observer, there is a huge difference between how students dress and act on the two campuses. Especially women. To walk around Penn is to see a lot of makeup, carefully tended hair, jewelry, and designer clothes. Not on everyone, of course, or necessarily even a majority, but lots. And the general dressing standards – even for guys, who are slobs wherever you go – are several quantum levels higher. In other words, at Penn, people tend to dress like they care how they are dressed, and expect to be judged by others on that basis. Maybe people at Chicago dress that way, too, but if so it’s in a weird, microcultural way, because from a mainstream perspective it is a mass of schlubbiness. </p>

<p>The i-word: At Chicago, students complain about how everyone is trying to be intellectual all of the time. At Penn, students complain about how hard it is to find people to have intellectual conversations with. Grade-grubbing is practically unknown at Chicago, way outside the dominant culture, and ubiquitous at Penn. (A friend who is a PhD student there says that’s the worst part of TA-ing: dealing with a constant stream of students trying to negotiate their grades and assignments.) People at Penn also talk a lot more about their future jobs.</p>

<p>Penn isn’t Penn State, but sports are really important there, especially (from a spectator standpoint) football and basketball. There’s a huge old stadium on campus (where they run the Penn Relays in the spring, another great event). The basketball arena, though small, is legendary, and an unbelievable place to see a game when it’s packed (as it usually is). Chicago is slowly nurturing its intercollegiate sports, but it is literally and figuratively in another league than Penn, a much quieter, lonelier, lower-key league.</p>

<p>Fraternities and sororities are a pretty big deal at Penn. I don’t think they dominate social life, exactly, because there is so much to do in the surrounding area, but they come close to dominating official campus social life. Chicago has some fraternities and sororities, but they don’t have a lot of impact on day-to-day life.</p>

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<p>An addendum to JHS’ informed post:</p>

<p>Many of the trends he describes (more makeup and designer clothes , hipper neighborhoods, etc.) at Penn are gradually growing at UChicago. When friends and I go back to Hyde Park, we are surprised by how “trendy” the U of C students look now, and that more amenities are gradually surfacing in the neighborhood (a movie theater will be built soon, a new hotel is coming, etc.). Similarly, I believe greek life is growing on UChicago’s campus.</p>

<p>It’s very possible that these schools will converge even more in the years to come. </p>

<p>One final difference to note, though: UChicago can at times feel a bit more “homey” than Penn in some ways. I mean that, at U of C, at least for the first couple years, students tend to relate to their college houses (dorms), as they generally eat with housemates at assigned dining tables. Penn doesn’t have this assigned house dining, and it changes the vibe a little bit. One of my fondest memories of Chicago was the 2 hour dinners with housemates. </p>

<p>At Penn, it seems as if students are defined a bit more by a certain group (be it a frat, being a part of a sports team or glee club or whatever), and that doesn’t seem to be as much the case at Chicago.</p>

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<p>Well, you are admitted to two great schools and it seems like you are leaning toward UPenn.So, go with your heart,seriously,don’t think about prestige; they both are really prestigious,rigorous etc. UPenn probably has a better social life,but it’s so hard to recommend. Once again,go with your heart!</p>

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<p>I second JHS’s observation about U Chicago social etiquette regarding display of wealth and such. My son told me that it’s COMPLETELY gauche and frowned upon to flaunt wealth, privilege, and status. The funny thing is, based on what he told me, there are kids from some really wealthy families. I guess they are missing out the opportunity to flaunt their stuff.</p>

<p>This is why he was struck by the contrast when he visited Princeton - how “naturally” and “easily” the students were talking about money, status, privilege, and how big a part of the conversation that was. They were talking about eating clubs and the competition to get into prestigious ones, and they were pegging people based on such prestige and other privileges. Who knows? perhaps that was a bad sample? May be, but I doubt it. I think there is a real difference. My son said, he couldn’t possibly imagine that kind of conversation at U Chicago and he does know some really wealthy kids.</p>

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<p>Penn and the U of C are very different. The problem with being in Penn’s College of Arts and Sciences is that it can be a bad experience if you don’t have the right interests. Penn has about 2000 undergrads in Wharton, 1200 in Engineering and 500 in Nursing. These students can stick together as they have all definite niche in a well defined curriculum at Penn. However, CAS has about 6500 undergrads all going different directions. A very high percentage are “pre-med” or proclaimed “pre-law” or are focused on some type of vocational preparation. Since there is no real common core curriculum, Penn’s College isn’t really much of a college but just a general undergraduate division.</p>

<pre><code> Housing at Penn is not the greatest, but you’ll likely have to make friends at Penn though the housing system. The original housing at Penn is its flagship brick neo-Gothic “The Quad”. It’s also the best. However, it is nowhere near large enough to hold even the Penn 1st year class. Hill Hall, built in 1960, is also social except it is all tiny double rooms. Beyond the Quad and Hill Penn’s housing takes a downturn.

In the late 1960’s Penn ran out of housing. Together with the City, who invoked its powers of imminent domain, Penn acquired and demolished 4 blocks worth of West Philly ghetto - between 38th & 40th streets. Penn then did a study that recommended building of colleges or houses like those of Yale and Harvard. However, Penn ignored the plan because it could build more housing with high rises. So in the early 1970’s Penn built its Superblock on money borrowed from the State. Penn’s Superblock is much like a typical urban renewal housing project. It features three nearly identical 25 floor towers together with low-rise minimal architecture buildings. These buildings originally featured names like East, West, North and South. Superblock also contains a dining commons which abuts an indoor parking garage and overlooks traffic on busy six-lane 38th street.

Penn college house system is on a much larger scale than UChicago’s. Penn uses one or more buildings as one “college house”. Penn has taken the Quad and allocated its 35 or so adjacent individual houses into three “college houses”. How do you make a college house out of a 25 storey high rise apartment building? Penn just took off the old names like East Tower and put up some former president’s name with College House signs.

UChicago has made tremendous progress over the last twelve years in adding 1500 new beds in building its Max Palevsky and South Campus dorms. UChicago has divided sections of these buildings into college houses for purposes of dining and other social activity. UChicago has also built a new athletics center to improve campus recreational facilities. Penn has not built any new undergraduate housing in 40 years.

Academically, UChicago is much stronger for both undergrad or grad than Penn, but UChicago is not for everyone. Penn is comparable to UChicago only at the professional school level: law, MBA and medicine. Penn is largely a slick marketing operation. It’s all smoke and mirrors: Ben Franklin, 1740, historic Philadelphia, Wharton, Ivy League, Quakers etc… Penn just isn’t that great a school.
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<p>I suspect that you are either on U Chicago’s waitlist or rejected by Penn or both.</p>

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<p>Nope. I am a grad alum of UChicago.</p>

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<p>I have to say I’m in complete agreement with rhg3rd. I crashed with three of my Penn friends for over a month (for reasons I won’t explain here), and I don’t think housing at Penn is all that great. There wasn’t a sense of community there in comparison to my experience at UChicago. Most of my friends built that sense of community and connection through fraternities. The dorm I lived in wasn’t the Quad, so the entire dorm looked really run-down and prison-like inside. I actually wanted to leave half way through my stay there… too bad I couldn’t change my flight without paying a penalty.</p>

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<p>I’d like to quickly point out that you have posted this in the UChicago forum, so I’d suggest also posting it in the Penn forum so you hear both sides of the issue and don’t end up making a biased decision.</p>

<p>From my point of view - I’d suggest that you choose Penn. You seem to be a person who would prefer a more well-rounded education, one that is technically and broadly a liberal arts education allowing you to explore and experiment without pre-confining yourself, and also one that is more global and worldly in its scope, not to mention more contextual and applications-based, rather than purely academic (as you will find at UChicago, not just in terms of the Econ major itself but also the Core - which I’ve heard can get slightly restrictive in terms of being unable to take all the classes that you want to, and because it’s so structured and defined, it takes up a lot of your free electives for the first two years, and then the rest end up going largely towards your major - leaving little room for much else). From what I have heard from UChicago students/alums, UChicago’s education is VERY theoretical, especially the Economics major. Of course, that is great and important, but in the end - when will you ever use all that theory on a practical basis when you get a job? Penn is definitely still theoretical, but not to AS great an extent as is UChicago, and because of Wharton, it’s definitely more well-rounded and should end up making you a better target for jobs as you pointed out. Penn is definitely well-recognized in the business world, and since Econ majors tend to essentially get into that field, Penn would automatically give you a leg up - also due to the accessibility and location. UChicago is known to be a very academically rigorous school and many employers are really not looking for textbook knowledge, but rather practical and more applied skills, which Penn obviously deserves more street cred for, and is well-known for. Philly might not be as “substantial” as Chicago in this case, but I honestly don’t think it matters much in this case, and you should also consider the fact that Chicago is very isolated in a sense. You would definitely not be visiting NY a lot (I’m assuming you’re from there?), whereas in Philly, it’s a very short distance away from New York - and so internships and jobs and everything automatically becomes easier. You don’t want to be restricted to Chicago in the long run, which is quite likely to happen if you end up going to UChicago, since OCR would be largely dominated by firms from Chicago. </p>

<p>And lastly, one of the MOST important things to consider in such a case is the “fit.” Cliched? Yes. But important? YES. From the tone of your post and whatever I can glean of your personality, you would probably fit in much better at Penn. UChicago definitely doesn’t “lack” a social life (common stereotype/misconception) and if you want and actively seek it out, I’m POSITIVE you’d find people who are willing to be more social at UChicago, but the point is that you’d have to put a bit of effort into seeking it out. Penn is definitely a more vibrant and social school, and this contributes a lot to its overall culture and atmosphere and type of student body (in terms of the students that it attracts). This is also a factor that I feel makes Penn more attractive to employers. They want to hire people who are people-savvy. Also, I don’t mean this in an offensive way, but I do feel that UChicago over-emphasizes the whole quirky aspect at their school. Yes, perhaps it’s a bit more evident than at other schools, but your UChicago experience won’t be entirely quirky all the time, it’s a normal college in the end, too. So I don’t think that should really factor into your decision as compared to Penn. The people at Penn would be equally (if not more) vibrant and quirky, and a college’s marketing prowess should not comprise the basis of your decision… As someone pointed out above, the Wharton option is open to you if you attend Penn, and although yes, CAS students might not be the primary focus at Penn, I don’t in any way feel it should undermine your Penn experience to a large degree. Penn has a VERY strong and incredibly active alumni network which I feel would help a ton in the long-run. But honestly speaking, I think your decision should start by considering the fit and the academics - do you want a more theoretical, textbook-based, and foundational education? Then go to UChicago. I highly doubt ANY school can match up to the academic rigor of UChicago. But if you want a school that is based on applications rather than solely textbook theory, more geared to the real world, current affairs, and has more of an international/global focus, and is more attuned to giving you the skills necessary to succeed in your career, then choose Penn. </p>

<p>Both schools are amazing and their rankings clearly prove that (equal, according to US News). But in the end, your college experience won’t be defined by the rankings at all once you do attend, and a lot more has to go into the decision based on your personal preferences and your personality, so make sure you consider every aspect of yourself before you consider other’s opinions as you make this decision! :slight_smile: Good luck!</p>

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<p>Well I made my decision so for those who find themselves in a similar situation I’ll post why:</p>

<p>Primary factor was the attitude of the respective campuses and classmates. I felt much more at home at Chicago with everyone passionate and interesting yet not showy. Their Facebook page is amazing and this speaks to its culture of a very intellectual but fun environment. Here is a place that will challenge and stimulate me without being stifling.</p>

<p>It makes a lot more sense for my career. On campus presentations for their Chicago Careers in Law and Business and Higher Education all show how much this large graduate school cares about their undergrads. They really invest a lot in them with personalized advising and plenty of internship and job placement. This was something I wasn’t expecting to be as good as it is at such a large school. I was unimpressed with Penn, even though they are supposed to be ‘pre-professional’. Whatever that means. Academic focus at Chicago is very welcome; at the very least it makes classes more vibrant.</p>

<p>The core classes I sat in on were exactly what I expected, and those standards were high. It’s extremely engaging and personal and I can’t speak highly enough of being able to pursue my non-technical interests in a meaningful way that is actually structured into my regular education, not viewed as an accessory.</p>

<p>Finally the atmosphere is incredible collaborative and homey rather than competitive. This also speaks to Chicago’s house system being much stronger than Penn’s in terms of accessibility and community.</p>

<p>Also I was able to secure significantly more merit aid at Chicago making it much more affordable.</p>

<p>I’ll be going next fall, anyone in future classes feel free to message me with questions.</p>

<p>Thanks everyone for your thoughts!</p>