UPenn vs. Vanderbilt vs. Brown vs. Georgetown

College Search & Selection
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I was recently lucky enough to be accepted to these schools RD, but now I have a tough decision on my hands- I’m extremely conflicted as to where to attend. Each school has different pros and cons, and I wanted to list the stereotypes about each that worry me most, so that someone might dispel one or more of these worries. Here goes:

UPenn:
Obviously a great school, but the whole “work hard play hard” mantra is a bit daunting. I obviously want an active social life in college, but it almost seems like the frat/party culture at Penn might be overwhelming, especially considering that I’m an introvert. I’ve also always heard that Penn can be a pressure-cooker sort of environment where things are more competitive than collaborative, and that the pre-professional undertones make for serious academic stress. Also, with Penn being literally right in the middle of Philly and being a bit larger than the other schools on this list, I’m a bit worried about getting lost in the crowd.

Vanderbilt:
Yet again, another great school, but the southern/frat-boy undertones seem to dominate campus. I know Vanderbilt has changed A LOT in recent years, but I can’t help but worry that Vandy cannot escape this SEC/party school/Greek reputation. The percentages for Greek Life participation aren’t extremely high, but Vandy does have a reputation for being dominated, social-wise, by the fraternity culture.

Brown:
Brown seemed like an extremely happy and relaxed atmosphere when I visited, which I definitely appreciated. However, I went during the summer, so there weren’t actually many students on campus. I’ve heard that the student body is kind of eccentric and ultra-liberal (which isn’t awful, but I feel like bipartisan discussion makes for a better campus culture). Also, while the open curriculum is fascinating, I’m not really sure what I want to do in the future, so I’m worried the lack of requirements might leave me unsure as to what classes to take and won’t help me to discover my passions.

Georgetown: Finally, Georgetown. It seemed to be in a great part of DC and the people seemed nice, but the campus was almost depressing and it appeared to be a very intense atmosphere. There just didn’t seem to be much of a campus-wide culture at all; however, I did go when there was a lot of construction and not many students, so this could be the reason.

If anyone could speak to any one of these schools, confirming or dispelling these rumors/worries/stereotypes, I would be extremely appreciative. This list probably sounds negative, but there are WAY more positive aspects about these schools than there are negatives; these are just the little insecurities in the back of my head about each school, which I would love to get rid of.

ALSO-- I’m interested in cognitive science, history, linguistics, and maybe law, but I would definitely consider myself undecided overall. I would also call myself an introverted person, but definitely want school spirit and a warm community wherever I go.

Thanks so much!!

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@mgb408 Just to clear some misconceptions about Penn. Penn students are competitive with themselves not against others. The school is in fact quite collaborative. I collaborated for most of my classes and I was more on the pre-professional side (Seas +Wharton). Yes Penn people are very ambitious, work very hard and balance many things: academics, jobs, research, social life. However they are not mean or cutthroat towards one another. At Penn there is a balance between social life and academics, and work hard-play hard has come to be an unofficial motto of the school along with the tag of the social ivy. However, this doesnt mean that everyone rages and parties hard. What it means is that there are many different ways to lead your social life. There are many student organizations though which you can make friends and find common interests. there is something for everyone. Both the really scene types and the more mellow ones. Also is not exactly right smack in the center of philly. It has each own distinct and defined campus (so called Penn bubble) which also being within walking distance from the city center. so you get the both worlds in my opinion.

All four are good choices. Can you visit them all? Then I feel you would have a better idea.

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@Penn95 thank you so so much, that was extremely helpful!! I’m going to visit Penn in a couple of weeks, and I think I’ll see Vanderbilt as well before I decide. I’ll try to see Georgetown and Brown, but the travel is expensive and I don’t have much time to decide.

Again, thank you so much for the info!!!

1 Like
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@mgb408 glad i could help. write it so fast without proof-reading and made some atrocious mistakes. glad it still makes sense though hahah.

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Being that you’re undecided and might go in any direction, BRown might be your best fit and give you the freedom to explore and find what you want in an environment that is very focused on the undergrad experience.

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@mgb408 i just want to second everything that @Penn95 had to say in that post. I also found Penn overwhelmingly collaborative as a student in the humanities and my friends in the sciences felt exactly the same way. They held study groups and review sessions together. The often studied in the College House library and lounges with one another. They quizzed each other and corrected one another’s mistakes. Penn students are certainly ambitious and they work hard but the vast, vast, vast majority of them are not outwardly competitive. I really do think the Social Ivy attitude pervades every part of Penn and students care very deeply about being collegial, supportive and friendly with one another.

I also wouldn’t worry about Penn’s size too much because they do an absolutely incredible job of breaking down the university into smaller communities. For example, it sounds like you’re in the College (which was my school as well!) and so your entering class will actually only be 1500 students (which is actually smaller than 1691 first-year students enrolled at Brown in 2016). And within the college, over 70% of your classes will have 20 students or fewer. By the summer before you matriculate at Penn you will also have a Pre-Major Advisor (a faculty member who shares your intellectual interests and who can guide you through your first few semesters of academic exploration) a Peer Mentor (an upperclass student to help you navigate Penn’s academic and social worlds), and a College of Arts and Sciences Advisor who can help you with your administrative questions regarding the College’s academic policies and programs. As you move through Penn’s advising system, you’ll add more advisors and mentors but you can keep your old one’s as well. So, as a double major, I had two different major advisors, a pre major advisor, a peer advisor, and an advisor in the college office. I also had a close faculty mentor who wrote recommendations for me and with whom I often discussed my ideas and ambitions despite not having a formal advisor-relationship with her outside of having taken her class. In fact, she and I still correspond regularly via email. I also had a career services advisor with whom I formed a great relationship as well. Furthermore, within Penn, you’ll be placed in one of Penn’s eleven college houses, primarily with other freshman, with whom you’ll be able to form incredibly close bonds. Students from all four of Penn’s undergrad schools live, learn, eat, and play together in the College Houses, making for a truly diverse and intellectually stimulating experience while also ensuring you’ll have access to a small group of peers with whom you’ll see regularly and most likely befriend. I still talk to 4 of the 6 people who lived in my entryway on a pretty regular basis, and one of them is still one of my best friends in the world. Clubs are also an incredible way to get involved and to become familiar with smaller groups of people. Furthermore, most student organizations have mentorship programs as well in which you are paired with an upperclass person to help you navigate everything from the intricacies of the student organization to finals and more. And if you’re worried about the presence of Greek life on campus, don’t be! Only about 25-27% of Penn students join fraternities or sororities (So about 75% of Penn students don’t!) and yet most fraternity parties are open to all students (free of charge) if you want to participate anyway. I never joined a Greek Organization but I never, ever felt alienated. It was always a great option to have on campus but one that I never felt compelled to join or engage with in any serious way. Penn’s larger size is actually an asset with regard to socializing because I always knew that if a certain scene wasn’t my cup of tea, I would absolutely find like-minded people elsewhere throughout the university. Furthermore, being in America’s 5th largest city gives you access to so much more beyond just what’s happening on campus. And your College House probably has a stipend for recreational use that they will often utilize to subsidize a fancy dinner downtown or a trip to one of Philadelphia’s incredible cultural experiences (like the PMA or the Barnes Collection). All of this is to say that Penn looks large from the outside but the lived experiences of students demonstrate that its size doesn’t make it more challenging for an introvert to thrive; it merely gives them more opportunities to find their niche.

Also, as was mentioned, Penn is actually just left-of-center to Philly’s urban core. University City (which is Penn’s neighborhood) is a beautiful, fun, exciting, vibrant, (insert your favorite adjective here) kind of place. With expansive green space and parks, cute coffee shops, independent book stores, and restaurants galore, the area around Penn feels more like a trendy neighborhood than an urban metropolis. And yet, at the same time, you’re only about a 15 minute walk from center city and all that Philly has to offer- it’s just over the river which acts as the dividing line between the more hectic center city and Penn’s more quiet neighborhood.

In all I would say that Penn is only a pressure cooker for those who make it a pressure cooker. If that’s not the experience you want or seek out, then that is not the experience you’ll have. The school does an incredible job of making Penn feel small, intimate, and closely united where it really counts. The city is manageable and a ton of fun but never so attractive as to deplete the campus of a worthwhile social life. And school spirit does run high- maybe not about sports (except when we’re playing our basketball rival, Princeton) but you’ll see a lot of people in Penn sweaters and cheering on one another in a variety of ways. In general, if you couldn’t tell, I think it’s an amazing place to spend four years!

You have several wonderful choices and I wish you good luck in deciding. Please let me know if you have any questions about what I’ve said or anything else about Penn. Always happy to help a potential Quaker :slight_smile:

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You seem to share negatives for each school. What are your positive takeaways for each?

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I really like Penn’s “One Penn” (or whatever they call it) way of doing things, which means essentially that students have access to classes in all other areas and even some grad classes. (correct me if that’s incorrect, Penn people). And Penn kids like to have fun – well good! I think Penn is probably the strongest academically, all-around, of these four schools – lots of top programs, not just Business/Finance. And man… cheesesteaks. I have to get to Philly sometime for a long weekend of cheesesteaks…

What I like most about Vanderbilt is Nashville: it’s really a nice city, with great music, some pretty awesome parks, good food (southerners could fry leather and make it taste good…), and usually nice people. Vanderbilt is a really good school and a pretty campus, and Nashville helps to sell it, IMO. I wouldn’t sweat the Greek thing too much. Two words: fried _______. And two more: Pancake Pantry!

Brown is a bit of an enigma to me: listening to some, it sounds like you can skip half your classes and still get A’s… or just take them all Pass/Fail, do C-level work, and pass – in other words, it’s not the most rigorous. But others make it sound like they are serious educators and students who teach and study hard. Most everyone says Brown students are a happy lot. Because they don’t have to study, maybe…? :wink: The open curriculum would be best with some guidance, IMO, to help you get at least some semblance of breadth. I bet the seafood is really good.

Georgetown is the school in DC known for Patrick Ewing, politics/polo sci, and IR in its SFS. It does other things pretty well too, of course, but certainly for a kid interested in IR or gov’t/politics, I don’t think it gets better than Georgetown. Try a half-smoked.

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^He’s right, the One University Policy allows you to take classes and do research at Penn’s other undergraduate and its Graduate/Professional schools. It’s the perfect opportunity for a student who thinks they might be interested in law school but isn’t sure because you can take classes in the law school (or take classes with one of the Penn Integrates Knowledge Professors who have appointments in both the Law School and the College) to see if you like it! Penn is indeed a great place for the undecided because you’ll have access to the entire university’s resources as an undergrad and lots of advising to help you navigate it all :slight_smile:

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@PennCAS2014 sorry to butt in, but I’ve also been admitted to Penn and I’m wondering how easy/hard/competitive it is to get involved in undergraduate research?

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@ZBlue17 it is not hard at all. There is an entire office called CURF that helps you find research opportunities on campus.It is very helpful. https://www.curf.upenn.edu

Regarding the competitiveness of getting the research position, it depends on the lab and the professor. For example, if you want to work on a research project with Ezekiel Emanuel (the architect of Obamacare) then you can expect some competition. But in general there are so many research projects going on that it is very hard not to find something as long as you are serious about it and you try.

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@ZBlue17 you aren’t butting in at all! But @Penn95 basically covered it. Getting involved with research at Penn is one of the easiest things you’ll do there. Honestly, there is SO MUCH research being done in every area and professors are more than excited to include undergrads in their work. The hardest thing will be choosing between your research opportunities and ensuring you don’t take on too many responsibilities in addition to your coursework. As Penn95 also said, some professors are more highly coveted than others. But, at the same time, every professor is doing groundbreaking research in their field of study and you wont be at a loss for opportunities in any way! Please let me know if you have any other questions- happy to answer them :slight_smile:

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Thank you both! @Penn95 @PennCAS2014 so would it be possible to be published by the time I leave Penn? I’m wondering because I may be interested in an MD/PhD, and my instate school has offered me a full ride research scholarship that would allow me to publish in undergrad. So I’m trying to see how the two schools compare in terms of opportunities

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@ZBlue17 Absolutely! Take a look at this. http://repository.upenn.edu/curej/
It is a repository with research papers done by undergrads in Penn CAS.

Also this: https://www.curf.upenn.edu/undergraduate-research-journals

Also getting involved in research will enable you to make connections with professors who could want you in their labs later as a Phd student. (getting a professor/professors to take an interestin you is one of the most if not the most important part when applying for a PhD). Also doing research in the medical school and hospital will help with those connections with hospital and med school faculty and potentially help with med school applications not just to Penn Med but also other top medical schools. (A letter of recommendation from a Penn Medicine faculty can go a long way).

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@ZBlue17 again, Penn95 hit the nail on the head. And from what i can tell- those are only the undergrad research journals posted above. Penn undergraduates author and co author a lot of work with professors backing them that gets published in journals outside of Penn as well. The question will not be whether or not you can publish- it will be where you’re interested in publishing your work.

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Maybe Brown is the right fit for you, especially since you seem a bit turned off by the frat/soror atmospheres at Penn an and Vanderbilt. My D goes to Brown and has loved it and she is on the introvert side. She has really found her calling as a teaching assistant (which Brown gives a lot of opportunities to do) and her friend group seems to expand every year. So socially it is a good fit for her. Academically, Brown has lot to offer in the areas where you expressed interest, esp in Cognitive Sciences and linguistics.The emphasis on undergrad education is underappreciated: Compared to other Ivy League schools, your classes will be taught by tenure track faculty and the focus is clearly on undergrads not the graduate students. I don’t buy the portrayal of Brown students as unserious. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/1979521/upenn-vs-vanderbilt-vs-brown-vs-georgetown/#My daughter is plenty serious and focused,and while they are fun-loving and have broad interests, they put studies first because they are genuinely interested in what they are learning.

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That’s a good point as well- a focus on undergraduate education should definitely be valued. At Penn, 95% of classes in the College of Arts & Sciences are taught by full faculty members and Penn has a lower student to faculty ratio (6:1) than Brown (7:1).