<p>So I don't really know much about Penn, but it's come under my radar after reading that it has one of the nation's best psychology programs.</p>
<p>So gimme so info on Penn... What kind of students go there? What's it like compared to the other Ivys? What kind of students are they looking for? How difficult is it to get into compared to other top tier schools? What's the Penn experience like?</p>
<p>As a prospective student, I think Penn is great. :]
Visit [Penn:</a> University of Pennsylvania](<a href=“http://www.upenn.edu%5DPenn:”>http://www.upenn.edu) to get all the information you could want.
Take a virtual tour of the gorgeous urban campus or come for an information session and campus tour!
Penn is known as the “Social Ivy” because though students are academically and pre-professionally driven, they know how to unwind and enjoy themselves.
They’re looking for talented students. Check their admissions site to see the median GPA/scores.
The acceptance rate this year for RD was 17.11% (even less for the College of Arts and Sciences which houses Psychology).
And by the way, Philadelphia is superbly unique.</p>
<p>It’s diverse. It has a real on-campus life. It has a real-off-campus city life (you’ll find lots of schools with one or the other, but to find both is exceedingly rare, all the more so in top-tier schools where the only really comparable campus/city balance is at Harvard). It has programs that are top-notch in just about everything. It has thousands of preprofessionals and thousands of people dedicated to liberal arts and research.</p>
<p>It’s awesome hotness.</p>
<p>
That was the overall acceptance rate. The RD acceptance rate was significantly lower.</p>
<p>My bad. >_></p>
<p>Well, I’m no expert on Penn, but you sound like you’re starting from scratch, so I’ll give you what I’ve gleaned from an interview, an information session, and a handful of visits to Philly. Full disclosure: I’m going to Penn for graduate school, so I can’t speak to the undergraduate experience. I can only tell you why I chose Penn over Columbia/Philly over NYC even though Columbia’s program was technically superior to Penn’s in my field.</p>
<p>To be frank, when I was applying to Penn for social work, Columbia was my top choice. I wasn’t aware that Penn was Ivy League, (most people where I’m from have no idea that Penn or Columbia are prestigious schools and many have never even heard of them. Getting my family to understand that my admission was ‘‘kind of a big deal’’ was like pulling teeth.) </p>
<p>So yeah, I didn’t care about Penn much. For my program they interview every single applicant, so I had to make an appearance anyway. It wasn’t until I actually set foot on campus that I had that ‘‘aha’’ moment. My nervousness vanished the instant I started conversing with the admissions officer, I just felt like we were having an interesting conversation borne of a shared passion for social justice. She wasn’t judging me, she was hearing me, seeing me for who I was. I was completely at ease, and the icing on the cake of course is that she told me I could expect an official acceptance letter in about two weeks. I was so high from that interview I almost didn’t even bother with the others (but I’m glad I did… now I know for sure I made the right choice.)</p>
<p>Now I can’t drive over the Ben Franklin Bridge into Philadelphia without getting butterflies. The campus grounds themselves feel like a kind of sanctuary to me, more like a temple than a school. It’s so amazing because you’re in the middle of this bustling urban environment, and then you stumble through a couple of academic buildings and suddenly you are surrounded by trees and ancient architecture–you would never guess that the nation’s 5th largest city was just outside your little fortress. </p>
<p>And that city doesn’t feel so large, even in Center City on one of the busiest days of the year… it’s practically empty compared to NYC, which personally I love… all the culture, museums, music, art, entertainment, beautiful fountains, architecture, monuments, historical landmarks… yet none of that crazy constant pounding pulsating NYC overpopulation which I find exhausting. And while diversity is certainly unparalleled in NYC, Philadelphia holds diversity as an explicit ideal, with monuments to diversity and to the struggles of working class immigrants built all over the city. Ben Franklin Parkway is lined with flags from countries throughout the world. And if you’re into American history at all, well geez – the freakin’ Declaration of Independence was signed here! I was in town on the 4th of July and they had an enormous parade, a free concert in the middle of the city (‘‘The Roots’’ and ‘‘Sheryl Crow’’) followed by an elaborate fireworks display over the Museum of Art. It was pretty nice.</p>
<p>If psychology is truly your passion, you couldn’t do much better than Penn. One of the reasons I ultimately chose this school over Columbia is due to its heavy emphasis on evidence-based methods and research within the field of mental health treatments. If you are interested in general psychotherapy/talk therapy, then Penn may not be the place for you. Penn is the home of Beck, one of the fathers of cognitive psychology, Martin Seligman, the man who discovered learned helplessness, and the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety, one of the world’s most renowned research and treatment facilities for anxiety disorders, particularly PTSD. Key word: EVIDENCE-BASED. Not all forms of mental health treatment are created equal, and Penn doesn’t just know this–Penn OWNS this.</p>
<p>From my perspective, I couldn’t be in a better place – I get the broad, theoretical, big-picture education of social work along with excellent resources in evidence-based treatments. Penn is a highly interdisciplinary institution that encourages you to combine fields of study. Again, this works for me because my two major fields of interest are evidence-based treatments for PTSD, and immigration. In a sense I can have the best of both worlds here, which is almost impossible everywhere else.</p>
<p>I don’t know if you’re aware of the absymally small acceptance rates for Ph.D. psychology students nationwide, but 4% of students who apply (I’m talking nationwide, not just Penn) are accepted into Ph.D programs for clinical psychology. My brilliant husband, with his Honors Psychology, 3.9 undergrad GPA, 4 years of research experience, 99th percentile rank on the Psychology GRE, got into only one of the 14 grad schools he applied to. If you want a snowball’s chance of getting into a Ph.D. program, then Penn will give you that edge.</p>
<p>As far as cons of the school go, the biggest complaint I hear is that the school is too isolated and insular. The culture of the university is very different than the culture of the rest of the city, and ‘‘Penntrification’’ is a pretty hot-button issue for a lot of Philly locals. The general Philly attitude toward Penn students seems to be that we are elitist snobs they would rather not have wasting space in their city. I think some people here definitely perpetuate that stereotype, but I certainly don’t and a lot of other kids don’t either. Any other cons I could offer pertain to my specific program in general and would probably not be helpful.</p>
<p>Ok, so what was it about Columbia that really turned me off, even though technically it’s a higher ranked program in my field? To oversimplify, an ugly campus in an inconvenient (for me) location, with insufficient personal attention. It also seemed highly disorganized… I never received a financial aid notification as promised. I got the feeling you can slip through the cracks so easily there.</p>
<p>I worked in New York City for a year, so the mystery there is already gone… New York has some great people and interesting sites, but it’s also loud, crowded, and full of Darwinian attitudes and people who believe that all other locations pale in comparison. To be frank, the curriculum itself wiped the floor with Penn’s, but I did the whole ‘‘enormous university’’ thing at UM (we are 50,000 strong) and I wanted an intimate community and a shared sense of purpose more than anything else. </p>
<p>That’s one thing you can never underestimate, that I believe all too many prospective undergrad students take for granted–the significance of quality of life issues. The truth is, there is no real difference between me getting a degree at the 4th or 14th ranked school in my field… I would work equally hard at either institution, have my mind blown in equally life-altering ways, and be equally employable. For those who say that ‘‘it is just four years, prestige matters more than fit’’ try to keep in mind that you’re not in a stasis field for those four years… you are alive, you are changing, for better or for worse, and where you are and what you choose to do WILL impact your identity as a graduate, it WILL shape your adulthood. Prestige doesn’t matter nearly as much as universities would like you to believe. Trust me… I’ve applied and worked at actual jobs. Nobody gives a **** where you went to school. </p>
<p>What matters FAR MORE to me is how I am going to feel waking up every day, walking through campus, commuting to school and my internship, engaging class material, attending class events. It’s about whether when my back is to the wall I am going to have people to run to for support or I am going to feel alone and isolated. It is about the person I will become as a result of my education. It’s about my relationship to the city. You may have different values and different criteria for evaluating your decision, that’s fine. I’m only giving you what I’ve got.</p>
<p>Just do me a favor and if you DO go to Penn, don’t become an elitist jerk. Now that I’m going to Penn I have a vested interest in our reputation. ;)</p>
<p>Endure. I love that. You win.</p>
<p>Endure +1. Sweet post.</p>
<p>Might also want to mention the cost of living in Philadelphia is lower than Manhattan ;)</p>
<p>Ilovebagels, well let me put it this way. Right now I live roughly an hour from New York City, in New Brunswick, NJ. My rent is $1150/month for 900 square feet, which is typical. The closer you get to the city, the worse it gets.</p>
<p>In two weeks I’m moving downstate an hour, to Maple Shade, NJ, which is a lovely little suburban town about 15 minutes from Philadelphia’s Ben Franklin Bridge (it takes another 10 minutes to get to get into campus.) My rent there will be $950 for same 900 square feet, with the added bonus of a free fitness center, a washer and dryer actually inside my own apartment, and free access to a swimming pool.</p>
<p>So even though I’ll be closer to Philly than I was to New York, my cost of living will go down significantly, while my quality of living will go up.</p>
<p>Going to Columbia would have necessitated moving to Jersey City (too far north and my husband couldn’t get to HIS school in New Brunswick.) It would have required spending hundreds of dollars a month on a parking space. The logistics were just a mess. That was certainly a factor in my decision, but if I had truly believed Columbia was the place I needed to be, I would have made it work somehow.</p>