<p>@45 Percenter: There’s no doubt they are great programs, but there is definitely a difference in the opportunities afforded someone who is serious about pursuing a career in research/academia at Penn vs the other schools mentioned. The flexibility of Penn CAS students to access Wharton/Law classes and the other resources you mentioned is very valuable to the average student, who probably wants to pursue some sort of professional career and may not be sure what they want to do at the time they are picking a college to attend. But for students who are very passionate about a certain field of academic study, they care predominantly about the strength of the classes/faculty/etc in that discipline. As an example, in mathematics, Penn has nothing to offer gifted undergraduates that compares to freshmen courses like Math 55 at Harvard and Honors Analysis at Chicago. You would have to take graduate courses at Penn to compare to what the top math students at those schools are doing freshmen year.</p>
<p>At the end of the day Penn has its niche, which is that it affords unparalleled opportunities to undergrads who are interested in pre-professional study, and in addition has one of the top 10 colleges in the country attached, which offers all students a lot of flexibility. It is only slightly lacking for a handful of students who want to pursue academic careers and are extremely gifted.</p>
<p>That’s just not correct. Penn’s College sends a significant number of undergrads to highly esteemed graduate programs in everything from Physics to Classics to English to History to Anthropology to Economics to Psychology, for just a few examples. I personally know of SEVERAL people who attended Penn as undergrads and pursued Ph.D.s at world-renowned graduate programs in those fields. Are you a Wharton grad? Or merely an applicant to Wharton? Because I find what you’ve been saying about opportunities for liberal arts students at Penn to be, quite frankly, a bit uninformed. ;)</p>
<p>@45 Percenter: There are also plenty of Penn state undergrads who pursue PhDs at world-renowned graduate programs in all kinds of fields, but would you suggest that is valid evidence that Penn State offers undergrads the same opportunities as Penn or its peers?</p>
<p>You make it sound as if I am making some extreme argument, when all I’ve stated is that for people interested purely in academics in fields like math, schools like Harvard and Chicago offer more opportunities than Penn does. To anybody familiar with these departments, this is a pretty uncontroversial statement. Of course Penn still sends a good number of students to top graduate programs - the quality of the departments and students is still very high relative to almost every other school in the country.</p>
Well, perhaps specifically in reference to THAT particular field at THOSE particular two schools, but your initial assertion seemed to imply more broadly that a liberal arts undergraduate interested in pursuing graduate studies in a liberal arts department, would be better off at a school like Chicago than at Penn. In fields such as English, History, Anthropology, Classics, Music, Art History, Linguistics, and many others, that just isn’t the case. Penn’s departments in those fields are generally ranked in the same range as, if not higher than, Chicago’s</p>
<p>But unrelated to all that, you haven’t answered my question. Are you a Wharton grad? Or just an applicant? Just curious if you graduated from Wharton in 1990. :)</p>
<p>My original post cited only math, economics, and physics as fields of study in which other schools offered notably better opportunities. I don’t know enough about the strength of Penn’s departments in other fields to say much.</p>
<p>I didn’t respond to your question because it was an attempt at a personal insult and had nothing to do with the subject at hand. The 90 is meaningless, I am a current Wharton student.</p>
I certainly didn’t mean it as an insult–I was just curious. I AM a Wharton alum. ;)</p>
<p>Incidentally, speaking of Physics, there was a Penn Physics major who graduated earlier this year who used to post on here fairly often. She’s now in the Physics Ph.D. program at Harvard, having been accepted to every top-5 program to which she applied, and she posted here that most of the other Physics majors in her class who applied to graduate programs had similar success. And Penn Economics majors also have graduate program opportunities comparable to those available to graduating Economics majors at Chicago. In fact, as you may be aware, there’s a special Mathematical Economics major at Penn targeted specifically at students intending to pursue a graduate degree in Economics:</p>
<p>Wharton is a great program–as I said, I’m a Wharton grad myself–but I think there’s sometimes too much of a tendency to discount the academic excellence of the College, and focus instead on the so-called “preprofessional” aspects of Penn which are, after all, primarily due to the presence of Wharton.</p>
<p>I think Wharton might be a bit below HYPS only because I got in and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have gotten into HYPS Wharton is a speciality schools attracting a different mindset of kids. You need business interests and awards but not huge prestigious Intel STS or Siemens.</p>
<p>This is an almost funny conversation because it’s all about branding. The true differences between the top 10-20 schools are based on branding. Whose mascot is better, whose acceptance rate is lower, whose average SAT is higher even though the statistical differences are not significant. An average 2300 is not different from an average 2270 or what ever numbers you pull. It really comes down to branding and so many of you who are so intelligent are guilty of drinking the kool aid of whatever brands you bought into.</p>
<p>Penn is not second class or second tier or second rate. It’s different. It’s large, urban, social, gifted, endowed and intelligent. We visited the other schools and they had some things and lacked some things. They have a stronger brand in liberal arts education and the air of eliteness. It is what it is. Stanford, UChicago and other schools are great non-Ivy League schools that don’t have the Ivy brand. It doesn’t mean their schools are lesser.</p>
<p>I always get the feeling that Penn takes the hit from people in love with the other schools because they are so social. Many really smart people have social deficits and don’t like to view others who are very outgoing as being equally intelligent as they are. But those people exist and seems like a heavy percentage of them are drawn to Penn over a school like Princeton. So Penn gets looked at as the lower Ivy which is really not justified.</p>
Wharton is a speciality schools attracting a different mindset of kids. You need business interests and awards but not huge prestigious Intel STS or Siemens.</p>