@Cue7 add some real value. Provide your Penn graduate md professional school analysis …
@Cue7 you don’t seem to be understanding what I’m saying. I am not saying that Penn students and Emory students are not intellectually identical (double negative, and I ain’t sorry about it). I am saying that they’re two different universities with two different sets of opportunities associated with them, composed of two different sets of student bodies and faculties. I am saying that when choosing between top colleges, fit is the most important factor and then identified a series of qualities that one might see as components of that fit (real, tangible opportunities and genuine distinctions between the schools rather than an imagined population of supergeniuses). I used an “ivy only networking event” at the Princeton Club and recruitment opportunities from the most elite firms because they are examples of opportunities available at Penn and not available at Emory-- you know, things you should ACTUALLY consider when choosing a school as opposed to the accomplishments of .04% of the student body over a 16 year period.
And that wasn’t a “defense” of Penn. I don’t have to ‘defend’ Penn from being compared to Emory. I heard a rumor that Emory is the Harvard of the South! What I’m saying is that there are actual differences between these schools that might make a difference to a student going there and that reflect the quality of the schools! You’ve yet to show that the difference you perceive exists to the degree you imagine it. I’ve listed a bunch of actual differences that do exist and are therefore of value to future students. I’ll tell you how many emory kids were at the ivy-only networking event at the Princeton Club: zero. The answer is a big 'ole goose egg! I’ll tell you how many Emory kids took classes at a top 10 law school and did research with the most published business faculty in the world all while contemporaneously majoring in English in a department consistently considered one of the top 5 in the country: zero again because those things are not available at Emory.
And finally, I am most certainly not trying to sell Penn or undercut its stereotypes. I’m sharing my experience and my perspective. I believe this is a board for high school students trying to think about where to go to college and to get much needed advice from those who have actually been there. Not a board for adults to write fan fiction about the .04% of Harvard students over the last 16 years that can add numb3rs real g00d.
@Chrchill - no need to do that analysis here, and per the rankles raised from the Penn blowhards, it looks like I’ve added plenty of value to this thread and this board…
And finally, ad hominem attacks aren’t nice. I may disagree with the things y’all say and I may have a sarcastic tone on this board (cause i get silly from time to time) but i mean no malice and I genuinely only adopt that tone because I hope it comes off as entertaining, not insulting. If it’s the opposite, then I genuinely apologize and I will absolutely try to scale it back. But that being said, I don’t appreciate being called a blowhard. Feel free to criticize what I say but consider the way your characterization of another person as a blowhard might make them feel. I don’t think i’ve ever called another person a name on CC-- hoping to keep that streak going.
@cue7
“I blame Penn’s admissions office. They recruit and retain wayyy too much of the “same” student.”
“Penn needs at least some students who just sat around and did math - exceptionally hard math - all day in high school.”
While the article was about Penn, I do not believe that Penn students are under any more stress than students at MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Cal Tech, Swarthmore, Princeton, JHU, Columbia, Yale, Cornell, Yale, or Chicago. None of this is really about Penn per se. Oddly, many of the same people who say Penn students are under too much pressure to study also criticize Penn for spending too much time partying. I don’t get it.
On other threads you attack Penn and argue that its admits are inferior to Chicago because of their slightly lower test scores, but Penn has always put more weight on gpa, and extracurriculars, and less weight on test scores compared to other Ivies or Chicago. Most years, you will find that Penn has the highest gpa average of any Ivy. In contrast, Chicago touts their students’ test scores, but refuses to publish a Common Data Set or gpa data. Perhaps Chicago grabs high test scores to puff up their ranking, and then hides the gpa data to cover their tracks.
I understand that you are a U Chicago fan and don’t like Penn’s pragmatic approach to education. You think Penn should be admitting more “life of the mind” single-interest students who just want to read books. Chicago has made efforts in recent years to move away from its self-created “where fun comes to die” stereotype, but they are still fighting many of their own alums over it, who prefer the old approach and think the administration has “gone soft.” In contrast, Penn’s educational approach is a practical balance between book learning and hands-on doing. That was established 140 years before Chicago was born, by Penn’s founder, Benjamin Franklin. Ben loved books and was mostly self-educated, but also realized the limitations of books without hands-on, practical experience and experimentation.
Penn does tend to admit students who are engaged, involved, well-rounded, and tend to be sociable. They also tend to be bright, naturally curious doers, who want to get a great education in a place where students are engaged, and classes are only a portion of the experience. They want to also have great experiences, and also enjoy their 4-year experience where they have built life-long relationships. They want it all and are willing to work hard to have it all. It does mean being very busy, but they like it that way.
Chicago is great. Students get an amazing education there. I would happily send the right kid there. I don’t see Chicago as better or worse than Penn, just very different. What I do not understand is why a Chicago backer wants to come to the Penn forum and post an old article that is critical of Penn on the day before students’ decisions are due. My only guess is that you don’t think your school can compete effectively for top talent on its own merits, and to improve its chances, you think you need to make a weak attempt to tear down Penn. That is unfortunate.
As always I agree with @Much2learn.
@Cue7 you have a history of putting down Penn in favor of mainly Chicago.
So a few days before college decisions you come to the Penn thread and recycle an old article that has in fact limited truth given that the author’s point of comparison is rather limited land also he is a Wharton professor, and of course the competitive, pre-professional element is more pronounced at Wharton.
Then you take this article to mean that Penn is somehow more stressful than any other school and go on to present what you personally don’t like about Penn as major issues that Penn needs to fix and as major negatives at Penn. In the process you exaggerate/distort most of them. Hate to break it to you but most of what you mention are major selling points of Penn for many and but reasons why they choose to attend.
The purpose of you doing this is rather transparent. I don’t see any similar posts on the Chicago forum initiated by Penn people who are trying to tear Chicago down and extol Penn’s virtues in length ( like you have done many times here).
Your agenda is really transparent I am afraid this will have the exact opposite effect of what you were hoping. All you are doing is perpetuating the stereotype that Chicago people are insecure that Chicago is not an Ivy.
Actually – no. He made a comment that UChicago was irrelevant. But tell you what. These discussions and debates are tedious. People will have their views. The rankings are what they are. Period. In fact @penn95 and @PennCAS2014 are the chronic Uchicago bashers. UChicago is. It an ivy. Neither is Stanford, MIT or Cal Tech. Get used to the “ivy plus”. And remember – there is a huge difference between the four top ivies and the rest of the old football club.
As my good friend @Cue7 is probably aware, I haven’t posted much on this forum for quite some time (just occasional informational posts here and there), but @Chrchill has expressed this at least twice in this thread (and perhaps elsewhere), and I think it might be time for a factually based rebuttal to this assertion. In FACT, many of Penn’s graduate departments are INDEED a force in “academic” subjects as you refer to them, having been continuously ranked among the top 10 or 20 graduate programs in the country for many decades. For example, the National Research Council (NRC) rankings of Ph.D programs–among the most widely respected of such rankings in the academic community–ranked many of Penn’s “academic” departments among the top 10 or 20 both in the early 1990s, and again in the most recent NRC rankings a few years ago:
https://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41indiv.html
http://www.chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-English/124728/
A survey of the early '90s NRC rankings reveals Penn’s Ph.D programs to have been ranked among the top 10 in 14 different areas: Art History, English, French, Linguistics, Music, Religion, Spanish, Neurosciences, Physiology, Biomedical Engineering, Materials Science, Anthropology, Economics, and Psychology. Further, Penn was ranked just outside of the top 10 in 5 additional areas–Classics (#13), Comparative Literature (#11), Ecology, Evolution, & Behavior (#14), History (#12), and Sociology (#11)–and among the top 15-20 in another 4 areas: German (#16), Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (#16), Molecular & General Genetics (#19), and Physics (#17).
So to summarize, out of the hundreds of Ph.D programs in 41 different areas, Penn was ranked among the top 10 in 14 areas, the top 15 in another 5 areas, and the top 20 in still another 4 areas.
Also, in ITS rankings of graduate programs based on departmental reputation, US News has consistently ranked several of Penn’s “academic” programs among the top 10 or so in the country. For example, it most recently ranked Penn’s graduate program in English as tied for #3 in the country with Columbia and Stanford, below only UC-Berkeley and Chicago, and ABOVE Harvard, Princeton, and Yale:
It also ranked Penn’s graduate program in Psychology as tied for #8 with Princeton, MIT, and others, and well above Columbia and Chicago, both tied at #17 with several other schools:
To my mind, that Penn has had at least 14 graduate programs ranked as top-10 in diverse “academic” areas, and another 9 graduate programs ranked as top-20 in additional diverse areas, would tend to belie the statement that Penn “is just not a force in academic subjects, especially in many graduate departments.” Maybe it’s not Harvard ;), but I’d maintain that Penn is certainly still “a force in academic subjects.” But that’s just me. 
In any event, carry on folks–I’ve been enjoying reading the sparkling repartee. And best regards to my old friends @Cue7, @PennCAS2014, @Penn95, and @Much2learn. Hurrah, Hurrah, and all that. 
Honestly, I do not comment on your posts because I don’t believe that your posts reflect your actual views. I think they are tongue-in-cheek provocations, designed to elicit a response for your own entertainment (and admittedly, sometimes mine). It seems to me that any relationship between your posts and actual views is purely coincidental.
In your most recent post, “The rankings are what they are. Period.” The Spicer parody has me personally rolling. Keep up the good work. I am amazed at how many people you have succeeded in pulling into this. I will now ready for the requisite onslaught attempt to convince me otherwise. 
:))
@Much2learn Just please stick to your alternative facts.
Oh, and one other thing, @Chrchill (CC won’t let me edit post #67 anymore, so I have to put this in a new post). If you review the graduate program rankings that I discussed, I think you’ll find that Penn is quite comparable to Columbia in terms of the number of “academic” graduate programs ranked in the top 10 and top 20, so your construct of there being 4 “greater” Ivies of HYP and Columbia and, presumably, 4 “lesser” Ivies of Penn and the rest, is also without merit. Add to this that Penn’s professional schools are, as you acknowledge, generally among the very best, and that Penn’s endowment is now $10.72 billion compared to Columbia’s $9.04 billion (making Penn’s the 4th largest endowment in the Ivy League and the first after HYP to reach double digits in billions), and the assertion that Columbia is at some sort of level with HYP that Penn is not, becomes even more tenuous. Penn and Columbia are quite comparable in every way (except perhaps for name recognition among the general public), and the notion that Columbia is in a class above Penn is, quite frankly, extremely dated. But that’s not meant as an insult–I’m an old fart like you.
Maybe I’ve also just been goaded into a rebuttal by our resident Press Secretary. Thanks for not giving me a heads up BEFORE I posted, @Much2learn, old pal of mine.
@"45 Percenter @Much2learn What did Sean Spicer major in at Penn ?
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Nothing more to add, and it’s just turned into a circular debate. Closing thread.