This is similar to the " What’s not so great about Harvard?" thread, so I figured I’d start one for UPenn.
The neighborhood.
@WISdad23 - I disagree about the neighborhood - I think it’s a GREAT benefit for the university. West Philly/University City has tremendous diversity - which is what I really like about it. If you just want chain restaurants and to not go off the beaten path - you can do that. There are plenty of options for that. If you explore a little, there is SO much to see - great ethiopian food, quirky stores (a store that only sells popsicles, thrift shops, etc.), nice parks (Clark Park!), music venues, etc.
If you want a suburban/rural neighborhood, or a very sanitized neighborhood, then don’t apply to Penn. You won’t get that. If you’re looking for an urban environment that’s accessible and affordable for college students, and is also up and coming, you can’t go wrong with West Philly.
In terms of stuff that I think is NOT good about Penn (only my opinion, of course):
- It's too large (it is big, and it feels big - big undergrad population, lots of large graduate schools, etc.) Can be easy to get lost in the crowd if you let yourself.
- A hustle/bustle type of feel - everyone did a million things in high school, and everyone seems to be trying to do the same in college. The admissions office doesn't do a good job of straying from this "type" - they like well-rounded students - kids who try to do (and try to succeed at) a million different things. For some, it can feel exhausting to be surrounded by this archetype.
- Competitive applications/feel for some student clubs - for some clubs, lots of tryouts, submitting resumes, etc. It can feel intense. This relates to the "hustle/bustle" feel described above.
- Too high a percentage of students in greek life (I think it's about 25-30%, which I think is high)
- Pre-professional feel - per the career surveys, traditional careers (finance, medicine, law) remain very popular at Penn. They place well for PhD programs and the like, but few students go this route.
- Decentralized admin support and YMMV - there are lots of places to go for different things, so it can feel decentralized. Also, some admins are great, others are not (have heard horror stories about Student Financial Services, the Registrar's Office, etc.)
- Overvaluing success and undervaluing failure - there seems to be pressure to "succeed" and this sometimes comes in the way of learning through failure, and sometimes just learning for the sake of learning - for some people, "Return on investment" is something people think about in their decision making. Maybe this is because of the Wharton influence? Haha...
Kings Court/English House and Hill House aren’t the Quad. One provides you the quintessential freshman experience and the others are places to sleep.
The neighborhood? It’s not that bad compared to where Temple is and you won’t spend much time outside of 34th-42nd and Pine to Chestnut anyway.
- The cost. I loved U Penn when we visited (as a parent), but the net cost was just too high. HPYS offer much more generous aid to help parents in that crunch zone.
- Emphasis on ED which combined with less aid that other Ivies is a double whammy.
My child was admitted to UPenn, we live in the pristine no man’s land called Mountain West with almost zero crime (we can actually leave our doors unlocked at night). We were terrified of sending child to Penn after I read everything about safety and security or lack there of, and how kids need “a walking buddy” or security to walk from library to dorm at night!!!
The 30th street station to the campus was considered extremely unsafe, that meant he couldnt take the train to visit family too late into the night.
I doubt there have been any stabbings or murders, but the general feel was too scary for us hill billies.
Its a completely different urban environment… Apparently there are 8 cross streets in the campus map grid that are “OK” but going West of 36th? was told to be completely unsafe.
It doesnt guarantee 4 year housing
Some out of campus housing was humungusly expensive.
Also the social stratification.
We were told getting into clubs would be near impossible since there was a multi tiered screening process.
Social work being so exclusive sounds completely bizarre to me.
Also the weekend outings had a “tab” we were told. Some kids formed groups where you must be willing to spend a minimum of $500 or $1,000 on Saturday outings.
Plus the email responses from the campus on questions about Housing and other issues went unanswered. Maybe they were too busy, maybe they wanted to wait to respond, nevertheless…
Apparently there are a lot of homeless people and drug addicts? roaming freely all over the campus, and can be found sleeping all over the lawns.
Not sure how much of it was true
We were terrified.
Child was absolutely THRILLED to have been accepted. To be studying in such an old illustrious institution was indeed an honor. To be able to live and sleep in housing over 250 years old is like a dream come true for the child.
Historic and intellectual no doubt
Kid wanted to study Comp Sc and so ultimately picked CMU SCS as that was a better fit.
@BoiDel sorry to say but most of what you heard was big misinformation. Penn is by no means a pristine no-mans land where you can leave your door unlocked but the campus is pretty safe.
Going as far west as 46th street is actually quite safe if you stay in the main streets that run through campus (market, chestnut, sansom, walnut, locust. spruce). After 50th-55th st, it starts to get kind of sketchy/unsafe.
You sure do not need a buddy to get across campus. It might be a good idea to do so if you are crossing campus at 3-4am but even then it is not necessary if you are in central campus locations (say from the library to the high rises or the quad). I did it countless times as an undergrad and not once did i have an issue. and same goes for many of my friends.
30th street station is definitely not safe to get to from campus on foot at a reasonable hour of the day. Even after hours it is definitely not very unsafe but obviously more caution should be exercised as is the case with any place.
Housing is not formally guaranteed for all 4 years but practically it is. Most people move off campus after freshman or sophomore year so there are plenty of openings for upperclassmen who actually do get priority for the high rises over freshmen.
The difficulty of getting into clubs depends on the club you re talking about. There are many clubs that do not require a multi-stage screening process, including many volunteering/community service clubs.
Going out does not have to have a tab. The $500/$1000-a-weekend crowd is a very small percentage of the Penn student population, mainly some super-rich kids in some frats/sororities. There are a lot of people who spend anywhere from $30 to $100 in a typical week to go out but there are also many kids who do not go out every weekend and cannot afford to pay that, who then find alternative ways to have fun, such as house parties or cheaper bars etc. Of course Penn has a lot of wealthy kids but there are equally as many kids from modest backgrounds who are on financial aid.
Three main things IMO:
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Dining Hall Food Sucks; You are forced to have meal plan freshman year which you will see is very costly vs. the quality of food (Some other on campus non-dining hall places - where you use “dining dollars”- like houston market or frontera have great food though, i’m just talking about the ones where you use a “meal swipe”)
Pressure due to competitive/very preprofessional atmosphere
School Spirit for sports is not great
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Bonus: I hear the CAPS (psychological counseling service) isn’t the greatest. Haven’t been there myself but everybody makes jabs about it.
@BoiDel I agree with @Penn95 and also, to add, if you EVER feel unsafe, UPenn offers police walking escorts, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year - they’ll go with you pretty much anywhere in West Philly.
https://www.publicsafety.upenn.edu/about/security-services/walking-escort/
This being said, if you don’t like an urban environment (and some don’t), then don’t apply to Penn. It’s that simple - it’ll never feel like being at Dartmouth or Williams or even a more suburban-ish/scrubbed clean school like Wash U.
You’ll never be able to make Penn feel suburban or rural. You could, on the other hand, make a school like Tufts or Duke (two schools with a more suburban feel) feel more urban (given their proximity to bustling urban areas).
@HyperTurbo - I think the food is a non-issue. Yes, Penn dining hall food isn’t what you’d find at Cornell or Wash U (two schools with excellent food), but you also can leave housing after the first year if you want, and there are tons of options for food in West Philly - cheap, good food trucks, grocery stores, niche restaurants, etc. etc.
Re CAPS - yes, I’ve heard that too, but they are expanding. The issue is they were understaffed for so long, and this is frankly because Penn, at its huge size, doesn’t have the wealth of its more well-resourced, smaller peers. Given recent mental health crises on campus, though, they are expanding CAPS, Student Health Services, etc. CAPS used to be in an AWFUL location on 36th and walnut - they moved recently, although a bit farther from the center of campus.
Re pressure - in my experience students DO NOT compete AGAINST one another, but an overall feeling of pressure DOES exist. I met many students who had this general feeling that others were “succeeding,” and they needed to keep up. It was pressure in a vague sense, but it was palpable. It’s why one Wharton prof said Penn’s hyper-competitive culture is the worst he’s ever seen. (I can provide a link if you want, but I’ve mentioned the article before, so no need for me to keep linking.)
Re school spirit - it’s about as good as you’ll get for a non-big time sports top school. It’s nothing compared to Stanford, Duke, or even Northwestern, but it’s the best of the rest.
@Cue7 's elaborations are correct.
I guess for the school spirit thing I personally do not go to many events so maybe I was slightly biased towards my own experiences. I get PennAthletics emails all the time so that does attribute to the school trying to get us to go to the games.
@Cue7 Our school spirit is 100% not “the best of the rest.” The Penn-Princeton rivalry is not close to the Harvard-Yale rivalry in terms of school spirit and student (and alumni) interest. The Penn @ Columbia basketball game this past season was sold out (or close to it) and the crowd was loud, but it wouldn’t have been close to that atmosphere if the game were at the Palestra.
That said, while we don’t have good school spirit, Penn has Franklin Field (used to be Philadelphia Eagles home field) and The Palestra (the Cathedral of College Basketball - has hosted more NCAA tournament basketball games than any other venue), which means we get to host The Ivy League Basketball Tournament (this may change going forward), The Penn Relays, and other big games (e.g. various Big 5 games including some that don’t feature Penn, Michigan State vs Penn State men’s basketball, LeBron James back when he was in high school against the top team from Philly). Also, unlike other Ivy League schools, we have the Big 5, which is a city basketball rivalry between Penn, Villanova, Temple, St. Joe’s and LaSalle. However, the rivalry has lost its luster in recent years. From my freshman year to senior year, you could see the difference among student interest at all the schools - Penn students don’t care except for the Villanova game, Villanova’s student section didn’t show up for the Penn game at the Palestra this past season (Penn hasn’t had a lead against Villanova in 8 years, so they maybe didn’t think it was worth the trip to see Villanova win easily), and Penn students no longer travel for away Big 5 games (my freshman and sophomore year, students traveled for the Villanova and Temple games, respectively).
@WhartonPenn2017 - so you think school spirit is better at Harvard or Princeton?
In my experience, I don’t agree with that, but I attended Penn in the early 2000s - back when the basketball team was really good and even putting up a good showing against Nova, St. Joe’s, etc.
This being said, from what I’ve seen, outside of Stanford, Duke, and Northwestern, I think Penn has the same (or more) school spirit than any other top 20 school. The football team has seen a bit of a resurgence of late, and it looks like basketball could be coming up too. (Women’s basketball is stronger now too.)
So Harvard or Princeton may have one or two games (like the Harvard-Yale game) where you see pronounced school spirit. Besides that, though, I don’t think there’s that much. UPenn seems more consistent on that front.
@Cue7 We can agree to disagree on this one.
School spirit has declined quite a bit since the early 2000’s, which may be why we have different views.
Harvard and Yale, I’d agree that you can say it’s just one big game. I was just making the point that it’s a much more spirited rivalry than Penn-Princeton. I was very impressed by Columbia’s crowd when Penn men’s basketball played there this past season and don’t think we would’ve been able to replicate the intensity of that crowd and game had it been at the Palestra.
“UPenn seems more consistent on that front” Definitely not! That’s one of the big problems. I’ve been to multiple basketball games where there were fewer than 20 students in the student section (we’d joke there were more players on the team than in the student section). The past two years, the Red and Blue was inconsistent. There were many games when no one from the club board showed up (but of course they showed up to all the big games and took all the credit for leading and organizing the student section at those games).
Edit: addressing women’s bball point…I 100% agree that the new women’s bball coach is great and turned that program into a dominant force. Unfortunately, very few students care and the only students who support them at their games are other athletes and the players’ close friends. That said, that’s probably the case for every school that isn’t named UConn.
@BoiDel , I live in the Philly area.
I’m sorry and don’t know how you got this information about safety, but it’s false. I say this not to make you feel bad, but to let others know that the area around Penn is quite safe. You write “the 30th street station to campus was considered extremely unsafe”-- First you wouldn’t take the 30th, you’d take the 34th. But second, considered by whom? I mean, I wouldn’t go at 1 am (just take an uber). But I’ve used SEPTA for over a decade. And homeless people roaming around campus? This is just untrue.
It’s possible people feeding misinformation are going by what Penn was like 10-15 years ago, when it was indeed less safe. Now, however, the campus and the city area through about 42nd or so is quite safe–certainly not “extremely unsafe.” Yes, as you go further west, you will get into high crime areas. But there is no need to go there–students would not go there unless they wanted to. And it’s also smart to use your head and not get yourself into unsafe situations (eg walking around the city at 3 am alone, or engaging in dicey deals).
As far as Philly as a city–it’s gotten a lot better and continues to do so. Yes there are areas that are high crime; don’t go there. There’s no reason for a student to do so. Center City has so much to offer and if you use your head, it’s quite safe.
That said, Penn is embedded in the city, so if you don’t like an urban environment, I would think that would be setting yourself up for misery. I mean, there’s lots of nature around - parks you can go to, hiking etc - but it’s not the same as a small LAC in a small town college. However, as far as the extreme lack of safety, that’s untrue.
@Boidel “Apparently there are a lot of homeless people and drug addicts? roaming freely all over the campus, and can be found sleeping all over the lawns…We were terrified.”
I laughed out loud at this. If you try to interact with the homeless, drug addicted looking people roaming around campus, you will discover that they are actually students! It could be a hung over, student, but a student.
@hyperturbo I agree about the food. It can be an issue for freshman who are particular eaters or like quality food. Our D called or texted home to complain about it for the entire freshman year. It was, by far, her biggest complaint.
@cue7 “Re pressure - in my experience students DO NOT compete AGAINST one another, but an overall feeling of pressure DOES exist.”
This is true. I think a lot of Penn students put this pressure on themselves. It does not help that grads are not as inflated as some Ivies, although they are more inflated than a couple of them.
@Much2learn - I would qualify your statement a little bit. Yes, UPenn students put pressure on themselves, BUT there seem to be broader pressures created by the community at large - and this unduly burdens many students. These students come in accustomed to putting pressure on themselves, BUT they now find themselves in an environment with MANY more of the same “types” of students (read: broad overachieving students who tend to be active in lots of different areas).
Further, they enter an environment, where, for many reasons, certain coveted jobs/positions/opportunities tend to be quite well known, and receive a disproportionate amount of interest from the student body. Be it an internship at Goldman Sachs or a competitive student group, students feel a push toward certain areas.
It felt like the invisible hand sometime was coaxing some students.
Note, this isn’t for ALL students - but there’s a palpable feeling of a current, or a stream, or a direction where things flow for certain large segments of the Penn population. In my opinion, this seems more pronounced at Penn than at other places, and this isn’t altogether healthy.
Again, just my opinion, but I’ve gotten to know many parts of Penn for some time.
And I should add - while this is a chicken and egg problem - I think a good chunk of the blame rests with the Admissions Office - they don’t do a good enough job getting varied “types” of students. The vast majority of students I met tended to be doing a LOT of things - they were involved in academics, extra-curriculars, sports, etc. etc.
It’s fine if a chunk of the student body fits this mold, but I was surprised by the lack of diversity in terms of student pursuits. I met lots of students doing LOTS of things, but barely any who were kind of drilling down and really just doing one (or two, or three, or even just four) things deeply.
@Cue7 I don’t get exactly what you mean by Penn not having varied “types” of students. I see where you are coming from in that Students tend to get very involved with many on campus groups, such as clubs, societies, and sports, but I do not know if this purports into a “lack of diversity”, especially compared with other schools with high achieving students who also juggle a lot of things in their life. There is this feeling at Penn that your peers are doing and achieving so much and you need to stay on pace, but again I don’t think this is too different from many other top tier schools.
First off, they were already admitted to their specific undergraduate school because their intended pursuits align with the specific goals of the school and careers they are going for. Aside from the combined-double degree programs (yet another example of Penn caterizing to specialized future pursuits), The students in Nursing (only undergrad program in the entire ivy league) were admitted because they showed in their application that they were very focused and passionate about pursuing nursing. Same with Wharton and business/leadership. Again, you can say that about other top tier schools too.
Moreover, I know many students who do a lot of activities, but it is focused and aligned with their professional goals. Penn is very pre-professional and for example, you will see a good chunk of Wharton students who do LOTS of activites, but they are all business-related (investment, consulting, finance, management etc. club, wharton-[insert country] society/exchange, Case competitions). You may find the same with Pre-med students (Pre-health frat, some medical club, volunteering work, working in a lab).
I agree UPenn is quite pre-professional, and students sometimes focus their activities in alignment with a certain professional goal, as you say. Beyond this, though, to me, it looks like Penn students do a LOT. For instance, I’ve met Harvard grads who pretty much went to Harvard to do math - that’s the bulk of what they did. Maybe they joined a math club or quiz bowl team or something, but pretty much they went to Harvard and dove into doing math.
I haven’t seen that as much at Penn. Maybe I just missed it, but there seemed to be less of that deep diving into certain subject areas going on. Everyone seemed to be doing a lot - it might be narrowed by professional interest - but they were doing a lot in that space. Maybe it’s because UPenn is more pre-professional, and, for those following professional interests, there’s a requirement to do a lot of different things.
Of course, other top schools have high achieving students juggling lots of things, but I was surprised that I didn’t meet really ANY of the Harvard-type I describe - and I met these Harvard grads by chance. It just seemed to me that the proportions in the UPenn student body were off - too many juggling too many things, not enough students drilling down into particular areas.
Again, just my opinion - but when it looks like everyone is fitting a certain mold (e.g. the pre-finance or pre-med students you describe), it amplifies the feeling of pressure.