<p>What other schools could you have gone to but chose Penn over. Just curious.</p>
<p>uh, your title is backwards</p>
<p>chose penn over johns hopkins (bme) and cornell</p>
<p>UChicago and Michigan. I didn’t really have a choice having applied ED though.</p>
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<p>What do you mean?</p>
<p>it should be what schools did you choose Penn over</p>
<p>your title is “what other schools did you choose over penn”</p>
<p>it should read “what other schools did you choose penn over”</p>
<p>otherwise, it sounds like you’re asking what schools we would have preferred to go to, rather than penn</p>
<p>DOH! yeah my bad.</p>
<p>hahaa i get this question a lot so let me copy/paste from the facebook group..
i chose penn CAS over stanford, i’ll prob be an IR major ..</p>
<p>i chose penn because i wanted more than a nice resume- i wanted a fun college experience. it has a good balance between work and fun and i love the work hard/party harder attitude. out of all the ivies its the only one id go to (tho i would’ve considered harvard if they’d taken me off their waitlist) b/c personally i think it has the best location out of the 8 except maybe harvard..i like a city and its the least cold also :)… i like their interdisciplinary approach to education and the fact that its pretty good at most things (although stanford like invented this argument and is arguably superior academically except in business). it has more international students than any other ivy. stanford was incredibly hard to refuse, but in the end I always knew id be a quaker :D</p>
<p>Nassau Community College, the cheesesteaks wouldn’t be nearly as good.</p>
<p>I chose Penn over Harvard and Princeton.
a) In terms to academics, I didn’t notice any difference. Honestly, all 8 schools I visited (They were “ranked” between 1-20) had the same quality of academics. If anyone tells you otherwise, I would highly question them.
In all three schools I saw the absolutely brilliant but silent kid who, through a single statement, planted something that sprouted into a class-long debate, the kid that struggled but did his best to learn by asking questions, and the kid that thought he knew everything and spoke too much but in reality, clearly didn’t. At Harvard though, I did notice that kids would push their ideas regardless of other people’s opinions.
b) Arrogant kids at Harvard and Princeton. The sense of entitlement (I saw this at Penn also, but to a lesser extent) was ridiculous. I found it to be fake and disgusting.
c) When Penn kids throw parties,they are real parties. Princeton kids went to parties in colorful things…always (Like seriously, they need to stop that. And the good looking girls are few in number). Harvard’s version of partying = middle school dances w/ alcohol with loads of people just straight up awkward and ditto in regards to the females. Call me superficial or whatever, but I cannot go to school surrounded by 1/10s.
d) This was probably the single most important thing for me. My high school has like these unofficial student reunions and what not, and I went to one before making college decisions. Met kids that went to every school possible throughout the night. People drinking, whatever whatever, and anyways, started to talk to a few people. The first kid I met just kept on bringing up the fact that he went to Harvard. Then I bumped into a kid I knew in high school, who went to Princeton, and he looked preppy as hell wearing Princeton gear. First off, he wasn’t wearing preppy things in high school, and he was pretty much the only one wearing college gear. Very toolish IMO. Then I met the Penn kid. Just chill, calm, funny guy, good to hang out with, actually spoke to me about college in general, didn’t really refer to Penn or anything. The way he spoke… it was as if the Penn kid’s confidence was natural, innate. The Harvard and Princeton kids almost relied on their school names for their confidence, and frankly put, they weren’t that fun to speak with. Whatever, you get my point. I’m sure this doesn’t happen to everyone, but it did to me, and it made my decision pretty darn easy to make.
This obviously doesn’t apply to every student at the mentioned schools, but this was my feel.</p>
<p>Wow, I was re-reading my post and I sound pretty harsh.
My sincere apologies to kids who go to Harvard and Princeton.</p>
<p>we should revisit this thread around dicember to see how we feel about our decision</p>
<p>Harvard/Yale/Brown/Columbia/Stanford/MIT/Georgetown/Tufts/UVA/UCBerk/UCLA/blahblahblah – likely a prime example of potential wasted.</p>
<p>If I could do it all again I prob. would have gone elsewhere.</p>
<p>oh common, don’t say that. really?
I started last year, and I love this place.</p>
<p>@legendofmax-- i’ll bet you all the waitlisters must have LOVED you</p>
<p>legend would have probably been happier as an engineering major at MIT or Stanford. happier academically than Wharton anyway.</p>
<p>I like engineering and I like some aspects of Wharton, don’t get me wrong – but there are too many things about this school (and Wharton itself) that get in the way of enjoying it all to the fullest.</p>
<p>What are some of the things that get in the way, lom?</p>
<p>In all honesty, I probably shouldn’t have transferred. I would have been happier doing a dual College/Engineering or something. I had this interpretation of what Wharton would be like before transferring, but instead it feels like too many things are rigged. I also don’t like many things about Penn itself. I’ve posted about this before, but I’ll recap:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Wharton dumbs down a lot of the math – if you want to understand why stuff works the way it does, you’ll likely be hard-pressed unless you go out of your way to figure it out yourself. More often than not you are faced with “Here’s an equation. It’ll calculate this result for you. Memorize it.” </p></li>
<li><p>In a lot of classes, there is a ton of groupwork, and too many people who will choose to do nothing, forcing everyone else to pick up the slack. I absolutely hate this form of ******baggery/slackery, but it’s everywhere. Worse than high school, in my opinion.</p></li>
<li><p>In other classes, assignments tend to be recycled over the years. This means a large share of students will essentially be copying last year’s answers or at least using them to verify their own work. That means people who choose to do their own work are at risk of losing “gimme points” as a result of a beefier curve due to people having the right answers to begin with. This is especially common in Finance and Acct courses.</p></li>
<li><p>MGMT is BS. Such an important subject with lots of potential… and yet it gets raped at the expense of touchy-feely activities, endless buzzwords, and activities that teach things that are already part of your common-sense logic.</p></li>
<li><p>The lack of feedback is also extremely irritating. In the College, I’d get feedback insanely fast. Usually within the week or the following week. And the College primarily uses Blackboard. Wharton has this entire Webcafe system that is chock-full with functions, and yet it takes eons to get results back in time. I can’t count the number of times I’ve wanted my scores/papers/etc back so I could fix my errors/learn from my mistakes/ask questions, only to find that I’d get everything back much, much later.</p></li>
<li><p>Too many beggars on campus. Tired of getting heckled every time I go into Wawa. I just want a damn sandwich, man.</p></li>
<li><p>SEPTA is disgusting. NY subways are like a breath of fresh air compared to SEPTA. Makes me miss the transportation systems in places like Hong Kong, where things are actually clean.</p></li>
<li><p>Laundry is too expensive compared to other schools. $1.25 per wash/dry? Another pound of flesh, please.</p></li>
<li><p>The weather tends to suck here. It’s either freezing your ass off, or it’s melting your face off with the humidity. A lot of people don’t have issues with it if they’re already used to such weather, but if you aren’t used to the heat or cold, it will definitely be a kick in the nads.</p></li>
<li><p>Housing is generally subpar when compared to peer institutions. Likewise with financial aid.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Basically, I’ve spent a lot of time at other schools and I find that they generally run better. Things operate like butter, but over here at Penn, there are constantly random obstacles and roadblocks getting in the way where they shouldn’t. I’ve also sat in on a bunch of classes, and I find that the way things are taught at other schools are generally much more comprehensive, in-depth, and interesting. When I left, I felt as if I learned something new or gained a better understanding of something. At Penn, I rarely feel that way. It’s usually just a teacher reading from slides and nothing more. The better classes here at Penn, in my opinion, tend to deviate from that approach. You can tell who knows their **** and who prefers to follow some cut-and-dry method.</p>
<p>Greek life here is pretty huge, and if you aren’t into the Greek scene, odds are you’re going to have to find some other way to have fun. Luckily, there’s a lot to do, and you can always venture downtown or hold a party of your own. </p>
<p>I just had this vision of having all my notes with me, walking into class, and hearing a great lecture about finance from a really interesting professor, going back to my comfortable dorm, getting **** done, and then having fun with friends. Instead I feel like a cog in a machine in my finance courses, and I wind up coming back to a dorm room with ****-poor lighting and cramped living conditions.</p>
<p>Anyways, I apologize for this post because it’s a huge joykill. But I feel like I gave up so many great opportunities for an experience I thought was going to be really enjoyable, only to find that a lot of it was incompatible with my preferences. I am sure a ton of people would disagree with the opinions I’ve just expressed – I am just saying that given my expectations and likes/dislikes, Penn and I don’t get along too well.</p>
<p>where’d u transfer from?</p>