<p>Hey guys,</p>
<p>If any alum or current students or anyone heard or even experienced things that made Penn and Wharton suck could you comment?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>I’ve heard the competition is cutthroat, but people take that differently at Wharton.</p>
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<p>The competition is NOT “cutthroat,” as that term is generally defined and understood. There is a lot of collaboration among undergrads at Penn, including and especially at Wharton where it’s actually part of the curriculum (e.g., Management 100). There is, of course, more academic competition than in high school given that the vast majority of Penn undergrads were among the highest academic achievers in high school. But the competition at Penn is not “cutthroat” in the sense that students actively sabotage each other’s academic success or even fail to provide assistance to each other. That’s just not generally the culture or atmosphere at Penn.</p>
<p>You may find some “cutthroat” people at Wharton but that is not the norm, and my guess is that it’s the same at any similar school.</p>
<p>There are some classes that have limited usefulness/are very annoying. MGMT 100 and MGMT 101 are the two worst classes that you are required to take IMO. ACCT 102 is also pretty useless. OPIM 101 is also a pretty poor class [surprised me, because I expected it would teach Excel; but in reality it’s mostly BS and IMO the exams are more of an intelligence test than anything else]. Basically, I think that most of the core classes required at Wharton are of low quality, and also the grading in some of these (MGMT 100/101 in particular) tends to be fairly arbitrary, adding to the frustration.</p>
<p>I’m baffled by wharton90’s statement about useless classes. How can an intermediate accounting course be useless to anyone with business and (possibly finance) as their career goal? Anyway I digress. Penn is rigorous. The students are generally very smart and often career focused. They don’t need to be cutthroat and they mostly aren’t. There’s a lot to be said in favor of focusing at the positive aspects of student life then searching for low points.</p>
<p>ACCT 102 is not an intermediate accounting course. It is an intro managerial accounting course. ACCT 101 (intro to financial accounting) and the intermediate/upper level accounting courses (201, 202, 242 in particular) are very useful and I’d recommend that any Wharton student find time to take those if they are interested in finance.</p>
<p>How about the Social scene? How are the girls ( lol )? How are the professors, do they have free time for students or are they busy with research etc? Hows teh career office? Hows the career prospect?</p>
<p>45percenter’s comments reflect our daughter’s experience at SEAS too. Students tend to work cooperatively and not be cutthroat.</p>
<p>“How about the Social scene? How are the girls ( lol )? How are the professors, do they have free time for students or are they busy with research etc? Hows teh career office? Hows the career prospect?”</p>
<p>Guys and girls are about equally represented on campus. Additionally, Penn seems to attract an unusually large number of sociable students. Of course on a large campus you find all types of people, but most of the girls that I met there were bright and nice looking, and pleasant to speak with. On thing that drew my daughter to Penn over other top schools was the work hard, play hard mindset. She wants a challenging environment, but does not want to study 24/7 all the time.</p>
<p>Penn does an excellent job of student placement.</p>
<p>Thanks that was a nice explanation. I also like to study but enjoy myself while I am at it. How about Wharton reputation for employment in the finance industry and in other industries? Do coordinated dual degree program workout, especially JOhn huntsman , or are they jsut a waste of time?</p>
<p>The people that I know that have been involved in the dual degree programs generally like them. They generally also do well in the job market. However, you do not need a dual degree program to compete for top jobs, and it can significantly constrain some of your course options. I would only go the dual degree path if is a very natural fit for you. </p>
<p>How is the schedule for a double degree student? Do we literately have to do twice the number of courses? As in I would like to have like 60% of my classes related to business/finance but the other 40% spread into sociology history international relations etc</p>
<p>Your schedule for an uncoordinated dual degree student will be rough. Really rough. You can double count things for interdisciplinary programs, but not too much (maybe three classes?). </p>
<p>The Huntsman program is difficult and slightly random to get into, very much determined on what the Huntsman director thinks of you (i.e. you need to go take a tour of Penn and inquire into the program and find out more about it. majority of the class is international (i.e. genuinely not American) and most likely went to boarding school in the UK). The program itself is fairly easy but fairly constricting. It is less impressive than going out and getting your own dual degree by and large. </p>
<p>For getting a job, the linkedin rankings do come from real data but they are flawed (i.e. only included people who use linked and put UPenn as their school versus UPenn - Wharton ) - albeit they are much better than any other qualitative statement by an ignorant, insecure, unemployed HYPS graduate spending his time on the internet, dwelling over the prestige of his college and contributing to countless college boards. </p>
<p>Almost all majors at Penn will not hurt you from being selected. That being said, the whole process is a crapshoot and doesn’t have too much to do with what you study (so long as it’s not incredibly easy, i.e. you just stick with Africana studies). There are some exceptions and this is where Wharton or Engineering or a quantitative College degree will come handy. </p>
<p>All firms come and recruit at Penn, never - and I repeat - never, at Wharton specifically. The people going to information sessions and signing up for events will however, be majority Whartonites for almost all finance internships. That’s really because it’s self-selection, if you study business you are going to be pre-professional - that’s the point of attending business school. The bulge bracket banks (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan etc) take a diverse range of students from Penn that includes History to Finance to Anthropology majors, even for their “most selective” divisions. Interviews come from meeting people and being able to come across as competent and sociable, not screwing up your grades, and showing you did something with your time at Penn. Elite boutiques, which are sometimes more prestigious (Evercore, Centerview etc) but mostly comparable or below, tend to 80% of the time hire Wharton graduates. You can never be sure how much of that is self-selection or how much they value the Wharton name or how much people who founded these firms/worked there get along with candidates (they often went to Wharton). The point is, it is never incredibly important about what school you are in (Even though the more insecure will feel that) but what opportunities you take advantage of, how much you’ve challenged yourself, how you present yourself and how you get along with others.</p>
<p>Consulting is more based on grades (3.5 and above), tends to have a higher success rate for liberal arts graduates (but even number of placement overall, just again, it’s more self-selective) and is based on a fairly structured case based interview process. McKinsey is more of an outlier, they take fewer from Penn than BCG and Bain, and take mostly quant grads (Engineers, Physics and Wharton finance) - but the occasional IR major. </p>
<p>Continuing:
That being said, this whole process is fairly unique to Penn. Georgetown and Harvard have a smaller recruiting program, but Penn (By virtue of its size as well, 2,500 undergraduates compared to 1,600 or 1,200) is the most recruited school in the country. The dream brand name companies are not for everyone, that is more than worth knowing - so don’t get your hopes set on them when you enter. Penn is probably (Well statistically) the best place to start working at one of those places (Save for tech, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford and even Harvard will do you better. Penn does well but it is less common and less something people focus on).</p>
<p>Pre-Med is incredibly tough. Penn Med is a top 3 med school, and just the hospital apparatus Penn has is just unmatched if you’re proactive and getting decent grades. That does help things in terms of you working at Penn Med over the Summer or you going to Med School there eventually is made a lot easier. </p>
<p>Penn Law is very small and is not as strong as Penn Med or Wharton MBA - and getting into an amazing law school is easier elsewhere (HYPS, Columbia and probably Brown, Williams and Amherst). But then again, going into law is just like becoming an investment banker with a ton of debt, 3 years gone of your life, more predictable pay (better initially, but not in the long run), more menial work, and less exit opportunities (i.e. you’re stuck). So I would just consider banking, and it’s easiest to do that at Penn. </p>
<p>If you want to win a Rhodes Scholarship or a Fulbright - that’s fairly uncommon at Penn. It is not an intellectual school. If you want to work in media or do something comm related, it is a good school however. People don’t focus on it too, it’s not as if that’s a crapshoot too and there still are no winners - it’s not incredibly focused on. Going to a good grad school is fairly easy I would say however - so don’t cancel it out for that kind of thing, just it’s uncommon. </p>
<p>Oh and if you want to be a nurse, Penn is the best place for that! But that’s probably a small minority of you. </p>
<p>Socially, the school has so many scenes and communities you cannot generalize or rank or do anything like that as a whole. Within the greek community itself - you can. The people a little but further from being in a top-tier frat/sorority care about it the most and are likely to define themselves most by their affiliation. Boys in it care most about it because they end up having no other friends other than those in their frat often due to pledging, wanting to get girls etc. Penn students also have a fascination with international students (Europeans often) largely stemming from the fact that they are white but don’t necessarily look jewish, but also dress well and have nice sounding accents. Also, there are places people can spend their money visibly so you also have wealthy but not so great looking indian/muslim/asian boys trying to be cool. But again, I stress this just one community that is a minority as much as insecure but deluded people will try and convince themselves the opposite. </p>
<p>There are so many dance groups, a cappella groups, campus organizations, business societies etc that also have strong followings, and also, people just make friends organically without groups and that’s definitely mainstream but vastly understated as well (it’s not like you can make up a name for friend groups and write about in the campus magazine). </p>
<p>The problem with Penn stems from the fact that it forces the real world onto you earlier, for better or for worse. You don’t live in an ivory tower, but at the same time, you also don’t graduate with world crashing down on you and ending up with a life that you didn’t want or expect. So for example, people sometimes are selfish and care about their grades, their extracurriculars and job opportunities more than their friends usually. Also, there is a strong Greek/international scene that some people feel sucked in by or affected by (i.e. they want to be cool, they want the attention - very normal habits) and those environments do depend on whether you can afford to go downtown or go eat out a lot etc - so it’s not like Yale or a liberal arts school in that sense (usually for worse). Living off campus is probably a mixed bag, but that is changing slowly as Penn improves the places it offers and students want to live there. At the upper end of the spectrum, if you come from a better off family - Penn is probably a much more liveable exciting place than any other college because you can live in a nice apartment building with just other Penn students and go downtown with just other Penn students, and have an amazing college experience with the trappings of upscale New York. That being said, living in a house can be lottery where people can score really nice places that are so close to campus (almost always pass downs) while other times, it does feel less secure and often is not so nice. </p>
<p>Also I think the sheer ambition and often insecurity of much of Penn is problematic. This probably stems from our pre-professional environment and the homogenous nature of Whartonites all wanting the same things - it kind of rubs off on the rest of campus in not such a great way. That is one problem that definitely exists. </p>
<p>But Penn has come a long, long way. It is probably the best training ground for you to do whatever you want to do in the future. Safety and our campus used to be an issue - but now it’s not. When Huntsman hall was built that improved things but probably didn’t tone down cultural problems, there’s a beautiful new premed complex being built on southern edge of campus and a stunning new social sciences complex as well. Campus has really gotten really pretty, but there are still some things that need to be gradually improved.</p>
<p>Thanks for the detailed answer! It is much appreciated! I myself come from an intenrational British school 
And am as international as it gets, I hope I fit the profile for Hunts man!</p>
<p>You end up making a lot of money, which really sucks if you hate money.</p>
<p>EDIT: I forgot this isn’t Yik Yak, but my point is, Wharton/Penn is awesome and you won’t be making any mistake by coming here. Every school has some things that “suck” if you try hard to look for them. I don’t really know anything that is blatantly sucky though.</p>
<p>“Penn students also have a fascination with international students (Europeans often) largely stemming from the fact that they are white but don’t necessarily look jewish, but also dress well and have nice sounding accents. Also, there are places people can spend their money visibly so you also have wealthy but not so great looking indian/muslim/asian boys trying to be cool.”</p>
<p>What the heck is up with that? Could you be a little more racist/xenophobic?</p>
<p>You know what sucks? Getting rejected. </p>
<p>He was just descirbing the reality, no problem with that!</p>
<p>I’ve literally never seen that international thing happen in any form or capacity… </p>