<p>I would like to know what really sets U-Penn apart from the other comparable schools, in terms of academics, atmosphere, etc? </p>
<p>From what I received in response to my other thread, U-Penn's looking more and more like a really cool place to be. However, setting aside prestige, statistics, and location, all of the top schools can tend to look alike, considering the lack of information I have about what really sets them apart. (That's where you-Penn'ers come in :D)</p>
<p>In case I'm sounding a bit vague, I'm looking for mainly the academic structure (core, no core?), unique/insightful classes, and social atmosphere (mutual learning, elitist egotism?).</p>
<p>what makes Penn unique relative to most of its peers is the sheer breadth of courses offered through the four undergraduate schools.</p>
<p>You are free to register for courses in any of the four undergraduate schools, and some of the graduate ones as well (like law, annenberg, fels)</p>
<p>Penn is the only ivy with all of its schools on one contiguous campus and that has fostered great interdisciplinary opportunities</p>
<p>there is no core curriculum per se but there are distribution requirements, so that everyone gets SOME exposure in fields outside their comfort zones. I never would have taken some of what turned out to be my favorite courses had the school not required me to broaden my intellectual horizons ;)</p>
<p>No other university anywhere--let alone in the Ivy League--has the breadth, depth, and uniform excellence of undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools all located together on one relatively compact campus, as does Penn. Business, Law, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, Education, Design, Engineering, Communication, Social Policy and Practice, Arts and Sciences--all located on a unified 280-acre campus, and most ranked among the top 5 or 10 in the country.</p>
<p>Again, NO other school offers that breadth and depth on a single campus, and no other school emphasizes and exploits the interdisciplinary research and study faciliated by such a campus more than Penn.</p>
<p>1- You'll be hearing about rape/murder all the time and receiveing emails from the university about that
2- you'll feel like ur nothing if ur not a wharton student, the wharton students are the ones who are referred to as "smart"
3- if ur an engineering student, prepare to meet some of the dumbest students on earth, and the most amazing teachers you'll ever have (Max Mintz)</p>
<p>rejectedfrommit, with your inferiority complex i can see why they rejected you. jklol...</p>
<p>i am in the college studying Intl. Relations, hardly an erudite elite major, however with little vanity do i say that i have many Wharton/MT/Huntsman friends who are envious of my position, that is, I am extremely happy with my major and therefore my life and genuinely passionate about my professional prospects (not banking or lawing, thankgod)</p>
<p>By their junior years, unless they are uber brainwashed or uber connected talented people, most bankers in wharton/engin realize they have one miserable slog through On Campus Recruiting Hell (yay ****ty economy) and then through 2 years of a mostly meaningless subsistence that is only rationalized and mitigated through 'Bottles and Models' (sorry girl bankers). only then do they have the possibility of climbing the finance pyramid which further selects for hedonism, buttkissing, andor quantative ability. ontop of all of this, even the best whartoners with some selfawarenss(as told to me by a M&T friend) wish they had actually read in college as to be less vapid, more interesting deep people. and believe, im more or less impartial to wharton, as opposed to the wharton haters both inside and outside of wharton. </p>
<p>so to wrap up my tirade, much of wharton is either dumb or generally unhappy with their studies, the millionaire kids simply do blow to feel better.
i imagine this is not even a penn phenom, its merely pronounced more here.</p>
<p>and college kids are lax, smoking, underachievers who sleep in. true, but another story</p>
<p>As our would-be commencement speaker Emeril would say, "bam!"</p>
<p>For the record, this doesnt mean Wharton people are simply bad people (though some are).</p>
<p>The most interesting Wharton students I know are the ones with career prospects other than banking, from entrepreneurship to architecture. And I dont think that is a coincidence</p>
<p>im gonna interject and qualify that comment</p>
<p>model un is fun here if you join into their 'im only cool within model un, but otherwise im a loser or prick with few friends outside' cult. granted if youre at the top its fun, but its alot of uninteresting ***** work otherwise. which the cool free hotel room doesnt make up for the fact you are trapped with high schoolers/college debating tools for a whole weekend. i mean, it is what you make of it in the end. </p>
<p>but in terms of actually giving you useful experience/professional insight, its more original and effective if you find research to do on campus rather than try to climb the human pyramid of mun</p>