<p>Just that, I’d like to you, upenn’s students to tell me why Upenn’s the best college for future leaders</p>
<p>please ^^</p>
<p>I had some really nice college choices but I picked Penn because it seemed really flexible. It's really good at letting you explore virtually any subject you want. Also cheesesteaks.</p>
<p>Wharton!!!!</p>
<p>hey day. econ scream. and perhaps spring fling.</p>
<p>-It's the only Ivy that has a real city, (because being in the middle of nowhere will get real old real fast) but the real city isn't so expansive that it overwhelms and sucks the energy out of campus life--so you get the cultural, social, and economic and do-random-stuff opportunities of a city but still the feel of a real cohesive campus community. Good luck getting to, say, Chinatown from Hanover...</p>
<p>-Wharton (and I say this as a SAS student). I personally think business undergrad is a terrible way to spend your college years, but regardless it gives me opportunities to take cool classes I just can't take at other Ivies, like my favorite--Negotiations. Exposure to Wharton will also make you more comfortable living within a business mentality, and you'll pick up valuable biz skills that will come in handy later...I wouldn't be interning in Singapore if it weren't for these skills.</p>
<p>-Progress--the campus is undergoing all sorts of new construction that will come to fruition anywhere from this fall to 20 years from now. There's a spirit of progress, of change, and moving--UP.</p>
<p>-I just have to say how great the campus-in-the-city thing is again. It's amazing how you can sit in a grassy field and then walk to the next block and it's urban madness.</p>
<p>-School spirit is great.</p>
<p>-the creperie in Houston Hall. Beyond spectacular.</p>
<p>-10,000 undergrads+another 10,000 grad students makes for quite a big alumni network</p>
<p>The real question is why WOULDN'T you go to penn ;)</p>
<p>Wharton......................</p>
<p>"It's the only Ivy that has a real city"</p>
<p>soooo... What would you call Columbia?</p>
<p>"but the real city isn't so expansive that it overwhelms and sucks the energy out of campus life" <-Columbia's problem</p>
<p>Hey, Penn is just as good as the other Ivies. I don't really think one Ivy is better than the other. They're all just different. It depends on what you are looking for in an Ivy experience. Do you want a small town and environment in which to spend the next four years, or do you want the experience of a diverse campus in one of the most popular cities in the world? I would think Columbia and Penn would be relatively similiar. May I add that Philly is one of the fastest growing cities in the nation now. Because of all of the regentrified neighborhoods, Philly is becoming more and more popular with young professionals and families. They are really building this city up nicely.</p>
<p>Come here for the spirit. Come here so that you can stroll down Locust Walk every day and see students salsa dancing, hula-hooping, soliciting amateurs to try out for intramural frisbee teams, and handing out free hot chocolate to passersby on a cold winter morning. Come here so you can throw toast from the Franklin Field bleachers in a "toast" to dear old Penn. Come here 'cause we're crazy, and we're smart, and we're fun...and we love it.</p>
<p>JohnnyK and eighteenforluck pretty much sum up the Penn experience... so I second those.</p>
<p>Also, make sure to call it "Penn" rather than "UPenn" on your application and such... there is a long and complicated story behind the repeated use of "UPenn" on server names and such, but the admissions office actually looks down upon applicants who use "UPenn" since that use of branding appears nowhere else. Unfair and ridiculous, maybe, but fact, yes.</p>
<p>I know why.... because it rocks.</p>
<p>It's the only Ivy with a communications major.</p>
<p>"May I add that Philly is one of the fastest growing cities in the nation now." </p>
<p>Actually the opposite is true. Philadelphia, like Detroit is a city that is rife with povery and violence since it lost its middle class with industrial jobs going overseas and the dismantling of the U.S. middle class. While the city is trying to grow and make itself look more attractive, it is far from becoming the vibrant place economically and socially that it seeks to be. </p>
<p>"Because of all of the regentrified neighborhoods, Philly is becoming more and more popular with young professionals and families. They are really building this city up nicely."</p>
<p>This is a kind of rhetoric that Penn and city officials/marketing people proliferate. I understand why this may be your perception, and the city is certainly attempting to move towards this, but the numbers simply aren't there yet.</p>
<p>It's funny how Penn people are quick to say it's an "Ivy". Penn is not Harvard or Yale and prospective students should know that. Penn uses its Ivy status like Star Jones used her celebrity status to pay for her wedding.</p>
<p>davida1...Did you go to Penn? I was just wondering how someone could know the quality of a school unless they went there themselves.</p>
<p>jeez davida1, let's lay off the penn hatin'. no one said to go to penn b/c it is an ivy. we think people should come here because it is a great school in terms of academics and student life. no one here even mentioned it's ivy status as a reason that we are great. of course we will compare it to the other schools in our athletic conference because that is the purpose of this thread. so you can come up with as many one-liners as you want, but i think in addition to knowing penn is different from harvard and yale, prospective students should also know that you have no actual credibility when it comes to penn and that actual students might have more helpful and informative things to say.</p>
<p>social scene...its funner AND its a good school</p>
<p>also, i dunno why you are comparing it to only ivy league schools unless you are talking about athletics...</p>
<p>Come to Penn because whiny, unpleasant people like Davida1 hate it.</p>
<p>Anyway, Philadelphia IS going through a renaissance. Philadelphia's population is shrinking, but so is that of the entire northeastern United States--this is merely a continuation of demographic trends since the end of WWII when Americans started dispersing en masse throughout the country. And Philadelphia's population is declining at a markedly slower rate than the rest of the northeast (it may even hold steady). empty nester Baby Boomers are retiring from their suburban McMansions and moving into a city where their dollars go farther than they do in New York</p>
<p>Since I question whether davida1 has ever set foot in Philadelphia, let alone Penn, I will also mention that anyone visiting Philadelphia will notice a construction boom. DOZENS of new condo buildings are going up. What's more, also going up is a new skyscraper, which will be the tallest building in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>Philadelphia also made headlines for being the first city with plans to deploy a citywide Wi-fi network.</p>
<p>New construction everywhere? Sounds like a dying city if I ever heard one.</p>
<p>Here's what the New York Times says (<a href="http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/travel/18going.html?ex=1151985600&en=971b1fe90a0e5ade&ei=5070%5B/url%5D">http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/travel/18going.html?ex=1151985600&en=971b1fe90a0e5ade&ei=5070</a>)</p>
<p>Center City, **more populous today than a decade ago,* is Philadelphia's throbbing heart and bustles day and night with lively museums, theaters, restaurants and shops. Old City, the atmospheric thicket of low brick buildings and narrow streets near the Liberty Bell, buzzes with the city's trendiest restaurants, galleries and nightspots. But change is particularly pronounced in fringe neighborhoods like Northern Liberties, an enclave north of City Hall, where galleries and restaurants have reclaimed the rusting factories and musty warehouses. <a href="ed:%20see,%20being%20in%20the%20middle%20class%20doesn't%20require%20a%20job%20in%20the%20industrial%20sector">/i</a>*</p>
<p>Why the new energy? City planning, focused redevelopment and tax incentives have brought businesses, housing and hope. A generous inventory of old buildings ripe for recycling helped, too, as did the city's foot-friendly layout, plotted more than 300 years ago by William Penn....*</p>
<p>eck Philadelphia is feeling so good about itself these days that they've thrown their hat into the ring for hosting the 2016 Olympics.</p>
<p>All this doesn't even mention the transformation of University City (Penn's home district), two luxury condos are being created, and construction of a new apartment on 40th st is winding up just in time for razing and new construction of another apartment on 39th st...</p>
<p>Davida1 is right, I can just feel Philadelphia declining and taking Penn down with it...</p>
<p>A member of my a cappella group was accepted into Penn (SAS) and Princeton and chose the former. My hallmate chose Penn's SAS over Harvard's FAS, having been accepted to both. Of course, 2 years later, with the Summers controversy blowing into the open just how scandalously lackluster Harvard's undergraduate education really is, he couldn't be happier. Nor could I.</p>
<p>I would rather be at Penn than Harvard or Yale. The sheer breadth of its undergraduate schools combined with its location in a real American city and between the two most important cities in the Northeast Corridor affords everybody more educational, social, and career opportunities than you'll find anywhere else.</p>
<p>I think posts 14 and 15 are more descriptive of the Penn, and Philadelphia I remember from the late 70's early 80's when I was in grad school there. At the time Philly was grim, as were most Northeastern rustbelt cities, even NYC which was a (bankrupt) disaster.</p>
<p>Sure parts of Phila compare to Detroit but there's a very large professional population that lives in the city, Center City, Olde City, near the Art Museum and along the Delaware and those areas are safe, interesting, busy, with lots of good restaurants and shopping. </p>
<p>As recently as a decade, maybe two, ago HYP applicants would consider Penn their safety. Today it is entirely possible to be accepted to Harvard or Yale, and rejected from Penn. Head to head HYP will beat Penn overall but still there are cross admits who will pick Penn, and I would guess Penn wins its share of other ivy cross admits. Plans to develop that mess toward the Schuylkill River sound amazing, finally linking West Phila with Center City. Most of its schools are ranked at or near the top, the campus imo especially for an urban school, is beautiful....what's not to like??</p>