Academics
Undergraduate studies at Penn revolve around one of four undergraduate
schools: the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the
Wharton School of Business, the School of Nursing, and the College
of Arts and Sciences. Wharton is the most prestigious of the
four schools, considered one of the top business schools (a
degree from Wharton is a sure ticket to an MBA). The Engineering
school is also highly respected, along with the non-professionally
oriented College, which the University had neglected for much
of its lengthy history in favor of the professional schools.
Penn now makes the College one of its top priorities and has
given it a dramatic boost in the past couple decades. The nursing
school doesn’t really seem to fit in, but hey, it’s
a great nursing school if that’s what you want to do.
With its dominant pre-professional programs, the school is
more practical than intellectual in nature, often possessing
more pragmatic competitiveness than intellectual intensity when
compared with its Ivy peers. This focus on practical education
dates back to the school’s founding in 1740, when Benjamin
Franklin established the institution to provide a valuable,
applicable education to citizens and merchants, making Penn
the nation’s first university to establish a medical school,
business school, and journalism school. However, a Penn education
is far from mere career training—all Penn students fulfill
distribution requirements, which vary according to school but
include generous portions of the liberal arts, as well as attain
proficiency in one of the forty-five foreign languages taught
at Penn.
Complimenting its undergraduate programs are Penn’s
twelve graduate schools. Undergraduates often have many research
opportunities through the graduate schools, and can apply for
early entry into the university’s master’s programs
during their junior year to begin completing graduate requirements
during their senior year. Continuing into Wharton’s MBA
program is the most common. Students may also hop from school
to school while pursuing individualized majors or joint major
program in areas such as business and technology, which awards
degrees from Wharton and the School of Engineering.
The renowned faculty, though often focused on research, is
still available for one-on-one contact with undergraduates.
Top faculty often teach a variety of freshman seminars, which
provide a small class focused on discussion, and are available
for office hours when teaching larger introductory courses.
Student Life
Known as the “Social Ivy”—or less euphemistically
the “Party Ivy”—Penn has a very active social
atmosphere and party scene. The campus’s proximity to
downtown Philadelphia makes clubbing and bar hopping a popular
weekend activity, and the many fraternities and sororities provide
all the alcohol and parties that Greek systems usually do. But
life outside academia at Penn is not limited to booze consumption.
There are hundreds of campus clubs and organizations, including
many cultural groups. If those groups aren’t enriching
enough, all a student has to do is walk, hail a cab, or take
a university van into Philadelphia, a city itself rich in tradition,
history, and culture; museums, shops, restaurants, theatres,
and everything else a huge city has to offer abound.
Diverging from its fellow Ivies in another way, Penn has a
fairly popular sports program. Football, like with most schools,
is the most popular sport, attracting large crowds of students
who get in free. In a Penn tradition, at the end of the third
quarter during home games, students hurl burnt toast at the
feild when everyone shouts the lyrics to Penn’s fight
song “Here’s a toast to dear old Penn.” Aside
from football, Penn has 32 other varsity teams, with about 10
percent of the student body participating in varsity athletics.
Thousands of other athletes come out each year to play dozens
of intramural sports.
Penn students have a reputation of coming from a lot of money,
so while most are very friendly, some also come off as very
snotty, and many students are quite conscious of how they look,
making them come across as a bit materialistic. So while there
is some truth to this stereo type, it is just a stereotype;
Penn attracts students from a wide array of financial backgrounds—in
fact, 48 percent receive some form of financial aid.
Campus Environment
West Philadelphia, the neighborhood bordering Penn’s campus
and also one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Philly,
is probably the university’s biggest setback. Some say
that its turning around (and maybe it is), but it's still pretty
bad, so Penn’s campus is heavily patrolled, and students
feel safe. Many students even take an active role in improving
the surrounding community. Regardless of West Philadelphia’s
condition, the campus is actually a self-contained 260-acre
neighborhood in itself called University City. The architecture
of its 116 buildings spans from Gothic to Postmodern, with centuries-old
historical buildings contrasting more contemporary facilities.
Among ample grass and trees inside “University City”
students escape the gritty urban atmosphere.
In order to “promote an environment where living and
learning intersect around the clock,” Penn established
a College House system the divides the undergraduates into twelve
residential communities, or “houses.”
Penn doesn’t guarantee housing for any of its students,
but most freshmen live on campus in an area known as “the
Quad” where dorm life is both noisy and sociable. Upperclassmen
usually reluctantly leave the Quad for more apartment style
living in one of the high rises on campus. Others move off-campus
altogether, but most of these students live in a fraternity
or sorority house bordering campus.
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