Anonymous
Post 08/03/2025 12:44     Subject: why do so many kids like Penn?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:All I can gather is people love it because they think it is an attainable Ivy.

My DC hated. They don't like city schools so it was a non-starter, but they also didn't like the culture. There was nothing about it to make DC think twice about city location (and this wasn't true at other schools).


A lot of kids get there and hate it. Very competitive, rich kids, not very kind.


Well most top schools are full of ‘Rich kids’ so that’s not the problem with Penn. The issue is the hyper-competitiveness and the unkind atmosphere. And the administration also does minimal for students’ mental health issues resulting in a high suicide rate for the school.


+1
Anonymous
Post 08/03/2025 12:43     Subject: why do so many kids like Penn?
Because it’s a good school, duh
Anonymous
Post 08/03/2025 12:34     Subject: why do so many kids like Penn?
Anonymous wrote:It tends to have a reputation as a school for professionals - finance, engineering, pre-med etc. And that's very appealing to a lot of students. It's an old school. It's prestigious. It has the Ivy brand. For most of the past twenty years, Philadelphia and the neighborhood around Penn have been fine places to live. It has a very good alumni network. And it's a school where applying ED does make a difference.

However, it is really, really difficult to get into Penn from the DMV. Penn is just up the road. And anyone from here is also competing with the NY kids for spots. And New York City rolls very differently than Bethesda, Arlington, and upper NW.


Is this true?
Anonymous
Post 08/03/2025 11:19     Subject: why do so many kids like Penn?
Anonymous wrote:I was born and raised just outside of Philly.
Why is Penn so popular in the DMV? (see ED thread where it is probably the most popular answer).
Why Penn over all of the other top 20 schools? I find this so curious and I'd love to understand more!


It's funny, when I went to Penn in the 90s, it was the school everyone thought was Penn state and no one seemed to even know it was an ivy. Philly was also considered a terrible town then, it's come up a lot!
Anonymous
Post 08/03/2025 10:01     Subject: why do so many kids like Penn?
Anonymous wrote:All I can gather is people love it because they think it is an attainable Ivy.

My DC hated. They don't like city schools so it was a non-starter, but they also didn't like the culture. There was nothing about it to make DC think twice about city location (and this wasn't true at other schools).


Can you elaborate what about the culture they didn't like?
Anonymous
Post 08/03/2025 10:00     Subject: why do so many kids like Penn?
Anonymous wrote:No idea. I think it’s on trend right now


Thanks to person occupying white house?
Anonymous
Post 08/03/2025 09:57     Subject: why do so many kids like Penn?
In a city, ivy, best business school, pre professional culture, and good social culture.
Anonymous
Post 08/03/2025 09:56     Subject: why do so many kids like Penn?
This thread is 2 yrs old why are you restarting it? Lemme guess must be the same poster who hates on various ivies or chicago, or wasHU and Emory.
Anonymous
Post 08/03/2025 09:55     Subject: why do so many kids like Penn?
Who is bumping all these old posts? Is it same people trying to sow discord with the “is this anyone’s first choice” posts?
Anonymous
Post 08/03/2025 09:47     Subject: why do so many kids like Penn?
Anonymous wrote:I was born and raised just outside of Philly.
Why is Penn so popular in the DMV? (see ED thread where it is probably the most popular answer).
Why Penn over all of the other top 20 schools? I find this so curious and I'd love to understand more!


Some people just like crime, roaches, & ugly campuses.
Anonymous
Post 08/03/2025 09:26     Subject: why do so many kids like Penn?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:No idea. Visited a few years back. Didn’t like even one thing about it.


Everyone’s different. When I visited as a high school junior in the late 80s I fell in love with Penn the moment I stepped foot on campus. To me at least, College Green was an oasis in the city. Applied ED and got in (it was easier back then), and spent four great years there.


The overall acceptance rate was 40% in the 80s, ED would be higher.
"[E]asier back then" is such an understatement.
Anonymous
Post 10/23/2023 23:07     Subject: why do so many kids like Penn?
Anonymous wrote:As a Jewish person, I thought Penn was largely for Jewish kids from the east coast?


Isn't Columbia the one that always took Jewish students in? To my understanding, Columbia never discriminated Jewish students in 1920s, 1930s...
Anonymous
Post 10/23/2023 22:26     Subject: why do so many kids like Penn?
As a Jewish person, I thought Penn was largely for Jewish kids from the east coast?
Anonymous
Post 10/23/2023 19:36     Subject: why do so many kids like Penn?
Anonymous wrote:It has the best alumni. The best. No other alumni like it. You’d be amazed.

Nice! "Then they asked me, with tears in their eyes, sir..."
Anonymous
Post 10/23/2023 19:33     Subject: why do so many kids like Penn?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:All I can gather is people love it because they think it is an attainable Ivy.

My DC hated. They don't like city schools so it was a non-starter, but they also didn't like the culture. There was nothing about it to make DC think twice about city location (and this wasn't true at other schools).


So why did you and your DC spend any time even considering it? My kid wanted an urban campus...so guess what, we didn't visit or consider Dartmouth (along with the hundreds of other rural schools). Why would we?

As parents, we like the proximity but that didn't matter to much for my kid. Ours was sold when an email was sent to the department in which my kid was interested, and the Chair of the department (for undergrad) emailed back, invited our kid to campus and spent 1/2 a day giving them a tour of the department and facilities. I am sure it was probably dumb, blind luck this happened...but the other schools of particular interest certainly didn't respond this way.

It is going well...kid is entrepreneurial and taking full advantage of what the school offers as well as alumni visitors who are in senior positions at large VCs, Tech companies, prominent start-ups, etc.


Congrats to your kid - glad they like it and sounds like it's going well.

To answer your question (which feels unnecessarily judgmental), early in the college search process we visited a variety of types of schools and this was how they learned they didn't like urban schools. Penn was an early batch of the Philly area schools. But also, DC was open minded enough and ended up at what they consider a school that is more urban than they want...but they looked past that because there were other plusses. So it's not as black and white obvious as you suggest. There are many different facets to a college and DC realized that to fully discount a university for being urban is short sighted, and that some schools were still worth applying to. Would they have preferred to go to the less urban one at the top of their list - sure - but they didn't get accepted.


Judgmental? You said your kid “hated” it and BTW, they don’t like urban campuses.

Seems obvious to me that one extremely simple way to narrow a college search is to decide the type of campus environment you want…which still leaves you with 100 schools.

For any campus environment you want, you have tons of good choices…there is nothing shortsighted about making your college search more efficient.