Brown vs. Penn vs. Princeton - Page 2

mgreenwa · 04-22-2009, 05:09 PM

Princeton is the best undergraduate degree in the country.

Penn is in Philly.

I recommend that you go be a Tiger.

SusieBra · 04-23-2009, 12:12 AM

Philly is a great city!! You don't just learn from textbook when studying anything cultural, you go see it in the city itself. Also has wonderful law firms which is a plus.

Princeton has crazy requirements much like those at high school and most of them are completely useless, much like those at high school.

Penn is like a grad school. It's a beautiful city within a city, set apart from Philly and its inhabitants and within its own bubble. Oh yeah, and I can always live in one of the awesome apartments in the high rises when I'm an upperclassman and not have to try to get into those exclusive, expensive eating clubs.

So, thank you but I really am decided - not just on Penn, but also on pursuing the opportunities that it provides and the career goals that it enables you to achieve.

This is the right place for me and I'm the right person for it. I can hardly wait.

coolbreeze · 05-11-2009, 07:36 PM

One reason not to go to Penn is their President wrote a poor essay for her application.

Check it out here in the WSJ --> Holding College Chiefs to Their Words - WSJ.com

andy_college09 · 05-12-2009, 11:49 PM

I know you probably already made your choice, but I forgot 1 major reason...CARLTON BANKS FROM FRESH PRINCE! GO TO PRINCETON!!!

SusieBra · 05-26-2009, 07:36 AM

lol I just randomly checked Brown and saw this. Yes, I already made my decision. I'm going to Penn with no regrets. I'm a fan of grade inflation, not deflation which just makes it tooooo competitive.

good luck at duke!

muerteapablo · 06-25-2009, 06:19 PM

No way are the numbers still tilted in Brown's favor. The feeder numbers are dated back to when Penn's high rank could have been perceived as a fluke; now it's been consistent enough for grad schools to know that they should definitely favor it as much if not more than Brown and Dartmouth. I'm certain that this will change accordingly in the coming years.

Anyway, if SusieBra can distinguish herself (get 3.8+, 173+ LSAT), she can easily get into Harvard, Columbia or NYU, and possibly Yale or Stanford.

I'm going to be graduating summa cum laude in a year barring any unforeseen GPA fluctuations, and I just took my LSATs and got a 175, so I'm pretty sure I'll get into Harvard Law, as well.

Peytoncline · 07-13-2009, 03:16 PM

"I'm a fan of grade inflation, not deflation which just makes it tooooo competitive."

Deflation doesn't make it competitive, at least not from what I've seen. It makes you work harder for your grades, and yes, you might have a lower GPA than, say, at Harvard, Yale, or Penn. However, since Princeton has implemented this policy in April 2004, a higher percentage of people have been accepted to grad schools and programs. But, you've already made your decision, and in the end, Penn is a fine school. So you'll do fine there, no doubt.

"Princeton has crazy requirements much like those at high school and most of them are completely useless, much like those at high school."

Crazy requirements? If you're talking about the distribution credits, then those aren't "crazy." It is a liberal arts education, after all, so if you didn't like that style of learning, then why did you apply? Just asking (that wasn't an irritated response, I was just curious).

slipper1234 · 07-13-2009, 05:20 PM

Brown and Princeton tend to do better with law placement than penn. The truth is that going to Penn will not serve you better career wise than going to Brown or Princeton - its flawed logic. At best its equal, although the stats say otherwise.

muerteapablo · 07-14-2009, 02:21 AM

Brown isn't on equal footing with Princeton, and Penn will serve you as well as Brown, or better - of course, it depends on the individual, but the prestige is definitely tilted in Penn's favor.

admitone · 07-14-2009, 02:43 PM

I don't see that being the case at all, you can't just make stuff up Muerteapablo.

mcgoogly · 07-16-2009, 04:36 PM

A couple things:

1) whichever school you choose will not affect what law school you get into. The exception may be that Princeton students genuinely do have a slim advantage over Brown and UPenn students. In general though, the differences in how many go to top law schools depends on how many students from those schools are interested in law school, and on the personal resumes of each individual applicant (with the actual college brand name pretty much a constant variable, when you're at the ivy league level).

2) I just looked this up, Princeton and UPenn have essentially the same core requirements. Except I think Princeton requires two science courses while UPenn might only require one..? Eithe way, this is a list of Princeton's distribution requirements:

Writing(w)--one course
Foreign Language--This requirement can take one to four terms to complete, depending on the language you study and the level at which you start it.
Epistemology and Cognition (EC)--one course
Ethical Thought and Moral Values (EM)--one course
Historical Analysis (HA)--one course
Literature and the Arts (LA)--two courses
Quantitative Reasoning (QR)--one course
Science and Technology, with laboratory (ST)--two courses
Social Analysis (SA)--two courses

Every requirement there is essential to a prospective law student, with the possible exception of the Quantitative Reasoning course (but not really, because that could include an Economics course too and things like that), the Foreign Language requirement, and the Science requirement.

Except that UPenn also has a foreign language, quantitative reasoning, and science requirement..

3) You say consistently in this thread about how Princeton will make you take courses that are irrelevant and won't prepare you for a profession. This might be a concern for a future doctor, but for someone planning on law school that's laughable. Law schools are famous for being the biggest proponents of a liberal arts education. They don't care what your major is, they just want you to have a strong basis in liberal arts, the humanities and sciences (mostly social sciences, I doubt they care too much about natural sciences).

muerteapablo · 07-21-2009, 08:06 PM

Quote:

I don't see that being the case at all, you can't just make stuff up Muerteapablo.

Prestige is based on public opinion. There are no "prestige polls" or other nonsense. Public opinion is based on things like RANKINGS. And the rankings have favored Penn over Brown for the last 12 years. Quite handily, in fact.

This has nothing to do with the thread at hand, though, and I think McGoogly's answer was fairly thorough.

SusieBra · 07-21-2009, 09:09 PM

Wow. So I just went to the Brown forum because I was thinking there might have been something interesting on Emma Watson.

Anyway, I can't believe this got started up again. I made my decision a while ago.

I really liked Brown because I think it's incredibly liberal, but ultimately, I needed more structure. But, hey, you've got Emma Watson- you don't need me.

I applied to Princeton (as well as every other Ivy League school). But once I got in, I went and, I didn't like the isolation. Also, I'm really not a science person and there is a two lab requirement that I hated. Penn has conceptual science. Don't worry, I know everything that law schools are looking for, and I'll have it covered at Penn. I might not have had enough discipline to take those courses at Brown though.

Also, I went to college p-ro-w- ler (all one word, but I can't type it normally on CC) and that confirmed a lot for me. I have two close friends at Princeton and they're always stressed out and complain about grade deflation. It's easy for an incoming freshman to deny the wrath of grade deflation, and I tried to for a while, but I don't want my law school getting a letter saying: the GPAs are low because of grade deflation.

Above all, I was closest to choosing Stanford over Penn (I got in off the Stanford waitlist), but then I realized that Penn is simply awesome and has the most opportunities for my field. It's a very personal thing though. All these schools are EQUALLY wonderful. It's what you do with them that will make the difference.

Now, let's close this thing and be happy that we're going to such great schools.

P.S: Brown people: say "hi" to Emma for all of us from Penn.

nEdgaR · 07-30-2009, 01:07 PM

congrats on going to Penn

I'm planning on applying to both Penn and Brown (my only Ivy League schools too

)

@muerteapablo:

if prestige is determined by public opinion, and public opinion determines rankings... then prestige is determined by the rankings

so technically, what ur saying is that there ARE prestige rankings

cmburns14 · 08-06-2009, 11:42 PM

I didn't go to any of these schools, I'd say they're all pretty comparable from a grad school perspective. Hiring managers on Wall Street seem to somewhat favor Penn grads over Princeton grads and certainly both over Brown grads for some reason. The top feeder into Goldman Sachs, private equity and hedge funds is Penn (no doubt masssively skewed by Wharton). Excluding Wharton, I'd say Penn CAS is still more recruited than Brown, probably because of the intense pre-professional environment on campus.

For pre-meds, Penn has an advantage over Princeton and Brown because the #3 ranked med school is right on campus. I would say Princeton is harder to get into than Penn and Brown at the undergrad level but again, it's massively skewed by recruited athletes.