Knight, I do attend Penn. Not sure how I can prove this short of revealing my identity.
I never said that Penn is not a great school. I merely said that it's not a good fit for me. I didn't have much of a choice because the only schools i got into were my state school and penn. Got dinged by the other ivies+stanford, mit.
Instead of transferring, consider spending your junior year abroad in England at an Oxford college or at LSE.
For funded admission to a top economics Ph.D. program, you'll need to take as least as much math as economics. Make certain you take intermediate "real" analysis (300 level), ODE, linear algebra, probability theory and mathematical statistics (requiring a probability course).
Gaining admission to another Ivy as a transfer will be difficult. Brown might be the Ivy that is the most different and which will take transfers. At Columbia College you'll encounter a substantial core, which may or may not be to your liking. However, NYC is a much better city than Philly. MIT is the best both in economics and math but historically has taken prospective engineering majors from other fields as transfers. Lastly, you should consider LAC's like Swarthmore, Williams, etc. which tend to send a high percentage of grads into Ph.D. programs. You could even try a class at Swat in the Fall.
Unfortunately, universities want what is best for them and not individual students. The fact that someplace other than Penn may be a better fit for you will be meaningless for transfer admission. Penn's pre-professional culture is definitely not for everyone.
rhg, thanks for your mature and thoughtful response. I appreciate it. You're correct that I need to take a lot of rigorous math courses since econ at the grad level is basically applied math. I'm planning on taking linear algebra, real analysis (critical course), probability, ODE, and maybe PDE as well.
I actually like columbia's core curriculum, smaller class size, and NYC location. I was waitlisted there, along with yale and princeton last year.
Correct that MIT will probably prefer engineers. I love boston, and their econ department is amazing. There are a few professors there whom I would love to take classes with.
Worse case scenario, if I don't get in next year as a transfer, I will just try to kick ass at Penn and do an econ Phd at a top program or go work at a great finance/consulting firm and maybe do an MBA at harvard or stanford. The key though is to keep my gpa up since college gpa is the best predictor of future professional success.
Which "multiple" econ professors, exactly, told you that Penn does not place its students in top PhD programs for "whatever reason"? No econ professor at Penn would tell you that, and if they did, they would provide a more educated reason as to why that's the case and wouldn't simply say that it's for "whatever reason."
It's hard for me to believe you're telling the truth since, if you were smart enough to get a 4.0 your freshman year at Penn, you'd also be smart enough to know that staying at Penn and maintaining that sort of GPA would open up so many doors to top programs later down the road.
Perhaps you're confusing Penn's general pre-professional proclivity with its inability to place its students into top PhD programs. The former is true - most econ majors major in econ to vie for the sort of jobs Wharton students get. The latter is false - there may not be as many in the econ department majoring in econ to actually a PhD, but those that are do well.
1) Penndude, I might or might not attend Penn, but I have the same feeling as you. Im also at one of the Ivies btw
2) dont listen to swingtime. Obviously hes a Harvard troll who wants to convice people that his alma mater is superior and therefore one outside of the circle cannot transfer in. Btw this is false, since I talked to a transfer student at Yale, and he said a lot of his transfer mates were denied as first year applicants. He was first waitlisted and denied too.
Swingtime, you should be ashamed.
Oh btw to be rejected by almost all ivies and accepted to one is nothing usual. Other posters shouldnt jump in and say " If he didnt make it into mit columbia brown etc etc, how did he manage to get into Penn! Therefore he must be a troll." right.
Define, you're right. I've heard of multiple ivy-to-ivy transfers. I recently talked to a guy at columbia who finished his sophomore year and will be transferring to yale this fall. Also, remember that asian kid who sued Princeton for discrimination a few years back? He ended up going to Yale and then transferred to Harvard! Go figure.
No school is right for everyone. And Penn is not a good fit for me; I've made a few good friends here, but overall I'm not too happy here. I'm pretty confident that I would be exponentially happier at a place like harvard/yale.
I guess you never know until you are there (harvard/yale)...if I were you I would stray away from saying that Yale/columbia/MIt/etc will place me in better grad programs because I think those said schools would probably consider themselves peer schools and would be skeptical that you just aren't using your Penn resources enough. If it is a social issue at Penn, then focus on it in an emotional light and you might influence the admissions for ivy to ivy transfer...however, don't come off as "my privileged ivy brethren don't treat me as well as your privileged ivy students will."
Am I mistaken or don't the ivy and ivy-like schools consistently accept each others kids at the graduate level? I know that 1/3 of graduate Whartonites come from ivy schools. and another 1/3 from the next top schools (standford, MIT, etc.). I have done the research on all the top graduate programs and penn students consistently get into them. All the ivys consider each other academically on par and would not look down on penn students.
I really want to go to penn cuz it's a great school and I hope one day you will realize that.
If the OP is legit- here are some thoughts. First of all, you would have been better off trying to transfer for soph year. I would say your chances at another Ivy are not great for junior year, but you do have a chance. You might look at UChicago.
My son was not happy at Penn freshman year for some of the same reasons you listed, plus he was injured and not able to participate in the sport for which he was recruited. He did transfer apps and was accepted to a few places, including Chicago (also accepted prior). However, he decided to stay at Penn and change the things he didn't like. He moved off campus, took more interesting classes (upper level) and had a much better experience. He graduated in 2010 (English with econ minor) and wound up loving Penn. He did put off some crummy requirement courses until senior year, which wasn't much fun, but he sure loved his classes soph and junior year! He also had a really good off-campus job which was a huge boost in his getting the job he got after graduation. And- he did NOT aspire to Wall Street.
PennDude is clearly a huge troll as his posts are almost solely focused on bashing Penn and putting it down. Please be more mature and stop talking trash about Penn. Even if you got rejected this is not the right way to act. Penn is a peer institution of any other ivy league
Also, PennDude can easily confirm his identity by writing his username on a card and taking a picture of his hand holding it on Locust or inside Huntsman or in Van Pelt (anywhere a legitimate Penn student would have access to)...the possibilities are endless!
All the econ profs and PhD. students I've talked to were always very proud about Penn's Economics department...I think it would be counter-intuitive for them to undermine themselves like that.
I love how 45Percenter is the Penn-troll police here...like the Penn-troll patrol! haha I made a pun
I don't understand why people are so defensive. I graduated from Penn and a lot of people have issues with the culture here. It's not so surprising that someone would want to transfer. There's even a category in senior superlatives for most-missed transfer...
Not sure about Ivy-to-Ivy transfers, but from what I can recall Brown seems like a popular destination, which probably isn't the best fit for someone wanting to do a PhD in Econ.
