@Cue7 The biggest reason is the One Universirty policy. I love the idea of being able to take classes at Wharton, the law school, the engineering school, etc as an undergrad at CAS. I also prefer Penns location as a Midwesterner, desperately looking to leave this part of the country
Interesting takes though I disagree with the above characterizations of my posts. My first sentence was “It’s true that law schools look almost exclusively at GPA and LSAT especially when comparing students from schools as good as Penn/Northwestern/JHU/Duke.” I never insinuated that LSAT and GPA wouldn’t be the most important considerations. I also never said students at schools without access to a great law school are “disadvantaged;” I said that Penn students enjoy certain advantages that can help strengthen the application of a student who utilizes them. And then I proceeded to explain the advantages that you might have at Penn. And yes, contrary to what Cue believes, those are advantages that you would exclusively have at Penn. Having a top law school on campus doesn’t matter at most schools but at Penn, because it’s an accessible resource for undergrads (unlike at Duke/NU or JHU - which doesn’t have a law school), it can actually make a difference. It presents the opportunity to sub-matriculate while still in undergrad and save on tuition at the “7th best” law school in the country. It presents the opportunity to test the waters of law school through classes before making a huge financial and time commitment. And yes, it unquestionably strengthens your application to have the endorsement of a professor at a top law school who is in an incomparable position to speak to an applicant’s future abilities as a law student. And thus, as I said in my first post, “Those opportunities do matter when it comes to law school admissions because if you have the same LSAT/GPA as a student from another school (which is very likely), but you have a recommendation from a professor in the law school with whom you did research or took several classes, that can definitely sway admissions committees at peer law schools.” Of course it won’t compensate for not being a qualified applicant, as I already explained in my posts prior to this one. But it will put you in a better position than someone with equally good grades and scores who doesn’t have a rec from scholar Dorothy Roberts (who holds a dual appointment between the Law School and Arts & Sciences as a Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) Professor). Law is an incredibly (at times, disturbingly) small world. And it’s a highly competitive one, thus every advantage matters. Merrick Garland ONLY hired multiple clerks from the law schools at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley, and only one each from Michigan and UVA in his entire career on the federal bench. He hired the most from Harvard, his alma mater. Justice Alito consistently hired clerks with Princeton Undergrad backgrounds when he was on the third circuit because he went to Princeton. Everything counts when you’re talking about the highest levels of the legal profession, including your undergrad and especially the soft factors that help shape an application. http://lawschoolnumbers.com/ is full of data from students with 170+/3.8+ LSAT/GPAs who were either waitlisted or rejected from Harvard, NYU, Stanford etc. Numbers tell part of the story, but at that level of competition everyone has good numbers. It’s the other stuff that counts a lot more when you are comparing Applicants 1 through 5,000 who all have great resumes.
Also, I do think Northwestern is a great school. I have many friends who went there and loved it. I considered it heavily. I chose Penn over Northwestern when it came time to matriculate, however, for the precise reason that I disagree with Cue’s opinion that Northwestern is doing what Penn does just as well. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel Northwestern leveraged the benefits of it’s grad programs for its undergrads and I often felt that barriers between schools were a bit more rigid than at Penn. Plus Northwestern lacked a lot of the faculty strength in the humanities departments about which I cared most (history and English). But Northwestern is an incredible place. If I were a student there, however, I’d want to have the law school and med school on campus and easily accessible for research and classroom opportunities. The geographical separation of NU’s professional school campuses was a turnoff to me as a student who wanted to explore everything that the whole university had to offer. In contrast, the combination of Penn’s One University Policy and the presence of ALL of Penn’s schools on one campus made it the ideal setting in which to step outside of the traditional boundaries of academia in a meaningful and sustained way. I loved studying in the Law Library and the Dental library. I loved overhearing Whartonites on their way to class discussing everything from tech to the markets in Asia. I was happy to take advantage of the easy process of utilizing all that the grad departments in the Arts and Sciences had to offer. Barriers were low, research productivity was high, undergraduate and graduate education mutually enriched one another. It was so great, I’m convincing myself that maybe i should go back for a master’s 
@PennCAS2014 One thing I do know is that the acceptance rates at Penn and NU have gone down significantly since you applied 6 years ago. So when you’re in my position now, it’s tough to choose between two top 15 schools when one has an ED rate of about 22% and the other about 34%
What do your parents say? Are they comfortable/willing to pay whatever for UG, and then for law school or medical school?
If indeed those are your aspirations, it may be that your way to go about UG degree/school may be fine, or you may have ‘hind sight is 20-20’.
I know one poster on this thread has a son in 4th year med school. My nephew is in his 3rd year of law school . Both are on ‘scholarship’ in their professional school. Both are highly successful in their rated programs.
It is what you achieve in you UG program, and the opportunities that you take advantage of there. Also it can be a school where you really like various things about the school and you will enjoy it there while you are working very hard being a top achiever.
My nephew is one of a few that will get out of law school w/o any debt. It is not because his parents are ‘rich’ either.
Do any of you think that my indicating the ability to pay full tuition will have an effect on my chance of admission?