@redoxreaction no prob at all! hope it helps!
so to answer your questions:
1)Generally double majoring at Penn is demanding and time consuming but it is nothing that serious and motivated students cannot handle with a lot of work and perseverance. As a wharton student is is relatively easy to do a double degree with CAS (if you have a 3.0 or above it is not a problem) . CAS as a school has more requirements than Wahrton so your workload would be prob heavier than if you did like a double concentration within Wharton, but i think it is worth it.
2)I dont thaink there many many benefits of doing one vs the other. Because of Penns lack of a core, students have flexibility in taking many classes from any of the four undergraduate and evengraduate schools. Penn has the so called one university policy which means regardless of the school you are enrolled in, you can take as many classes as you want in another school. So for example as an econ major at CAS you can supplement your econ degree with as many Wharton classes as you want and vice versa. So you can get a unique balance of per-professionalism and lib arts that is unique at Penn. in terms of recruiting, all penn undergraduates have access to the same recruiting opportunities and do equally well (you can look at the career stats in the penn career services website). Also the Penn student body as a whole is quite entrepreneurial. The guy who came up with Venmo for example was a creative writing/philosophy major.
- I do not think the different undergraduate schools at Penn have starkly different cultures, but rather that there is a unique, distinct Penn culture. Yes Penn is more social than the rest of the ivies, and to a reasonable extent there is a work-hard-play hard culture, but a huge number of people are involved in politics, social advocacy etc. Obviously it is only natural that as a whole the CAS student body is a bit more intellectual than Wharton, but what is unique about wharton is that a huge part of the students are not automatons just interested in landing the prestige finance job but have diverse interests and passions–this is because wharton students are easily able (and strongly encouraged) to get a high quality liberal arts education along with their pre-professional degree. (same goes for engineering students).
4)Philly is a big city as naturally there are parts that are safe and parts that are not. The campus is safe and there is Penn police in virtually every block on campus. of course as you go further west outside the campus, the ghetto begins, but i dont see why you would ever need to venture out. you have everything you need on campus: supermarkets, cvs, many different places to eat even an urban outfitters and gap (if you need to go shopping you can go to center city around rittenhouse square which is a very nice neighborhood).