Competitive atmosphere at Penn?

Poeme
Mon, 01 Jul 2013 13:12:43 +0000

There will be some amount of competition at every top school just because of the self selection that occurs at the admissions level. This is just something you need to learn to live with to a certain extent if you go to an Ivy League school or another top university. Liberal arts colleges in general may have environments which are a bit less competitive, but this may not be true.
Despite this, I don’t think most people attending these schools are cutthroat, it’s just that they put a lot of pressure on themselves to succeed and others feed upon this. It becomes a self perpetuating cycle rather than something started by competition between students. In general, especially in my department, there is hardly any competition between students, we work together and are genuinely happy for our friends when they succeed. If someone asks me a homework question, I will try my hardest to help them because I know they would do the same. I think most of Penn is like this except for small groups of people mainly in Wharton or who are pre-med. However, in general, students look down on cutthroat behavior and these groups often alienate themselves from other students.