History Major at Penn?

Cue7
Tue, 08 Aug 2017 21:01:15 +0000

@“45 Percenter” - why is the fact it’s not required an argument that the school’s identity isn’t immersed in this philosophy - a philosophy that changes the contours of the school and makes comparing with certain other schools a poor exercise?

To use an alternate example: there’s no requirement that Duke undergraduates attend Duke basketball games. It’s an available opportunity - but not a requirement. You could go to Duke for four years, never go to a game, and have an experience that resembles Swarthmore undergrad or St. John’s College. You could probably surround yourself with other people who never go to a game, and ignore this completely - so that you have a little Swarthmore bubble in the middle of Durham. You could do this because you selected Duke because you like Durham and Duke has a great Poli Sci dep’t.

To do so, however, cuts against the grain of the school’s identity - and its ethos. From their president down (and incoming Duke president Vincent Price - of UPenn fame) has stated the importance of basketball to Duke. It’s in their capital campaign slogans. It’s discussed by senior administrators and prospective students alike. It forms a key part of the experience. Ignore it, but at your own fault - you might as well have gone to Swarthmore or Reed or Emory. I’d wager a good majority of students attend Duke with this feature as a centerpiece of their consideration.

Same line of reasoning goes for Penn’s liberal arts majors. You could have an experience that resembles what you’d find at Brown or Dartmouth or Yale - it’s certainly not a requirement that you dive into the interdisciplinary waters. From UPenn President Amy Gutmann on down, however, this cuts against Penn’s ethos. It’s in the capital campaign slogans. It’s in the air. It’s in the very structure of the school - notwithstanding the 7-10 classes you might take (out of a total of 40-50) that don’t feature such interdisciplinary approaches. It’s the defining feature of the experience. You might as well have gone to Brown or Dartmouth or Yale, otherwise.

So, I’m not sure why your view here on this is myopic. Yes, it’s not required, and you can make UPenn’s liberal arts college feel like any other top 20 liberal arts college. You could do the same at most other top places, too.

But Penn chooses to have students from all its undergrad schools living together, and collaborating together. Of the, say, 12 required history classes - maybe only 6-8 of them will just have an undiluted pool of serious history folks. The rest will feature the broad panoply of Penn - a panoply you can’t get elsewhere, and the reason the majority of students choose UPenn.

It puzzles me when people say you can get a liberal arts education at Penn or Cornell that mirrors what you’d get at Dartmouth or Yale. Such a view limits and winnows out the true richness of the UPenn undergrad experience. If you truly wanted such a setup - have segregated student housing (e.g. dorms for CAS, dorms for Wharton, etc.), and don’t allow cross-registration at school symposia, speaker series, etc. Only then would the CAS experience resemble what you get elsewhere. Once you allow intermixing to occur - from intro level classes onward, the experience differs from what you get elsewhere.

And that’s exactly the point.

(I wonder, btw, what President Gutmann or incoming Provost Pritchett would think of the phrase “Penn’s robust interdisciplinary offerings are merely icing on the cake should a liberal arts undergrad want to take adv. of them.” This is hardly icing to the Penn experience - it’s germane to the school’s mission, from the undergrad environment forward. If students don’t take advantage of this, just like if Duke students don’t go to basketball games - it’s often their loss. They aren’t required to, sure, but… really?)