History Major at Penn?

Cue7
Mon, 07 Aug 2017 15:33:51 +0000

@“45 Percenter” - all good points, but if you truly account for Penn’s interdisciplinary nature (and noting that, say, a Wharton undergrad could also major in history), I think the best way to assess the popularity of the major is to note the full size of the class.

So, accounting for interdisciplinary majors like PPE or Communications, and noting how UPenn is quite flexible in majors across schools (like Wharton and CAS), let’s say, when viewed in the most favorable light, that about 90 students per year are pursuing a history major (or taking a lot of classes in it).

90/2500 = 3.6% of the class at UPenn
That’s still demonstrably lower than the 8% of Princeton undergrads majoring in history

Also, many top schools have overlap in most popular majors - as you say. What differentiates Penn (and, similarly, Northwestern and Cornell) is it’s one of the only top schools with many undergrad divisions, all mixing and mingling together. You’ll never find as high a concentration of history majors at Penn than Princeton because UPenn has 4 undergrad schools, and Princeton has 2 (the liberal arts college and engineering).

Now, some schools may be more STEM focused (like Stanford) or more Humanities heavy (like Yale), but Penn, Northwestern, and Cornell are somewhat distinct from the other (non-technical institute) schools because they have more undergrad schools. It changes the complexion of these schools, and makes comparing, say, UPenn and Princeton, or Dartmouth and Cornell, a limited exercise.

It’s why, when deciding whether to study undergrad history at Penn, a paramount consideration is the structure of its undergrad program - in a way that’s different than deciding to study history at, say, Yale or Princeton or Columbia or that school on the south side of Chicago that I criticize often on another board (all these other schools have fairly similar undergrad structures).