<p>Furthermore, your argument regarding finance professors is completely flawed. The only point you are proving is that Chicago, Harvard, and MIT’s PhD programs in economics are extremely good, which I think just about everybody on CC recognizes. Wharton is renowned for its eminence as a BUSINESS SCHOOL; that is, producer of MBAs. Not PhDs. Obviously these people in academia are more likely to have pursued PhDs than any other degree. So the finance faculty consisting of one person who got his PhD from Wharton, as opposed to twelve who got their PhDs from Chicago, isn’t proving anything.</p>
<p>This thread is a bit misleading. The strength of the overall department does not matter as much as the strength of your particular field. For example, I am interested in the US South during the 19th century so my list of schools would be very different than someone interested in Renaissance Italy.</p>
<p>Y7</p>
<p>If you cared (which you apparently don’t, given the unrelentingly hostile nature of your posts towards Penn), you would find that Penn has a career services survey that is amazingly detailed and lists employers and grad programs of all students who have participated in the survey. A few things are apparent–Penn students are much more inclined to go to law and medical school than other graduate programs and large percentages of Penn students take jobs (and pretty good ones) immediately after graduation. </p>
<p>As I have noted before, without knowing how many Penn students apply to the programs you have chosen to highlight, you cannot make a judgment whether Penn students can or cannot get into these programs (much less a judgment about the quality of the Penn undergraduate education and the students who attend the school). Just as an example, however, let’s take the case of history. Of students who responded to the survey who majored or double majored in history, 21 went on to grad school of various kinds including 2 to the London School of Economics, 1 to Cambridge, 1 to Oxford, 1 to Stanford, 2 to Penn and 12 to law school, including 3 to Harvard Law. These results seem pretty impressive to me, even though none of the students went to Yale.
For those interested, here’s the link to the 2008 survey for the college of arts and sciences <a href=“http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/college/2008cpsurvey.pdf[/url]”>http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/college/2008cpsurvey.pdf</a></p>
<p>Penn is an excellent school, one of many excellent schools across the country. It has a more pre-professional bent than certain other schools, but, in my judgment, that doesn’t make Penn better or worse than those other schools, just different (and probably appealing to a different type of student). The US News rankings are hardly perfect. Rather, like many ranking systems, they use factors that the publishers consider important. By those criteria, Penn was number 4 this year, but it could easily drop to 7 or 8 next year. People (like you) who appear to be fixated on the rankings and constantly begin negative threads about a specific school seem to lack a sense of balance and proportion. Hopefully, as you get older, you will develop the maturity that you seem to lack at the current time.</p>
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<p>Not trying to be with Y7 side at all, but I was disappointed when I found the following lists. I expected UPenn has much closer adomitted rates to Yale and Princeton, although I expect UPenn has the similar adomitted rates with peer schools like Brown etc and better than most of schools.</p>
<p>[Yale</a> law stats](<a href=“http://www.yale.edu/visvi/students/gradprof/lawschool/media/lawstats.pdf]Yale”>http://www.yale.edu/visvi/students/gradprof/lawschool/media/lawstats.pdf)</p>
<p>[Princeton</a> law stats](<a href=“Search Opportunities | Human Resources”>Search Opportunities | Human Resources)</p>
<p>[University</a> of Pennsylvania law stats](<a href=“http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/gradprof/law/law_stats.html]University”>http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/gradprof/law/law_stats.html)</p>
<p>UMichigan and others have the similar list at their pre-law or theirs career service sections.</p>
<p>Brown’s page:
[Brown</a> University - Dean of the College](<a href=“http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Dean_of_the_College/advising/law_admission_stats.php]Brown”>WELCOME TO PRE-LAW ADVISING | Pre-Law Advising)</p>
<p>I’m not very surprised Yale and Princeton have better numbers. As a whole, the student bodies at both are higher-achieving than that of Penn. I don’t think anyone denies that HYP have the best of the best students. An interesting note though: Penn and Princeton had practically identical figures for Yale Law admissions. 9/68 admitted from Penn, 10/70 admitted from Harvard. Penn also had only 20 more law school applicants than Yale despite a much larger student body.</p>
<p>midatlmom- a superb post. thank you.</p>
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<p>I had an impression that the levels of basic skills among students of top 10 schools, as well as top 10% students of the state flagship schools, are no difference. All are excellent. The scores of SATs and GPAs do not show any meaningful difference among them.</p>
<p>And those applying to law schools are successful ones in the schools,</p>
<p>flatland-- not true. All those schools do have excellent student bodies, but there are some differences. Just look at the average LSAT score:</p>
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<p>Note, a few points can be quite a move on the percentile scale:
[L.S.A.T</a>. Sample Score Percentiles](<a href=“http://www.esc.edu/ESConline/focused/prelawresources.nsf/db1a77fb2f6bcf2085256bfa005466b0/f6f479ed15e0764885256dba005f2d3f?OpenDocument]L.S.A.T”>http://www.esc.edu/ESConline/focused/prelawresources.nsf/db1a77fb2f6bcf2085256bfa005466b0/f6f479ed15e0764885256dba005f2d3f?OpenDocument)</p>
<p>Notice that from Harvard to Berkeley you drop from 94.7% to 79%. Pretty big difference.</p>
<p>The average LSAT ranking is just like the selectivity ranking. So a high SAT kid just get a high LSAT after 4 years? </p>
<p>Students of UPenn are one of the top, aren’t they. But…since UPenn is known as a more pre-professional focused school, I hoped to see it has an edge over other non-hyp schools on the admitted rates, showing closer to hyp.</p>
<p>My point is that the selectivity of those schools are not necessarily as indistinguishable as you thought.</p>
<p>I’m not making any comment about UPenn’s success.</p>
<p>This list doesn’t surprise me at all. Penn, Brown, Columbia and Dartmouth are a core group of the elite schools, and often place together in various rankings.</p>
<p>@Flatland -
Penn DOES have pretty impressive law school placement. For example, it is the 4th most represented undergrad at Harvard, after Harvard, Yale and Stanford - but before Princeton. Out of 68 who applied to Yale last year, 9 were accepted - quite similar to Harvard and Princeton, I think. Penn also has similarly excellent placement at med schools.</p>
<p>So, I think your initial assumption was correct, in terms of the excellence stemming from the pre-professional bend of the school.</p>