<p>To be honest, I too was not terribly thrilled with Penn overall. My course of study was excellent; my friendships are bound to be lifelong; the experiences I had were extremely unique. Yet I cannot say that I loved Penn as a whole.</p>
<p>Especially freshman year, I saw many of the negative aspects of Penn: a significant number of students are sheltered children with too much money for their own good, which makes it hard to really get to know them; the bureaucracy is staggering (when I graduated and stayed on as a researcher for a few months, it took two weeks, four forms, five face to face conversations, eight emails and four phone calls just to get a new PennCard that reflected my status as a temporary employee); many of the facilities are lacking, to say the least. Especially living in Hill, which has been SIGNIFICANTLY rehabilitated in the past four years, things were not very fun.</p>
<p>After freshman year, it all got better. Once you see past the nonsense, learn which professors really care about teaching, take upper level courses, get involved in campus leadership and find your niche, you will be able to really make a mark.</p>
<p>Also, to address two points that legendofmax made… laundry at Penn is free as of fall, 2008, and the weather is pretty comparable everywhere along the Northeast Corridor, from DC to Boston, and there really isn’t much anyone can do about that.</p>