<p>45 percenter - agreed, there are likeminded students at all of these schools. On that note, I’m sure that at Wharton, students can find other students who are extremely passionate about non-profit startups, or econ majors can find other econ majors at Penn who are interested in econometrics and theory, rather than just the application of econ to a particular jobs. I don’t doubt there are many - perhaps hundreds - of students like this on campus.</p>
<p>Similarly, at a large state school known for partying, a student interested in no alcohol consumption could find hundreds - if not thousands - of students interested in similar pursuits. </p>
<p>At the same time, prevalent cultures exist at all these schools. There can be a sizable minority - or perhaps even a majority - of students that run counter to the culture, but there is something to be said about the general feel of a campus, or of the trends and factors that are the most heavily emphasized, if even by volume rather than actual # of people supporting/feeding the trend or culture. </p>
<p>In that vein, I think distinctions between schools are still worthwhile. There may be a sizable group of Wharton students who don’t go into finance or consulting (probably close to half of the grads do other jobs), but that subset of the culture has become quite dominant. Similarly, while you point to the diversity at Penn - and it’s certainly there in spades (it’s part of what makes the school great) - I imagine there are dominant cultures that have emerged. So, at least when I was at Penn, while only 30% of individuals were involved in greek life, they seemed to be a very vocal minority. Louder than, say, the minority of students involved in robotics and engineering who participated in some wonderful clubs and student orgs. </p>
<p>Ultimately, the analysis needs to balance the very real diversity present at campuses like Penn with the vocal and dominant cultures that certainly can emerge, despite this backdrop of considerable diversity.</p>
<p>I haven’t visited UChicago since I graduated a few years ago, so I’m not sure how different the culture is now. I do know that when I was there kids generally did not flaunt their parents’ wealth. On the contrary, they seemed to hide their parents’ wealth, partly as a way of establishing their independence. I was surprised to find that some of my friends came from “super wealthy” families because they lived super frugally, only bought clothing at secondhand stores, and never bragged.</p>
<p>I went to grad school at another private university and the culture was different from Chicago’s and, from what I can deduce from anecdotes, Penn’s. Even if cultures are converging, I think schools will maintain distinct cultures and will always attract certain types of individuals through self-selection.</p>
<p>Wrong. People here don’t talk about anything remotely intellectual, let along have intellectual interests. To be very honest, Penn’s atmosphere is more reminiscent of a state school. </p>
<p>In fact, a decent amount of students have expressed great frustration regarding the enormously anti-intellectual atmosphere here. See the following DP article with comments from other students:</p>
<p>That’s the problem with threads like this–they bring in the anti-Penn ■■■■■■ (including ones pretending to be Penn students). And in fact, all evidence points to this thread having been started by one.</p>
<p>I really didn’t like that article. I think it represents a very narrow perspective of the school. I think Penn is a very diverse community which makes it impossible to accurately stereotype. You will see a lot of wealthy students at all of the ivy league schools, I don’t think it is any different at Penn.</p>
<p>I agree that its tough to “stereotype” about schools that are as varied and diverse as Penn, but I do think its worth taking a stab at presenting some generalizations about schools, as there are distinctions between them. For an example of an apt approach to this, check out how JHS characterizes Princeton, Columbia, and UChicago here: </p>
<p>Of course, not everyone at Princeton fits the bill as described in the post, and not everyone at Columbia is as “politicized” as described.</p>
<p>At the same time, all schools possess cultures and vibes, and that’s part of what makes the umbrella of elite schools so great - there’s something for everyone, and I don’t know if it’s productive to try and homogenize the top schools too much. </p>
<p>I don’t think it’s worthwhile to underplay this fact too much. Absolutely, top schools have cultures, and there are probably merited subjective differences between Princeton and Swarthmore or Duke and Brown. There are a whole bunch of similarities too, but there are still differences that remain worthy of discussion.</p>
<p>(And 45percenter, yes, Penn has a wealth of pretty sophisticated intellectual offerings on campus - Philo being an especially great resource.)</p>
Aha! As I suspected, it’s our old friend PrincetonDreams:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Claims in other parts of CC to go to Columbia–check;</p></li>
<li><p>Claims also to have been accepted to Stanford–check;</p></li>
<li><p>Claims to be a Penn student, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary–check;</p></li>
<li><p>When his fraud is revealed, erroneously accuses me of working in Penn’s Admissions Office–check.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Seems like it may be about time for the CC mods to ban you again. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>No, no, no. Money isn’t an object for students here. It rarely comes up in conversation. The social atmosphere here is one of the most accepting that I have ever experienced.</p>
<p>Maserrano said: “No, no, no. Money isn’t an object for students here. It rarely comes up in conversation.”</p>
<p>This is quite the opposite of my experience at Penn. How can this be? Because Penn is a big, varied school, and one’s experiences can differ much more so than at a smaller school. Maserrano, perhaps for you these issues never came up, but for others, it may be more prominent.</p>
<p>Additionally, I think the “money as an object is bad” view is overly simplistic. One of the aspects of Penn I actually enjoyed was the fact that many students were ambitious, practical, and had set goals - they wanted to work on Wall Street, they wanted a certain type of lifestyle, etc… and they were really open about this. These students had clear expectations and they worked to meet them.</p>
<p>Again, I liked that aspect of being on campus, but maybe that’s just me.</p>
<p>The income distribution from Penn is interesting, and I think it’s about the same at Stanford. 50-60% of the students receive aid, which ends at around $200k, suggesting that 40%+ make over $200k. Penn’s stats can be compared to the income distribution in the US:</p>
<p>which shows that the higher the income, the more that demographic is overrepresented. </p>
<br>
<br>
<p>To reiterate, this is not Penn’s fault. This is the fault of the US, with widespread income inequality roughly equal to that of Kenya or Uganda (which have virtually the same Gini coefficient as the US). Privileged students are overrepresented everywhere because they have more opportunity - one study found that at the top 146 colleges, only 3% came from the bottom economic quartile (Penn has 2x that proportion), while 74% come from the top economic quartile (which is a little higher than Penn’s proportion). This is a problem at all top universities. I wish others would release such detailed income statistics for their student bodies; they’re probably afraid of showing that the income inequality in the US, which is terrible (something like 67th in the world in a ranking of Gini coefficients), is far worse on their campuses.</p>
<p>At the same time, while this isn’t Penn’s fault, all the top universities including Penn should be working harder to balance the socioeconomic makeup of their student bodies. Having an accurate representation of the US income distribution is obviously not the goal (the student bodies would be just as unequal as the US population). Rather, the goal is to have an equal representation of incomes among their students, to give equal opportunity to all backgrounds. To that end, Penn is doing a great job, esp. with its recruitment of low-income students and its expanded financial aid to allow middle-income students to attend. But neither Penn nor its peers will be able to reach that goal with mere “admissions engineering.” It’s going to take significant improvement of the K-12 system and national policy ensuring a basic living standard for everyone, before the top private universities can hope to be the “conduits of social mobility” as they purport to be.</p>
<p>I think it’s interesting that Penn’s admission goal (like many other universities) is diversity in race but not specifically diversity in income…</p>
<p>Among U.S. citizens and permanent residents in the admitted class, 51 percent of students identified themselves as minorities, defined by the Office of Admissions as Asian, black, Latino and American Indian.</p>
<p>Last year, the Class of 2015 set a new threshold as 52 percent of its domestic students were self-identified minorities.</p>
<p>Dean of Admissions Eric Furda said the growth of minorities in its admitted class is both intentional and natural.</p>
<p>I visited Penn this past weekend and I will be a student there next year. Truthfully, I had the same concern about the social atmosphere there, especially because my family does not have a lot of money. Penn’s very generous financial aid is making it possible for me to attend. I was talking with some friends that I was staying with and they told me that they have found money to not be a huge issue…there is so much diversity at Penn that if you don’t want to be friends with people in higher income classes, you don’t have to. You can find a place for yourself within the countless communities and groups within Penn’s campus.</p>
That’s not the way I read that article–or the many statements made about this very subject by Admissions Dean Furda and President Gutmann over the last several years. Penn has a very specific goal of increasing diversity in income, as noted in the article, itself:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In fact, “increasing access” through substantially increased and enhanced undergraduate financial aid is one of the main goals of President Gutmann’s “Penn Compact,” which is the underlying foundation of her administration’s policies:</p>
<p>And as an alum, I can tell you that the one fundraising goal most discussed by Penn administrators and fundraisers is increasing access and undergraduate financial aid for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds:</p>
<p>Clearly, diversity in income is a very specific–and extremely high profile–goal of Penn’s undergraduate admissions, and of the highest levels of Penn’s administration.</p>