<p>I’m really interested in applying to UPenn, although i dont know much about it till now. kk. is it a big university in the US (consider me a foreigner).
i’m thinking of choosing my profession at the end of my sophomore year, cuz at that time i’ll make smartest decision, i guess, knowing that what i’m good at.
so my university should be good at engineering, computer science, and marketing.
i may choose one of them.</p>
<p>penn is big. it’s an ivy league school. it has over ten thousand undergraduates (and about the same number of grad students).</p>
<p>it’s reasonably good at engineering (specifically bioengineering) and okay for cs, and very good at marketing.</p>
<p>there are 4 undergraduate schools at penn; the engineering school houses engineering (obviously) including computer science, while the wharton school houses the marketing department (the other two schools are the college, and the nursing school). you apply to one for consideration only at that school (unless you’re applying for the joint degree programs)</p>
<p>because the marketing department is in the wharton school, there is a very competitive application process involved in transferring from the college / engineering / nursing to wharton if you aren’t admitted to wharton on admission. you may take marketing classes, but there is no minor nor is a double major option possible without the internal transfer.</p>
<p>Penn’s tops in Computer Science. Recruiters from Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and the government, along with all the grad schools come here and hire, and know us well. This is something I was afraid of entering school, but I’m glad I decided to come to Penn. The small size of the engineering school holds Penn back in the rankings, but it ends up helping the student more, and these companies that recruit, along with all the big names on Wall st. should be a flag for you. </p>
<p>However, Penn does not yet have a computer engineering major (yet - it’s about 5 years away). If you tend to be more interested in the hardware side of things, you may want to look at other schools as this (along with civil engineering) is something you simply won’t find at penn.</p>
<p>If you’re interested in CompSci AND you want to work for tech companies, I recommend going for more techie univ like MIT, Caltech, CMU, Stanford, or even state schools that’s renowned for CS like UIUC and Cal (Berkeley).</p>
<p>Reason is, they have bigger CS dept, which mean more course offerings, more research opportunities, more varieties of tech companies visiting on campus, more on campus interviews and generally more reputable program. </p>
<p>Top tech companies indeed visit Penn campus but the number are quite limited, the big ones that attend Penn engineering career fair are Google (but they don’t do on campus interview for tech students, I think they’re looking for more MBA and Wharton students) and Microsoft (they do on campus interviews). I think Cisco also attends Penn career fair and also does campus interview but that’s about it. Other companies like Yahoo, Amazon, Adobe, AMD/Nvidia only visits the schools that I mentioned above for career fair so you’re better off at those schools. </p>
<p>Actually, there are more tech companies visiting Penn but most are defense contractor/government agency or defense lab like Lockheed Martin and MIT’s Lincoln Lab. But considering you’re not a U.S citizen you won’t be able to work for these companies due to security reasons. So going for Penn will pretty much limit your employment search. Most companies that visit Penn are finance companies e.g. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, etc and they are looking for IT interns/full time employee. So if you’re interested in working for financial companies, Penn might be a good choice. </p>
<p>Also, another factor that you might want to consider is Penn engineering dept does not offer CPT course for international students so basically that means you won’t be able to work in summer, which restricts your option if you want to gain technical experience. But don’t worry, all other universities that I know of offer these courses so if you are not attending Penn you won’t get into this trouble. </p>
<p>Also keep this in mind, Penn is not renowned for their engineering dept… It’s true that they are one of the “better” schools for engineering but it’s definitely not the top ones.</p>
<p>Google hires Penn students in engineering and business (they have a dire need for businesspeople in HR and the like at the moment). Microsoft is the #1 recruiter on campus, and hires more Penn grads each year than any other employer. Yahoo recruits here, as well as AMD/ATI and NVIDIA (and I do have the emails to prove it). You do see a lot of defense companies (heck, that’s where I am now) but then again, Lockheed employs more computer scientists than even Microsoft.</p>
<p>However pearlygate highlights an interesting point: the culture at Penn is definitely toward finance and banking. Many of the top engineers go in to careers in business because the culture at Penn promotes it, and the salaries are much higher. If you’re hard set on a career in tech, you may be happier at a tech school - sitting in classes of thousands of identical peers, or miserable in Pittsburgh. If you’re considering a career in business someday, Penn’s got options you just won’t find at the other schools - Wall St. doesn’t look much outside of the Ivy League.</p>
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<p>They did some job listings in PennLink (to the OP, PennLink is the career listing website for Penn Student) but I never recall ever meeting them at Penn Engineering Career Fair. Some other companies that list their job openings in PennLink include: HP, IBM, Sun, etc. But I don’t think job listings at PennLink help much, since they’re not visiting Penn campus. You can find the same listings in other online job board like monster or monsterTRAK or hotjobs, etc.</p>
<p>Also if you go to to yahoo career site
<a href=“Careers | Yahoo”>Careers | Yahoo;
you’ll find that they only go to Stanford, MIT, CMU, berkeley, Cornell and the rest.
also for amazon
<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Universities-We-Visit-Technical-Careers/b/ref=sc_bb_l_1_14237921_10/002-9128383-8310435?ie=UTF8&node=14713041&no=14237921&me=A2UFG9NDFLOV22[/url]”>http://www.amazon.com/Universities-We-Visit-Technical-Careers/b/ref=sc_bb_l_1_14237921_10/002-9128383-8310435?ie=UTF8&node=14713041&no=14237921&me=A2UFG9NDFLOV22</a>
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<p>I just went up to AMD and Nvidia website, they also didn’t mention Penn in their target school list. But their list is incomplete because it’s only filled up until first half of this year. Nonetheless, I don’t remember seeing them in Penn career fair and you can take my word for it. </p>
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<p>I somewhat agree, but I also wanna add, it’s because there are not many tech companies interested in recruiting them anyway. Salaries are pretty relative to where you’re working. If you manage to land a job at bulge bracket IB I think you’ll get paid very well but IB only recruits like what? 10%-25% of top students?</p>
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<p>LOL, CMU CompSci students being miserable? Studying CS in one of the best computer science school in the nation… I don’t know about that.</p>
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<p>Don’t forget Stanford and MIT, IB recruits pretty heavily in these 2 schools, maybe even more than lower ivy schools :)</p>
<p>Pearlygate, are you actually an engineering student at Penn? You’ve listed the gamut of schools in your posts, and you mentioned you got a masters here (which, if in CS, help you god is worthless. the masters programs MSE and MCIT are cash cows for phd funding). Yahoo and Nvidia recruited more casually. To get listed on PennLink, a company needs to recruit many months in advance, and pay quite a bit to the career services office. Quite simply, most companies don’t know that far in advance how many they’ll need. Yahoo recruited at a tech talk - it was good, and they talked about using Flickr to test graph theory research. (See, I went). NVIDIA recruited via emails and through faculty - I remember Dr. Martin’s lecture where he brought it up. It’s surprising, because the graphics companies need computer <em>engineers</em> more than computer scientists - there’s a reason people get an entire degree in Verilog and VHDL. IBM and Sun visited; I know several folks going to IBM next year, and I attended the Sun presentation. (Never mind that HP wants completely different people from what Google and Microsoft want, and that IBM is now a consultancy, not a computer company)</p>
<p>Amazon- I haven’t seen them outside of Wharton discussions. They’re also not exactly making much money right now either - 1% margins really bring in employees, eh?</p>
<p>I’ve got to clear this up: IB isn’t the only thing on Wall st., and it’s certainly not where CS grads hope to end up. Quantitative finance and hedge funds are where CS grads are going now, and it’s a different field than IB. IB wants cocksuckers who can make powerpoints; hedge funds want intelligent quantitative folks, and they like to get them from Penn.</p>