<p>[College</a> Applicants’ Top 10 Dream Colleges: Princeton Review List](<a href=“College Applicants' Top 10 Dream Colleges: Princeton Review List | HuffPost College”>College Applicants' Top 10 Dream Colleges: Princeton Review List | HuffPost College)</p>
<p>Hard to imagine: good school but not a top ivy (that would be HYP, arguably followed by Columbia), not on a par with the very best LACs in terms of formidable undergraduate education and clout with grad/prof schools (Swarthmore, Williams, Amherst) and it’s in Philadelphia (contrast with Boston, New York, Chicago). Wharton may be a dream school for an applicant with a narrowly business-undergraduate focus, though.</p>
<p>I’m obviously biased, but ^^I think that is all subjective to who you’re asking.</p>
<p>Really, Dad2, that’s a fairly uninformed view you’ve expressed there (the Wall Street Journal professional school “survey” notwithstanding, given the many flaws in its methodology).</p>
<p>Rest assured that Penn offers an undergraduate education, and clout with grad/prof schools, that is comparable to those of Swarthmore, Williams, and Amherst. Penn’s undergraduate admissions stats are as good as or better than those of the top LACs, many of its liberal arts departments are ranked among the top 10 or top 20 in the country, and the breadth and depth of the research, interdisciplinary and curricular opporuntities it affords undergraduates are unparalleled.</p>
<p>And in terms of Philadelphia, it’s a cultural mecca and haven for college students with a lively center city more accessible to Penn students than the amenities of Boston, New York, and Chicago are to students at schools in those cities. Again, your dismissal of it is quite uninformed.</p>
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You’re wrong on so many accounts that it’s quite hilarious.</p>
<p>Dad2’s posts are always skewed in favor of rural/liberal arts colleges. I’m surprised he mentioned Columbia as being below HYP and not Dartmouth.</p>
<p>My parents don’t get the whole “liberal arts provide the best undergraduate teaching” idea. They insist that one of the most important aspects of becoming educated is learning how to teach yourself, and that the importance of going to college lies in being surrounded by professors who are key innovators at the cutting edge of their field. It is more important to have someone help you gain this perspective than being spoon fed material. For this reason they encouraged me to apply to the most well respected research universities so that I could have the resources and intellectual environment to grow.</p>
<p>While some people seem to think that university professors are likely to only care about research, I could not disagree more. The majority of the professors I have interacted with at Penn are incredibly passionate about their field and are more than thrilled to share their enthusiasm with students, both in and out of the classroom. I am just finishing my freshman year and am already starting to do research in the physical sciences.</p>
<p>That is terrific to hear that you have had great professors so far. It is even better to hear that you have access to do research in the physical sciences.</p>
<p>However:
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<p>Going to a small liberal arts college does not mean you are being spoon fed the material. The reason there are so many proponents of such schools is because of the interactions between student and teacher. There is no doubt that a small seminar class is much more conducive to learning and critical thinking than a lecture room with 150 students.</p>
<p>Yes, but you can still have those interactions at a research university as well as more opportunities to be involved in current research and experience an environment filled with people at the top of their field. Also, your comment about classes of 150 students is out of place. While many intro classes are large lectures, that is not true of all classes. Writing seminars here are capped at 15. Right now as a second semester freshman only two out of my five classes are large lectures. And honestly if you have an engaging professor, I don’t see what the problem is with large lectures. There are plenty of opportunities to approach the professor or discuss in recitation.
You can have the same level of interactions at a research university as a liberal arts college as long as you have the initiative to instigate them. That’s what you need to do to succeed in anything. Once you get to a certain level it’s more important to be exposed directly to subjects than have a good teacher who can express concepts well but is not directly involved in the area. Once you are exposed to certain ideas, it is important that you have the drive to explore them. I think some people don’t understand this until they get to college.</p>
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<p>There are many small seminar classes at top universities such as Penn; in fact, there is a much wider selection of such classes than there is at a top LAC. Only the most basic intro classes will consist of large lecture rooms full of students, and even those are found less frequently in many of the liberal arts departments (English, Philosophy, languages, etc.).</p>
<p>It’s really a myth that small seminars are found only at small liberal arts colleges. Top research universities like Penn have sufficient faculty and resources to offer an incredible breadth and depth of smaller classes that small LACs couldn’t even begin to approach on a consistent basis.</p>
<p>there are a number of swarthmore kids who commute to penn to take our classes because they’re not offered there</p>
<p>I was surprised by the inclusion of usc and nyu as opposed to schools like UChicago, Duke, or Columbia</p>
<p>That’s because kids are stupid, and so is this survey as a remotely serious rubric for institutional excellence.</p>
<p>I think the real issue here is that some of that article’s pictures seem to have been submitted by “Cthulhu.”</p>