<p>I think that there are numerous reasons to choose non-Wharton Penn over Stanford and I’m sure that it’s not an uncommon choice. For example, you might prefer being on the East Coast to the West Coast, prefer an urban campus to a suburban campus, prefer a compact campus over one that’s fairly spread out and you might prefer the four-season weather of Philly to weather that’s good, but more similar over the course of a year.</p>
<p>Also, in terms of academics there are many departments at Penn that are equal to or better than Stanford-for example, according to the Gourman report, Penn is better at linguistics, international relations, computer science, biochemistry, french (but Stanford is very close), anthropology, Chinese and environmental science and is close to Stanford in psychology and communications. </p>
<p>I honestly think that at both these schools, you can’t go wrong and you should definitely go with your preference and not worry about what other people are doing or what other people would think.</p>