Penn vs WashU

Much2learn
Thu, 21 Aug 2014 22:31:14 +0000

To me, it depends on what matters to the student, and their fit with the school.

DD visited both schools, and was admitted to both schools. In my experience, students at both schools seem to really like their schools more than most college students and both schools do a better job than most at allowing students to maintain a social life.

Both schools have nice campuses, but she liked Wash U’s campus better, and they had one of the best student presentations of all of our many campus visits.

Penn is a more research intensive University and there are more opportunities to become involved in research. Wash U marketed this as a positive and says that its professors are more focussed on teaching. Which matters more depends on the student.

Penn has very strong internship and career placement office. Penn computer science majors had over 2 job offers per student last year and over 90% of them had a job offer by graduation. The average salary was about $70,000. Significantly higher than most other schools. You can check that with Career Services. I do not know how well Wash U does at placement, but I don’t think that they are as strong as Penn.

As far as location, Philadelphia is nice and gives you an hour and 15 minute train ride to NYC. That is hard to beat if you like cities. However, some students may prefer to be in the midwest.

Finally, ED applicants to Penn have about a 25% success rate compared to about 30% at Wash U. Penn has a very low RD rate, and Wash U’s RD rate is significantly higher than Penn’s. So if you want to apply to Penn, you are well served to apply ED.

If you want to improve your chances to be accepted to Wash U, you should show strong interest in the school. I think both school care about that, but Wash U seems to care more.