<p>Philadelphia-Small City? You must be from NYC haha. Stanford has so many courses you are not too constricted by the core curriculum. And like most universities with Grads and undergrads you are actually paid attention to by both professors and grad students. Stanford is not a huge school relative to UCLA, Michigan or Berkeley so there still is that small school attention available and I think you can even take grad level courses if you are a top notch student and so inclined. But to be honest I agree with eating food. It seems like you want to go to Penn so just go to Penn. I almost feel like you are more justifying to yourself why Penn is on par with Stanford because maybe you feel subconsciously that Stanford has more name recognition than Penn, but they are both great places. According to the chart below students choose Stanford 85% of the time when faced with this option</p>
<p>[The</a> New York Times > Week in Review > Image > Collegiate Matchups: Predicting Student Choices](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/09/17/weekinreview/20060917_LEONHARDT_CHART.html]The”>The New York Times > Week in Review > Image > Collegiate Matchups: Predicting Student Choices)</p>