UPenn vs Cornell - Creative writing & personal fit

Denlah
Sat, 29 Mar 2014 23:18:38 +0000

Hello again, everyone.

First, @plmdin, your advice to contact my Penn interviewer was stellar. We had already gotten back in touch, but often I need someone to remind me of social expectations, so I thank you for your message. My interviewer is an absolutely amazing person. I was on a college tour this past week and she, now a graduate student at Harvard, let me stay at her apartment right next to campus for the night.

Second, my thanks again go out to @45_Percenter, who provided some awesome leads on the Writers House. I’d seen them before, I think, but once they were fresh in my mind I became even more excited about Penn. Penn was the very first stop on my college tour, and the first place I went was the Writers House. I was able to meet a director there whom I’d previously video chatted with, and that was super cool. But a sophomore girl lounging on a couch provided me the greatest insight about the Writers House community; she struck up a conversation with me and displayed a brilliant passion.

Like @Poeme and @JHS stress, Cornell’s quaint and secluded college town is perhaps a better model for the college experience. For a while I agonized over Penn and its location, torn about its community and its concrete jungle. I don’t love cities. But finally I warmed up to the University of Pennsylvania and decided that, despite its urban backdrop, I would be happy there.

Then a last opportunity hit me out of the blue. Princeton University accepted me. I have yet to commit to any school officially, but I am almost certain now that I will spend my next four years as a Princetonian. I stopped by for a visit and it captured everything I loved about both Penn and Cornell. Its town was quaint and quiet, its campus gorgeous. But with Princeton’s English department and gigantic endowment came many of the benefits that made me salivate at Penn.

That I have to turn down excellent schools like Cornell and Penn in order to attend pains me, but I know that it is the right choice for me. My thanks go out to all the wonderful people in this forum who helped me discover Penn and who, through their unwavering kindness and assistance, have shown me that they genuinely care both about the school and about me.