<p>
</p>
<p>Is this for real!!!
well, if it is, my respect for Brown has diminished significantly.
Caltech >>> Chicago for physics.</p>
<p>
Was this because they’ve been handwaving/sleepwalking/taking English 200: history of vixens etc… to fulfill Quantum Physics and realized knowing about Mary Boleyn won’t cut it at Caltech?</p>
<p>Penn emphasizes practical training. Maybe Penn students are unable or at least unwilling to engage in higher theoretical reasoning.</p>
<p>
Please tell that to the physics professors at Chicago, Stanford, or Berkeley. I’m sure they’d love to hear that their graduate students are not expected to cultivate “theoretical reasoning” skills. :eek: :D</p>
<p>
You know as well as I do that graduate program selection is not that simple. </p>
<p>While Caltech and Stanford are generally ranked #1 for geology, for example, I sure as heck wouldn’t apply to either if I were interested in paleontology – I’d head to Chicago, Yale, or UT Austin.</p>
<p>Plenty of Penn students go to strong PhD programs. The majority of students aren’t interested in academia, but the ones who are do just fine for themselves despite the deficiencies caused by going to a school merely ranked 13th in Physics by USNWR.</p>
<p>IBclass06,</p>
<p>I was being somewhat facetious. </p>
<p>But the fact of the matter is, Penn originated as a “trade school” of sorts and still retains much of its focus on practical (vs. theoretical) training. Even the biggest Penn apologists would admit that their school is not a very intellectual place.</p>
<p>P.S. Try not to take yourself or life so seriously. :)</p>
<p>
So the great majority of Penn engineers pursue careers in finance, medicine or law. Why am I not surprised? This thread is about placing students in top graduate programs. Of the handful who pursued graduate studies in engineering, only 7 or 8 were placed in top 5 engineering programs. When you start with the 6th most selective incoming class, this is not that impressive.</p>
<p>I agree with Venkat… serious engineering students who want a career in engineering generally don’t go to Penn SEAS.</p>
<p>MAN! Some serious Penn-hating on CC. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Lots of envy and insecurity out there.</p>
<p>“MAN! Some serious Penn-hating on CC.”</p>
<p>Yep. </p>
<p>“Lots of envy and insecurity out there.”</p>
<p>Nope.</p>
<p>^ An apparently not much introspection. :)</p>
<p>
That’s as true as what you wrote.</p>
<p>Once again…raw numbers are irrelevant. The important measure is how successful applicants are.</p>
<p>After this response I’ll try to stop feeding the ■■■■■■ (who are probably high schoolers who could never even get into Penn or Caltech). The notion that Penn is focused on “practical versus theoretical training” has been used so out of context. Yes, Wharton has a more practical bent and many graduates don’t go on to graduate school. The same can be said for the students other undergraduate business schools–Michigan, NYU, Berkeley?? People like to conveniently ignore the fact that the College of Arts and Sciences has the biggest population of undergrads at Penn. Yes, many are pre-med, pre-law, etc. And guess how many kids from Harvard or Princeton or [insert any elite institution] go to med school, or law school, or dare I say it, business or the financial sector? I don’t quite understand why people on this site consider PhDs and academia the only respectable route for college graduates. And please, please someone explain how the curriculum at Penn is more “practical” than theoretical. I’d really love to know, and I’d really love to see your evidence for it. Explain how the number of pre-professional students correlates to the academics and teaching at the university being more “practical.” People really have no clue what they are talking about. I’m not sitting here trying to argue that the student body at Penn is as intellectual as Chicago, because I’m sure it’s not, but give me a break. You are taking your biased perceptions way too far without any sense of what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>Let’s stop for a moment and give thanks to Ben Franklin, though! If it weren’t for his utterly pathetic and non-intellectual idea of introducing numerous faculties into one university, we all might still be studying theology.</p>
<p>I think an interesting broader question is why do so few American students go on to PhD studies? (especially in the hard sciences and engineering)… Professor Derman at Columbia wrote in an article that of the 70 students in one graduate class he was teaching, only one had been born in the United States. Similarly, looking at the Caltech list, if one excludes foreign students (most from China, Russia and India), my guess is the only students left would have Jewish and Chinese last names (both groups are renowned obviously for their age-old emphasis on education)… </p>
<p>my simple explanation is that smart students (e.g. Penn SEASers) have realized that America doesn’t really respect technical talent unless you can pair that with entrepreneurial success (like Gates/Simonyi or Brin/Page)… since lightening really has to strike for you to be at the helm of the next MSFT or YHOO or GOOG, the rational thing is to leave the technical arena and reposition yourself for finance and consulting, two bulls*** industries that are nonetheless lucrative for the people who work in them…</p>
<p>btw, Elon Musk who co-founded PayPal and set up Tesla motorcars studied physics as an undergrad at Penn before dropping out of the Stanford doctoral program.</p>
<p>
[Graduate</a> School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/44846]Graduate”>http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/44846)</p>
<p>Of course, the situation is a bit different in the sciences, but nevertheless many fields (e.g. marine biology) are absolutely saturated with PhDs. Why work your tail off for a degree that may not help with employment? </p>
<p>(That said, I don’t mind facing unemployment and went to grad school anyway. :p)</p>
<p>
In case you didn’t noticed, I specified chemistry and biology. Nice job reading. Also, nice job neglecting what I wrote about individual labs rather than whole programs. For instance, a Brown Chemistry undergraduate, Kaylie Young, who won one of the most prestigious undergraduate research awards available in chemistry, had her choice amongst the top ten graduate programs in the country. She went to Northwestern due to a particular top scholar in nanochemistry that she wanted to work with.</p>
<p>
Have you taken Quantum Mechanics at Brown? I have. This sort of attack is just nonsense and makes you look like someone who shouldn’t be taken seriously in these discussions.</p>
<p>“After this response I’ll try to stop feeding the ■■■■■■ (who are probably high schoolers who could never even get into Penn or Caltech).”</p>
<p>Such arrogance from an HYPSM reject…</p>
<p>“The notion that Penn is focused on “practical versus theoretical training” has been used so out of context.”</p>
<p>How so? Penn has a nursing school. LOL! Enough said.</p>
<p>^ And Harvard has a divinity school. So? It’s one (small) arm of the school. The point is you treat Penn as though it’s a vocational school that turns out office drones incapable of higher thinking. Once again you failed to actually respond to any of the arguments I made. The naivety of high school students never ceases to amaze me.</p>
<p>Oh and let’s see…didn’t apply to Princeton, waitlisted at Yale, turned down Caltech–oh but that isn’t part of the holy mandated Golden 5 so it doesn’t matter I guess. God, what can I say, feeding the ■■■■■■ is so fun!</p>
<p>“And Harvard has a divinity school.”</p>
<p>The above is a graduate school. </p>
<p>Penn, however, accepts nursing students at the UNDERgraduate level.</p>
<p>Chicago has a divinity school too. I feel like that might conflict with the econ and biology departments a little bit.</p>
<p>Penn is a top school with top departments and great grad programs. All the tools are here to set a student up to be very successful in grad school admissions. The school has a very large, visible, and vocal set of preprofessional students. HOwever, that does not mean that Penn doesn’t produce PhDs and it doesn’t mean that you are at any disadvantage for PhD admissions by going to Penn. It is very easy to do research with top professors in any field starting very early on in an undergraduate career at Penn, easy to take graduate level courses as an undergrad, and in many departments relatively easy to get a Master’s degree in 4-5 years.</p>
<p>CAPA is my new favorite poster.</p>