Everyone has their college horror story... This is mine.
Written: Sep 30 '00 (Updated Oct 01 '00)
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Pros: Wonderful resources, Ivy-League education, terrific specialty schools.
Cons: You'll just be one person, lost in the crowd.
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| BunnyJav's Full Review: University of Pennsylvania |
I want to be honest with you. Although this review is on the University of Pennsylvania overall, I will not be including an in-depth description of course requirements, admission standards or anything else that can be found in any run-of-the-mill college guide. I know that these reviews are meant to be used as a sort of buying guide, so I apologize for not including the standard specs on the school. However, I believe that my experience at Penn gives more insight into the school itself than any list of majors and core requirements ever could.
I graduated from high school in 1993 from a nationally known private high school. Being the dork that I am, I excelled in high school and graduated with a 4.0 average and a 1460 on my S.A.T.'s. I was captain of the varsity track team and basketball teams, business editor of the yearbook, advertising editor on the newspaper and a member of a choir that toured Eastern Europe following my graduation. I share these things with you not to brag, but to make a point: if I could crash and burn at Penn, anyone could.
As a Philadelphia native, I had spent the majority of my teenage-years on Penn's campus -- since most of my friends lived in University City -- but I did the requisite homework making sure that Penn was the right school for me. What I found was that although Penn is always pretty highly ranked in surveys, the spectacular reputation was primarily deserved by Wharton, the College of Nursing and the College of Engineering. When pressed, even the deans of admission at the College of Arts and Sciences (or, the "College") responded that their program was not as strong as those of the other Ivies or even other Ivy-caliber schools. As a prospective finance major at Wharton, I did not care. My goal was to pursue a double-degree, which is a program that allows you to obtain a Bachelor of Arts from the College while obtaining a Bachelor of Science from Wharton (or any other school at Penn).
Things did not work out as I had planned.
The first problem started at my high school and had nothing to do with Penn: my college advisor thought it would be better for me to start at the College -- rather than at Wharton -- before conjoining the degrees, so he changed my application from Wharton to the College of Arts and Sciences. Essentially, I was admitted into the wrong school. I tried to call the admissions dean at the College to explain what had happened, but she explained that since I was already admitted to Penn, there was nothing I could do about it. I would just have to apply to Wharton at the end of freshman year. Unfortunately, 1993 was a boom year for wannabe-transfers from the College to Wharton, so they raised the minimum freshman-year G.P.A. requirement to 3.8. Honestly, do you know anyone who got a 3.8 freshman year? :)
Problem number two was the social scene. I was not and still am not a big drinker. Frat parties held no appeal for me, since drinking was not really part of my social life pre-college. Plus, I found the parties to be hot, over-crowded and basically glamorized meat-markets. As an overweight woman, I felt that I had enough rejection in my daily life without being sneered at by a bunch of Greeks. Oddly enough, it really shouldn't have mattered, since I was engaged at the time (that's a whole other story...), but it did matter to me and it should matter to anyone with the slightest bit of low self-esteem. As I am sure you have read on other Epinions, Greek life rules Penn. For some, that may be fine, but for others -- like me -- it was terrible. Why didn't I realize this when I was visiting the school? The frat guys sit outside their houses on Spruce Street (a major University City street), sitting on lifeguard chairs, and holding up ratings signs when women walk past. I got a 2.5. Out of 10. Did I, or anyone else for that matter, really need this?
Problem number three was the deans. I was part of the Benjamin Franklin Honors program at Penn, and there were special advisors and academic deans for students in the program. I had two very traumatic events occur during the first half of my freshman year (an attempted rape and a major car accident) and I found the deans entirely unresponsive when I came to them for help. During freshman year, most classes are graded by your midterm and final. That's it -- 50% for your midterm, 50% for your final. No pressure there, right? What happened was that I aced all of my midterms, but following the car accident -- which left me on Codeine -- I was unable to attend class or to sit through a final. I asked for a medical extension on my final, but my professors refused. I went to my dean and my advisors, and they said that the decision to grant an extension was up to the professor and they couldn't do anything about it. I was just one person in a huge sea of Penn students, and they seemed to care for me very little as an individual. Quite odd, since there were very few students in the honor program... Regardless, the deans were completely unable to allow me to push my finals back before the second semester, so I wound up having to take the finals on Codeine. Would anyone care to place bets on how well I did? Needless to say, I flunked. Every single one of them. I had had to miss several classes following the attempted rape (I snapped ligaments in my foot as I tried to escape) and even more after my car accident. This did not matter to my professors, and even less so to my deans, who were supposed to be there to advise and counsel me.
Problem four was the school overall. If you read the last paragraph, you can tell that I had a very traumatic first semester. After graduating as an honors student, 4.0 G.P.A. superstar, I fell through the cracks at Penn and landed on academic probation. I got straight C's for the first semester (A's on the midterms, F's on the finals), which sent me into a tailspin heading into the second semester. I won't go into further needless detail, but I wound up in a severe depression from the above-mentioned events as well as other circumstancial happenings. I stopped going to class. Any class. Again, needless to say, I did very poorly (1.95 for the second semester). The school did not seem to care, my deans were never notified and my professors could have cared less. I understand that that is part of the process of going off to college -- no more hand-holding -- but a little support would have been nice in such a traumatic period of my life. Freshman-year classes are taught in an auditorium, with an average of 500 students per class. Professors have their backs to the class and teach over a microphone with their notes written on an overhead projector. I found the professors completely inaccessible during their posted office hours, as most of them were ensconced in tedious research projects. Never forget that Penn is primarily a research institution! Most lab sessions and office hours were held by student teachers (TA's), and unfortunately, almost none of them spoke English very well. I hate to seem prejudiced, but these students were brilliant yet incoherent. Apparently, two years after I left, Penn instituted an English-proficiency requirement for TA's, which should have been implemented many years ago.
I was lost at Penn. Living in a single dorm, unable to relate to the social scene, and ignored by my professors and deans, I fell through the cracks. Could my experience have been different? Absolutely! Had my freshman year progressed like most normal freshmen years, I probably would have excelled (at least academically) at the school. However, since my freshman year didn't go the way the college handbook depicts, I found the school to be cold, uninviting and propagating a "sink-or-swim" attitude. If you begin to fall through the cracks, for whatever reason, they won't seem to care. Even assuming they notice. My transfer to Bryn Mawr College was the best move I ever made.
In response to a very poignantly written comment (read below), I wanted to add a sentence or two as to why I posted this as a University of Pennsylvania review and not as a General Comment on College editorial.
My experiences with Penn are not unique. Although I would not have expected anyone else to have had the identical indices as mine occur, everyone who has entered college has encountered roadblocks. I very well may write an editorial on college life in general which addresses this. However, it is my opinion that the University of Pennsylvania should have done more to help me. Not to sound self-justifying, but I was an honors student -- one of only 20 in the freshman class of 1,500. The honors advisor's job was to watch out for just 20 students and make sure that we did not fall through the cracks. I sought him out, I sought out my freshman dean, and I approached the professors directly, all to no avail.
This review was not meant to air my dirty freshman laundry (although there was a lot of it!), but rather to show what the school's responses -- or lack thereof -- were. These responses are common at large universities, but at Penn (with its $30,000 per year price tag), I expected a lot more.
If anyone has other comments, I welcome them either below or via email. I hope that I have been able to shed some light on the shadows of attending Penn, but I welcome any comments you might have.
Thanks for reading this whole thing, as difficult and rambling as it might have been! :)
Recommended:
No
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BunnyJav
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Location: Minneapolos, MN
Reviews written: 34
Trusted by: 59 members
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"You're the true Lord of the Dance, no matter what those idiots at work say"
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