Touring Penn

I woke up at around 8, local time. I had slept fairly well, though I did wake up during the night a few times. I had breakfast, a waffle, at the restaurant within the hotel. After this, I relaxed in the hotel room for a bit while Michael slept and Jun went out on a run. Later on, I looked around Philadelphia with Mr. Hillyer, Michael, and Jun. We took the train down to near Independence Hall. There is a far better public transportation in Philadelphia than there is in the Bay Area. While BART is good, in Philadelphia you are never more than a short walk from a station. In the Bay Area, many people get in cars to go down to the BART station, at which point they are already in a car and figure they may as well drive. There were many old buildings with gorgeous architecture. It was extremely hot and humid out, at least in my opinion. It felt like you could grab a piece of air and wring a gallon of water out of it. After wandering around more, taking in the sights, a few of us had some cheesesteak and we went back to the hotel.

At the hotel, we met up with the two ladies and walked to the Penn campus. The campus was full of beautiful old buildings and green grass areas. The campus reminded me of other campuses I have visited, especially the Harvard campus. We found College Hall, where our tour was to begin, right behind a famous statue of Ben Franklin. While there were many people there for the tour, after a short introduction we split up into groups of perhaps 20. Within the groups, a guide gave us the tour itself.

Penn offers 104 languages, including Ancient Icelandic. It is also split into 4 different schools: The College at Penn (School of Arts and Sciences), School of Engineering and Applied Science, School of Nursing, and The Wharton School. While you apply to just one of these schools, taking classes from others are encouraged. We wandered around campus, learning interesting facts. The library has many great study rooms, in addition to 5.8 million volumes. The study rooms look quiet and good for getting work done in. I also learned that there is wifi all over campus. Housing for freshman is guaranteed, and if you want, you can almost certainly get housing through senior year.

We then retired to the auditorium, for an information session. While much of the material had been covered previously, I took away two main ideas from it. The first is that in an application, you should not only write about why you want to learn, you should write about why you want to learn at the school you are applying to. The second piece of information is to really make yourself stand out. The people at Penn have to go through thousands of applications, and you need to get the people at Penn to remember your application. I would say that, while useful, the information session was inferior to the tour. The tour was given by a student currently at Penn, and felt much more personal. For example, we were able to ask him questions. I asked him about the computer science at Penn. He says that computer science is great at Penn, having just taken a course in it.

After a rest in the hotel room, we walked to a train station, took the train, then walked to the restaurant.

At dinner, all of the cohort sat on one side of the table, facing somebody from Penn. I sat in the middle of the table, across from the alumni Liz and Ross. I was also able to slide down to talk to the current student Dyana and the admissions officer Frank. I talked to them over some mushroom risotto, the restaurant's only vegetarian option. The city of Philadelphia in general seems to have far fewer vegetarian options than what I am used to.

Liz was a nurse. She enjoyed Penn because it had a hands-on nursing program. Ross enjoyed Penn because it had so many types of classes and extra-curriculars to offer. Liz once took a class on witchcraft and possession. Once, in the middle of class, the professor started writhing and choking. All the students thought he was dying. It turns out that he was showing what somebody possessed in their sleep might look like. I talked to Frank about admissions. He says that they are looking for people who are passionate. Being well-rounded is great, but passion, truly being interested in something, is what they look for.

As we left the restaurant, somebody must have taken a handful of air to wring water out of, because it began to rain. Lightning flashed. The bells struck nine. An old building was lit up by the flashes. It could have been the start to a movie. I got my umbrella open just as it began to pour. By the time we had walked from the restaurant to the train station though, the rain had already stopped. All told, it was a packed day. Tomorrow we will visit Princeton; it should be just as exciting.