A City Almost as Beautiful as SF

After much anticipation, we had our first full day in the University City of Philadelphia. We began our day by having breakfast across the street from the hotel, at a bagel shop named Spread. I had a very simple whole wheat bagel with peanut butter spread and jam. I accompanied that with an iced coffee that I had really been craving for a while now. Most iced coffees I had been having were sub-par.

Once we were all done with breakfast, we walked over to the Irvine Auditorium, less than a 10-minute walk away from our hotel, for the Penn information session. The auditorium had a very cathedral-like architecture and seemed pretty grand. It differed greatly from the student life center that we had the Vanderbilt information session at. 

The entrance to Irvine Auditorium

The information session began with a video that conveyed what life at Penn was typically life and provided a vast amount of information on the university's history, like the fact that it's the United States' first university. It also pointed out some notable alumni like John Legend and Elon Musk. After the video, the admissions counselor, Kim, began the full information session. I felt like it was different from other information sessions because it didn't have a powerpoint to go along with it. 

Kim addressed several of the most important topics: the four schools at Penn, student life, the admissions process, and financial aid. In the pamphlet and throughout the session, the interdisciplinary way of education at Penn was definitely emphasized. The four schools are the College of Arts and Sceicnes, the Wharton School of Business, Penn Engineering, and the School of Nursing. There are over 50 majors in the College of Arts and Sciences, and last years graduating class of 2400 had 1700 different combinations of majors and minors. That's overall pretty impressive and shows how everyone can really have a broad way of thinking at Penn. Additionally, no matter the school someone is in, they will take classes across the other schools as well to fulfill different requirements and electives. 

Furthermore, we heard a lot about how busy a Penn student usually is since there are so many activities and organizations to be a part of. Additionally, Philadelphia is a great city where there are lots of things to explore. Not to mention, the countless food options to try out. Kim mentioned that there is such a thing called restaurant week at Penn, where some of the best food places have highly discounted prices. It's an event that both faculty and students at Penn look forward to. Housing at Penn also makes it easy to meet new people and try out new things with the different themes the dorms have. There's a dorm that is essential for people who want to explore Philadelphia and really love the city. There is also the women in leadership dorm, among several others that cater to people's interests.

More on student life, there seems to be a great support system for the students at Penn. They have several cultural resource centers, where students of different backgrounds can have a "home away from home" and access to staff members that support them. Unlike other colleges, these resources aren't just online but have physical buildings on campus that students can go to. One of the ones that obviously grabs my attention is La Casa Latina. Being able to find a Latinx community in college is something of great value to me and I feel as though Penn can definitely offer that. 

There is also Penn First, which is a student organization dedicated to providing support for the first generation and low-income students. Our tour guide, Louis Lin, is a rising sophomore at Penn and he shared with me the importance of Penn First to him and how helpful it was for him in terms of getting to Penn. He's also involved with FGLI, a program that facilitates the transition to college for those low-income and first generation students. 

Another big topic was the admissions process and how the admissions counselors review the applications. We didn't talk about this a lot with our tour guide, but Kim did go into some detail about what Penn looks for in its students. There are 5 things to be submitted and then they get sorted into 3 "buckets." There is the one with the transcript, test scores, and teacher recommendations. Those are important, and it's important to have a teacher who can speak really highly of you and not just a teacher who says the student got A's on every single test. That doesn't say much about the student. Then there's the "impact" bucket, which looks at what extracurriculars and other things students are involved in. Kim saying that for students who do sports it's understandable if there are not another 10 things on top of that. Every student is different and some will only be heavily involved in one activity while others will do several.

The most significant thing I got out of the "2nd bucket" bit of the session was that Penn cares that a student is doing something they love. Love seems to be a huge thing in Philadelphia. But, it made me feel a lot better about the extracurriculars I take part in. I personally do value having community involvement and doing team and character building activities, but sometimes I worry I'm not doing enough. Today I sort of realized that there isn't really such thing as "enough" but whether or not I love what I do, and I do love it. I love my busy and slightly overwhelming schedule. 

Kim touched very briefly on financial aid. The pamphlet also provided a breakdown of the cost of attendance for the class of 2019, which looks pretty good for family incomes of less than $100,000 a year, where they only have to pay about 85% of the tuition. Also, Penn's financial aid packages do not include loans and several students are able to graduate without debt. For someone of the community I come from, being able to afford college tends to be a difficult thing so when schools like Penn have strong financial aid, it makes things a lot less stressful. 

If it wasn't evident in these past paragraphs, the site visit at Penn was extremely successful and I retained a lot of good information from both the tour and information session. The campus was also one of my favorite's, being in the middle of a city and still feeling slightly urban but not so sprawled. Louis mentioned that almost all the buildings are about a 10-minute walk from each other, and the city itself is rather bikeable.

After what felt like a pretty quick tour, we decided to grab something to eat near the bookstore. The nearest thing was a sort of grab and go type of restaurant named Cosi. I personally liked it because the options were on the healthier side. I got a smart fit Chicken Noodle soup bowl. Usually, I'm skeptical about the vegetables in Chicken Noodle soups, but these were very edible and delicious.

Once we were all fed, we made our way to the Eastern State Penitentiary. I was a little baffled by the fact that the once-prison was right in the middle of a busy part of town. It also almost really seemed like a castle, we later found out the architect had planned it that way. The penitentiary was Benjamin Franklin's (and some other fellows) attempt to reform the prison system, so the architect made it seem very ominous with the very high walls to deter people from committing crimes. It also was designed to be a solitary confinement prison, in order to make the prisoners think about the crimes they had committed. 

The castle like penitentiary

We learned quite a bit about how the system at Eastern State was planned out and how it actually worked out. What I found the most interesting, though, was that they had this big 3-d chart of the incarceration rates in the US throughout the decades. They also broke down the prison population by demographic. On another side of the graph, it compared the incarceration rates across different countries and listed the ones that had the death penalty. It led to some discussion about why the rates were as such and whether or not the US prison system focused enough on rehabilitation as opposed to punishment. 

After learning a lot at the penitentiary, we decided to relax a bit and visit the Spruce Street Harbor Park. Unfortunately, it seems like it is best to arrive early to the park because all of the hammocks were taken up. It's important to note that there were a number of hammocks to choose from too, so it's a very busy park. Despite the lack of hammock time, I enjoyed the atmosphere of the park because seeing the Ben Franklin Bridge and the Delaware River reminded me of being in Sausalito overlooking the Bay and the Golden Gate. It's rather "insignificant" things like that that can draw a person like me to a college so far away from home. We got some snacks at the park and hung around the huge connect 4, Jenga, chess, and lego blocks. 

The cotton candy sky over the Ben Franklin Bridge

Eventually, hunger got to us and we walked a few blocks to Jim's Steaks. The walk over there allowed to see a more historic part of Philadelphia, although the whole city is pretty historic itself. What was so nice about it that specific area was that most of the road was cobble stone and the architecture of the houses exclaimed 18th century to me. We couldn't help but take photos of the streets and even in front of one of the houses we really liked.

Something about these houses is so
attractive to me

The area where Jim's Steaks is at is also a very eccentric area that I strongly recommend being checked out. Again, it reminded me of back home, like Telegraph Ave in Berkeley. There was a lot of traffic but everyone still got around walking and it was just a busy street with several quirky shops. They even had a greeting card and gift shop like the store Greetings on Solano Ave, but we couldn't go inside because they were closed for the weekend.

We explored that block for a bit until we were able to get inside of Jim's Steaks, the Philly Cheesesteak joint that so many people speak highly about. We all came to a consensus of ordering original Philly Cheesesteaks with Provolone cheese. Just being in line made my mouth water, it smelled so good inside. I didn't' feel like that line was too long and soon enough we had our trays with sandwiches ready to go enjoy them on the upper level. 

I don't usually like onions on my food, but there was no way I was saying no to some grilled onions on my first Cheesesteak sandwich. It was significantly juicy and the bread was perfectly soft. I'd give that sandwich a solid 11/10, just like all the famous people that had dined there before. 

Once again, very full and satisfied, we made our way back to Spruce Street to get the car and drive back to the hotel. Once we were back, we crossed the street to the Penn bookstore to pick up the oh-so necessary Penn gear. It always intrigues me how some college bookstores will have apparel that is cheaper than others, for no apparent reason. 

That was essentially the end of our full day in lovely Philadelphia, and I can certainly say that it is a city that is very easy to love.