University of Pennsylvania Reviews in Philadelphia, PA Area

Pros

Great campus environment, some professors are really professional and nice.
you can meet friends with a lot of talented people.

Cons

you still need to rely on yourself to learn basic stuffs and gaining
experience from team project or independent study.

Pros

Everyone here is very friendly. Just don't get too comfortable. This is more of an entry level place where once you have your foot in the door at Penn, you move onto other departments. Benefits(med, vision, dental) are good and you have the opportunity for an Ivy League education for free.

Cons

The only con that I have for my experience is my job was highly repetitive. There are no special projects; it's pretty much the same thing day in day out. This leaves little room for personal/professional growth. The pay is not great.

Pros

Because it is an academic environment, people are always willing to teach you. It's a great environment to learn new techniques and broaden knowledge and skillsets.

Cons

University salary does not compare to living expenses of Philadelphia, no promotions or bonuses like in private companies.

Pros

Good city and plenty of resources

Cons

Bureaucratic and slow moving sometimes when you need something

Pros

It's very convenient to live in Philadelphia, there are many different stores around Upenn. You can buy lunch from food trucks in the campus. Many job opportunities in upenn. Beautiful campus in the middle of a city. Philly's a really culturally diverse place- and so many great restaurants.

Cons

Winter is cold. public security is not good. Especially In urban setting, things can go wrong and you have to be prepared for that.

Pros

University NAME,
City,
PROXIMITY TO Industry
INEXPENSIVE CITY ( COMPARED TO OTHER EAST COAST CITIES)

Cons

Crime prone area,
Horrible management.
Very unprofessional attitude.

Advice to Senior Management

You might be Ivy league, but you are still a college.

Pros

Penn is an incredible place to work. In addition to the intellectually stimulating nature of working in academia, I enjoy the benefits of working on a college campus such as lectures, workshops, and university resources (library, etc.). Additionally working at Penn offers amazing benefits in terms of vacation time, sick days, regular cost of life raises, health/dental insurance, retirement contributions, and best of all - tuition benefits! Get a free degree while you work!

Cons

Penn is very decentralized - there is little communication between the 12 schools, so sometimes you miss out on opportunities due to lack of hearing about it.

Pros

There is a good sense of comraderie within the department and in general people are willing to share both information and equipement, etc. There are ample opportunities for learning new things, whether through a seminar or having a presence of different biotech companies demonstrating new products or services.

Cons

Being a postdoctoral fellow means you get the short end of the stick pretty much anyplace, however at Penn the so-called postdoctoral council which is supposed to help us out really does nothing but hurt and the administration constantly feels the need to screw us over - usually in the form of salary which is a joke to begin with. Here the admin feels that your PI cannot pay you as they wish (which would be higher b/c you cannot pay lower than the federal std) and that they are not responsible for giving you FISCAL year pay raises until your contract comes up again - if that's in June then you basically lose out on a year's worth of pay rise that is not back-compensated at the time of your contract renewal. This means that a 4th year postdoc could be making less than a second year for any amount of time it was their misfortune to have signed a contract.

Advice to Senior Management

It's time to stop screwing over the people actually doing the grunt-work which brings in the grant money to this university. As time goes on, we have to spend a longer amount of time being a postdoc because of the shortage of faculty positions. It's time to take a hard look at some policies and re-evaluate whether they are helping your bottom line or helping make Penn great research institution as well as a great place to work.

Pros

I am doing part-time research assistant, at Dept. of Computer and Information Science, school of engineering and applied science, PRECISE center

Cons

tuition is expensive. philadelphia some times is cold. but to day is warm. summer is hot, not a good place to live

Advice to Senior Management

not really, good place to study to live. campus is nice, professors are nice. just too many students enrolled, so every class is full

Pros

Looks good on PhD applications
Extremely smart people
Great academic resources
Cheap, fun city
Great athetic facilities
AWESOME food nearby

Cons

Everyone is super busy, lack of real mentorship
lowish pay
Philadelphia has generally shitty weather during the winter (November through April)

Advice to Senior Management

University of Penn is awesome, I am grateful for the time I have been allowed to work here and it has been what I needed right out of college. Thank you very much for the system you have.