Kyle Henson

Penn isn’t the only one of its peers that doesn’t require senior theses. But schools that have made it a requirement view it as a cornerstone of the undergraduate educational experience.

Are lectures really the best way to employ Penn’s eminent faculty? Are undergraduates getting their $39,088 worth of tuition by listening passively?

Three years ago, I arrived at Penn, already in far over my head. I enrolled in Math 104 and Biol 121 because that’s what pre-med kids do.

This failure seems to hint at a pervasive resistance to change that plagues our society. This problem proves most dangerous when our stubbornness to adapt allows obvious, and sometimes even easily solved, inefficiencies to persist.

It would be naive to think that the obnoxious type-A personalities that helped many of us get here in the first place disappeared after our matriculation.

Candidates should be judged for how well we think they’ll handle the unpredictable

For those who are unfamiliar, the curve means two things: stress and a lower GPA. Most classes with curves have exam averages that float somewhere between the high 50s and the low 60s.

Penn’s efforts amount to little more than a band-aid on a gushing wound.

While Penn claims on its housing website that college houses “stand at the center of the Penn undergraduate experience … to form shared communities,” the system fundamentally fails to achieve this mission due to a lack of political and financial commitment from the administration.

We don’t spend $50,000 a year over four years just to read textbooks and have our beliefs reinforced. We want to hear brilliant opinions and arguments from our professors.