On the off chance you’re interested in status, prestige, or yellow highlight on a blue font, you can now search through the New York Times wedding announcements at WeddingCredential. Penn has our own category right on the homepage, along with our Ivy Plus (ew) friends.
The most fun comes in searching for terms like “Goldman Sachs” or “on the board” to hone in on your homewrecking targets. In case you don’t want to wait around for the divorce, you can also search for the terms “brother” or “sister” and gold-dig your way to glory.
The job market! It’s pretty awful out there–but maybe not as bad as last year? According to an article in Tuesday’s New York Times biz section, “This spring’s college graduates face better job prospects than the dismal environment encountered by last year’s grads.”
And when you’re a newspaper looking for a handsome, hired business grad, where do you go? Why, Wharton, of course!
The article profiles Andrew Stern(who looks pretty cute in the photo! Call us! Wink!), a ’10 Wharton grad who’s been “snatched up” by financial services firm Deloitte. Stern, who concentrated in “organizational effectiveness” (hmmm), said good ol’ Huntmsan Hall was gloomy after the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008, but that Whartonites are starting to see green again. Read the rest of this entry »
This is not Keith Flaherty.
Once upon a time, we set up a Google alert to let us know whenever good ol’ Penn was mentioned in the news. About five minutes later, we turned said alert off because, well, most of the stuff is pret-ty lame. But an article in today’s New York Times makes us (almost) wish we had reconsidered. We knew Penn had some talented people, but this is fo’ real.
Dr. Keith Flaherty, a Penn oncologist, has spent the last few years leading a team of doctors in researching and creating a melanoma drug that actually appears to work. The drug targets a specific genetic mutation that typically drives the disease. The latest trial significantly shrunk tumors in 11 out of 13 patients, the unlucky two not having matched the genetic mutation for which the gene was developed. The drug still needs to go through many tests and trials before it is determined to be safe for widespread use, but it just goes to show (despite evidence to the contrary) that there are some things going on in our little University City bubble people actually get right!
Jerome Allen, back in the day.
We gave you our take on the Glen Miller debacle a couple of weeks ago, but today the New York Times weighed in on the ordeal. Thanks to the Gray Lady, we learned that from 1963 to 2007, Penn and/or Princeton won every Ivy League championship except for two. Whoa.
We also got this awesomely Wharton-y quote from Wharton sophomore (and team co-captain/Maccabi stud) Zack Rosen: “Not all C.E.O.’s work out, and that’s what the head coach of a basketball team is. With Coach Miller, there was a disconnect. For whatever reason, his formula just wasn’t working.”
Basically, Jerome Allen has a lot riding on his shoulders, but his stats are super legit and the boys love him. So for the first time in a long time, we’re pretty excited to see what they can do. Allen’s first game as interim head coach is Monday night versus Davidson, and will be broadcast on XPN starting at 7 p.m. Want to actually see some action? Tune into ESPN2 on New Year’s Eve to see the Quakers take on Duke at 6 p.m.
Hogwarts?
Remember when we told you that Houston was getting all Harry Potterized for finals? Well, in that post we linked to a New York Times op-ed written by Lauren Edelson, this high school senior from Portland who totally hates how college tour guides always compare their campuses to Hogwarts. After all, she says, Harry Potter is just so high school.
Lo and behold, this really pissed some people off! Today the Times printed three (!) letters to the editor regarding this piece (which is called “Taking the Magic Out of College,” by the way). And imagine our delight when we realized that one of these letters was written by two Penn students, Isaac Setton and Ariela Rosenberg. Basically, they’re all, “Pshhhh — you don’t know what’s up, Lauren Edelson! College kids love HPizz!” Read their letter after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, we indulged our hate nostalgia for the days of college applications and read questions for Penn Dean of Admissions Eric Furda through The Choice. Fortunately, parents have completely calmed down about the process, College Board dissolved the SAT, and instead of essays, applicants just have to win at leap frog. Sike! Everything still sucks.
But, like a glorious ray of Philly sunshine, our own Dean Furda managed to assuage the fears of some soon-to-be 2014 parents in the New York Times’ week-long series of questions and answers.
You can read his kernels of wisdom here. Although we already got in, it’s never too early to plan for your future Quaker babies!
Read the rest of this entry »
The Choice is not something we have an easy time reading. We struggled through the college admissions process, and everything turned out great but, man, it is not easy to hear about it now! It’s what it must be like for an alien abduction victim to read an alien abduction blog. They must say, “Living through the beaming up and the poking and the prodding on the ship was enough, so no thank you, we do not need to read about how abductions are going these days.” Totally the same thing! That’s why we don’t check in very often.
But then yesterday, they opened up the comments section for questions directed toward Eric J. Furda, Penn Dean of Admissions. Obviously, we had to see what was up. As you could imagine, parents were all over this. Let’s check out some of their questions.
“People say it’s critical to take the most difficult curriculum available at high school. If a student is really an English focused person…does she have to take AP Chem and AP Calc to be considered by Penn — considering she’s not into math at all?”
“And when I say ‘at all,’ I mean AT ALL. I ask her, ‘If I make you stay home and study 6 nights a week, how many nights can you spend reading for pleasure or watching movies with your parents?’ She just stares at me like she has no idea what the answer is! What an idiot!”
Read the rest of this entry »
As bloggers (and Tweeters!) and people who hope to one day be employed, we will most definitely be checking out a talk about “New Media’s Impact on Non-Political Journalism” tonight, given by New York Times columnist David Carr. You should too, because new media is exciting, there will be free food, and most importantly, this guy is really awesome! We’ll let the press release prove it:
David Carr writes a column for the Monday Business section of The New York Times which focuses on media issues including print, digital, film, radio and television. He also writes for the Media Decoder blog, a showcase for The Times’s extensive media coverage and a window on how the business of connecting with consumers is changing in the digital age. During awards season he writes a daily blog called The Carpetbagger about the Oscars. In addition, he appears in weekly videos that put a New York spin on the red carpet season.
The event will take place at 7 p.m. in the Terrace Room of Claudia Cohen Hall. If you’re not convinced that this is worth your time, read some of his writing! We’re partial to “Me and My Girls.”
Last week, the New York Times wrote about this thing called the Ivy Plus Society. Basically, a bunch of single ladies and guys who went to prestigious universities get together to network and bat eyelashes at one another. Anyone can pay the $15 and show up, but those without the proper pedigree will probably be cold shouldered and snobby-commented right out the door. You can read all about the Society here. Thankfully, no Penn alums are featured in the article, but as an Ivy League school, we can’t help but feel guilty and gross by association. Let’s take a look at some quotes.
If you thought the importance of where you went to college had withered with each passing day since graduation, this group is here to say it can be put back in the forefront, and on your name tag.
This reminds us of people who were still talking about SAT scores during NSO or girls in 11th grade who were still talking about who had the swankiest Bat Mitzvah. Can you imagine if those two groups of annoying people started a society where they talked about reading comprehension and DJs who gave out blow-up guitars and oversized sunglasses? Wait, maybe that’s a bad analogy because that actually sounds like a society we’d want to be a part of.
More after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »
Oh, this is gross. Our buddies at the New York Times wrote about a pair of Penn professors who joined a Delaware brewery to make some chicha, an obscure corn beer popular in South and Central America. Dr. Patrick E. McGovern, the scientific director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory, and anthropology professor Dr. Clark Erickson chewed and spit out corn into trays, converting the corn into fermentable sugars with the natural enzymes in their spit and ewwwwwwww.
The upside here is that if you’ve always hoped that your beer drinking would land you in the ole Gray Lady, keep that dream alive, my friend! But if you’ve been waiting for your corn regurgitation to get your name in print, sorry, that probably won’t happen now because they just did that. Check the link for some funny mid-chew quotes, a picture of a purple corn-stained mouth and repeated use of the phrase “salivated corn.”
Once again the New York Times has acknowledged Philadelphia’s awesomeness. Disguised as a piece on Philadelphia’s art scene, this week’s Art & Design section goes beyond Philly art to detail much of what we love about the city: murals, good eats and BYOs. As the article describes, Philly has lots to offer. (Duh.) Incoming Freshman: get excited, going to school in Philadelphia has its perks… according to us and some fancy pants New Yorkers.
It turns out we were a bit cavalier when we first presented you with our Summer Approval Matrix, letting you know just how cool you are, or aren’t, based on your June-August occupation of choice. According to the New York Times, the hottest thing to do this summer is… nothing. The powers-that-be at the Styles section inform us that our generation’s latest challenge, following years of over-involvement, is coping with underachievement. We’re not judging these victims of the recession. (We’re familiar with them. We ARE them. This post is being written in Mom and Dad’s kitchen, located smack in the center of Jersey suburbia.) It’s more that, keeping in the theme of the past week or so, we want you UTB readers to know that you are not alone. Also, we especially like the staging of the photograph, which depicts the following slacker activities: slurping milk from a cereal bowl, sitting on your ass watching YouTube videos/Facebook stalking/reading TextsFromLastNight, and floor-sniffing (oh wait, that’s just the dog).
Take that, Garden State
Most Penn students — as our summer exodus indicates — don’t usually think of Philadelphia as an exotic getaway destination. More accurately, for us, Philadelphia = Penn, which represents eight grueling months spent in Van Pelt (or for us classy kids, FFA) and a few blissful moments binge drinking our sorrows away. Therefore, any chance we get we flee to more “desirable” locales: Acapulco, Goldman Sachs, etc.
However, for the second time this month, the New York Times has given Philly props where props are due. This week’s Escapes section highlights Philly’s flourishing gardens. Street already outed Philly’s appreciation for plant culture, but who knew that we live amidst the country’s highest concentration of gardens? The article tours just five of the many, meaning there are more out there for you to discover.
So, for the few who stuck around this summer, no need to begrudge your NYC bound friends with their big shot internships and Saturdays spent in Central Park. Philly is clearly where it’s at.
Just so all you graduating seniors know, apparently your diploma is in Latin. And apparently this is a bit unusual. And quite pretentious.
For us Streeters, the Sunday edition of the New York Times makes every weekend a bit like Christmas. We devour the Style section, searching for Penn mentions in the wedding announcements and familiar faces in Bill Cunningham’s photos. We check to see if a professor of ours has made it into the Book Review or written something for the Arts section. We attempt the Sunday crossword, and we sneak a peak at those newsy sections, too.
So we were thrilled to see that our beloved Philadelphia got the Times treatment this week. In the Travel section’s “36 Hours in [insert city here]” feature, Philly gets all sorts of attention. There’s mention of the Cézanne exhibit, Silk City, Chifa, and the Magic Gardens. (And we admit, we were also pretty excited to see that Street has covered most of these places this year.) Though we doubt one can fully appreciate all Philadelphia has to offer in just a day and a half, we must say: well done, Grey Lady.
