Any current Penn students have any insight on this? I knew there was something off about the place, but what the HELL is going on here lately? 2 suicides in a few weeks / 4 student deaths since the start of Winter Break... would be ridiculous numbers for an entire school year at a huge state school wouldn't it?
A second University of Pennsylvania student has committed suicide almost three weeks after another student took her life, according to the Ivy League school's student-led newspaper.
College sophomore and math whiz Elvis Hatcher, 18, reportedly died on Tuesday after hanging himself, the Philadelphia Daily News reported.Hatcher's death marks the fourth Penn student death since winter break, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian. The most recent was 19-year-old freshman, Madison Holleran, who jumped to her death from a Philadelphia parking garage on January 17.
Source: "Second University of Pennsylvania student commits suicide in 3 weeks"
Yeah, it has been nuts reading all of the suicides. Like two of them within a couple of weeks.
There was a Chinese girl who killed herself the first week of the school year as well but it didn't make the news. On top of that we had 2 kids die over Xmas break.
As someone who goes to Penn currently, I have to say that none of this is a surprise to me at all.
I find it ridiculously depressing/unsettling/upsetting that I had not heard about the Chinese girl. The amount of press the track girl has gotten is kind of ridiculous too, the media is really really heartless at times. Flooding the aerticles with pictures and shit.
And as someone who went to Penn, I will also say that none of this is a surprise to me at all.
I've read through some of your previous posts and The BlackHat Interview is one of my bookmarked favs :) But I'm getting the feeling that you didn't really enjoy your time at Penn as an undergrad...is the culture of the school really that bad?
Found the article. http://www.thedp.com/article/2013/08/graduate-school-of-education-student-dies
She wasn't a pretty white girl though, so no one cared. Supposedly someone hung themselves on campus over summer break as well.
I don't know if it's as simple as "no one cares". Sometimes the parents don't want to disclose a suicide. There was a girl who died last year that was prominently featured in the DP, but they never mentioned that it was a suicide. Similarly, the guy who died over Christmas Break was found in his room off-campus, which raises some flags, but they haven't said anything yet.
I went to CAPS for a few sessions and found it to be useless... honestly doing shrooms helped me out more. They somehow got me in pretty quickly, but it's ridiculous that a person might have to wait two months to talk to someone.
I went too. It never helped, and I ended up getting referred out anyway, not that that helped either. I never had the experience of having to wait more than a few days or something, but I'm sure the traffic in and out of CAPS has gotten a lot higher since I was there. Who knows.
I heard the off-campus guy was an accidental overdose. Can't confirm that though, just hearsay, so don't take my word for it. Though I found it morbid/hilarious/inaccurate for the DP or whoever it was to report the other two Winter Break deaths as being by "natural causes." What natural causes kill a 20 year old? This ain't a nursing home.
Not a Penn student but I am a university student. These stories are really disheartening and it sucks that I'm hearing of them more and more frequently. This issue isn’t limited to a select few schools – it’s happening at schools across North America/Europe.
In fairness to the Penn girl, she jumped off a parking garage on sat in center city. Rather headline news for the city as whole.
The question is why ?
Do all of these suicides have to be directly linked to the school ? I mean those universities/schools are crowded of students so it doesn't appear shocking if 2 or 3 students on a large amount kill themselves (family issues, BF/GF break...)
Just trying to figure it out
Scary stuff! Went there as an exchange student last semester and have to admit that I'm really shocked to read about this. I'm not that familiar with the statistics, how much of this do you see at other Ivys?
I think you see mental health issues like depression/anxiety/stress on the rise at every university today. It's just something that you probably don't know about because it's not really visible - unless you know the signs/symptoms to look for. I think most students try their best to deal on their own especially if there's not enough awareness/support services available at your school. And it takes alot of mental grit to get through alone because most students don't want to be stigmatized or treated differently because of it.
Wow. Shocking and unsurprising at the same time. Looks like Penn is turning into Cornell / MIT.
I imagine you'll see this at any school where there is a lot of pressure combined with a lot of ambition.
Wow, MIT published this on their website http://web.mit.edu/~sdavies/www/mit-suicides/
Damn, that's a scary read...
First two sentences are pretty strange...
Aside, this news is pretty strange/disturbing.
Group Suicides per 100,000 Males ages 20-24 > 21.4 Females ages 20-24
Hm, I wonder why they stopped updating it after 2007.
BH has 5,700 posts so his opinion of Penn is the only one that matters
Reminds me of Cornell circa 2010...really disheartening.
man that was depressing. my heart goes out.
Indeed shocking that MIT would publish this. Must scare the jeepers out of some parents.
I don't think so...you look at some schools outside the US (like IIT for instance) and the problem is arguably even worse but that doesn't deter anyone. Also if parents were really that concerned about their kids mental well being they wouldn't bother sending their kid to a competitive east coast private school anyway...they would send them to a liberal arts college with lots of grass (no pun intended) or some big state school with lots of partying or something in California where the sun is always shining.
can anyone comment on the culture at penn? i go to a top 15 undergrad school, very competitive, but we arent on the east coast. kids are stressed out here but not suicidal. also isnt penn huge? so while they may have more suicides, is the suicide rate actually higher?
Current Penn student here. VERY pre-professional and competitive, especially Wharton. There's a ton of pressure to get a good GPA and move on to Wall Street, as investment banks seem to dominant the OCR process. Everyone here was top of their class in high school, and I'd say that half of the kids think that it's not worth it to kill yourself to get a slightly higher GPA and have a pretty healthy outlook, and the other half are always running around stressed out. From what I hear, though, that's pretty typical for an Ivy.
My personal opinion is that all of the coverage of Madison Holleran's death was pretty bad in that it romanticized suicide and may have helped cause the second one. The media played it up because she was a popular, attractive girl, which seems unfair to her family and friends. Just my 2 cents, though.
Penn is about 10k undergrads and 10k grad students. And I also heard that one of the deaths over break was a drug OD. Pretty decent drug culture at Penn (weed and coke, if you're into that)
CASTLE BROOOOOOOOOOO
I also heard the same thing.
It's not just coke and weed, though. Penn is a huge drug school. That "work hard, play hard" philosophy is almost a caricature. Factor in the absurd wealth of the student body and that it's in the city - pretty much everything is up for grabs. In my experience (wasn't in a frat) it was all sort of hush-hush until senior year, but there are a good number of Xanax zombies, percocet poppers, weekend MDMA warriors, psychonauts, raging alcoholics and eating disorders. How many schools are there where someone will casually ask if you want to try opium? And then there's Adderall, which hardly counts since it feels like half the student body is on it anyway and the deals go down in plain view in the GSRs and computer labs.
Maybe I knew a particularly drug-oriented crowd, but I doubt it...you never really know what the inconspicuous Jewish kid in FNCE207 is up to on the weekends.
FNCE207... Good times...
Not all recreational drugs are created equal and there is a massive difference between coke and weed. Cannabis is less poisonous than cigarettes and even molly isn't that that bad so long as it is pure. There is noting wrong with popping some MDMA while enjoying some EDM over the weekend. As a matter of fact soft drugs like these are a lot less destructive than a lot of the legal prescription drugs that go around. If anything, I think an active soft-drug culture can actually help mitigate stress and prevent suicides. Maybe Penn can open up a marijuana dispensary on campus. These things work better than psychological counseling.
I am curious what went thorugh Elvis Hatcher's mind thou. He seemed like a math prodigy of sort (graduating with math degree from Miami Dade college with 4.0 at 17 before attending Penn) who was also a very cool and artistic dude with diverse of range of interests who lived his life to the fullest, even appearing in a music video thanks to his sick dance moves. This does not look like the typical suicide profile of burned-out narrow-minded over-achiever type at all. Perhaps he killed himself for different reasons, like how genius sometimes go mad due to the burden of their ingenuity, a la Van Gough.
I think this article explains things most clearly (3 suicides at most; one natural cause):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2553185/Penn-sophomore-Elvis-Hatcher-hangs-just-weeks-19-year-old-freshman-committed-suicide-pressures-school.html
Hopefully all of this sheds some light on mental illness.
Speaking about Philly schools in general, my feeling is that a lot of that kind of thing is closed-doors for the most part. Meaning it's there if you want to get into it or if you know the right people, somebody can get their hands on it for you. Nova, Temple, St. Joe's, even Penn (though I'm not as familiar with the scene there), kids are going to have fun and pretty much do what they want. I don't think it's necessarily "fair" to label Penn or any another Philly school as a "huge drug school" because again, that kind of scene is on any campus if you're friends with the right people or are interested in recreational activities like that.
College can be a very dark time for some individuals, I'm def not surprised to see it happen at highly technical institutions like MIT or Cornell to an extent. The isolation one can feel when working on a difficult major can be intense, especially for very focused individuals. Not sure what's up with Penn, I would've thought the kids would've been more chill there or more focused on connections and than pressure cooker top honors status but I'm underestimating how driven many of them likely are...
It was really sad to read about these suicides in the news. That girl had so much promise and was so beautiful (its true and its valued sorry) and this guy was probably extremely intelligent and could've done great things. I'm 30 now and you just wish you could give those kids the perspective; not trying to dilute the power of depression though, which can overwhelm people at any age or level of perceived success
people who are really getting crushed under the workload and stress need to take fewer hours and get out more, who gives a shit if you take 5 years instead of 4, if you do great things with your time it will not matter. that's only part of the problem i'm sure but anything to help...
I am still young.. but still i realize that things like this are so sad to hear about. not just because someone died, but also because they killed themselves for reasons that are so insignificant. (assuming the suicides were largely driven by academic pressure - grades, school workload, etc)
Just imagine how some people must feel when they find out that they are diagnosed with cancer, HIV, or got hit by a truck and lost their limbs. Still, even with these huge adversaries, people try to move on with their lives.
Kids that even contemplate suicide because they didn't get the GPA they wanted at college are just very short-sighted about life in general. If you can't get top grades at an Ivy or what not, yet you really want the top GPA anyway, then just transfer to some easy state school and call it day. I reserve no sympathy for these folks, as cold hearted as that may sound.
Not to single you out, but this is why there needs to be more discourse on mental illness. There's a huge stigma associated with a person admitting that they have mental health issues. I can't speak for Madison Holleran or Elvis Hatcher, but it's a bit disrespectful to say you have no sympathy for them because other people have bigger problems.
Imagine waking up every morning feeling empty. All you want to do is sleep. Your food has no flavor, your favorite movies bring you no joy. You don't necessarily want to live or die, just cease existing. How nice it would be to not wake up tomorrow morning, that way you won't hurt your family. You know it's irrational, but your mind is your worst enemy. Maybe you tell your roommate that you think you might be depressed, and they go "If you have nothing to lose, go travel the world!" But what's the point? You don't feel anything as it is, how is it going to be any different if you're sitting in Turkey, not feeling anything. You try to go to CAPS, but it's a three month wait. It's a balancing act here: If you tell them you've thought about hurting yourself, they'll involve the hospital and your parents. Maybe they manage to squeeze you in, but the whole thing feels clinical, a lady running down a checklist, and it reminds you of the therapy you see in sitcoms.
Maybe you've built up a wall, know when to smile and what to say to keep up appearances. Make it to class and do your assignments, sleep the rest of the day but lie awake at night thinking about how worthless you are. And eventually you don't bother getting up for class, and your grades start to slip, or maybe you did keep trying and your grades slipped anyway and you got fucked during OCR. You can't even muster the energy to network, and let's say you get the job. Are you going to be happy? You can't begin to imagine a world in which you might be happy, forgot what happiness could even feel like. Your parents are wasting $60-fucking-thousand dollars a year to send you here, and you're just a disappointment. They say that suicide is selfish, that you're going to hurt everyone around you, but maybe they'd all be better off without you. You're a burden. Or maybe you're not, but the pain is too deep and the light so faint that you can't see yourself ever escaping from the cruel joke your body plays on you every waking moment. In the grand scheme of the universe, your life means so little, and the hurt is so immediate. So you write a note, apologizing, telling the important people in your life that you love them and that it isn't their fault (and you mean it), but this is the only way you could imagine finding peace.
Just food for thought...
That post actually sent chills down my spine. SB'd.
Wow dude mad respect. I appreciate your post, I have a close relative dealing with suicide and I was the one at the house who had to drag her to the hospital after she swallowed 20 zanex. I initially hated her at first, but I'm beginning to see from a different point of view. SB'd
That was deep. Respect bro.
Excellent, excellent post. Just ran out of SBs, otherwise I'd give you a bunch. As someone who has been there, and who unfortunately wasn't able to turn the corner until after I finished my undergrad work, I can relate 100% to all these feelings. People need to understand this isn't just a case of someone getting bummed out. True, real depression is one of the most destructive things that a human being can go through. It affects you physically, and affects everything you do. It is not something you can just wake up one day and decide to snap out of.
Described everything I'm going through.
I understand what you are saying, but depression can really screw you up. It's important to the understand that some people can very logically say, "I'm going to let go of this, I'm not going to let this bother me, I know it's insignificant and I know it's unhealthy" BUT their brain will not let them. It's like a trap, even if you want to break out and say fuck this I'm going in a different direction, your mind still won't go in that direction.
It's a sickness and it's very debilitating.
This is extremely sad. It seems like it has been going on nationally, but especially at the East Coast schools. The kid who hosted me on my recruiting trip to Penn also committed suicide. He was an incredibly nice guy, so I have no idea what was going on to push him to that point. I'm not sure if it's the pressure of the schools or something else. I wish I had some more insight to provide.
http://voices.yahoo.com/the-suicide-penn-state-football-star-kyle-ambrogi-48086.html
can't tell if you're trolling....
Definitely not trolling on a subject like this. I didn't think it was that high pressure of an environment. Most of the classes weren't even mandatory, so you could just cram before the test and knock it out. But quite a few would disagree with that assessment.
My undergrad was just as bad. At least one (frequently two or three) every semester I was there. Like clockwork.
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Today it's NYU, what a way to go.. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2557199/18-year-old-woman-dead-bag-head-committing-suicide-upscale-Manhattan-hotel.html
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To be honest, I've never been at that level (like never thought about self harm), don't take meds, and depression is personally something that ebbs and flows. Without appealing to emotion, dutchduke describes it best. It's a trap, and people who've been there probably understand the twisted logic that leads to such a desperate act, as well how fragile your mental health can be before starting down that path.
I'm not really the type to go for a direct appeal on a massive internet community, but this is an issue that a lot of us have dealt with (or still struggle with) that no one talks about. Someone reading this (maybe not now, but eventually) is or will be a depressed Wharton student or prospective monkey anywhere who doesn't want to admit that they're depressed, especially during OCR, and has tuned out the "Your life IS worth living" columns. There's no doubt that the voices in that discussion skew towards certain majors and genders. So I'm gonna quickly hijack the topic to say:
All you have is your health. Don't suffer in silence. It's such a multifaceted beast that I don't think there's any concrete advice beyond being brutally honest with yourself and seeking help if you need it. The world won't end, even if it seems like it. Penn has a way of making people feel that way.
If you are thinking about hurting yourself, please go to a doctor right away.
Don't self-medicate. Looking back (as much as I didn't want to admit it at the time), it's no coincidence that at my lowest I was also blacking out at the bar like clockwork. Casually mentioned shrooms in an earlier comment, and I'll stand by it in terms of my personal experience, but it's taking a huge gamble that the trip won't go bad and make things much worse.
DON'T self-medicate. Seriously. Thankfully this is not from experience, but from lots of reading. Do not fuck with benzos or painkillers. They might make you feel good, but that's a very dangerous path to addiction. If you're at that point, or messing with SSRIs or other prescriptions, you need to stop and see a doctor.
This and the earlier post you wrote were absolutely beautiful writing. It's great to see thoughtful responses rather than the usual 'harden the fuck up' crowd. Very well done.
I am not in the harden the fuck up crowd...depression is indeed real and serious. But comments like "penn is a very superficial place where people are judgmental" are both ridiculous generalizations and do disservice to people who suffer from actual depression which is a real mental disorder and not something brought on by not getting into your choice of fraternities.
Title should be "@"BlackHat" is back? What's going on here?"
Having gone to Penn, this isn't entirely surprising. So many of the top tier east coast schools have the same type of insanely competitive culture that drains you mentally. People aren't really built to deal with that type of environment, and when the weather is shitty it makes it even worse. Same thing was going on at Cornell in 2010 (although many of the suicides on campus were from Ithaca residents or past students) and the mental health office(s) aren't all that great at dealing with it either.
Current Penn student here.
To be honest, as tragic as these suicides are I have to say (like the other two Penn posters) that I am not at all surprised, and neither are most of my friends. This might not be a popular opinion, but it's a miracle that we've only had two. Anyone in administration who didn't see this coming has been walking around with the wool pulled over their eyes. For every Madison and Elvis there are hundreds of others who have thought about doing it, or have tried to but failed, either because someone interrupted in time or because they vomited the meds etc.
CAPS means well but they are largely out of touch and useless. They learned their craft from a textbook.
This school beats the value of external validation and projecting perfection into you since day one - frat/sorority rush, club applications, hell, even the way your "friends" in freshman year start triaging their relationships based on who might be of the most utility in terms of social connections or who looks the best next to them in their facebook albums. And then of course there's OCR, the most ridiculous beauty pageant of all. I've seen smart, good-hearted, hardworking kids with 3.8 GPAs land nothing for first-rounds because the entire game's just a freaking crap shoot. There's no rationality to any of it.
To anyone who's seeing themselves starting down this fing rabbit hole, and wondering if the problem is you, or the system - I'm telling you right now, 99% of the time, it's the fing system. Give yourself one more shot. It gets better.
Also current Penn student. Cannot agree more with this. So much blind judgment based on the most superficial of things: I have often seen people verbally express disdain when hearing about peers who take jobs in "less prestigious" fields like risk. The worse thing is that the culture spreads. I literally feel like a worse person than before I came here.
Not to be harsh but if you guys let others' perceptions of you have this much of an effect on your well-being that is a problem with you, not the environment. In the real world things are often very arbitrary and often judgements are made for superficial reasons....that's just life. There is no problem with Penn the school or Penn students as a whole...there are about 15,000 students so certainly such generalizations are absurd, and this type of scape-goat thinking is a cop-out.
this is sad but kids kill themselves sometimes...its not a problem relegated to east coast universities. my guess is that the suicide rate amongst the general population of 18-22 year olds is higher then it is amongst college students. Not to be a dick but this is a bit of rich people being shocked that real world problems effect them also.
Would be interested to see that stat too, since I'd actually think the opposite. In my experience the hungrier, poorer, etc. my friends were, the less likely they were to be depressed or suicidal because the mentality was different. The spoiled rich brat's unhappiness tends to derive from a very intangible, existential source because they don't have some obvious, tangible things to point to like not enough money, food, etc. Those kids end up holding onto that and lingering on it in their minds. My broke friends are working too long to feed the family to be able to get depressed and plan suicides during their ridiculous amount of unsupervised downtime in college.
That's only likely to hold water if the problem is something that one believes is potentially fixable. I mean, there's a reason Mr. Gekko always screens resumes carefully to deduce which kids are poor and hungry...they're better workers because they're trying to improve their lot and they know it's possible. But, let's say a kid goes blind or something...that's not a problem that anyone can believe to be fixable and he's not going to feel much better just because he has identified the precise source of his discomfort.
I would have assumed the same, but it seems the lower you make the worse off you are and the less you make relative to your neighbors, the worse off you are:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/suicide-rate-rich-neighborhoods_n_2102777.html
"Although people making less than $10,000 are 50 percent more likely to commit suicide than those with incomes above $60,000, the San Francisco Federal Reserve paper shows that comparing yourself to those around you might have a larger impact on happiness than personal net worth."
But, still it is mostly a white people problem: http://students.com.miami.edu/netreporting/?page_id=1285
It seems as if super intelligent people are more likely to commit suicide... something with their mental makeup.
Or are we just biased with stories of only generally "exceptional" individuals committing suicide?
The fact that suicides are now expected at some colleges is unnerving.
n/a
Another suicide 6 days back - truly tragic. http://www.phillymag.com/news/2014/03/21/university-pennsylvania-penn-t…
I just joined WSO, so I was unable to comment about this at the time. I'm going into sophomore year at Penn--frankly, these events were scary, especially as I was a freshmen when it all happened. Perhaps the scariest realization was when multiple articles cited that Madison's concern about her GPA and academic standing took a toll on her. I had a very similar GPA, and I did struggle a bit in my first semester.
The mention of GPA is just one minor detail, however. The main issue, as everyone is pointing out, is mental health. There's so much misconception about it. I am in no way an expert, but there are other factors that caused these suicides--it is not just stress. This is an ivy league school we're talking about, so stress is virtually inevitable. These suicides did raise awareness of stress levels, but it mainly raised awareness of mental health. I think it's great that the university has seemed to take an interest in mental health. More inspiring was the response from my peers. Everyone was affected by the terrible events, and everyone spoke out against holding everything in. it really helped generate--or, in my opinion, reinforce--an inviting and supportive nature that could be difficult to find at a competitive place like Penn.
Just saw this thread. Truly sad to see what happened at Penn this year. Undergrad applications were up 14% though, and yield was 66%, the highest in the Ivy League after HYP. Hopefully the suicides won't impact next year's numbers.
A couple of thoughts.
Penn is VERY pre-professional. The university revolves around Wharton, and the school's culture and ethos spill over into the other schools. For instance, lot of kids in the college who major in econ recruit for finance jobs since that's what everyone else wants. There isn't much of a cerebral intellectual environment like Yale where debate clubs and politics societies thrive on campus.
Undergrad culture and cohesion are weaker than some of the other ivies due to the lack of a formal house system and the division of the undergrad program into 4 separate schools as well as the numerous joint degree programs offered.
One effect of #2 is that people in less prestigious schools and programs feel alienated and insecure about their status at the school. This is further exacerbated by the fact that Penn is full of super bright kids who BADLY wanted HYPSM but didn't get in and hence already have a huge chip on their shoulders.
I'll second a lot of what you're saying here, especially the pre-professional environment. I had always heard about Penn being pre-professional, but I never quite understood what that meant until I heard engineers talking about wanted to do IB and consulting... during NSO! I don't think lack of a formal house system takes a huge toll on culture and cohesion, but it does play a role, as do other factors such as lack of school spirit (for sports) and the fact that it's one of the biggest ivies. That being said, I have found that Penn students find themselves in specific groups and niches that they feel comfortable in, which in some respect mitigates the downsides of the lesser cohesion. As far as your Third Point, I'll agree to an extent. Those people do exist at Penn, but there's the exact opposite as well; some Penn students feel lucky to be there, and often might question if they even deserve to be among their ultra-talented peers. Nonetheless, I agree with a lot of what you're highlighting, and I can see that that all might play a role in the buildup of stress at Penn.
I've found that amongst the Ivy League, Penn alums tend to be very unenthusiastic about their undergrad experience. Contrast this to Princeton, Yale, and Dartmouth alums, who cannot shut up about how awesome their schools are and how much they enjoyed their time there. If you look at alumni giving rate, Penn trails the other Ivies as well. I think this problem is rooted in the structure and culture of the school. Wharton plays a huge role in this, hence one reason why I've always been opposed to undergraduate business programs. They poison the school's culture, increase competition, and lead to divisions within the student body.
People respect the hell out of M&T kids because they put in fucking work and most of them are just on another level academically. Huntsman is kind of weird. Some really smart people, but also a ton of loaded international kids (not to say that the categories don't overlap). Admissions officers do a great job of convincing high schoolers that everything is meritocratic, but I think a lot of people (within the broader Penn community) are surprised/disappointed when they realize that Huntsman, by its very nature, trends towards the kind of jet-set international crowd that one's born into. I mean you can't fault a person for being rich, but at the same time you kind of have to laugh at how much of a caricature Penn can be.
Anyway. Demi-gods? That's one of the funnier things I've read in a while. I've never heard anyone talk like that in real life.
Same thing for Wharton MBA guys. Graduate programs are so self-contained that it's hilarious to imagine some 27 year old thinking of themselves as a "demi-god on campus". Jesus Christ.
Definitely agreed for M&T - all my friends in the program work insanely hard. Except for one friend, dude goes out at least 4 times a week and pulls a 3.9 lol. Huntsman is certainly interesting, but on the whole I'm a fan of them. And where's the love for Vagelos LSM? (joking)
M&T is one of the least rigorous undergrad programs in the country. Mad respect for them. Huntsman is cool, but there's huge variance in the outcome of the alumni. Some became extremely successful while others are floundering. On the other hand, the vast majority of M&T alums end up doing extremely well. Further proof that quantitative skills trump all.
Speaking of vagelos, is the legendary Ponzy Lu still teaching and tormenting students at Penn?
EDIT: I obviously meant "most" rigorous above.
Another one bites the dust. Tragic.
http://www.thedp.com/article/2014/09/gutmann-mental-health-email
^ Damn, RIP.
Very Disheartening
http://www.thedp.com/article/2015/06/timothy-hamlett-found-dead
...and another one.
In these cases everyone rushes to blame on "Depression" without really understanding what it means. They also forget that the definition of "depression" has crept significantly over the years to where it frequently doesn't refer to an actual mental disorder, but merely a state where someone has been emotionally beaten down to the curb.
From what I hear about UPenn it's not surprising. Everything I've heard is that the social environment there is toxic.
Is the social environment at Penn that much worse than other Ivies? I doubt that. My friends who went there liked it, although the wharton people did say that it was pretty competitive. The college though seems like a walk in the park; it's not very selective, and the classes there seem pretty easy. Penn is also known as the "social ivy" and it has a huge greek scene.
Is this a joke? Upenn is not selective? Classes seem pretty easy?
Exactly what high school did you go to? A country day school or other franchised semi-elite high school?
At most high schools a majority of students matriculate at in-state public universities and most definitely do NOT get into even lower ivies.
I went to a really good public high school. The smart kids in my class made fun of UPenn (non-wharton) and Cornell as the "third world of the ivy league." As I said, back when I applied to colleges, every reasonably smart kid with a pulse got into Penn (again, just the college and engineering, NOT Wharton, which is exponentially harder to get into) and Cornell. I'm sure things have changed since then.
Yeah this is completely retarded. Having gone to Penn I'm biased but getting into any school like Penn, Cornell, Chicago, Northwestern, etc... (well maybe not NU) is not typical even at a very good high school. Most kids are going to places like Georgetown, Tufts, NYU, Vandy, etc...
Also on the broader subject at hand -- Penn is only competitive if you convince yourself it is, and any "pressure" is either self-created or shamefully applied by parents/family. It's really self-reinforcing/self-fulfilling to a large extent. I had a great time at Penn, didn't take things too seriously, graduated with a middling GPA and still found good jobs in BB IBD/PE/HF.
Lol, what a bunch of geeks.
Brady's trolling guys. Roll with it.
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