As an international student I decided to come study in the United States because I knew that I would be exposed to an array of opportunities that I would not have if I stayed back home. The expectations were already high; Penn is so much more.
I won’t talk about the pre-professional aspect, consulting, OCR part because everyone already knows about it. There is a lot more that Penn offers. As a pre-medical student, the moment I arrived at Penn I knew I made the right decision. There is a multitude of clubs that offer shadowing opportunities in HUP/CHUP, one of the most important hospital in the nation, suture clinics, first aid/CPR classes, talks, doctor dinners etc. Here at Penn we have the opportunity of having hospitals on campus that allow students in the operating room, emergency rooms and the clinics. One of the best opportunity that Penn offers is research. I knew that Penn was a research before arriving here but I did not really know what that meant and how that would affect me. Now I do. Studying at a research means that your professor is mentioned in your textbooks and are Nobel Prize winners. They will talk to you about their research in class and will get really excited about it. When teaching a new topic and talking about a discovery, they won’t fail to mention that it was done here at Penn. If you want to get research experience and work in a lab you will be overwhelmed by all the options that you have, will spend weeks going through a tenth of the labs and won’t be able to decide on which one is your top choice.
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