Freshman Action List

Dear Members of the Class of 2017,

The time has finally arrived: you have been admitted to Penn. You’ve been thinking about college for years, worrying about getting in, and now you are accepted. Now what happens? First, you tell us you are coming. What happens next is an adventure, I promise you.

Your four years in the College of Arts and Sciences will astonish, anger, amuse, and challenge you. You will surely find everything you need here to blaze your way to a brilliant career, but we hope you will also experience the pleasures of learning for its own sake. This is the one time in your life when all we ask of you is to learn, to think, to experiment, to dream.

As the faculty, advisors and staff of the College of Arts and Sciences, our goal is to guide and inspire you in the next four years. It is widely recognized that a liberal arts education is the strongest foundation for success in business and most professions. What is just as important, however, and what will remain with you for the rest of your life, is the excitement of discovery and the pleasures of the life of the mind that are at the core of that experience. Bring to Penn all the considerable talent, energy, and intelligence we saw in you when you were admitted, and we promise you will not be bored.

This web site and the Freshman Videos provide much of the practical information that you need to know to get started at Penn and to plan your way through the next four years. It can seem like a bewildering excess of information, since the College offers nearly 2,000 courses and approximately 50 majors, but with the aid of your teachers and advisors and your own intellectual curiosity, you’ll come to make sense of it.

I look forward to seeing you on campus.

Sincerely,

Dr. Dennis DeTurck
Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Mathematics

Dear Incoming Freshmen,

The transition from high school to college is one of the biggest challenges in a young person’s life. Though they may be aware that college offers a very different learning and living environment than the one to which they are accustomed, many will not truly appreciate how significant this difference is until they have become immersed in their new lives.

At Penn, students will spend far less time in class than they did in high school–on average, about 12 to 15 hours per week. The remainder of their time is unstructured, and the challenge is to find a way of organizing this unstructured time in a manner that ensures the students’ ability to do well in their academic work while still taking part in the life of the campus. For many Penn freshmen, the learning process that this adaptation entails is like a course in its own right.

Advisors, professors, house deans and other members of the Penn community stand ready to help, but students must understand an important fact: These people will all assume that the students with whom they work are adults, capable of making their own decisions, understanding the consequences of their actions (or inaction), and seeking the information and help they need when they need it. Ultimately it is the student who must take responsibility for the decisions he or she makes. The section of this site that deals with Advising and Support provides listings of people and services that can help. In particularly, I would like to introduce you to the College Office, your academic home base for the next four years. The advisors in the College Office are available to help you chart your undergraduate career, find answers to your questions and take  best advantage of the resources and opportunities available at Penn.

We look forward to greeting you in person this fall.

Sincerely,

Dr. Janet Tighe
Dean of Freshmen and Director of Academic Advising