Years 1-2 of undergrad study
During your first two years of undergraduate study, aim to:
- Make the most of your intellectual opportunities at Penn by excelling academically
- Engage in activities in which you are genuinely interested
- Educate yourself on current issues in your fields of interest
- Determine how you can work with others to help solve existing problems
- Engage in service to help others beyond Penn's campus
- Enroll in small classes such as Freshman Seminars that allow you to get to know Penn faculty well
- Explore research and independent study opportunities to dig deeper into the questions that interest you
- Enroll in Penn graduate courses in your areas of interest
- Maintain and strengthen connections with faculty and others seeking to solve problems that perplex and engage you
Once you identify a problem or issue you wish to address, engage with Penn faculty and others who are working on the problem:
- Learn from others working on the problem, and contribute your ideas to efforts to solve it
- Seek advice from faculty work on the problem, and ask them how you can learn more
- What solutions have been attempted?
- Why have efforts to solve this problem fallen short?
- Determine how you might contribute to finding a solution to the problem
- Seek assistance from others, and take action to solve the problem
- Take initiative to demonstrate leadership on and beyond campus
As your interests develop, you should be moving from broad questions (e.g., the power dynamics of nonprofits) to more specialized issues (e.g., Has anyone looked at how effectively psychiatric care is administered for geriatric patients in country X, and what can be done to improve it?)
Ask yourself: How am I going to improve the world?
Years 3-4 of undergrad study, and alumni and grad students
In addition to the steps above, juniors, seniors, alumni, and grad students should begin to focus on next steps:
Potential applicants seeking UK degrees should identify specific academic programs you wish to pursue:
- Seek advice from your Penn faculty mentors to identify key faculty and departments in the United Kingdom (UK) and elsewhere
- UK applicants should use the keyword search at Prospects.ac.uk to identify available UK grad programs
- Use the UK government's Research Excellence Framework 2021 ranking of UK graduate programs to identify the strongest and most appropriate UK graduate degree programs that fit your interests as determined by UK faculty. This is an extremely useful snapshot of the quality of graduate programs based on the academic strength of departments at UK universities as determined by UK faculty, and helps dispel the myth that Oxford, Cambridge, and the best-known universities in London are the strongest academic programs in all fields. Instructions on how to use the REF 2021 results by subject
- Once you have identified departments with strong programs in your field, review the department's website and the "Courses" they offer
- Use CURF's resources to identify potential courses of graduate study
- Finally, use the Fellowships Directory to determine which fellowships potentially fund your chosen course of study