Penn Courses
If I were to redo Penn, which courses would I take first? This is a function of (1) amount of knowledge acquired (2) relevance of knowledge (3) enjoyment of course. So it's a personal question. If you think we're similar, you'll find this ranking helpful.
| Semester | Rating (/4.0) | Course No. | Title | Prof | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F25 | 3.3 | STAT 5350 | Forecasting Time Series | Stine | My first high-level STAT class and it was a thrill. Professor has both applied and academic experience. First half of the class is much faster paced. Second half kind of falls flat (lectures become redundant). |
| F25 | 3.2 | CIS 1210 | Data Structures | Arvind | Cool graph algorithms, building off CIS 1600. Lectures were a little slow sometimes. |
| F25 | 2.6 | BEPP 2030 | Public Policy in Markets | Anagol | Lots of cool class conversations but the class is really slow at times. |
| F25 | 2.2 | STAT 5710 | Modern Data Mining | Not sure why this class is called data mining? Good intro to beginner data science techniques. | |
| F25 | 1.6 | BEPP 2500 | Managerial Economics | Vairo | After AP Econ and FNCE 1020, 95% of this class is review. |
| SUM25 | 3.6 | CIS 2620 | Theory of Computation | Ananya | This class develops a formal notation for the study of problems and algorithms. Computation is cool, Turing is cooler. Can we find anything non-computable? |
| SUM25 | 3.4 | CIS 2400 | Intro to Computer System | Farmer | Class organization is excellent. This is the first course every CS major should take. |
| S25 | 2.7 | FNCE 2500 | Venture Capital | Sylvain | Sharp professor. Good applied Wharton class. |
| S25 | 2.1 | FNCE 1010 | Monetary and Global Economy | Saka | Well organized, good scope, natural extension of AP Macro Econ. Still a slow class. |
| S25 | 1.0 | ACCT 1020 | Strategic Cost Analysis | Bunch of random accounting terms and frameworks to memorize that take 2 seconds to intuit. | |
| S25 | 0.9 | OIDD 1010 | Intro OIDD | Think Algebra 1 word problems. Not joking. | |
| S25 | 0.8 | STAT 1020 | Business Stat 2 | Gupta | Isn't this the same content as STAT 1010? Why are both required? Also, each exam is a copy of the practice exam. Easiest class I've ever taken and really needs to be looked over. |
| F24 | 3.8 | CIS 1600 | Discrete Mathematics | Rajiv | Socratic lectures are fucking electric. Many new topics. Rigorous proofs. Very satisfying. |
| F24 | 3.1 | ACCT 1010 | Intro Accounting | Schauflete | Wharton's strongest business fundamental. Accounting is an excellent framework to understand businesses. |
| F24 | 2.0 | WH 2010 | Business Communication | Good practice with public speaking. You also make friends with people since classes are tiny. | |
| F24 | 1.9 | STAT 4300 | Probability | Cai | This class is mandatory for all STAT majors - unfortunate it is taught poorly. You are just thrown a bunch of example problems in class that professor solves (with little to no explanation / grounding theory). Organization of materials is bad and difficult to prepare for exams because you don't know what's on it. Still, you learn about common distributions (multivariate too) and get to do some calc. |
| F24 | 1.8 | FNCE 1000 | Intro Finance | Dresler | If you get time value of money, and have basic EV calculations, this class is kind of redundant. Lectures feel slow. |
| S24 | 3.0 | CIS 1200 | Intro Functional Programming | OCaml is awesome and I learned a lot from functional paradigms. The worst part about this class is that half of it is Java. | |
| S24 | 1.4 | STAT 1010 | Intro Business Stat | Mandatory for all Wharton students... so much potential! Unfortunate the class is poorly organized. Definitions are thrown at students without the intuitions behind them. Half the kids walk away without knowing that variance is expected squared surprise. | |
| S24 | 1.3 | MGMT 1010 | Intro Management | Good if you want definitions of corporate management techniques. Bad if you want to understand what makes good management. | |
| F23 | 3.7 | COML 1020 | Marxism | Biareshyk | Eccentric and unfiltered professor who cares about what he teaches. I had been a "common sense capitalist" for so long. I walked away with an appreciation for Marx' genius and theory of labor. Peer group is quite a different set than traditional Wharton kids - so new faces and perspectives. |
| F23 | 2.8 | RELS 1730 | Intro to Buddhism | McDaniel | Professor is one of the coolest guys I've met. But the lecture content just felt generic and not as metaphysical as I liked. Maybe I was expecting enlightenment. |
| F23 | 2.5 | LGST 1010 | Law and Social Values | Smollen | Discusses legal precedents in business settings. Wish it was more technical. |
| F23 | 2.4 | MGMT 2130 | Entrepreneurship through Acquisition | Perelman | The concept of ETA is pretty cool. But professor is a serial entrepreneur, not a serial lecturer. |
| F23 | 1.5 | WRIT 0770 | Writing Sem for Adam Grant's Originals | Very nice professor but discussion of Originals is pretty surface level. Standard for writing felt like 8th/9th grade writing. | |
| F23 | 1.2 | WH 1010 | Business and You | What was the point of this class? Bullshit on teamwork, leadership. Ugh. I lost faith in Wharton curriculum after my first lecture. |
Caveats:
- Ranking probably depend on the specific order of classes that I chose (maybe choose differently!)
- Rankings have varying confidence... because I barely attended lectures of some courses. More relevant for bad courses.