This article was originally published in Penn's Red and Blue magazine, and was the winning entry for the 2012 "You are Penn" story contest.
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3 sisters, 6 Penn Degrees
- by Smita Jain
Brunches at White Dog. Saturday morning runs along the Schuylkill. First Fridays in Old City. Pub.
There are so many memories that my sisters and I share of Penn. It was the place where we forged our deepest friendships, expanded our sense of self, and learned new ways of being and thinking. Among all the experiences we’ve shared together so far, our collective Penn experiences -- spanning 15 years, 6 degrees and 3 schools – have perhaps left the deepest imprint on us.
Penn has had an invisible pull on my family since my older sister Sarika (Eng’02, WG’08) first stepped onto campus as a bright-eyed Engineering student in 1998. I couldn’t believe her stories when she came back home to India for vacations: she had friends from all around the world, participated in marathon computer programming sessions with brilliant minds, and had taken her love for salsa to new levels.
When it came my turn to pick colleges, it wasn’t hard for her to convince me that Penn was the place to be. Having attended high school in urban India, I dreamed of a liberal arts education in a beautiful American college campus that had a small town-meets-big city feel. With its unique blend of West Philly character, hip downtown scene and verdant parks, she was sure that I would love Philadelphia.
Looking back, I can’t imagine having had such an amazing college experience anywhere else. I kicked off my Penn experience with PennQuest, hiking through the beautiful Appalachian mountains with a handful of my new classmates, some of whom would remain my closest friends years later. PennQuest almost seems a metaphor for my Penn experience: a shared journey with an unknown destination, with rich learnings, challenges, laughter, and close friendships along the way.
My younger sister, Monica (C’07, WG‘13), needed a little more convincing. She started her undergraduate career at a liberal arts college in the South, but the lack of diversity proved difficult to adapt to. During her first year, when she reported her concern to her sisters that her fellow classmates always confused “India” with “Indiana”, Sarika and I knew that the Penn pull was needed. Not surprisingly, she started up at Penn the following year! She immediately found a comfortable home at Penn, sharing a particularly close bond with fellow transfer students from around the world.
We had each cherished our Penn undergraduate experiences. So when the time came for us to pick our graduate schools, after several years in the professional world, we each independently decided that MBAs were right for us. And what better school than our beloved alma mater, with the number one business school program in the world!
So soon enough, Penn had wielded its inexorable pull on us again. Sarika went to Wharton to study strategy, while Monica (who is currently in her second year at Wharton) and I went to study finance. Our Wharton experiences have been completely different from our undergraduate experiences, in new and exciting ways. With its emphasis on global learning and professional development, Wharton taught us lessons in leadership and management that went far beyond the classroom, indeed even to the far corners of the world. With the support of an 800-strong class of tremendously talented classmates, we learned how to design strategies, build financial models and lead campus organizations to address complex global problems. My sisters and I have each had our unique experiences at Penn, but the synergies that have emanated from our shared network of friends, professors and classmates have been unparalleled.
My parents, who are all too familiar with Philly by now, are scheduled to attend Monica’s graduation in 2013.
As much as they love Penn, they are wondering if we’ve had enough Penn degrees for a while…at least until the next generation of the Jain family!
We are a Proud Penn family!
