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  • Hi, this is Simmy Gramolini here for EducationUSA and today I'm talking with Maxine Mendoza,

  • a representative of the University of Pennsylvania

  • Thank you for coming for talking with us today. Thank you for having me.

  • So what about UPenn in terms of undergraduate admissions

  • for the international student

  • I know you're a very big research-oriented

  • facility and you have a very large student body, good funding and everything so what kind of opportunities

  • do you have for undergraduate students involved different kinds of research?

  • Sure, so as far as

  • the size of our university, so our undergraduate student population is just under

  • ten thousand,

  • so by US standards that actually makes us about a medium-sized

  • university.

  • And you're right that we are primarily a research university,

  • research is something that certainly draws a lot of our applicants to Penn

  • and I think one of

  • things that they know that they will receive at Penn

  • is an incredible amount of access to those opportunities.

  • We tell students that they can get involved in research

  • as early as their freshman year

  • and research sort of happens all over campus but really the center

  • of research

  • is a place known as CURF

  • which has an incredible website

  • and which stands for the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowship

  • so this is a center on campus and you might notice the word "undergraduate "

  • in the title of this center and it's a place where students

  • can go and meet with the staff and the faculty there and the advisors and talk about their interests

  • interests and staff there will work to connect them with research opportunity

  • whether it is

  • doing medical research in one of our labs on campus, our many labs ,

  • or whether it's more arts-orientd research. There's also a lot of funding

  • for our undergraduate students to take on their own projects so undergraduate

  • research grants that they can apply to

  • as well as many internships

  • throughout the city, in New York, and also abroad that they can apply for.

  • Fantastic! We talked a lot about

  • research and everything

  • but how exactly does it work for the arts programs?

  • I know a lot of big funding goes into research

  • and that's where a lot of people focus

  • but with such a big school I'm sure you have great programs in arts, in music, in all different types of fields.

  • So within our liberal arts school, which is the College of Arts and

  • Sciences, we certainly have fabulous departments. We have the department of fine art,

  • the department of

  • visual studies which is an interdisciplinary major focusing on

  • sort of the culture of

  • seeing,

  • we have a fabulous art history department

  • as well and a music department .

  • But for a student, certainly being in a city like

  • Philadelphia

  • just opens up a whole world for them. We have incredible resources

  • on our campus, we have world class museum s our students are involved in,

  • so Philadelphia Museum of Art,

  • the Barnes Foundation, the Barnes Collection on our campus

  • as well as the Rodin museum.

  • On Penn's campus we have an art gallery called the Institute of Contemporary Art

  • so students can take certain courses that are actually housed in the art history

  • department

  • where they're able to curate exhbitions as a group

  • that will actually be shown in these major

  • exhibition spaces. Certainly students can

  • take advantage of the city which has a lot of connections with Penn.

  • As a Penn student you get to know the city very well, we see it as sort of an urban

  • laboratory for our students to kind of test drive their ideas in a real-world setting.

  • Okay, so you talked a lot about the connections you have with Philadelphia

  • the internships you can take there, museums you can visit,

  • resources and facilities within the city

  • So I'm wondering

  • in terms of international students who are coming to the US, maybe for the first time, maybe to a new city,

  • or even if they've been there before,

  • how exactly does the sense of community work at UPenn?

  • Is it very much a campus space?

  • Or how do students end up meeting each other

  • and everything?

  • This is such a great question, because when you think "city school"

  • you visualize this place that's a little bit

  • disparate and incongruous but actually we are one cohesive campus

  • within the large city Philadelphia. So all of the buildings are on a residential

  • campus, so I think that really

  • contributes to our sense of community.

  • For international students, I mean, we have many global voices on our campus.

  • We have

  • overall 109 different countries represented in our student body

  • so you never know who your roommate is going to be, which is great,

  • and we are overall 14% international.

  • International students are involved in so many different organizations,

  • there's the Assembly of International Students or AIS

  • and they're a community that promotes the interests of international students

  • on the campus. They do things like meeting the new freshman at the airport when they arrive

  • to make them feel welcome ,

Hi, this is Simmy Gramolini here for EducationUSA and today I'm talking with Maxine Mendoza,

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