Study what you love!

I think an important part of the Penn education that often gets overlooked is the opportunity students have to study what they truly love during their four years. We walk on to College Green that first day as a freshman, and a world of choice is available to us, something that is really taken for granted by American students. So embrace it! Rather than feeling obligated to study something "useful," take the linguistics class about the creation and evolution of languages or the comparative literature class about different narrative styles across the world.

Or, just feel lucky that you're not a student in a country like, say, Spain, where your college entrance exam determines what you study. Spanish students who score in between certain marks must study history, for example, while higher-scoring students are admitted to fields such as law or medicine. Rather than choosing majors and minors, Spanish students start in their respective departments in their freshmen year. Ugh!

So test the waters, and explore different majors and minors, either online or at Penn itself when you take a visit. The admissions office has a list of classes that you can sit in on to get a feel for academics at Penn. It's your duty as a prospective Penn student to push the envelope and find what really interests you, because you have the rest of your life to do something useful, but only four years to be a Penn student!