“You’re living in Hill College House?! Why did you even put that down as an option on your housing list?” I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard people say that when I say where I’m living freshmen year.

Like most other freshmen in Hill College House, I put down Hill as my 4th choice, right behind the three college houses in the famous Quadrangle: Riepe, Ware, and Fisher Hassenfeld. Yet many wonder why Hill College House, also known as Hell College House, is such a horrible place to live. The answer is: it isn’t. Like many other aspects of the University of Pennsylvania, students come into Penn with a preconceived image about all of the residential houses. Just because the Quadrangle’s gothic architecture is much more attractive than Hill’s plain brick exterior, it is plastered all over advertisements and publications from the university to prospective students. As a result, students become fixated on living in the Quad, and it has become the main residential house for freshmen who want to party and have the best first year experience. Once a perception such as this is formed, prospective students from all over the world feed into it by seeking advice from biased upperclassmen who lived in the quad, and then spreading the word on College Confidential and every other conceivable blogging and social networking utility. Even my Penn tour guide fed into the frenzy, as she stopped in the Quadrangle to enthusiastically explain how “The Quad is the only place for freshmen to live if they want to network and meet a lot of people.”

Naturally, when I opened my housing results in the middle of the summer, eagerly waiting to see which part of the Quad I would be in, I was extremely disappointed when I saw the dreaded word: Hill. Actually, disappointment is an understatement. There was a general sense of anarchy among all freshmen who landed in Hill, as we immediately searched when and how we could transfer to the Quad. However, now that I have been in Hill College House for three weeks and accepted the fact that I am not moving to the Quad, I am happy that I ended up here. Who cares that the rooms are slightly smaller than average? It just forces one to bond with his or her roommate. Who cares that Hill has no AC? In a month’s time there will no longer be a need for air conditioning. Furthermore, I have found that more Quad people have been hanging out in Hill than vice-versa, as Hill is equipped with a cafeteria, entertainment center, and ample common space.

The point of the matter is that the misconceptions about Hill College House are only the tip of an iceberg of other false generalizations that incoming freshmen are led to believe. There are many college guide books and websites completely unaffiliated with the University of Pennsylvania that end up creating stigmas about the university that do not even exist. After all, I’m sure there are many fullyqualified students who would have applied to UPENN but decided that they did not want to be overshadowed by the supposedly over-driven, scary Wharton students. Needless to say, upon arriving on campus, I realized the whole tension between the Wharton school and the other three schools on campus was non-existent. Further to the point, most of the dual degree and Wharton students that I met ended up being some of the nicest and most modest students. However, when prospective students watch UPENN’s life on campus video at THEU.COM, they are led to a radically different conclusion. When the students interviewed on the video go on about how “Wharton is such a big deal on campus” and barely mention the other three schools, it is only natural for prospective students to make certain false conclusions about the university.

When official information about any university is so limited, and one can only get a true experience of campus life by enrolling as a student, the university needs to work on conveying an image that does not feed into any such stigmas created by external publications. One of the most common conceptions I’ve heard about Penn is that it is “the social Ivy.” I have no idea who coined this phrase, but it has surely stuck in the minds of a lot of prospective and full-time Penn students. I recall my tour guide summing up her presentation by explaining that we should come to Penn because it is the “social Ivy” and that the “work hard, play hard” mantra truly exists. As if a social Ivy League school isn’t an oxymoron by definition, I don’t think either of those brash statements are particularly good take-aways about life at Penn. First of all, while freshmen do travel in mobs to fraternity parties past 40th street, it would be misleading to assume that a partying atmosphere and social alcohol scene is ever-present. Secondly, “the work hard, play hard” generalization, as one of the speakers on Academic Life in the College said, assumes that one’s study is laborious work and that one’s play is devoid of any intellectual stimulation.

So far, I have observed that most Penn students are incredibly well balanced in the many facets of their lives, and that the numerous perceptions about Penn that worried me have proved false. While there are many predominant conceptions about life at UPENN, I am glad that I made my decision to enroll at Penn and chart an academic course based on my own observations, not the prevailing generalizations that are held on campus.