iLurk

This is remarkably untrue and I feel compelled to correct it for anyone else considering living in Philly. I'm not sure what the "metro" is in Philly. I do know that from old city you can take the El to 30th, 34th or 40th and market. You can also take the regional rail to university city (roughly 32 and south of walnut, near Franklin Field/Penn's Hospital complex). Further there are trolleys that run through the area as well as buses. You wouldn't have to walk 25 minutes to Wharton if you lived in Old City and you certainly could get closer than 30th and Market on non-bus public transit. If you're really cheap, you could live in old city, walk to regional rail (market east I guess) and hop on any westbound train. Get off at University City and you won't have to pay. Technically there's a fare for that trip but it's never collected. 99% of the time they don't take tickets until they leave the Center City zone. Penn also offers (or at least used to) a really cheap semesterly transit pass. I bet other schools do too. I think it was like $90/semester whereas the regular pass was like $70/month. Those numbers could be off, this was four/five years ago.