<p>Penn values diversity a lot. It is splashed all over their brochures. They like to have a mix of students - not simply a class of high school toppers with perfect SAT scores and an unbeatable GPA who devote tremendous time to academics. </p>
<p>Penn goes beyong academics into the overall development of a student and having a diverse bunch of students exposes each one to a range of varying cultural values and traditions. And as Globalization is the name of the game in this the 21st century - Penn seems to be exactly in line.</p>
<p>Indeed this artitcle does date back to kingdom come but a number of the procedures are still followed. I doubt Penn would have changed their admissions process , given that they have produced outstanding candidates for the past 10 years. </p>
<p>As Chanman would say : Intresting , Very Intresting.</p>
<p>What constitutes "not performing well"? I don't know what Penn would qualify as not performing well, but in the article that girl with the B's and "rigorous curriculum" wasn't up to performance standards since she wasn't accepted (but was also lacking in other areas). It varies on the school, but I would say B's are alright in as long as some upward trend is observable. But then again, there are so many different factors involved in admissions that you can't narrow down the influence of a single variable on the final decision, and you can't determine what's acceptable for each criterion.</p>
<p>What gets me about the admissions process is that if your counselor's been having a bad day or a particularly excellent day, your decision can change (if you are just right on the borderline). I know this realistically doesn't affect many people and that multiple people look at your app and so on so forth, but there's just so much error and ambiguity in the process. Obviously it's confusing!</p>
<p>"Penn values diversity a lot. It is splashed all over their brochures."</p>
<p>lol... the whitest schools in America probably have the same displays of diversity on their brochures... :) I love how many schools round up their Native American population percentages to 1% even if it's just one person out of 10,000.</p>
<p>I have seen the brochures of all the Ivy leagues save Princeton. In contrast to those , Penn does seem to value higher diversity. Of course it could be a mere display but my cousin who is at Penn says there indeed exists a diverse group of students in his classs the Clas of 2009.</p>
<p>One A native american out of 10000? Exaggeration exaggerated.</p>
<p>I wasn't challenging whether Penn is diverse or not. Just saying that all brochures look essentially identically, with the same crest toothpaste smiles and seemingly diverse student bodies and the same quotes about how your future starts today.</p>
<p>I think or I can only hope that every counselor keeps in mind he/she could be determing the future of a student - and thus remain neutral. Only solution is to be really close to your counelor:P!</p>
<p>Crest toothpaste?:S? : Isn' that one of the adverts shown during the World Cup telecast?</p>
<p>Not buying"diversity" argument - some people are apparently more "diverse" than others. If your ancestors are from Ethiopia you are "diverse" but if they came from 50 miles across the water in Yemen, you ain't. Does moving from Scarsdale to White Plains make you "diverse", or moving from MA to KS? This makes no sense. They only want certain kinds of "diverse" that fit their views. Someone who was say a fundamentalist Christian would have views that would definitely "add diversity" to the classroom but that's not the "right" kind of diversity. "Diversity" is just a buzzword for "we get to discriminate in favor of the groups that we like."</p>
<p>Im an International so I dont understand a word of the Scarsdale White Plains jazz.
Diversity is certainly not a 'buzzword' at Penn. Why would the admissions committee have any bias towards people in Ethopia as compared to those in Yemen , citing your own example. Thats ridiculous.</p>
<p>I can understand that for internationals the whole system here doesn't seem to make sense, 'cause it doesn't really.</p>
<p>If your ancestors are from Ethiopia you are an "African-American" which is one of the favored categories called 'underrepresented minority" (URM) and they spot you a couple of hundred SAT points, generally speaking. If your grandfather was from across the water in Yemen you're not a URM, just an Arab or Asian or something that doesn't help you get in. Originally this was supposed to help the descendants of American slaves, who had a long history of being discriminated against in the US. But I read that an increasing % of "African Americans" who are actually getting in are from families that are really recent arrivals in the US . No one quite knows what to make of this kind of "African American" (like the American presidential candidate Barack Obama). Once you set up this kind of system where it "pays" to be something, you have all kinds of people playing the system - people who suddenly "remember" that their families are really American Indians or Hispanic or something. </p>
<p>Scarsdale is a very wealthy suburb of New York City, like the Beverly Hills of NY. White Plains is a little less wealthy (though it's not really poor, so I don't know why they picked that as their example - maybe because their schools are not as good as the Scarsdale schools - 10 years ago the gap might have been bigger) They mentioned a kid in the article and they said he was from a community that was in-between - "not Scarsdale but not White Plains either." I read this as implying that it would have been better in the admissions committee view to be from White Plains.</p>
<p>I have a problem with the article in comparing some of the things stated with what most of us on CC 'know ’ to be true. From the article (marked as <<)</p>
<p>Scarsdale is a well to do westchester community who contribute much into their schools via taxes. This means smaller class size and better teachers who are well paid. These students do have an edge and their scores and grades may reflect where they went to school. On the other side is White Pllains, a neighboring town of Scarsdale and in westchester county as well. This school is closer to thr average suburban school. Less money is contributed to schools ie larger class size and great teachers are not attracted to work there. Don’t get me wrong they are good teachers…some better than Scarsdale ones but-- larger class sizes means less one on one with students. These schools curve down fron Scaesdale with scores and grades. That is the point, students from White plains should not constanly be rejected because of less than stellar grades or scores. Therefore like grades are curved and student A from Scarsdale with a 3.8 GPA and student B with a 3.7 GPA from White plains may be seen as equal. Also if only 2 applicants from White Plains applies to an IVY school and 20 from Scarsdale then the White Plains students may get the edge because of the desire to pull in students form diverse communities as well. How would it look if UPENN accepted students were all educated in very rich pockets of America??? Not good for them.</p>