Chance Me ED/RD (legacy)

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
1

Demographics: white female from philadelphia (i live and go to school within city limits). I go to a private prep school.

Hooks: I’m a legacy at penn (my father went there four times lol), but he also works for the school. I would love to know how his faculty position affects my chances, as i literally can’t find information about this anywhere online. I’m also taking a class at penn this fall through the young scholar program. my school sends at least 10 people to penn every year (out of approx 120).

Intended Major(s): possibly polisci. I’m mostly undecided, something in the humanities.

ACT/SAT/SAT II: ACT 34. I took the Literature subject test and got a 750. just took the US History test in august so im waiting for my results, but i’ll retake in october if its not 700+.

UW/W GPA and Rank: weighted GPA is a 3.98. my school doesn’t calculate unweighted GPA and they don’t rank.

Coursework: I’ve taken all honors courses except for a few electives and two CP classes freshman year. This year I’m taking three APs: Lit, French, and Lang (at our school you can only take AP english senior year). My school only offers about 11 APs and you can’t take any until junior year though, so keep that in mind.

Awards: I’ve received the french award at my school three years in a row.

Extracurriculars:
-i interned at the penn museum for three weeks this summer
-I sing in a choir, i’ve done this all four years of high school and i’m in the most advanced group/level. were good lol (this is outside of school)
-I play the harp in a youth orchestra (since sophomore year). were good, there are some college students in the orchestra (also outside of school).
-I’ve taken harp lessons since I was nine (I’ll be submitting debussy’s arabesque no. 1 as my music supplement btw)
-last year i went to south africa with my choir for three weeks to tour and learn traditional south african music.
-freshman year i sang in an opera with my choir.
-I hosted a spanish exchange student for one summer, helping her learn english and doing everything with her for three months.
-I’ve done crew (building sets) for my school musical sophomore and junior year.
-I was the co-head of french club last year and I’m doing it again this year.
-I’ve been the videographer for my lacrosse team since freshman year.
-I did a summer program at Yale this summer, i know admissions reps don’t normally care about these but it really informed me about the subject/made me realize i might want to major in it.

Essays/LORs/Other: my parents hired me an essay coach so i think my essays will be good. i also bet that my LORs will be good because i have a strong relationship with the teachers i asked.

essentionally what i want to know is what are my chances for penn ED/RD? I know my chances will be better ED but im feeling really indecisive and not really ready to commit to that right now. Do i throw away my legacy advantage if I apply regular? and most importantly what does the faculty thing do for me?
any help is much appreciated, thank you!

2

Legacy boost is usually applicable only in the ED round. I would say the same for the bump for the child of a faculty but you are right, that’s a grayer area. What does your dad say? Your GC?

3

my dad knows faculty is a boost but he doesn’t know more than that. i’ve heard conflicting things from different counselors; some say all my hooks work against me in the RD round (because i should have applied ED with all my ties to the school), but some also say that i actually have a decent shot RD. you can see how this becomes a bit confusing lol

4

I agree that you should talk to your father.

5

While I’ve never seen published information on the acceptance rate for faculty children at Penn, as a result of the anti-asian bias lawsuit, there is information available for Harvard which “…accepted 46.7 percent of faculty and staff children…” who applied to the classes of 2014-2019.

Your ACT and GPA are in the ball park for accepted students. With the faculty bump and applying ED, you have a significantly better than average shot.

6

Thanks for statistic about Harvard! I didn’t know that and it really helps because I bet Penn’s admit rates for faculty are similar.

7

If your father is on faculty you have a much better chance. Princeton accepted 6 students from my DD’s class (2023) 5 of them had a parent on the princeton faculty.

8

There is great boost for being a child of faculty. Each college handles this differently. Some only give benefits to children of professors/assoc/asst profs. While others give boost to faculty + administrative staff.

As mentioned above, the recent Harvard case revealed how big of a boost. In terms of absolute numbers the odds are increased by 6.18 (518% increase). This is not as big of an increase as for legacy kids (odds 7.82 or 683%). Again this data is from Harvard College admissions, not sure how Penn handles things.

But given your grades and scores, I think you are almost certain to get accepted if you apply ED (as long as there are no negative dings in your reccs and you don’t have any disciplinary problems).

9

The problem with waiting until the RD round is that more than 50-60% of the seats will be filled by then. During RD the goal is to round out the class: geography, ethnicity, race, sex, balancing majors, etc. So during RD they have a lot less flexibility. Your chances drop a lot if you wait until RD to apply.