Does Penn not like my school?

I think Penn doesn’t like my school, yet I love Penn - take a look and tell me what you think:

  • 33 applied from the past 5 years to Penn with very decent stats and 32 of them rejected
  • The 1 that got accepted must've been an athlete or had a major hook because he had close to a 3.5 and 1900 on SAT
  • Also the 1 that got accepted denied the offer to Penn
  • 2 of the 33 applied early and both got rejected
  • One person a few years ago had a perfect 2400, 4.7 GPA (highest ever achieved in school history), and 800s on SATIIs
  • Another person had a 36 ACT, high level research with Stanford professors, and applied early
  • Both above got flat-out REJECTED (A&S and Eng. respectively)

Does uPenn have something against my school? Does the regional officer not like where I am from? Or is it the fact that the students from my school are simply not apt enough to get in?

This is really important as I was considering Penn for ED, as it is one of the schools I love in terms of academics and social life. At the same time I don’t want to throw out an ED chance on something I can’t control - if it is in fact the case that my school doesn’t work well with Penn. All opinions count, thanks!

Statistically speaking 3 people should have been accepted. They don’t appear to hate your school. They are HIGHLY selective. This is not surprising.

I’m not sure how others will respond to your query, but i know it is very possible for certain universities to have “beef”, so to speak, with certain high schools. To give you an example, years ago a student from my school broke an ED agreement with Brown (and not for one of the allowed reasons). Brown has rejected many qualified applicants from my school since- even going so far as to reject legacies with very wealthy alumni parents. One student in the past 8 years from my HS has gone to Brown (and she was a recruited athlete). To give you an idea of the caliber of the student body, we send approximately 10-12 students in a graduating class of 95 to an Ivy-league school. So it is very possible for a university to blacklist a high school.

While it’s theoretically, in some other dimension of the universe, possible for a college to blacklist a high school, it is simply not a plausible explanation for what is going on in any of the situations listed above. The ivies have billions of dollars and tens of thousands of applicants-- they don’t have issues with individual high schools and they aren’t penalizing students for the behavior of those that came before them. These are the most selective schools in the world. It is not abnormal for great high schools to fail to send any kids to certain ivies for several years in a row. If it’s your top choice, you should just apply and see where the chips fall. There is absolutely no evidence that exists to indicate that any of these colleges care about specific high schools or ED contracts of previous students or any of this other stuff. And there is tons of evidence that these schools just want the best students they can find to build a class, no matter what high school or background these kids come from. I once heard a stat that Harvard could fill its class at least twice with applicants who scored perfect 2400s on the SATs. Of course, they choose not to because nobody wants a class of 2400 SAT scores. All of that is just to say that the competition is ridiculous. If kids from your school aren’t getting accepted its exclusively because of that competition and not the university’s relationship with your school. It can be jarring to see students who you would otherwise consider qualified to be rejected from their dream schools but with over 35,000 great applications to places like Penn and Harvard, it’s simply a fact that some of the most impressive-seeming candidates just won’t get in.

If you love penn, then apply! Maybe you’ll be the person to break the streak.

Penn had not taken any student from my high school for the past five years before last year. They took two.

It is morally wrong to punish a high school, and I do not think that it is allowed by any university.