<p>I have been told that Penn and the City of Philadelphia have some sort of deal whereby Philadelphia residents have a heightened chance of admissions (some sort of deal whereby a certain number of Philadelphia residents must be admitted). I know about the Mayor's Scholarships but that is just aid. Does anyone know if this other agreement about purely admissions exists?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>In order to have that much aid, they have to admit enough kids. The definitions for the Mayor’s Scholarships have changed over the years, and are now regional rather than limited to the city, but effectively it still represents a commitment to admit far more students from Philadelphia and its suburbs than any other comparable college is going to admit.</p>
<p>With the possible exception of MIT, ALL of the top universities (and non-top universities, too, for that matter) admit local applicants disproportionately (with different definitions of “local”). Some of that isn’t so much a local preference as the effect of preferences for children of faculty and staff (all of whom will be local, too) and children of alumni (who may be disproportionately local). Still, even if you strip those factors away, I don’t think anyone doubts that there is some real local preference at Penn and elsewhere. There is self-interest involved. Penn benefits plenty from having so many alumni and parents of alumni salted throughout the state and local political and civic worlds. And some of the local applications are coming from very high-caliber local students that wouldn’t necessarily apply to Penn if they lived someplace else. But there is also a sense of good citizenship and historical mission. </p>
<p>That said, the extent of the local preference has nose-dived since Amy Gutmann assumed the presidency at Penn. At different points, my kids attended a top local private and a large public academic magnet school. In my older child’s cohort, HS class of 2005, Penn accepted almost 50 kids from just those two schools combined, and 33 enrolled. Two years later, in 2007, it accepted around 30 kids from the two schools, and enrolled in the low 20s. ED admissions had stayed about the same, but RD went way down. And I think both of them have declined further since then.</p>
<p>7-8 years ago, students near the top of their classes at Masterman, Central, and Lower Merion (and similar schools, including the top privates) would routinely be counseled that Penn could be their safety school. Their admission was assured, and Penn would normally beat the financial aid offers of other colleges for local students. Neither of those things is true anymore. Penn still accepts quite a number of students from those schools and others like them, especially ED applicants, but it’s not anything like a sure thing.</p>
<p>Thanks, JHS but actually Mayor’s Scholarships are only for Philly residents who go to school in Philly or nearby. I was told specifically that the admissions agreement only covers Philly students, not those who live nearby. Thus, an applicant who goes to school in the city but lives outside the city would not benefit from this agreement. </p>
<p>From Penn’s web site:
Q Who is eligible to receive the Mayor’s Scholarship?
A Philadelphia residents who attend high school in Philadelphia or one of its contiguous counties (Bucks, Delaware or Montgomery), and who apply for admission and financial aid, are eligible for consideration of a Mayor’s Scholarship.</p>
<p>Yeah I also heard the story that a while ago Penn bought a bunch of land from the city at a really cheap price in exchange for promising to admit a certain number of Philly kids each year. Don’t know how much credibility that story has, however…</p>
<p>Philly kids definitely have an advantage. I think Penn has to accept somewhere around 120 kids from the Philadelphia School District annually.
I live in Philly… and attend Masterman. About 30 kids are accepted every year from my school (the graduating class is 100) and about 20-25 attend.</p>
<p>Any quotas you hear about are false, but there is still a general preference toward residents of Philadelphia (I know for a fact that had I lived two miles away, outside the border, I would never have gotten in!). Besides the practical reasons why a university would want people with local roots, Penn has long held a commitment to Philadelphia, and part of honoring that commitment is offering a world class education to Philadelphia’s residents. That said, every year is more competitive than the one before it, so while you may be more likely to get into Penn as a Philadelphia resident, that doesn’t mean that you are very likely to get in (to use random numbers, 25% is better than 13%, but it still means that 75% of kids are getting rejected).</p>
<p>I was never a huge fan of Penn, but I definitely think they got their commitment to Philly right.</p>
<p>I apologize – I was referring to the expansion that covered Philadelphia residents who go to school in the surrounding counties, which of course brings into play a lot of kids in fancy private schools. And in general, I am pretty certain that Penn admits a disproportionate number of applicants from Montgomery County PA or Gloucester County NJ compared to, say, Montgomery County MD or Gloucester MA.</p>
<p>j0ker’s “story” is right: The city gave Penn a great deal of land to expand its campus in the late 19th Century, and Penn agreed to provide free education to 125 city residents a year. There was litigation over it 30 years ago. This DP article has a pretty good summary of the history: [The</a> Daily Pennsylvanian :: The changing face of the Mayor’s Scholarship](<a href=“The changing face of the Mayor's Scholarship | The Daily Pennsylvanian”>The changing face of the Mayor's Scholarship | The Daily Pennsylvanian)</p>
<p>I think I found my answer …</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v39pdf/n09/102792.pdf[/url]”>http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v39pdf/n09/102792.pdf</a></p>
<p>That’s a great find, benezet. I would be interested in knowing if they still have 500 city residents as undergraduates, though (125 per class). Based on what I know, it’s not impossible, but a somewhat lower number would be more likely.</p>