So I’m a huge college sports fan (especially football), so I was wondering what the sports culture at Penn is like. Everything about the school made me fall in love with it, but I always dreamed of going to a school where I would be going to football games on Saturday afternoons with my buddies and tailgating. But being an Ivy, I have a feeling Penn isn’t like that at all. I feel like I am a decently qualified applicant at the school (35 ACT, 4.1 W GPA, 770 SAT Math II, 750 Bio SAT II, 9 AP classes & 9 Honors Classes, 162 Community Service Hours, 4 Varsity letters in Cross Country), but obviously it is a reach school and therefore it is one of my top two ED choices (the other being Duke, which is obviously exceptional at sports). So I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on what it’s like at Penn! Thank you!
Penn sports are DI, and they have good athletes, but is is not the Big 10 or ACC. Very few Penn athletes are going to be professionals. Still, the games can be fun, and the stadium is on campus to students will go if the team is decent. Last year the football was terrible. However, most years they have decent teams by Ivy standards, and I believe that Penn has won the most Ivy League championships at football. I am also told that Franklin Field is the oldest football stadium in the country.
Duke is much better than Penn at athletics, because Penn does not give scholarships. However, Duke is not great at football either, if that is your main interest. They did make it to a bowl game last year, but that is unusual, and I am pretty sure that they have not won a football bowl game in well over 50 years. Sort of the opposite of their basketball team.
Overall, if you want the best sports, you would go to Duke, but I there will be plenty of opportunities to attend athletic events and parties at Penn.
Most of your stats look solid, although I am not sure about your gpa. Penn’s average high school gpa is 3.9 unweighted. It looks like yours may be lower than that, although I can’t tell for sure. Your ACT and subject tests do look good. From what I can tell, your ECs look better than average, but seem to lack a real “Wow” factor. You have a chance, but it would help to keep your first quarter grades high, and write an impressive “Why Penn?” essay, and have strong recommendations.
It’s true that Penn does not have the same big sports culture that Duke has. But Penn’s sports culture is honestly a TON of fun if you take part. It doesn’t dominate campus but people definitely get excited.
The Penn Princeton rivalry is one of the most storied in college athletic history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn%E2%80%93Princeton_basketball_rivalry
From Princeton’s perspective: https://www.princeton.edu/paw/archive_new/PAW03-04/07-0128/features1.html
From Penn’s perspective: http://www.thedp.com/multimedia/27705 … jk, kind of 
And Penn students do get excited for homecoming and other notable sports related event. But sports definitely do not dominate campus life, if that’s what you’re looking for.
One of my fondest memories, however, is the first time I threw toast onto Franklin Field…
http://www.pennathletics.com/ViewArticle.dbml?ATCLID=208921565&SPSID=8576&SPID=537&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=1700#