<p>The article highlights an important question that should be at the fore of Penn’s immediate and longterm plans. Establishing Penn’s credibility on a level on par with that of the Ancient Three poses two issues, the first and most essential being raising and sustaining a substantially larger endowment. </p>
<p>Frankly, I don’t know the first thing about fundraising, so I’ll let the bean counters in the basement of College Hall field the specifics, but let there be no question of the importance of a large endowment. The fact that the smallest endowment within the Ancient Three is more than twice that of Penn means that we have some serious ground to cover in the coming months and years. With larger endowments come fatter departmental budgets and hence salaries, which makes it easier for wealthier schools to poach our prospective and current faculty. </p>
<p>Likewise, wealthier schools are able to maintain their facilities and assets in ways we simply cannot afford given our relatively small endowment and diffuse budgetary priorities. Curiously, we have the highest operating budget of any school in the world (if memory serves), yet the amount we waste is equally astounding, whether it be the distribution of funds across a growing spectrum of functionally useless and peripheral departments that contribute nothing to our school (either in scholarship or prestige) or simply the underwriting of a plethora of fully catered events for even more useless school-sponsored student organizations that cost a great deal of money even to exist at all. </p>
<p>Further, I have seen no effort to maintain the dilapidating buildings across campus nor have I observed any conscious effort to beautify the campus itself, which is our greatest marketing tool and the veritable embodiment of Penn itself. The rooms in College Hall clearly haven’t been touched since the 90s (at best), to say nothing of the sad state of our beautiful student union, which hasn’t been improved since 2000 and whose formerly formidable rooms have been abused ad infinitum by students and Penn employees alike. Penn needs to invest serious money into improving its physical image and marketing itself as a premier research university whose buildings are as impressive as the people inside them. I have seen the campuses of Columbia and Dartmouth, and let me say that, upon walking through their gates, I had no doubt that I was walking among those who were destined to rule.</p>
<p>Soapbox rambling aside, let us discuss the second and, dare I say, more obvious problem about Penn: There is not enough emphasis placed on securing our USNR. (Whether you agree with the USNR or not is irrelevant, as it is the consummate self-fulfilling prophecy and one we cannot afford to ignore.) In short, the longer we stay where we are at four, the greater our credibility with the laymen and prospective applicants. By prioritizing hard factors in our applicants (e.g., standardized test scores, GPAs) over soft ones (e.g., ECs, AA) and accepting slightly fewer applicants, our yield will not only increase, but also our SAT/ACT/GPA averages. (I concede, it is difficult to manipulate our yield insofar as those with near-perfect scores etc. will likely choose HYP over Penn, hence we may be doing ourselves a disservice by accepting them and perhaps should focus on the next best applicants. This is worth further exploration and discussion.)</p>
<p>Boiling down to the essentials, Penn has the following tasks ahead of it if it is to firmly entrench itself alongside the Ancient Three:</p>
<ol>
<li>Raise a substantial (i.e. greater than 10 billion dollars) endowment</li>
</ol>
<p>-Slash operating budget
-Eliminate wasteful and functionally useless departments
-Cut wasteful spending on peripheral student organizations and events</p>
<ol>
<li>Increase credibility (academic and otherwise)</li>
</ol>
<p>-Market an image of Penn that is at the very least as clean and professional as that of its Ivy sisters
-Prioritize high test scores and GPAs over AA, ECs, and soft factors
-Accept (slightly) fewer applicants to raise yield and selectivity</p>