UPenn Early Decision for Fall 2022 Admission

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
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With the stats I’m seeing here, you’re all phenomenal !!! Congratulations to all whether or not you were admitted.

An admissions committee decision is not a decision on your ability or worth. Yes, concentrate on Plan B. Note, there’s also Plan C - transferring. It’s where you end, not where you start, and not over unti it’s over.

I know an applicant to attended 5 colleges I never heard of in my state, including a community college in the mix, who ended up going to Harvard for his MBA.

Employers only care about the terminal degree you use. At a previous employer requiring an MBA, a co-worker attended Harvard college, and then secured a top 35 MBA. His starting pay package, etc. were all based upon his MBA, not his Harvard undergrad. He was evaluated on his performance after that.

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My wife and I are both alums, actively volunteering on our local alumni club boards off and on since graduation. (She: Penn club, me: Wharton club) I’ve never been a club officer, but she has in the past when the Penn club was less active in our city. I donated small amounts for a couple years after graduation, but it’s mostly been time. I’ve participated on an alumni panel at a few annual MBA recruitment events in my city. We’re also listed as alumni mentors in the alumni database (which I think is a new program). I’ve also been volunteering as a new student welcomer where I’m assigned a new admitted MBA student per admissions round. We recently signed up as alumni interviewers as I suppose they’re contacting more alumni due to interviewing 90% of undergrad applicants. In the spirit of fairness, alumni volunteer interviewers are disqualified from interviewing anyone in years where their children are applying to college, regardless of whether or not they apply to Penn. Despite our involvement in our local Penn/Wharton clubs, we did not know the assigned interviewer for our D.

I don’t know what verification the admissions office conducts when one lists legacy parents. I do know that our alumni profile includes that we’re available mentors, members of our listed local clubs, I’m an MBA admitted student welcomer, and alumni interviewer. Note: I haven’t interviewed students in a long time to where I don’t remember the rating sheet. My profile also lists the on-campus college houses I lived in (grad towers and married housing). Rest of profile is similar to LinkedIn profile.

Penn recently migrated to this new database system, which seems very user friendly. There are also 3 icons for “Go!,” “Give!” and “Lead!” Mine are all greyed-out. I don’t know what Go stands for. I don’t know the threshold for Give or Lead. Perhaps my history didn’t carry over.

As Penn only considers legacy in ED, where 3/4 of legacy are rejected, although it helps, I think the strengh of the applicant controls.

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You have a great attitude. I hope it still comes through later!

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Yes, we do send our yearly checks to Penn, including one yesterday despite the disappointing outcome :). Not much in terms of time, but our D who is at Wharton does spend time volunteering in the local community.

It is what it is…May be something else is in the cards for him….I just hope something does work out well. Keeping fingers crossed …

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We got disappointing news despite our daughter being a double legacy (5 degrees between the parents and prior employment at Penn - 15 years on that campus). In total, I think we have given ~$1M to the school. The legacy advantage has been greatly overstated. Her grades and SAT scores are within Penn’s average.

There appears to be an abandonment of the legacy admissions advantage. The truth is that we have no recourse except to stop giving money to the school. The impact of this is minimal given the size of the endowment.

Congratulations to those who gained admission. I loved the school when I as there.

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This is the trick bag. Schools are trying to move away from legacy (at least some bcuz it then often caters to the elite).

Hopefully you funded the school based out of love for the school and what it can offer society. And you’ll continue to do so if that’s part of your future charitable endeavors.

On the other hand it’s human nature to think…I funded them well and my kid should get in. As you say your child made the averages but for whatever reason missed the cut.

Many kids at many top schools face that reality…and unfortunately will never know why not them ?

I hope you continue to love your alma mater. And hopefully your student achieves the level of happiness and success that you did as she forges a new path for your family.

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Thanks @tsbna44. There is some irrationality to the entitlement that I feel. Of course the school should choose the students that they think will be best for their goals and if that does not include my daughter, we shouldn’t expect them to go out of their way to keep alumni happy.

I tell my daughter that it is time for her to make her own legacy and that she will be successful in life no matter where she goes. But I know that she wanted to go to Penn, in part, because her parents met there and her story began there. It’s sad that we will not have the common connection with her. I would feel the same if I went to a school that was easier to get into. I wish Penn was easy to get into like it was when I went there in the 90s.

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Accepted ED
Neuroscience - College of Arts and Science
4.0 UW / 4.58 W GPA
Super proud of everyone!

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The ‘Go’ refers to whether you’ve been back to campus for an event like Homecoming or Alumni Weekend.

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That’s just stunning to me that your D didn’t get in. I am very sorry to hear about that.

You don’t owe a single thing to Penn. They have enough money. The puppies and kittens in your local humane shelter are far more deserving of your contributions!

ETA: And most especially the “older” animals…I really don’t care what age they are, but they will always be puppies and kittens, whether they are 10 weeks old or 20 years old. This world would be a much finer place if they were in charge.

Penn: get your cash elsewhere!

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You also have a great attitude. Keep the faith - a legacy kid I know was rejected as well, with decent stats and (my guess) essays/rec letters. Everybody and their neighbor want to get into Wharton. In reality, the most coveted jobs would require you to have an MBA later on anyway, so why not wait a few years if things don’t work out the first time? Who knows, the kiddos might end up getting accepted to great schools in RD? Good luck either way!

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A girl (minority) in our school got in Wharton, with many B and C in her grade. A boy with brother in UP got in. All others with greater grades and performance got rejected or deferred.

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Thank you. After seeing all the rejections, she and I didn’t want to say anything. She was actually accepted to A&S, social science major.

I think legacy helps if there are 2 equal applicants as Penn’s ED legacy rejection rate is 75% (last year) vs. 90% ex-recruited athletes, Questbridge, and legacy. She applied to 3 safety state schools (1 full tuition, 2 full COA), 6 private schools hoping for 3/4 to full tuition scholarships (WashU to SMU) plus Penn ED. We only paid application fees for Penn and 1 private as the rest either waived them upfront or via attending a virtual scholars day. Her thoughts were if she didn’t get into Penn ED, then other Ivies were not going to happen. She calculated RD ex-ED acceptance rates for ivies ranged from 2.5% - 4.5%, with Cornell at 7%. If rejected/deferred, she planned to submit 4 more ivies anyway + Stanford & Duke by Christmas. If rejected from all her ivies + Stanford, she would then attend the private school which gave her closest to full tuition. She was just invited to submit essays for 2 full scholarship types at Miami.

I think her essays pushed her over the top. She didn’t select any of the standard CA prompts as they seemed confining, and one seemed a poor topic. After taking the ACT in April, she spent all summer writing them, which is a reasonable amount of time. She had a few different main essays with our family voting on the best one, and then her tweaking it. After completing her main essay, she completed most of the secondaries, but not all the ones for her Christmas week schools.

Her opener exhibited several personal traits and a theme which she used during a few points later including her closing where she stated her career goal. The end of the opener had a line which I think connected with a reader, while being humorous. She then transitioned into finding herself, from an activity she failed at to what she found of interest. She included diversity, how she brought people together with her clubs, and impacting society in the future. She included her magnet program to where the reader felt her story made sense for supporting her major and career goal. She also discussed a community activity to display impact outside the school, and impact of her parents. There was a lot conveyed about her in the essay including additional implied traits.

Her 2nd essay did a nice job discussing classes, professors, advising, research, plus a variety of less visible academic offerings. She also made a comment about classroom discussions.

Her 3rd essay discussed clubs and supportable community impact off-campus based on H.S. activities. All 3 were solid and nicely done. Due to word limits and theme topic, she didn’t continue it in latter 2 essays.

I hope the above helps others these last 2 weeks.

Her writing quality and intelligence are beyond my level. And I was accepted as last round applicant in the Wharton MBA admissions cycle when acceptance rates were 1 out of 40 vs. 1 of 10 in the 1st 2 rounds. (The MBA program had rolling admissions over 20 years ago)

Her stats, likely within the range of most of the applicant pool:

  • Nat’l Merit (in a high index state). All Ivies provide need based aid only (no merit scholarships of any kind) and no athletic scholarships. (Questbridge program scholarship is need based) Although about +/- 100 Nat’l Merits attend each ivy/yr, they don’t receive any money. Her public school district had a total of 4 Nat’l merits.
  • 36 ACT (single test), and top 1% writing section score.
  • Ranked 4th in large but not gigantic H.S.
  • 100/100 for almost all H.S. courses including current Calc BC, a few 99s. She had counselor send 1Q grades to show 12th grade performance.
  • 7 AP, plus 2 dual enrollment. I prevented her from taking AP in 9th/10th as my oldest (starts top 25 med school next year, used different strategy) had trouble with her AP in 9th grade. To provide and idea of how much D likes to learn, she is still upset by this. (We didn’t mention my limiting her in the app)
  • President of 2 honor societies and a couple more clubs, class officer, officer of a few more clubs including 2 related to her career.
  • Typical community service.
  • Co-captain of varsity sport and a non-athletic competition team where she’s also a mentor.
  • Local coordinator for elementary school free tutoring organization
  • Not an underrepresented minority
  • Good interview

Her financial aid package matched the Net Price calculator. Outside our contribution amount, $3K student contribution and $3.5K work study (which she’ll decline), received rest as institutional grants.

Financial aid also informed me that Penn will keep the parental contribution concurrent sibling spit for institutional aid. (December law stopping the multi-sibling concurrent attendance split on federal aid side effective 23-24 year). Tulane also confirmed maintaining the split on institution aid side. Others may or may not have decided yet.

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Congratulations to your daughter. From one Penn alum with a child on campus to another, consider keeping the work study award. Work study students cost the university 40% of what it would cost to hire a non-work study student. On campus, professors are often looking for the work study kids.

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Financial aid also informed me that Penn will keep the parental contribution concurrent sibling spit for institutional aid. (December law stopping the multi-sibling concurrent attendance split on federal aid side effective 23-24 year).[/quote]

This is good to know about Penn. My second child starts college next year. If I’m not mistaken, however, the law you refer to has been pushed out at least one year to '24-'25.

524

How did she get 100s in classes? Did she never miss a question or was there extra credit? Also, congratulations on your acceptance.

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DadSays - Thanks for the tip on work-study! I’ve also read the split has been pushed out but I don’t now for sure. But this only affects the federal aid side, e.g. Pell Grants.

Collegeseeker01 - For some, she never missed an answer, for others she may have missed something on an assignment and her grade averaged to 100. For a couple, e.g. Calculus, she received bonus points. This is unweighted, so her weighted average is over 100.

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Herbessence - I’d ask to see her acceptance letter as the Wharton undergraduate program is quite quantitative. I can’t see someone with many Bs and Cs get through the program. I know such a student wouldn’t make it through the 1st semester of the Wharton MBA program, where the calculus based macroeconomics was taught at an advanced level.

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Hi all,

Looking for some info from kids who applied to M&T and were deferred.

did you get only 1 deferred letter or 2? Also, did the deferred letter say anything about M&T or just the second school?

Kid applied to M&T second major being engineering. Got deferred and letter says deferred from SEAS. No mention of Wharton or M&T

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My son accepted ED Wharton. Shocked and thrilled for him!
4.0 UW/5.3 W, 34 ACT, 10+ APs (5&4s), Ranked 5th in public HS, lots of DECA state and int’l awards, and part-time job thourout HS. Legacy.

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This is truly a shocker - I was under the impression that children of a significant donor like you would get a good read. Perhaps it was just that the AO woke up on the wrong side of the bed that morning. Oh well. Once again, I am sorry about the result but do hope that your DD finds greater success elsewhere.

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