<p>I think they realize that some people can't actually visit and meet the profs, and even when people do visit you can't exactly meet every single one to pick out your favourite. When I answered the question, I went on the Penn website to look at profiles of some of the professors, and then looked up pieces that several of them wrote. I then used that information for an essay, to talk about how I found their ideas and research fascinating, and that I'd like to study with such and such because we have similar interests.</p>
<p>I understand that you might want to write about a cooler professor, but what are you going to say in your essay? "I want to study with Professor X because some random poster on CollegeConfidential said he was the ****"?</p>