<p>When I look through my parents' Ivy League athletics programs, as well as old admissions handbooks, journalism, etc., everyone always said "Penn" which seems reasonable to me. Same thing with "Chicago" which (in context) everyone always understood to mean the University of Chicago. Now many people are saying "UPenn" and "UChicago" which seem clunky and inelegant. Why did this habit catch on?</p>
<p>Probably to differentiate between University of Pennsylvania and Penn State.</p>
<p>Can’t comment on UChicago.</p>
<p>But 1) that wouldn’t be something new and 2) I’ve never heard of anyone refer to Penn State as “Penn”… </p>
<p>Some people don’t know the difference actually. They think they are one in the same. </p>
<p>I don’t know about Penn, but can address University of Chicago. I was very confused when I first saw the UChicago branding on CC and in my daughters college mailings. All my alumni mailing and $$ requests still say university of Chicago, Chicago or “u of c”. So I asked the alumni office and was told it was conscious rebranding to create a more immediately recognizable identity (less confusion w UIC and the California UCs).</p>
<p>Nothing from Penn is rebranded like that, but their website is upenn.edu, so that may be a cause for confusion. </p>
<p>I have no real idea but I am from Pennsylvania and people seem to know the difference. Outside of Pennsylvania, I’ve known many people to confuse the two.</p>
<p>Penn State is huge with a bazillion alumni and a huge name in football. Most people know someone who attended Penn State, far less who graduated from Penn. So, when I say my D goes to Penn, 85 percent of the time people think Penn State.</p>
<p>Not really an answer, just my experience.</p>
<p>I haven’t perceived the same trend. Everyone related to the school calls it Penn.</p>
<p>The use of “UPenn” apparently began in the early days of the internet, when Penn adopted or was assigned the “upenn” domain name. The University of Delaware supposedly started this trend, i.e., with the internet domain of “udel,” and many other schools whose names begin with “University of” have a similar internet domain name (uchicago, utexas, umich, etc.). Virtually no one affiliated with or aware of Penn before the 1990s referred (or currently refers) to it as “UPenn,” and other than its domain name, the university itself always brands and refers to itself as simply “Penn.” In the past (before the 1990s), Penn was also referred to as “U of P” and “Pennsylvania” (several of the traditional school fight songs and anthems do so, e.g., “Fight on, Pennsylvania!,” “Hail Pennsylvania,” and “Cheer Pennsylvania”: <a href=“http://www.dolphin.upenn.edu/pennband/lyrics.html”>http://www.dolphin.upenn.edu/pennband/lyrics.html</a>).</p>
<p>Bottom line: among the Penn “family” (students, alumni, etc.), it’s usually referred to as just “Penn,” as it is by the university itself. But, when speaking with those not part of the Penn “family” or otherwise familiar with the school, I suppose it could also be useful to say “UPenn” to avoid confusion with Penn State.</p>
<p>I agree with @madaboutx, the majority of people I encounter think Penn State if I say my daughter goes to Penn. This is in North Jersey and southern New York State. </p>
<p>As an international applicant, most people around me don’t know a thing about Penn State (other than for football) any more than they do about UPenn. Yet I never refered to UPenn as Penn since I could never assume whether Penn could mean Penn State or UPenn to anyone I am speaking to, other than my research-based recommenders, who both know the same people at Penn (Trodden, Khoury, Cvetic).</p>
<p>With them I was explicitly told that I had to refer to the University of Pennsylvania as UPenn, if I am not using the full name.</p>
<p>On another personal note, I like to just say Penn sometimes and let whoever think what they want to think. Sometimes, when it’s explicit that I’m not talking about Penn State, I get comments that I don’t want to deal with - like a conversation about how expensive it is and how rich I must be or how broke I must be, how my D must be a genius (maybe she is, maybe she isn’t but she works incredibly hard regardless of how smart she is or is not.) and the dreaded and thankfully rare comments about diversity - although her SAT was 100 points higher than the class mean it doesn’t matter. The worst comments come from parents who have a child rejected by an Ivy. I know greet kids don’t get accepted and nobody has to prove it to me how their kid should’ve been. I believe you.</p>
<p>My D did a great job picking the perfect school for her and the school has been really good to us and her also. We couldn’t be happier with everything. And it doesn’t matter to us if you call it Penn or UPenn.</p>
<p>It has been interesting watching this situation evolve over the past decade. Things like “UPenn” and “UChicago” are anathema to people of my generation – they sound clueless and declasse. The very idea that you had to worry about anyone who might possibly confuse the University of Pennsylvania with Penn State seems odd to me. If you don’t know enough to know the difference, I am not going to care much what you think.</p>
<p>But my children, both Chicago grads, and both raised to say “Chicago,” not “UChicago,” have pretty much given up. They and their friends talk about “UChicago” now, and the University has officially surrendered, too, embracing the new name for branding purposes. I can understand how “Chicago” can be a problem – I often have to say “Chicago, the city” or “Chicago, the university.” But if the main issue is distinguishing yourself from UIC, the University of Illinois at Chicago, I don’t see how “UChicago” really does anything. (In my part of the world, and probably in almost every part of the world that isn’t the upper Midwest, no one has ever heard of UIC, so no one gets confused.)</p>
<p>Penn has a different local problem: In addition to Penn State, a huge brand wherever football is watched, there is the whole Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) system of public former teachers’ colleges, each of which goes by “<em>X</em> University of Pennsylvania” (West Chester, Bloomsburg, Millersville, Kutztown, etc.). (The PASSHE system is like a breeding ground of brand confusion, including as it does both Indiana University of Pennsylvania and California University of Pennsylvania. A few years ago, the University of Kansas had to get an injunction against Kutztown, which had more or less appropriated Kansas’ “K” logo.) If you Google “University of Pennsylvania,” 90% of the responses involve the PASSHE colleges. </p>
<p>“But if the main issue is distinguishing yourself from UIC, the University of Illinois at Chicago, I don’t see how “UChicago” really does anything. (In my part of the world, and probably in almost every part of the world that isn’t the upper Midwest, no one has ever heard of UIC, so no one gets confused.)”</p>
<p>That may be true, but the part of the world that the University of Chicago administrators live in IS a world in which UIC and University of Chicago get confused. Part of that is due to the fact that the UIC Pavilion (a sports and entertainment arena) gets a lot of play / press in this area. The fact that no one in Philly has heard of UIC isn’t really relevant to the University of Chicago administrator (who doesn’t live in Hyde Park) whose friends and neighbors aren’t exactly sure where he works, again. </p>
<p>If someone asks where DD is going to school, I say University of Pennsylvania, unless I know that they are familiar with the school, then I say Penn. In the midwest, most people have never heard of it. </p>
<p>The UPenn, UChicago, and UMich, names are all recent and relate to the internet. You would never have heard those from actual students in the past. Really you do not hear them from actual students now either, but you do hear them from the high schoolers.</p>
<p>For me it comes down to all my visits to “UPenn”.edu for research and things. When I say it aloud though I just say University of Pennsylvania. Doubt I’ll ever abbreviate.</p>
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<p>If you end up going there, you will simply call it “Penn” (although you still may use “University of Pennsylvania” or “UPenn” when talking to people unfamiliar with it). Trust me, you will. 
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<p>Pennsylvania was named after William Penn.</p>
<p>Penn makes more sense as an abbreviation therefore.</p>
<p>UPenn is better to use if you are not talking specifically about colleges.</p>
<p>In this day and age of “e-this” and “i-that”, “u-this” sounds like another branding attempt. The only people I knew 20 years ago referring to Penn as UPenn were my aunts who thought they were all that.</p>
<p>“Not Penn State” shirts are still available at Penn from what I’ve seen. </p>
<p>A comparison is Washington University in St. Louis. I call it Wustl (Wust rhyming with “just” and “uh-l”) because in my field, we deal with their online databases a lot. But every single person I have met who teaches or has gone to the school calls it “WashU”. Thus, you can tell if someone actually has experience with the school or not.</p>