After careful review of over 8,000 Early Decision applications and QuestBridge Match students, we welcome the first members of Penn’s Class of 2027. This was the largest Early Decision applicant pool in Penn’s history, and we were blown away by the individual stories and unique perspectives, backgrounds, and ideas.
Our admitted students, as individuals, are each singular and outstanding; as a group, they represent the first half of the Class of 2027 across Penn’s four undergraduate schools: the College of Arts and Sciences, Penn Engineering, the Wharton School, and the School of Nursing. They will join us from 65 countries, 43 states, Washington, D.C., Saipan, Puerto Rico, and from our home city of Philadelphia. They come from high schools with senior classes as large as 1550 and as small as 7. They also represent more diversity among their racial and ethnic heritage, their socioeconomic backgrounds (including those who will qualify for Pell grants), and the proportion of students who will be the first in their families to attend college than in any previous Early Decision round. But, most importantly, each student joining the Class of 2027 is so much more than a number or a statistic to the members of our Admissions Committee.
Through their applications, each student revealed their academic enthusiasm and aspirations, identifying all the ways they see themselves growing intellectually during their time at Penn. Some have already completed research; some aspire to begin their work in labs or internships at Penn for the first time. Whether they’ve already identified a specific faculty member or academic interest, or they channeled Ben-Franklin-like curiosity toward a wide range of subjects and ideas, we felt their dynamism throughout their applications, and we can’t wait to see them activate at Penn.
We also realized that the gratitude the applicants expressed in their answers to our new writing supplement was contagious. We learned so much from reading the thank-you notes written by the students to those who influenced them, and we felt so grateful, in return, to get to represent their voices in the Admissions Committee. Their sentiments were kind, funny, serious, genuine (shout out to you math teachers who make math fun) and offered such tremendous insight into each applicant’s unique perspective.
There is much to celebrate as we welcome these students into our communities. They have already shaped their families, their classrooms, their places of employment, and the teams, stages, clubs (and Zoom rooms) where they have already led, challenged, changed—and been changed by—their mentors, teachers, and peers. We applaud their resilience, enthusiasm, good will and their amazing capacity for curiosity and intellectual rigor and cannot wait to welcome them to campus in 2023.