Admissions

Admissions Dean Whitney Soule comments on students engaged in academic research during their time in high school, many earning national and international accolades for research.

Princeton University, Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania have also decided to refrain from releasing detailed admissions statistics. The remaining five Ivy League universities—Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown and Dartmouth—have made their traditional admissions announcements. 

Admissions Dean Whitney Soule said drawing attention to the acceptance rate of Ivy League schools like Penn does more harm than good, distressing applicants and their parents. “We’re focusing not on how hard we are to get into but on who these young people are that we chose,” she said.

Vice Provost and Dean of Admissions Whitney Soule said letters of recommendation used in college applications should highlight specific examples of a student’s characteristics. “If a recommender can focus on how the applicant does something rather than telling us what the applicant does, it helps a lot,” she said.

Vice Provost and Dean of Admissions Whitney Soule wrote an opinion piece about changes to the college application process amid the pandemic.

Kaitlyn Nguyen, a high school senior in Pomona, California, spoke about being accepted to Penn as an early decision applicant. “I came to the realization that this was the school for me,” she said. “I came to this conclusion primarily because of Penn’s commitment to community service and community advocacy work, which has been something that I have been passionate about growing up.”

Neha Vapiwala of the Perelman School of Medicine commented on the uptick in applications to medical programs. “There is a sense of respect and in some cases newfound respect for health-care workers, for scientists, for this idea that during a pandemic, when so many other aspects of life were unavailable or deemed nonessential, that the one source of inspiration was the role of health-care workers, of doctors and nurses on the front lines helping people get through this frightening time,” she said. Olivia Palmer, a first-year medical student from Connecticut, is also interviewed.