About the Application

Do you have students planning to apply to Penn? Hooray! We can’t wait to learn all about them. We know applying to college is an exciting—but often stressful time in a student’s lives. And, let’s be honest, it can be a stressful time for you, too, as you support many students through this process.  

At Penn, we practice what we call “Whole-Person Review.” That’s not just a sound byte. Students often want to know what specific scores, courseload, or extracurriculars they need to be accepted, and we mean it when we say there is no formula. We want to understand each student within their context. We want to know what applicants did with what was available to them, and how they plan to explore their unique interests at Penn.  

We provide detailed information about our application in our How to Apply section, and we recommend you and any student intending to apply to Penn begin there.  

What’s Changing for Penn’s 2025-2026 Application

Penn's application for the 2025-2026 cycle is now live! To help you guide your students, we have outlined the major changes to our application and application process below. We recommend directing students to the Preparing Your Application section of our website for more detailed information. 

Testing 

Penn applicants are required to submit the SAT or ACT for the 2025-26 application cycle. Applicants who face hardship in meeting this requirement can submit a waiver instead. This applies to all first-year, domestic, international, homeschooled, transfer, and QuestBridge applicants.  

There is no minimum score required to apply to Penn. We understand that standardized testing only provides a fraction of insight into students’ academic performance, and through our comprehensive review process, we consider multiple factors to determine preparedness for Penn. No preference is given to the SAT or the ACT. If an applicant submits both tests, we will pay attention to the higher score from either test.  

Applicants who have not taken the SAT or ACT and experience hardship in meeting this requirement may submit a testing waiver when completing the application. In lieu of submitting testing information, applicants will be asked to share the nature of their hardship (such as lack of test center availability, financial hardship, natural disaster or civil unrest). Once submitted, the testing requirement is automatically waived.  

Please note, applicants who have taken standardized testing are required to submit their scores. Should we receive reported or self-reported SAT or ACT scores, those scores will supersede the waiver and we will use this information in our review process. 

Penn Supplemental Questions 

Penn asks brief supplementary questions and program-specific responses to support our committee-based evaluation process. These questions provide us with helpful information not gained elsewhere in the application.  

Gratitude Prompt 

This prompt will remain the same for this cycle. The gratitude prompt invites students to express gratitude to someone they have not had the chance to properly thank yet, and if possible, we invite them to share this note with the person.   

Why do we ask students to do this? In addition to experiencing the wellness benefits that come from expressing gratitude, we want to know if a student can accept positive influence from others: the kind that elicits reflection and inspiration. We also want to know if they are able to center someone else’s influence rather than their own. Accepting influence is essential to relationships, to building community, and of course, to learning. And since this is a skill that is really important in participating in a learning community, and for the environment that we intentionally create here at Penn, answering the thank you note is a way for us to see how students do that.  

Community Prompt 

The next questions we ask center around community; this prompt is also remaining the same for this cycle.  

Why do we care about community? When we admit a class to Penn, we’re not just admitting 2,400 individual students. We’re welcoming a diverse and interconnected cohort that will shape Penn as a whole. We ask students to consider what community means to them as part of the application so we can learn how they might positively influence Penn through their contributions and how they think about the concepts of citizenship and community.  

School-Specific Prompt 

Finally, students will also be asked to respond to a prompt specific to the Undergraduate School or Coordinated Dual-Degree Program to which they choose to apply. Some schools and programs have updated their questions for this cycle. Each school or program will have its own unique question and students will be asked to respond to the prompt that corresponds to the school to which they are applying. For example, a student applying to Wharton would respond to the Wharton-specific prompt, while a student applying to the School of Nursing would respond to the Nursing-specific prompt. Some of these school-specific prompts have been updated this year. All prompts can be viewed on our Essays page.  

No Interviews/Alumni Conversations 

Penn will continue not to offer evaluative interviews. Beginning this year, Penn will no longer offer Alumni Conversations. The application materials we require are sufficient for us to make our admissions decision. 

Letters of Recommendation 

This year, students will only be asked to provide two letters of recommendation, and may opt to provide a third letter from a person of their choosing. This applies to students applying as first-years or as transfers. Students will be asked to provide letters from: 

  1. their school counselor or other official (the letter students will submit as part of the Common App or Coalition App) 

  2. a teacher in a core subject area   

Optionally, students may submit a letter from another teacher OR supporter in their community who they believe could add a perspective otherwise missing from their application. This supporter may be another teacher, a supervisor at work, mentor, coach, arts or music instructor, spiritual leader, or cultural leader. Letters from family members and close family friends usually do not provide information that is helpful to the evaluation process. Applications will not be negatively impacted should students choose not to submit an additional letter of recommendation. We prefer letters from those who have worked with the applicant recently (junior and senior year). We recommend that students choose recommenders who know them well and like them.