University Of Pennsylvania Admission Essay Writing Guide

Contents

UPenn Admission Process and Admission Essays

The University of Pennsylvania doesn’t require some special knowledge to apply, but the high competition among the applicants means that they need to achieve astonishing results in the standard school disciplines. It makes sense to pay more attention to the main subjects of the School you choose: your coursework should reflect your inclination towards the School’s field of knowledge, like Biology and Chemistry for Nursing School, Physics and Maths for Engineering School, and so on. The school choice is very important because you can’t transfer to another school until your second year of studying.

Here is what you need to apply for UPenn:

  1. A standard Common App or Coalition App UPenn essay
  2. Two internal UPenn application essays
  3. Optional in 2021-2022: ACT or SAT test results. The university treats both tests equally. Remember that you need to submit the official results from the testing agency, the copies won’t be considered
  4. Also optional: IB, AP, or AICE test results. The students without them will also get a full admission
  5. SRAR and your school transcript (the final report will be required in June only when the final grades will be known already)
  6. The letters of recommendation: either one counselor’s and two teachers’ recommendations; or one teacher’s recommendation may be substituted by another, e.g. your mentor, cultural leader, supervisor, or another respected person.
  7. Anything else you feel can benefit you during the admission process: more recommendation letters that matter, your art or sports achievements, etc.

The three essays you are supposed to write are the standard personal Penn Essay (submitted via Common App or Coalition), the internal “Why UPenn” essay, and the Community and Diversity paper. If the first essay is relatively easy, because its prompt is almost always related to your personal experience, the two internal UPenn supplement essays require logical thinking and rather serious research. You have to learn a lot about your particular school and campus life to write a truly outstanding text.

We understand that you may feel unsure about writing an essay for a university that accepts only less than eight percent of the applicants. We have gathered dozens of UPenn essays that worked at our site for you to read, check the pattern, use the facts, style, or anything you’ll find useful. No matter whether you need, for example, a Nursing School essay sample or just a general idea of UPenn-suitable writing style — you’ll definitely find something useful here. You may also let our professional writers know that you need a helping hand, provide them a few of your thoughts and personal information and they will tailor a highly personalized and beautiful Penn supplemental essay.

The General Tips of Writing UPenn Application Essays

This advice is based on the original tips given by the UPenn site. We gathered everything they suggest and broadened these ideas a bit to make them more practical. We also did a little research about the ideas making UPenn accepted essays so successful.

  1. The admission committee promises to read all the papers attentively and they mean business. They mostly talk about your voice, mindset, and creativity, but it’s always a good idea to double-check your grammar, punctuation, and spelling. You may speak from your heart, but it’s Ivy League, after all, and they may be extra picky when it comes to commas.
  2. Make sure you answer the question of the prompt. The possibility to shift the topic is too tempting sometimes, but you have a tight word limit to let your thoughts go astray. Check the consistency of your text every time you finish a sentence. Each phrase should bring something meaningful to the main idea. You may simply ask yourself: how can this sentence help me describe the prompt? Keep in mind that the admission officers are exceptionally strict about that: they may even consider your application incomplete if they think you weren’t specific enough.
  3. They explicitly ask you to not reuse your content, or do it as stealthy as possible. While you may have a single Common App essay to rule them all, the successful UPenn supplement examples are all custom and unique. You may still use the ideas, but make sure you have rewritten the paper itself completely.
  4. Show them facts. If you are talking about your school choice, show the admission committee that you did your research and know a few figures to back up your decision. Having a passion for something is great, but combining this passion with the plan of studying and knowledge of your future perspectives is simply awesome.

The Types of Penn Statement Essays

As we said before, the Penn supplemental essays are divided into the external one and two internal ones. The first one is easy and common for all the universities accepting Common App and Coalition applications. There are plenty of similar UPenn supplement essay examples on our site. The two others aren’t tricky too, they just need a bit more dedication and research on the benefits of the University of Pennsylvania.

The personal entrance essay

The standard Coalition or Common App essay is limited by the portal’s 650 words. There are several prompts, most of which ask you to describe a personal experience that shaped your personality. They can ask about the eureka moment of your life that brought you to the UPenn application and Major choice, or, on the contrary, about the lessons you learned from your biggest failure.

There is plenty of advice about writing these essays, but if you want to create not just an average entrance letter, but a high-class UPenn essay, you need to keep the high standards. Despite being personal, your essay should be written in neat and formal English. The hardest part is to carefully balance emotional reflections (that you should have about such a prominent event in your life) and rational explanations. Being sincere but not overly dramatic is your key to success. You may check some of our UPenn essay examples to get some style tips and ideas, or just ask the authors of these papers to write one for you.

The “Why UPenn” motivational essay

This essay of 300-450 words is exactly what is said on the tin, with a single addition. You should explain the choice of both the university and school. To write a perfect “Why UPenn” essay you need to learn a lot about the University of Pennsylvania, its schools, and majors available for students. You need to get all the information you can gather about the community, learning programs, professors, and even extracurricular life. You are going to spend a considerable part of your life there, so it will be quite useful anyway.

Don’t try to cover all the topics, be specific on something you truly love (or you managed to get the most info about). A good plan is to start from learning possibilities (your favourite professors, programs, interdisciplinary studies, etc), then mention some extracurricular activities and social service you like to participate in, and then finish with your future possibilities after graduation (alumni community, job offers, the research base for internship and so on). Entering the UPenn just because it’s in the Ivy League and extremely prestigious isn’t a very good approach. The admission committee wants to know that you want to get something more than just a beautiful diploma: they are working to give you access to top-quality education, help you fulfill your dream, and achieve your ambitions.

The admission officers have a keen eye for the application papers that were copied and pasted from the other admission. So make sure to write this UPenn essay from scratch. It should make no sense if you will substitute the University of Pennsylvania with any other name.

The Diversity application essay

It is a very short essay (150-200 words only) that should show your future contribution to the university community. The University of Pennsylvania is all about personality, individual feats, and diverse culture. They want to know what is comfortable for you, what makes you worry, what is your background, and what you can teach others.

You don’t have to be starry-eyed about learning everything about all the other cultures if you really aren’t. It’s okay to keep your heritage for yourself and let others keep theirs, while you both respect your diversity. This essay isn’t meant to get the perfect answers of “good girls and boys”, it will help the university administration create the best campus environment for you and the others.

The essay for transferring students and additional entrance letters

These essays are kind of similar to the “Why UPenn” essays, but they are even more specific. The transferring students should explain the reasons for their transfer and why the University of Pennsylvania is better for achieving their goals. The students who want to learn interdisciplinary or specialized programs should also explain why this is important for them. They are going to take a double load of learning and they should have a pretty good reason for it: possibly they want to work on the project at the edge of both fields, or they have a particular future job in mind and that job requires proficiency in both areas.

Schools of the University of Pennsylvania

The four schools of the University are the School of Arts & Sciences, the School of Business, the School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, and the School of Nursing. They offer a wide range of Majors for bachelors. There are even more schools and programs for master’s degree applicants, and we aren’t even talking about the interdisciplinary studies of the Penn Integrates Knowledge Program yet.

The research and practicing base of the University of Pennsylvania is also immense. Its research budget almost reaches a billion US dollars. Its School of Medicine is generously funded by the government to provide the best place for professors and young interns to work together and make new discoveries. The campus has almost two hundred research centers that work on the problems of different fields of study.

Status of University Of Pennsylvania

Despite its status as an elite university, UPenn is a very diverse and inclusive school. It welcomes students from more than a hundred countries worldwide and all the USA states. More than half of the students are women, and also more than half are non-whites. The percentage of female students and students of color grows steadily, too, according to the Action Plan for Faculty Diversity and Excellence 2011. The diversity of cultures and opinions is an integral part of UPenn’s politics and strategy.

Financial status

Financial status won’t be an obstacle for talented students: they can apply for scholarships, grants, and loans of all sorts. 64 percent of the first-time applicants receive financial aid, according to the information at the UPenn site. The total of all financial aid reaches two billion US dollars.

University Of Pennsylvania History

One of the oldest universities, founded in 1740 by Benjamin Franklin himself, the University of Pennsylvania has its honored place in the Ivy League. It also holds its place among the top 15 universities in all the USA, being the 9th in the Forbes and Niche rating and 12th in Wall Street Journal rating. It speaks volumes about its terrific range of possibilities for study, social life, for internship, and career. The demands for students to be are no less terrific. The last figures show that only 7,7 percent of the applicants were accepted to UPenn.

Conclusion

Remember that answering the question about your academic and personal interests is the best way to complete your UPenn supplement essay. Talk about the major benefitting your future life and you, in your turn, benefitting the prosperity of your country and community. Lots of University of Pennsylvania admission essay examples we offer have touched this topic from different sides and a great deal of them worked just well for their authors now studying at UPenn.

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