The University of Pennsylvania, or Penn (some say UPenn, but we don’t love how that rolls off the tongue), is a top-tier high-selective research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The city offers a cosmopolitan urban college experience steeped in culture, history, and delicious food, and the university offers one of the best educations on earth. They have four undergraduate schools — The College of Arts & Sciences (or The College), The Wharton School, The School of Engineering and Applied Science, and The School of Nursing — and more than 10,600 undergraduate students. There are nearly 30,000 students overall, and the campus is known for bringing together the best and the brightest to innovate, engineer, and discover.
Penn is also very international. Being in a major east coast city makes the school highly attractive to students from abroad, as does being a member of the prestigious Ivy League, and they had nearly 7,000 international students enrolled across the university in 2023.
If you’re a student-athlete looking for the best of everything, you can’t do much better than Penn. The athletic side of the university is seriously impressive, breaking.
As we said, they are a member of the famous Ivy League, which was actually founded as an athletic league in 1954, but that has come to carry massive cache far and beyond the confines of sport. Demand for a spot at Penn is massive. They experienced a more than 10% increase in applications in the 2023-24 application cycle, which is a wild jump even in an era of crazy numbers. The size of Penn has stayed about the same, so that means the acceptance rate had to drop even further to winnow the more than 65,000 applications down to just a few thousand accepted students.
However, they haven’t released the actual rate of acceptance. We can look to the Class of 2027 for guidance, though. For them, the acceptance rate was 5.8% — and remember, that was with 6,000 fewer applicants.
In this post, we’ll outline what you, a prospective Penn admit and student-athlete, need to know about getting into, and playing at, Penn.
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What is Penn looking for in Student Athletes?
As an Ivy League institution of exceptional caliber, Penn isn’t giving anyone a free pass in, regardless of how far they can throw or hit or swim or whatever. Instead, they are looking for top students who are also top athletes. You can’t get into Penn by being good at sports, but being good at sports can help you get into Penn if you are already a qualified applicant academically and with your extracurriculars. Yes, they expect to see leadership roles outside of being the captain of a team. Yes, they expect you to do things other than compete. Yes, that can be hard to schedule. We get it — but it’s also doable. Because Penn admissions wants to see a diversity of experiences, this may mean backing off the private coaching and travel leagues as you prepare to apply to make room for, say, a long-term volunteering gig at a local non-profit, or an internship related to your academic passion or professional goals.
Now, we’ll break down the two primary ways you can join a varsity squad at Penn, and then some other options if you start to get the feeling that maybe going NCAA Division I isn’t for you.
Recruited Athletes
First off, while being in the NCAA Division I, a division known for throwing around a lot of money to attract top athletes, Penn doesn’t do that. As a member of the Ivy League, Penn has agreed, along with the other Ivy League schools, to not offer any athletic scholarships or aid based on a student’s athletic performance. They only offer need-based aid, or aid calculated using a formula to determine how much support you’d need from them to attend based on your financial background and resources. So, if you are looking for a free ride to college through your athletic skills, and don’t qualify for full aid due to your financial resources, Penn is not going to work for you. In fact, none of the Ivies will.
Instead, the student-athletes who are most successful at Penn are those who are amazing students who can use their athletic skills as a boost to their application through coach support through admissions — but who can afford to pay the difference between need-based aid and the cost of attendance.
If this isn’t an issue for you and you want to play at Penn, you’ll start out by reaching out to express your interest and to let the coaches know a little about yourself. The first step in this process is to fill out the sport-specific recruiting form available here, because the forms include exactly what they need to know about and from you before initiating their end of the recruitment conversation. Coaches aren’t allowed to respond until your junior year (for most sports, there are some exceptions), so don’t be surprised if you don’t hear anything after you submit the form if it is before that. Once you’re within your “recruiting window,” look out for correspondence and, if you still don’t hear anything, then it’s time to respectfully follow-up over email. Many of the coaches are listed here, with contact email addresses, and they try to make the process straightforward and easy, even putting all the info you may need together on one page.
Any direct contact, like emailing, should be undertaken as if you were applying for a job. Have an athletic resume prepared in advance, a copy of your transcript available to share digitally (this could be a pdf), and proof-read absolutely everything. Practice how you introduce and describe yourself in advance, too, in case a coach calls. Remember, they aren’t just assessing whether you are good at your sport, but whether you are a fit for Penn. That means showcasing your caliber across all communications.
Recruited athletes are often asked to apply in the early cycle. This is good for you, because it’ll give you an answer with enough time to re-calibrate your strategy if it didn’t go your way. Before you even get to that point, though, you may be asked to undergo an early evaluation, or what Penn calls a “pre-read” of your application. This review is basically an early evaluation by the admissions office. They will assess your application in the fall of your senior year of high school (but no earlier than Oct 1), and you’ll be issued a decision of “likely,” “possible,” or “unlikely.”
The letters have become known as likely letters, as that is the result you are looking for. A likely letter is not a guaranteed offer of admission, but basically says that you are likely to be admitted if you maintain or improve upon all aspects of your application between the early review and when you officially apply. We work with students each year on readying their applications for this early evaluation, increasing their chances of receiving a “likely” determination and their eventual acceptance into a top-tier university like Penn as a student-athlete.
Parallel with the early evaluation process, students are encouraged to communicate clearly with the coaches they are speaking with, and to ask directly whether they’ll have the coaches support for their application. They want to see that you’re committed, so it’s fair for you to expect commitment in return. And, if your parents are involved in the process, you should ask them to read this resource document, “The Educator’s Playbook,” that Penn created to help parents and caregivers in supporting the young athletes they are guiding towards a successful future.
Walk-Ons
Walking-on is the term used for joining a team without being recruited and without coach support through admissions. Students often walk on to a team if they decide to play in college after recruitment quotas have been filled, or because a coach wants to see more from them before committing to putting them on a starting line-up. One of the downsides of walking on at many colleges and universities is that you don’t have access to athletic scholarships, at least not at first. But because Penn doesn’t offer athletic scholarships anyway, this isn’t an issue!
If you are considering walking onto a Penn team, you’ll still want to start with the form — even if it is already in your senior year. This starts the conversation around who you are as a person and an athlete, as they need to know you before the first day of tryouts (if they even have them regularly scheduled). Many teams will only consider walk-ons if they are communicative in this way. Showing up to the field with your gear doesn’t communicate preparedness. They want to see that you did the prep!
Club Sports
If you’re super into a sport, but aren’t totally sold on it monopolizing a major part of your time at Penn — and you don’t think you need the admissions boost recruiting can provide — the club sport roster is solid. Club sports are student run and often highly competitive, but require less time commitment and typically have more of a focus on competitions than on practices…unless the students want more practices…because you get to make the rules.
There are around three dozen club sports teams, ranging from the club equivalent of varsity squads (tennis, lacrosse, etc.) to teams that don’t have a varsity equivalent, like spikeball, roller hockey, and multiple different martial arts squads. Some teams have tryouts, and some don’t. Some expect a lot of experience and compete at a high level, and some don’t. They typically practice around 3 times a week, though, and compete on weekends. So, it is a significant time commitment when you are “in-season.”
One of the things Penn emphasizes to athletes is the return on your investment if you choose Penn. By that, they specifically mean educational and career successes that stem from your Penn experiences in the classroom, in the community, and also on the field. The proof is in the pudding. Many Penn students go on to great futures — especially athletes.
If you’re considering Penn, let us know. We can help.