Important question regarding penn supplement essay

KingAuthor
Sun, 09 Oct 2011 15:59:18 +0000

A Penn admissions officer who visited my high school and discussed this for about ten to twenty minutes recommends focusing on just one preferred school.

If you apply to a dual-degree program, your application FIRST gets read by the people that coordinate the programs. These people decide whether you get accepted or rejected from the dual-degree programs. If you get rejected from the dual-degree programs, your application THEN gets read by Penn admissions officers in consideration for a single-degree program. To be admitted you really need to explain to them why you would be happy to attend a single-degree program at Penn. If you try to say (in question 10) that you want to study at both Wharton and CAS, for example, the admissions officer won’t be sure if you would really be happy at Penn if you only got into one of the schools.

Obviously dual-degree candidates want to express their interests at both schools because that’s the point of applying to a dual-degree program. There’s a reason, then, why Penn requires extra essays for those candidates. That’s where you do it.