How Penn reads applications: committee-based evaluation

PPenn's admissions officers often read an application in teams of two, looking at the same file at the same time and talking it through until they reach a consensus, as the Daily Pennsylvanian reported in 2016. Most families picture a lone reader at a kitchen table late at night, and for years that was roughly how Penn worked: officers divided the files, read them alone on their own hours, and wrote a recommendation to advance, defer or deny.

A conversation between two readers judges an application differently from one reader working alone, and the difference has consequences for how every part of a Penn file should be built.