Does the University of Pennsylvania require letters of recommendation? The short answer, as you can probably imagine, is a resounding yes. But that’s not where this story ends. UPenn does require your standard letters from a school counselor at your high school and a teacher in a core subject area (i.e., Math, Science, English, Social Studies, or Foreign Language), but the third letter they require is where things get a bit unorthodox. Unlike many schools of its caliber, including most Ivy League schools, UPenn allows applicants to submit their third letter of recommendation from a “supporter in your community.” Huh? While we all have our personal cheerleaders who hype us up when we need it, is this sort of person really who Penn is looking for? 

What Does Penn Mean by a “Supporter in Your Community?”

Recommendations from a school counselor and core subject teachers are nothing out of the ordinary. Penn also allows your third recommendation from another core subject teacher; many successful applicants opt to go in this direction. After all, your teachers have spent much time with you, know how you perform academically, and have your best admissions interests at heart. But sometimes there’s another person in your life, whether it’s a mentor, employer, or extracurricular leader, who knows you well too. Here’s how Penn Admissions words their optional request for a recommendation from a community member:

“While an instructor’s perspective and understanding of who you are in a classroom setting is crucial to our process, we also know that there are many reasons that other people in your life may know you even better. Our letter of recommendation policy is designed to offer you flexibility for this reason. . .

For non-academic recommendations, choose someone who knows you personally and whose perspective would add information not captured elsewhere in your application. This person may be a supervisor at work, mentor, coach, arts or music instructor, spiritual leader, or cultural leader. Letters from family members and close family friends typically do not provide information that is helpful to the evaluation process. . .

We don’t prefer one type of letter of recommendation option over the other (academic vs. non-academic) and encourage you to choose the people you believe will best represent you.”

How to Successfully (and Competitively!) Navigate Penn’s Letter of Recommendation Process

Aside from this slightly unexpected twist in their letter of recommendation process (which might remind some of our readers of Dartmouth’s optional peer recommendation), the same advice we at Ivy Coach would give to all college applicants we give to those applying to Penn: ask for your letters of recommendation as early as possible (by spring of your junior year), provide your recommenders with ample details about your academic plans and character, and be very gracious for their hard work on your behalf! 

Ivy Coach’s clients take it even further. With guidance from a member of our team of former elite college admissions officers, including Jayson Weingarten, a former Penn admissions officer, we help our Penn-bound applicants prepare a collection of compelling classroom anecdotes for teacher recommenders to reference when writing their letters. In the case of a community member recommendation, we help our clients furnish them with extracurricular anecdotes that underscore their highly competitive singular hook (though we typically prefer they submit an additional teacher letter of recommendation instead!).

Ivy Coach’s Assistance with UPenn Admission

With Penn’s acceptance rate drawing closer to the tangent line of 0% each year, Penn admission officers are in no position to risk admitting students who won’t use their time at Penn to their fullest potential. The singular hook is our antidote to this fear — it gives Penn a definitive game plan of the many things you’ll do once on campus to make the world a better place in your own unique, often small, and wonderfully weird way. Your letters of recommendation are just another way to drive your hook home, whether your math teacher or your spiritual leader writes them.

If you would like to optimize your child’s odds of admission to the University of Pennsylvania with the help of Ivy Coach’s Jayson Weingarten, fill out our complimentary consultation form, and we’ll be in touch.