Penn received 61,264 applications for the Class of 2030, about 11,000 fewer than the year before. That class was the first since 2020 required to submit SAT or ACT scores. Penn admitted 3,575 students, almost exactly as many as a year earlier, so the smaller pool translated into an admit rate of 5.8 percent, up from 4.9 percent, according to figures announced to Penn’s trustees in June 2026. Penn has not said why applications fell.
The decline is the newest number in a record that otherwise moved in one direction. Between Fall 2021 and Fall 2025, applications rose from 56,332 to 72,544 while the number of students Penn admitted barely changed, and the entering class held at about 2,400. Penn enrolls roughly 10,000 undergraduates across four schools, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Wharton School, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the School of Nursing.
This profile draws on Penn’s Common Data Set filings for the 2021-22 through 2025-26 editions (also available in the College Transitions Common Data Set repository), which cover the classes that entered from Fall 2021 to Fall 2025, along with Penn’s published profile of the Class of 2030, Penn’s own announcements and reporting in The Daily Pennsylvanian. Each figure below names its year. Rates describe applicant pools, not the odds facing any individual student.
Eleven Thousand Fewer Applications, and the Same Size Class
Penn admits about the same number of students every year, so its admit rate moves almost entirely with the size of the applicant pool. Admits ranged only from 3,304 to 3,575 across the six classes in Figure 1, while applications swung by nearly 18,000.
Figure 1. First-year applications and admit rate, Fall 2021 to Fall 2026. Sources: Penn Common Data Set (Fall 2021 to Fall 2025); The Daily Pennsylvanian and Penn Admissions (Fall 2026).
The Fall 2026 drop came in the first cycle under Penn’s restored testing requirement, which the university announced in February 2025. The timing alone does not establish that the requirement caused the decline. Early decision applications also fell, from 9,503 for the Class of 2029 to just over 7,800 for the Class of 2030, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian.
| Entering class | Applications | Admitted | Admit rate | Enrolled | Yield | ED applications | ED admits | ED admit rate |
| Fall 2021 | 56,332 | 3,304 | 5.9% | 2,418 | 73.2% | 7,961 | 1,183 | 14.9% |
| Fall 2022 | 54,588 | 3,549 | 6.5% | 2,409 | 67.9% | 7,794 | 1,210 | 15.5% |
| Fall 2023 | 59,465 | 3,489 | 5.9% | 2,416 | 69.2% | 8,109 | 1,204 | 14.8% |
| Fall 2024 | 65,236 | 3,523 | 5.4% | 2,395 | 68.0% | 8,683 | 1,235 | 14.2% |
| Fall 2025 | 72,544 | 3,570 | 4.9% | 2,420 | 67.8% | 9,503 | 1,266 | 13.3% |
| Fall 2026 | 61,264 | 3,575 | 5.8% | 2,415 | – | Over 7,800 | – | – |
Table 1. Penn first-year admissions, Fall 2021 to Fall 2026. Source: Penn Common Data Set, items C1 and C21; Fall 2026 from The Daily Pennsylvanian and Penn Admissions. Rates computed by College Transitions. Dashes mark figures not published.
Yield, the share of admitted students who enroll, settled near 68 percent after an unusually high 73.2 percent for Fall 2021. A high yield and a large early decision program go together, because early decision admits have agreed to enroll.
Early Decision Admits Equal Roughly Half the Entering Class
Early decision drives Penn’s admissions math. Penn’s profile of the Class of 2030 reports that 52 percent of the class was admitted early decision. The Common Data Set does not report that share directly, but it shows early decision admits equal to between 48.9 and 52.3 percent of the entering class size in each year from Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. That ratio compares two counts and is not exactly the share of enrolled students admitted early, since a small number of early decision admits may be released from their commitment.
Figure 2. Admit rate for early decision applicants and for all other (non-ED) applicants, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Source: Penn Common Data Set, items C1 and C21. Non-ED rate computed by College Transitions.
Early decision applicants were admitted at 13.3 percent for Fall 2025. The non-ED admit rate, which College Transitions computed by subtracting early decision applicants and admits from the totals, was 3.7 percent. It is not a pure regular decision rate, because it includes students admitted from the waitlist. The early decision rate has been three to four times the non-ED rate in every year shown.
Those rates describe pools, not individual odds. The Common Data Set does not say who is in Penn’s early decision pool, including how many recruited athletes it holds, and that pool may differ from the regular round in ways the data does not measure. What the numbers do show is that a regular decision applicant competes for the places not already committed to students admitted early.
The waitlist offers little additional room. Penn offered waitlist spots to between 2,958 and 3,933 students in each of the last five years, and between 2,288 and 2,753 accepted. It admitted 60 of them for Fall 2025, and no more than 147 in any of the five years.
| Entering class | Offered a spot | Accepted a spot | Admitted from waitlist | Share of those accepting |
| Fall 2021 | 3,933 | 2,753 | 121 | 4.4% |
| Fall 2022 | 3,351 | 2,508 | 147 | 5.9% |
| Fall 2023 | 3,010 | 2,288 | 40 | 1.7% |
| Fall 2024 | 2,958 | 2,288 | 66 | 2.9% |
| Fall 2025 | 3,252 | 2,566 | 60 | 2.3% |
Table 2. Penn waitlist activity, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Source: Penn Common Data Set, item C2. Admit share computed by College Transitions.
What Penn Costs, and What Its Aid Covers
Penn’s billed charges for 2026-27, covering tuition, fees, housing and dining, total $94,582, a 3.8 percent increase over the prior year. Penn’s full estimated cost of attendance for an on-campus student is $99,082, which adds books and supplies, transportation and personal expenses that do not appear on the bill.
Penn’s Common Data Set reports need-based aid for first-years and lists no non-need-based (merit) grants. For Fall 2025, 1,116 first-years, or 46.6 percent of the full-time first-year class, were found to have financial need, and Penn reports meeting 100 percent of demonstrated need. Students who did not apply for aid or were not found to have need received no grant from Penn and pay the billed cost, less any outside scholarships.
Figure 3. Billed cost and the average need-based grant for first-years found to have need, 2023-24 to 2025-26. Source: Penn Common Data Set, items G1 and H2. A comparison of two averages, not a net price estimate.
Among first-years with need, the average need-based grant for 2025-26 was $70,867, equal to about 78 percent of that year’s $91,112 billed charges. That comparison sets an average for one group against a standard bill. It does not mean a typical aid recipient pays the remaining 22 percent, because individual grants vary widely around the average.
| Entering class | Full-time first-years | Applied for aid | Found to have need | Share with need | Average aid package | Average need-based grant | Need met |
| Fall 2021 | 2,285 | 1,429 | 1,127 | 49.3% | $54,954 | $53,221 | 100% |
| Fall 2022 | 2,338 | 1,283 | 1,041 | 44.5% | $62,265 | $59,883 | 100% |
| Fall 2023 | 2,415 | 1,460 | 1,119 | 46.3% | $65,883 | $63,395 | 100% |
| Fall 2024 | 2,415 | 1,530 | 1,199 | 49.6% | $70,971 | $68,578 | 100% |
| Fall 2025 | 2,393 | 1,518 | 1,116 | 46.6% | $73,689 | $70,867 | 100% |
Table 3. Need-based aid for first-time, full-time first-years, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Source: Penn Common Data Set, item H2. Shares computed by College Transitions.
Penn’s Quaker Commitment, first applied in 2025-26, sets two income thresholds. Families earning up to $200,000 with typical assets receive aid covering at least full tuition, and families earning up to $75,000 receive aid covering tuition, fees, housing and dining. Penn also removed primary home equity from its aid calculation for families with typical assets. Penn states that it meets need with grants rather than loans.
For a family’s own figure, the averages above are less useful than Penn’s new Penn Cost Calculator, launched October 14, 2026, which produces an itemized estimate of billed costs and the aid Penn would cover. Penn notes that the calculator does not yet address aid for international students, that families with divorced or separated parents may need to contact the aid office for an estimate, and that the result is not a final aid offer.
Where an Applicant Lives Changes the Numbers
Penn’s recent filings break applications down by residency, and the published rates differ widely. For Fall 2025, Pennsylvania residents were admitted at 8.3 percent, students from other states at 5.4 percent, and international applicants at 2.5 percent. International students submitted 17,882 applications, about a quarter of the pool, and Penn admitted 441 of them.
| Residency | Fall 2024 applied | Fall 2024 admitted | Fall 2024 rate | Fall 2025 applied | Fall 2025 admitted | Fall 2025 rate |
| Pennsylvania | 5,219 | 440 | 8.4% | 5,411 | 451 | 8.3% |
| Other U.S. states | 44,290 | 2,644 | 6.0% | 49,251 | 2,678 | 5.4% |
| International | 15,727 | 439 | 2.8% | 17,882 | 441 | 2.5% |
| Total | 65,236 | 3,523 | 5.4% | 72,544 | 3,570 | 4.9% |
Table 4. Penn applications and admits by residency, Fall 2024 and Fall 2025. Source: Penn Common Data Set 2024-25 and 2025-26, item C1. Rates computed by College Transitions.
These are descriptive differences between pools, not evidence of a formal preference for Pennsylvania residents. The in-state pool is small, about 5,400 applicants, and its makeup, including recruited athletes and local applicants, is not reported. The international rate is likewise a benchmark for the whole international pool rather than a probability for any one applicant.
Testing Returns at Penn
Penn was test-optional for the five classes in Table 5. About half of enrolled first-years submitted SAT scores in each of those years, and the share submitting ACT scores fell from 30 percent to 18 percent. Penn’s 2025-26 filing lists standardized test scores as “considered” in admissions decisions, a step below the factors it rates “very important,” which include the rigor of the high school record, GPA, essays, recommendations and character.
| Entering class | Submitted SAT | Submitted ACT | SAT reading and writing | SAT math | ACT composite | Top tenth of class | Average GPA |
| Fall 2021 | 49% | 30% | 720–770 | 760–800 | 33–35 | 93% | – |
| Fall 2022 | 48% | 23% | 730–770 | 770–800 | 34–35 | 93% | 3.9 |
| Fall 2023 | 51% | 19% | 730–770 | 770–800 | 34–35 | 92% | 3.9 |
| Fall 2024 | 50% | 17% | 740–770 | 770–800 | 34–36 | 91% | 3.9 |
| Fall 2025 | 52% | 18% | 740–770 | 770–800 | 34–35 | 92% | 3.9 |
Table 5. Academic profile of enrolled first-years, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Source: Penn Common Data Set, items C9 to C12. SAT figures are 25th to 75th percentile section scores for students who submitted. Class rank covers only students whose schools reported it (23 percent of the Fall 2025 class). Average GPA is on a 4.0 scale, for the 98 percent of Fall 2025 students who submitted a GPA.
Under the optional policy, students who sent SAT scores clustered near the top of the scale. The middle half of Fall 2025 submitters scored 740 to 770 on reading and writing and 770 to 800 on math. For the first test-required class, Penn’s profile of the Class of 2030 reports a middle 50 percent SAT composite range of 1440 to 1550 and an ACT composite range of 33 to 35. Earlier years were reported as section scores and the new figures as composites, so the published numbers cannot show how the underlying score distribution changed. Applicants facing hardship in testing can submit a waiver, according to Penn.
Grades are nearly uniform at the top. Among Fall 2025 first-years who submitted a GPA, 59 percent had a 4.0 and another 32 percent were between 3.75 and 3.99.
Who Enrolls
Figure 4 shows the first-year class in each Common Data Set reporting category from Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Under CDS rules, students who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents are counted only as international, whatever their race or ethnicity, and every other student appears in exactly one race or ethnicity category. The chart describes those reporting categories. Fall 2024 was the first class admitted after the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling ending race-conscious admissions.
Figure 4. First-year class by CDS race and ethnicity category, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Source: Penn Common Data Set, item B2. Shares use all first-time, first-year students reported in B2 each year and were computed by College Transitions.
The white share fell from 30.7 percent in Fall 2021 to 21.6 percent in Fall 2025, and most of that decline came before the ruling. The Asian share rose from 27.7 percent to 30.1 percent. In the two classes admitted after the ruling, the Black share was 8.6 percent and then 9.6 percent, against 9.8 percent in Fall 2023, and the Hispanic share was 11.3 and 11.2 percent, against 12.3 percent. At the same time, the share of students whose race is unknown nearly doubled, from 4.7 percent to 8.2 percent. That increase alone is large enough that these five years of data cannot establish whether the ruling changed the makeup of Penn’s classes.
Penn’s profile of the Class of 2030 adds measures the Common Data Set does not collect. It reports that 20 percent of the class are the first in their families to attend college and that an estimated 22 percent are Pell Grant recipients. The class comes from 49 states and 76 countries, and 167 students are from Philadelphia.
What Penn Students Study
Business is the largest field of study at Penn by a wide margin. Business accounted for one in five bachelor’s degrees, as Penn reports the field shares, between July 2024 and June 2025, reflecting the size of Wharton’s undergraduate program. Social sciences followed at 13 percent and biological sciences at 11 percent.
Figure 5. Share of bachelor’s degrees by field, July 2024 to June 2025. Source: Penn Common Data Set 2025-26, item J1. Shares of majors completed, which may count second majors, rather than shares of students.
The Common Data Set asks colleges to compute these shares from majors, counting both first and second majors, though it allows first majors only. Penn’s filing does not say which method it used. Either way, the figures describe majors completed rather than the share of Penn students in each field, and a double major can appear in two fields. Compared with degrees conferred four years earlier, the social sciences share fell from 16 percent to 13 percent and health professions, which include nursing, fell from 10 percent to 7 percent, while biological sciences rose from 9 percent to 11 percent.
Applicants choose one of Penn’s four undergraduate schools when they apply, so the competition for a seat in Wharton or Engineering is a competition within that school’s pool. The Common Data Set does not report admissions by school.
Staying and Finishing
Nearly every Penn student returns and graduates. First-year retention ranged from 97.7 percent to 98.8 percent across the five filings, and the six-year graduation rate ranged from 96.1 percent to 96.9 percent for the cohorts that entered from 2015 to 2019.
| Filing | First-year retention | Six-year graduation cohort | Six-year graduation rate | Pell recipients |
| 2021-22 | 97.7% | Entered 2015 | 96.2% | 95.4% |
| 2022-23 | 98.4% | Entered 2016 | 96.1% | 92.7% |
| 2023-24 | 98.1% | Entered 2017 | 96.8% | 95.0% |
| 2024-25 | 98.8% | Entered 2018 | 96.5% | 92.7% |
| 2025-26 | 98.6% | Entered 2019 | 96.9% | 94.8% |
Table 6. Retention and six-year graduation rates. Source: Penn Common Data Set, item B22 and the graduation rate tables in section B. Pell rates are for cohort members who received a Pell Grant.
Pell Grant recipients graduated at slightly lower rates, between 92.7 percent and 95.4 percent depending on the cohort, compared with 96.1 to 96.9 percent overall.
In the Fall 2025 term, 58.3 percent of undergraduate class sections had fewer than 20 students, and 102 sections had 100 or more. Penn’s reported student-to-faculty ratio was 6 to 1 in Fall 2021 and 10 to 1 in Fall 2025, but the student count behind the figure also changed, from 9,741 to 13,708. The filings do not explain the difference, so the two ratios may not be comparable and cannot by themselves show a change in classroom conditions.
What These Numbers Cannot Tell You
The Common Data Set is the most consistent public record of Penn admissions, but it leaves out several things a family would want to know. It does not report admit rates by undergraduate school or describe who is in the early decision pool. It does not explain why applications fell for the Class of 2030, and Penn has not released detailed regular decision results since 2022, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian. Three questions are worth raising directly with Penn or a counselor.
| Question | Where to look |
| How competitive is admission to the specific school I am applying to? | Penn Admissions information sessions; a counselor’s experience with recent applicants |
| What would my family actually pay? | The Penn Cost Calculator, then Penn’s financial aid office |
| How does the early decision pool differ from the regular pool? | Ask Penn directly; the Common Data Set does not say |
Table 7. Questions the Common Data Set does not answer, and where to look.
Sources: University of Pennsylvania Common Data Set, 2021-22 through 2025-26 editions (Fall 2021 to Fall 2025 entering classes; degrees conferred through June 2025; charges through 2026-27), from Penn’s Office of Institutional Research and Analysis. Class of 2030 applications, admits and admit rate from The Daily Pennsylvanian (June 12, 2026), reporting figures announced to the Penn Board of Trustees; Class of 2030 early decision applications from The Daily Pennsylvanian (December 18, 2025); Class of 2030 enrollment, first-generation, Pell, early decision share, geography and test ranges from Penn Admissions’ incoming class profile (accessed November 2026). Testing policy from Penn Today (February 14, 2025). 2026-27 charges from Penn Today (March 6, 2026) and cost of attendance from Penn Student Registration and Financial Services. Quaker Commitment terms from Penn Admissions (November 20, 2024) and Penn Today (February 27, 2025). Penn Cost Calculator from Penn Today (October 14, 2026). All rates not reported directly by Penn were computed by College Transitions from the counts shown.
Sources
University of Pennsylvania, Common Data Set (all editions). https://ira.upenn.edu/penn-numbers/common-data-set
The Daily Pennsylvanian, Class of 2030 admissions rate (June 12, 2026). https://www.thedp.com/article/2026/06/penn-admissions-rate-test-mandatory-tuition-financial-aid
The Daily Pennsylvanian, Class of 2030 early decision results (Dec. 18, 2025). https://www.thedp.com/article/2025/12/penn-class-of-2030-early-decision-admissions-results
The Daily Pennsylvanian, Class of 2030 regular decision results (Mar. 26, 2026). https://www.thedp.com/article/2026/03/penn-regular-decision-2026-results-class-of-2030
Penn Admissions, incoming class profile (Class of 2030). https://admissions.upenn.edu/admissions-and-financial-aid/what-penn-looks-for/incoming-class-profile
Penn Today, Penn reinstates standardized testing (Feb. 14, 2025). https://penntoday.upenn.edu/announcements/penn-reinstates-standardized-testing-undergraduate-admissions
Penn Today, 2026-27 undergraduate charges and financial aid budget (Mar. 6, 2026). https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/penn-trustees-approve-2026-2027-undergraduate-charges-and-financial-aid-budget
Penn Student Registration and Financial Services, undergraduate cost of attendance. https://srfs.upenn.edu/costs-budgeting/undergraduate-cost-attendance
Penn Admissions, Penn’s Quaker Commitment (Nov. 20, 2024). https://admissions.upenn.edu/visit-connect/penn-perspectives/blog/penns-quaker-commitment-expands-financial-aid-middle-income-families
Penn Today, Quaker Commitment (Feb. 27, 2025). https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/quaker-commitment-guarantees-full-tuition-scholarships-families-earning-200k-or-less-trustees
Penn Today, Penn launches the Penn Cost Calculator (Oct. 14, 2026). https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/penn-launches-new-tool-help-families-understand-their-individualized-cost-attendance
