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A word of caution for those applying to UPenn...

Posted: Thu Dec 02, 2021 9:36 am
by dontapplytopenn
I saw some incredibly unethical behavior last year from the admissions committee during the whole COVID crisis.

Until late Autumn, their website said they weren't accepting new graduate students period in arts and sciences. No big deal, lots of schools were doing the same. By Decemberish, they decided they were in fact taking applications for their math grad school, so I threw mine in and paid the $100 or whatever it is. Come Spring, the following pops up on gradcafe.

"UPenn (2/16 unofficial offer, they said they only admit student interested in joining their mirror symmetry group because of funding issue.)"

"email from prof. I previously talked to "Formally Penn is not admitting
new graduate students this year. However, ------ and I have a Simons
Foundation grant that is able to support two incoming graduate students.
We were very impressed with your file, so we hope you’ll want to come
to Penn and work with either or both of us." very strange year!"

I was pretty ticked off I wasted $100 since my area is nowhere close to mirror symmetry and that I wasted time and effort on this application as well. Dunno if they have more funding this year, but COVID is still around so I wouldn't be surprised if something like this happens again. Either way, assuming they got a few hundred applicants, they scammed tens of thousands of dollars in application fees only to throw most of them in the trash.

Re: A word of caution for those applying to UPenn...

Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2022 7:52 pm
by deviant_lime
Does anyone know about the funding situation for Penn this year?

Re: A word of caution for those applying to UPenn...

Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2022 10:07 pm
by ensemble
yeah f**k them, it was a complete scam