A strong rain meant lower SAT scores for about 4,000 students who took the test last October, and 103 of the victims have applied to Penn.
Now, admissions officials are reconsidering some applications in light of a processing malfunction which left some students with scores 100 points lower than they actually earned.
Dean of Admissions Lee Stetson said he was concerned about the case of 14 students whose scores had been incorrectly reported and who had subsequently been denied early admission.
"We've looked [those applications] all over and there are no changes at this point in any of the decisions," he said, adding that the problem "has not had a significant effect" on Penn's admissions pool.
He added that the average change in score was only 10 to 15 points for affected Penn applicants.
The effect of the score changes was even smaller because the SAT recently switched to a 2400-point scale as opposed to the previous 1600-point scale.
Admission decisions had not been made for affected regular-decision or deferred early-decision applicants, so the situation was not as serious for these students, Stetson said.
Brian O'Reilly, executive director for SAT Information Services at the College Board, said the problem is the result of a "scanner not picking up all of the marks that students made."
He said some score sheets obtained moisture, causing them to swell and slightly moving pencil marks.
A significant number of affected students took the test in the Northeast and Eastern Seaboard regions, which are areas that received "historic rainfall" on the day of the October test, said Dave Hakensen, a spokesman for Pearson Educational Measurement, the company that scans the answer sheets.
Some students were not affected by the mishap because they submitted scores from later tests as well as from the October test, Stetson said.
After realizing the error earlier this month, the College Board rescored affected tests and notified students. These students are also being refunded for registration fees and fees associated with sending the scores, according to a College Board press release.
Stetson said Penn did not specifically notify its affected applicants but made it clear through media statements that it was re-evaluating applications.
As a result of the mishap, O'Reilly said a software program has been developed that will check whether answer sheets have been exposed to excessive moisture.
"Nobody knew to look for" moisture issues prior to the incident, he said.
Furthermore, Hakensen said that answer sheets will be given more time to "dry out" at Pearson's facility in Austin, Texas, before being scanned.
Complications such as this have not occurred in the SAT's recent history, O'Reilly said, adding that the College Board has had to rescore tests, but problems were "not associated with scanners not picking up answers."
Stetson said Penn has received rescores of the SAT in the past, but this year's score changes were "more delayed than normal.
"It slows us down while we have to do some checking to make sure everything is correct," he said. "But we understand these things happen."
