The Penn Alumni Ambassador Program will no longer offer alumni conversations with prospective students beginning with the 2025-26 cycle, University leadership announced Wednesday in a message to members of the program.
In lieu of “brief admissions-season conversations,” alumni ambassadors will now participate in a “sustained year-round volunteer experience focused on supporting students at every stage of their Penn journey,” Vice Provost and Dean of Admissions Whitney Soule and Senior Associate Vice President for Alumni Relations Hoopes Wampler wrote in the message. The announcement is the latest in a series of updates to PAAP, an initiative designed to build relationships between Penn alumni and new students.
Soule and Wampler described the program as a “robust, campus-wide mentorship initiative” with “opportunities to congratulate and welcome matriculating students.” They cited feedback from current alumni ambassadors, including a desire to ensure their “valuable time be made more relevant and rewarding” during the admissions process.
In their message, Soule and Wampler attributed the change to the University’s record-breaking applicant pool and the resulting need to redirect alumni “expertise” to encourage "enduring impact.”
Vice Dean and Director of Strategic Communications of Penn Admissions Paul Richards described the new model as “the evolution of a strong and long-standing collaboration between Penn Admissions and Alumni Relations,” in a written statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian.
The complete details of the update to the admission process will be made available on Aug. 1, when Penn’s undergraduate application goes live.
“Applicants will be able to see that we no longer list an optional alumni conversation as part of our application requirements,” Richards wrote.
Penn received 72,544 applications for undergraduate admission in the last admissions cycle — making it the University’s most selective year on record and marking a sharp increase from the 31,000 applications received in 2012, when PAAP was established.
According to a frequently asked questions website linked in the message, this “rapid increase in application volume and the compressed timeline for review have made it challenging to sustain one-on-one conversations in an equitable and timely way.”
Under the newly designed program, one-on-one alumni conversations will be replaced with yearlong efforts to welcome, mentor, and support new and current students.
“From the moment an admitted student chooses Penn, you will help ease their transition and guide their academic, extracurricular, and professional exploration,” Soule and Wampler wrote.
“Alumni volunteers will be able to focus on meaningful and sustained connections with admitted and current students, rather than short conversations with applicants who may or may not end up coming to Penn,” Richards wrote.
The message also featured an interest form for alumni to log their involvement and mentorship goals to help guide the program. According to the form, the updated model will also offer opportunities for alumni to receive mentorship from fellow alumni.
The announcement comes after Penn Admissions pivoted from alumni interviews to non-evaluative conversations for the 2023-24 admissions cycle. The Penn Admissions website currently describes alumni conversations as an opportunity “for students to learn more about Penn from someone who can speak from experience.”
Laurie Kopp Weingarten, president and chief educational consultant at One-Stop College Counseling, previously told the DP that when she brought up the shift away from alumni interviews at a meeting of the Wharton Club of New Jersey, “it was not a good reaction.”
“People were not happy,” she said, adding that many people in that group are “active Penn alumni” who are part of the interview program.
Chair of Penn’s Board of Trustees, Ramanan Raghavendran — who has served PAAP for 16 years — noted his enthusiasm for “piloting new initiatives” for alumni relations.
“Ultimately, for me, this is about engaging our 350,000 alumni who each have a wealth of experience and knowledge, a resource shared by very few other universities,” Raghavendran added in the message. “All journeys begin with a first step."
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