It’s time the admissions interview returns to Penn.
In July 2025, University leadership discontinued the optional alumni interview for undergraduate applicants, effective for the 2025-26 application cycle. The interviews ran through the Penn Alumni Ambassador Program, which paired alumni with applicants for brief, one-on-one conversations to discuss the applicant’s background and interest in Penn. In their letter to PAAP volunteers explaining the change, senior officials from the Admissions Office and Alumni Relations cited a sharp rise in applications and the narrow review window as the basis for the decision.
At first glance, it may seem that Penn made the right call. In the 2024-25 cycle, Penn received a record 72,544 applications — more than double the 31,000 applications it received when PAAP began offering an alumni interview in 2012. As applications climbed, the program placed heavier demands on alumni volunteers’ limited time, and the University could not always honor every student’s request for an interview. On top of that, the interview was non-evaluative to begin with; it never officially factored into an admissions decision, and skipping it carried no penalty. In other words, the interview had become an administrative burden that asked a great deal of alumni for a step that, on paper, decided nothing.
Despite this, Penn has good reason to bring the interview back — and make it evaluative. With an interview, admissions can more effectively screen for authenticity, move in the direction higher education and the labor market are already heading, and give applicants a dose of a campus driven by face-to-face interaction.
The emergence of artificial intelligence has only sharpened the problem. Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini can draft a personal statement, research a school’s programs, and manufacture a reason for wanting to attend Penn. It’s also cheaper, faster, and harder to catch than a parent or paid consultant ever was. The result rewards whoever games the system best and punishes the student who writes every word themselves. None of this means the essay has to go. But it’s worth rethinking how much weight to place on a task so easily outsourced, when a 15-minute conversation can give admissions officers a better sense of the person behind the application, in their own voice, than an essay ever can.
Reinstating the interview would also put Penn Admissions in step with where Penn faculty, higher education at large, and the workforce beyond it, are already heading. As AI reshapes how students learn, professors nationwide are leaning on oral defenses, in-class exams, and cold-calling to gauge student understanding. Employers are doing the same, testing candidates on their feet rather than on a polished resume. Penn wouldn’t be alone in leaning into this, either. Georgetown conducts an interview for each and every applicant while Ivy League peers including Yale, Harvard, and Dartmouth all offer (and encourage) prospective students to participate in an alumni interview.
Reinstating the interview also fits into the current Penn undergraduate experience. Long before “Social Ivy” became shorthand for our school, students built their four years around conversation — coffee chats, club interviews, small talk with teaching assistants and professors that shaped as much of the Penn experience as any lecture. The admissions interview is simply a preview of that culture, and a screen for the kind of person who can thrive within it.
College admissions have been turned upside down over the past several years. Essays get outsourced, extracurriculars get inflated, and much of what makes an applicant a person gets flattened into a file. As Penn selects its next classes, the interview remains one of the few places left where a personality can come through in a student’s own words, to another human, and feel heard. For the $75 application fee, applicants deserve at least that much.
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PETER KENNEDY is a College sophomore from West Chester, Pa. studying philosophy, politics & economics. His email is kenned29@sas.upenn.edu.
