"The Class of 2021 Facebook group will remain active this year, barring any unforeseen issues,” Vice Dean and Director of Marketing and Communications Kathryn Bezella said in an emailed statement. 

Virtually all schools cited their admission percentage and the size of their applicant pool.

“I personally have not noticed discrimination against Asian-Americans in my practice,” Laurie Kopp Weingarten, director of One-Stop College Counseling, said.

“I kind of cloistered myself because I was scared of what would happen,” Victoria Mak said. “Those ten minutes before I found out were the longest ten minutes of my life.”

Penn has admitted 3,699 students among 40,413 applicants to the Class of 2021 — a record-low 9.15 percent acceptance rate.

“What are we offering to the middle-range student, the student that can afford to pay some money towards education, but not enough to cover the full bill?” University Director of Financial Aid Elaine Papas-Varas asked. “Does that mean loans for a middle-income student?”

On average, research has shown that homeschooled students have higher average scores on standardized testing than their peers in formal educational institutions.

A positive experience during Quaker Days was a major motivating factor for many students when deciding whether to volunteer to be a host for admitted students for the event this year. 

Credit for Biology 091 and Chemistry 091 will no longer be offered to students enrolling in fall 2017.

Penn's School of Nursing and the Wharton School took the top spots on U.S. News & World Report and QS World University Rankings.

Some universities — most recently Columbia — have accidentally sent congratulatory acceptance letters to students who were in fact rejected.

Student Financial Services blames the abrupt shift in policy on the Department of Education, but some students suspect Penn’s financial aid officers made the mistake.

College freshman Michelle Lu, who receives financial aid for approximately half the total cost of attendance, said that while the $3,000 tuition increase doesn’t seem like a lot incrementally, it will be significant by the end of her four years at Penn.

“If this is an admitted student group, then we can decide at a certain point, let’s say the May 1 reply date, that that group no longer exists, that we take the group down,” Admissions Dean Furda said. “The purpose has already been served.”

Furda touted the course recently as a way Penn is attempting to play a larger role in students' lives before they get to college. 

“We talk a lot being first generation low income in college, and we forget what it was like when we were seniors in high school and all of the fees we had to pay,” Alfaro said.

Graduate School of Education Senior Lecturer Anne Pomerantz also examined the influence DeVos could have on the many educational issues beyond Penn, specifically the effect of voucher programs on Philadelphia public schools.