University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania (commonly referred to as Penn or UPenn) is an American private Ivy League research university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It is one of the Colonial Colleges. Incorporated as The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn is one of 14 founding members of the Association of American Universities.

Benjamin Franklin, Penn's founder, advocated an educational program that focused as much on practical education for commerce and public service as on the classics and theology. Penn was one of the first academic institutions to follow a multidisciplinary model pioneered by several European universities, concentrating multiple "faculties" (e.g., theology, classics, medicine) into one institution. It was also home to many other educational innovations. The first school of medicine in North America (Perelman School of Medicine, 1765), the first collegiate business school (Wharton, 1881) and the first student union (Houston Hall, 1896), were all born at Penn.

Penn offers a broad range of academic departments, an extensive research enterprise and a number of community outreach and public service programs. It is particularly well known for its medical school, design school, dental school, school of business, law school, communications school, nursing school, veterinary school, its social sciences and humanities programs, as well as its biomedical teaching and research capabilities. Its undergraduate programs are also among the most selective in the country (12.1% acceptance rate).

All of Penn's schools, alone or jointly, exhibit very high research activity. Penn is consistently included among the top five research universities in the United States, and among the top research universities in the world, for both quality and quantity of research. In fiscal year 2011, Penn topped the Ivy League in academic research spending with an $814 million budget, involving some 4,000 faculty, 1,100 postdoctoral fellows and 5,400 support staff, graduate assistants.

Penn's academic and research programs are led by a large and highly productive faculty.In the last ten years alone 9 Penn faculty members or graduates have won a Nobel Prize. Over its long history the university has also produced many distinguished alumni. These include 12 heads of state (including one U.S. President), 3 United States Supreme Court justices, and supreme court justices of other states, founders of technology companies, international law firms, and global financial institutions, university presidents and 18 living billionaires.

Student admissions:

The Princeton Review ranks Penn as the 6th most selective school in the United States. For the Class of 2015, entering in the fall of 2011, the University received a record of 31,659 applications and admitted 12.26 percent of the applicants (9.5% in the regular decision cycle), marking Penn's most selective admissions cycle in the history of the University.The Atlantic also ranked Penn among the 10 most selective schools in the country. At the graduate level, Penn's admissions rates, like most universities', vary considerably based on school and program. Based on admission statistics from U.S. News and World Report, Penn's most selective programs include its law school, the health care schools (medicine, dental medicine, nursing, and veterinary), and its business school.

Rankings:

According to U.S. News & World Report Penn is currently ranked 8th in the United States (tied with Duke), behind Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, The University of Chicago, MIT, and Stanford. The eighth position is three spots down compared to 2011; the university attributed the drop in U.S. News' new methodology that takes into account the opinions of high school college counselors, who emphasize the benefits of large urban centers like New York.U.S. News also includes Penn in its Most Popular National Universities list, and so does The Princeton Review in its Dream Colleges list.