The Penn community faced several challenges throughout the 2020-21 academic year, including but not limited to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19
Penn administrators closed campus in fall 2020 two weeks before students were scheduled to move in. With the change, classes were moved online and campus buildings were closed for the semester.
While campus itself was closed for the fall semester, many students decided to live in off-campus housing in West Philadelphia regardless, and Penn offered COVID-19 testing to students living near campus during the semester.
According to Penn's COVID-19 testing, case counts peaked in October 2020, with 3.3% of undergraduate students testing positive and 107 community members contracting COVID-19.
Although classes remained virtual, campus housing reopened in the spring semester.
While the campus’ semester-long positivity rate was 0.61%, it spiked during February 2021, increasing to a 4.47% positivity rate. Positivity rates fell to 0.09% by the final week of the semester.
Penn offered COVID-19 vaccines starting on April 14, 2021, and required them for students to return for the fall semester.
Politics
The 2020 presidential election featured two candidates with strong connections to Penn, as 1968 Wharton graduate and incumbent Donald Trump faced off against Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor Joe Biden.
The election featured record voter turnout on Penn’s campus, with 689 ballots cast between three on-campus voting sites, including the participation of former Penn President Amy Gutmann and her husband. Before the election, Pennsylvania was widely expected to be a critical swing state which could decide the victor.
83% of ballots cast on Penn's campus were for Biden, who emerged victorious in both Pennsylvania and nationwide.
After the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the United States Capitol, Gutmann condemned the assault. Penn alumni — several of whom withheld their donations from the University — also called for the school to revoke Trump's degree in response.
While Trump was impeached shortly afterwards, he was acquitted by the Senate.
In the summer of 2021, Biden nominated Gutmann to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Germany.
Admissions
The University’s admission rate for the Class of 2025 was 5.68%, down over two percentage points from the 8.07% acceptance rate from the year prior. The new figure marked the lowest acceptance rate in Penn's history, and the application cycle also featured the largest application pool in history.
After debuting student-led virtual tours with the Penn Admissions Office in the 2019-20 academic year, the Kite and Key Society, Penn’s tour guide group, continued to offer them throughout the 2020-21 school year. They were the first of their kind within the Ivy League.
Dean of Admissions and 1987 College graduate Eric Furda resigned after 12 years in late 2020. He was replaced in an interim capacity by Vice Dean and Director of Admissions John McLaughlin, and was replaced permanently by Whitney Soule — who formerly worked as Bowdoin College's senior vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid — on July 2.
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