Penn Admissions hopes to “give back to Philadelphia in a way that is accessible and interactive” by partnering with Heights Philadelphia to launch College App Classroom.
Credit: Chenyao Liu
Penn has partnered with Heights Philadelphia — a nonprofit that provides underrepresented communities with better access to educational and career opportunities — to launch College App Classroom, a free 28-lesson course aimed at easing the college application process.
The in-person course, first offered this fall to high school students in the School District of Philadelphia, is designed to make the college application process more accessible to low-income and first-generation students who may not otherwise have access to advising and support. College App Classroom was first piloted in seven local schools and through the Penn Rising Scholars Success Academy summer program, reaching nearly 1,000 students over the past two years.
In an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian, Vice Provost and Dean of Admissions Whitney Soule noted the significance of the partnership.
“Heights has an incredible connection and place within the network of Philadelphia public schools and so working together with Heights was really important,” Soule told the DP. “Partnering with Heights has helped us get it into more classrooms and the attention of the school district.”
The course covers every step of the college admissions process — including financial aid resources, approaches to selecting the right college, and essay writing strategies.
College App Classroom is being provided to schools as a comprehensive digital toolkit, complete with an instructor’s guide for those teaching the course, lesson plans, presentation slides, and student worksheets. It also features three case studies of hypothetical students as they navigate the college admissions process.
According to a Heights spokesperson, the course will primarily be taught by part-time teachers employed by the nonprofit, but it may occasionally be taught by teachers in the school district.
Despite Penn’s involvement with its development, the course intends to help students with the application process for any college.
Paul Richards, Vice Dean and Director of Strategic Communications, emphasized how the main intention of the course is not to “give a student a leg up in applying to Penn,” but rather about viewing it from an “educator lens.”
“Whats been a goal of ours for a long time now is that if you interacting with us as a prospective student, we are going to teach you something that is relevant to your college application experience, regardless of where you apply and regardless of where you go,” Richards said.
Richards added that Penn Admissions hopes to “give back to Philadelphia in a way that is accessible and interactive” by designing the course’s case studies to resonate with underprivileged Philadelphia public school students.
“That kind of content that debunks myths and mysticisms here in Philadelphia specifically, I think serves our broader purposes and what we want to do for the city,” Richards said.
High school senior Bangle Wei told the DP that the course was “reassuring” and made him feel “less anxious” about the college application process.
“What was really nice was that they demystified financial aid because that was the one thing I really couldn’t understand,” Wei said.
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He shared that while he felt like the case studies in the course were “a good visualization tool,” he would have liked the hypothetical characters to be “more diverse.”
Richards noted that the College App Classroom team is working on developing more case studies based on direct student feedback.
Penn and Heights partnered in 2023 to develop Applying to College 101, an online college application course on Coursera that has since been taken by nearly 10,000 students worldwide.
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