{"id":248221,"date":"2025-09-23T06:24:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T06:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/248221\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T06:24:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T06:24:11","slug":"penn-partners-with-local-non-profit-to-assist-phila-high-schoolers-with-college-application-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/248221\/","title":{"rendered":"Penn partners with local non-profit to assist Phila. high schoolers with college application process"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"09-06-25-campus-chenyao-liu\"\/
\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Penn Admissions hopes to \u201cgive back to Philadelphia in a way that is accessible and interactive\u201d by partnering with Heights Philadelphia to launch College App Classroom.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: Chenyao Liu<\/a> \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Penn has partnered with Heights Philadelphia \u2014 a nonprofit that provides underrepresented communities with better access to educational and career opportunities \u2014 to launch College App Classroom, a free 28-lesson course aimed at easing the college application process.\n<\/p>\n

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.\n\t\t<\/p>\n

In an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian, Vice Provost and Dean of Admissions Whitney Soule noted the significance of the partnership.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cHeights has an incredible connection and place within the network of Philadelphia public schools and so working together with Heights was really important,\u201d Soule told the DP. \u201cPartnering with Heights has helped us get it into more classrooms and the attention of the school district.\u201d\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The course covers every step of the college admissions process \u2014 including financial aid resources, approaches to selecting the right college, and essay writing strategies.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

College App Classroom is being provided to schools as a comprehensive digital toolkit, complete with an instructor\u2019s 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.\n\t<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Despite Penn\u2019s involvement with its development, the course intends to help students with the application process for any college.\n<\/p>\n

Paul Richards, Vice Dean and Director of Strategic Communications, emphasized how the main intention of the course is not to \u201cgive a student a leg up in applying to Penn,\u201d but rather about viewing it from an \u201ceducator lens.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWhats 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,\u201d Richards said.\n<\/p>\n

Richards added that Penn Admissions hopes to \u201cgive back to Philadelphia in a way that is accessible and interactive\u201d by designing the course\u2019s case studies to resonate with underprivileged Philadelphia public school students.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThat 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,\u201d Richards said.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

High school senior Bangle Wei told the DP that the course was \u201creassuring\u201d and made him feel \u201cless anxious\u201d about the college application process.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was really nice was that they demystified financial aid because that was the one thing I really couldn’t understand,\u201d Wei said.\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\tSign up for our newsletter<\/p>\n

Get our newsletter, DP Daybreak, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.<\/p>\n

He shared that while he felt like the case studies in the course were \u201ca good visualization tool,\u201d he would have liked the hypothetical characters to be \u201cmore diverse.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Richards noted that the College App Classroom team is working on developing more case studies based on direct student feedback.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The Daily Pennsylvanian is an independent, student-run newspaper. Please consider making a donation<\/a> to support the coverage that shapes the University. Your generosity ensures a future of strong journalism at Penn.<\/p>\n

Donate<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0Penn Admissions hopes to \u201cgive back to Philadelphia in a way that is accessible and interactive\u201d by partnering…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":248222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5672,5229,8432,1322,50,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,45998],"class_list":{"0":"post-248221","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-beats","11":"tag-featured","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-pa","14":"tag-pennsylvania","15":"tag-philadelphia","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa","22":"tag-west-philly"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115252184147705810","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}