Author: Liz Pinnie
Well folks, interviewing season for the Penn Alumni Interview Program has wrapped up, and we couldn’t be more thrilled with our inaugural year in Sweeten. With the help of our fabulous volunteers and supportive co-workers (and lots and lots of coffee), we have managed to have a red letter year: over 22,100 applicants were offered interviews in all fifty states, as well as 123 countries. We have over 2,440 new members, as well as ten new Virtual Interview Committees. Interviewers have spent over 5,600 hours in Starbucks across the world and our longest participating interviewer just hit the 50 year mark! There is now a new Portal, our fancy new website is in the works, and trips are being planned to all corners of the earth to spread the interviewing word and provide training.
What does this mean? This year, all over the world, Penn graduates and talented teenagers met to talk about Penn, and along the way had fascinating conversations about everything from Kafka to Cambodia, Fruit flies to Freakonomics, baking classes to Engineers without Boarders. These conversations mean that more alumni are being engaged than ever before, more applicants have the chance to speak with an ambassador from Penn, and unique ideas and thoughts are being shared across generations and boarders.
One of our awesome chairs sent us the most giant fortune cookie ever- thanks Felix!
While this has been a wildly successful year, we here in Interview Program Headquarters are not ready to rest (yet). There is still (a lot!) of work to be done both on our end, and yours. If you would like to help spread the word about Penn as an ambassador and member of the Penn Alumni Interview Program, please just sign up here. If you are already a member, spread the word- we want to keep this momentum going to make this experience, for our alumni and prospective students, the best it can possibly be.
Frankly Penn 