Greetings from PennApps Outreach! We’re the group that runs the entire application process, including grading, travel reimbursement, and check in. This year we’ve received thousands of applicants, and while we would love to accept everyone, there is only so much space in Penn’s Engineering Quad. As a result, we ask everyone to tell a little bit about themselves and why they would like to attend PennApps on the application. Below is a summary of our grading process and what we are looking for in our applicants. Please note that this application process only applies to non-Penn students; PennApps welcomes all Penn students who sign up by the Penn students’ deadline.
All applications are read and graded by our awesome Outreach Team! As some graders may be more harsh or lenient than others, every application is read and graded by two different members, and we take the average as the final rating. This means each member of our team grades over 400 applications!
First, we read through each of the two free responses thoroughly. This year the questions were:
- 1. Tell us about a cool project you’ve worked on or an interesting experience you’ve had that inspired you to apply to PennApps. Why did you choose to work on it, and what did you learn from it?
- 2. Why do you want to attend PennApps?
For the first response we look for experience or interest in computer science. How has the applicant expressed interest for the field? Perhaps he/she has conducted research. Or published an app on the app store. Or just created a fun side project! We know that 100 words isn’t a lot, so we make sure to check any links the applicant provided, oftentimes linking to websites or GitHubs that provides more information about the project the applicant wrote about.
For the second response we’re looking for enthusiasm and passion for PennApps and hackathons in general. We want to make sure the applicant really wants to be at PennApps. And furthermore, we want to make sure that the hacker will make the most out of PennApps, and leave PennApps exhausted but inspired to keep coding and hacking in the future.
If the applicant provided his or her devpost or Github, we will take a look at those as well. Through these sites we get a sense of how active the applicant is in the hacker community and coding in general.
We would like to emphasize here that having an amazing devpost or Github is not necessary to be invited to PennApps. We understand that everyone is at a different stage in their computer science path, and we’re excited to bring both beginner and experienced hackers to PennApps, as we believe diversity makes the community stronger and encourages everyone to learn from each other!
After getting a sense of where the applicant is coming from, we grade the application on a scale from 1–9, with 1 for empty or incomplete apps and 9 for the exceptionals who’ve gone to lots of hackathons and won many accolades for their achievements. A 9 is very rare; we usually only get one or two per cycle. Most applicants fall within the 4–5 range; they have some involvement in the computer science field and may have attended a few hackathons in the past. This is the borderline range where we either accept or waitlist the applicant, depending on the cycle.
After the applicant receives a rating, we then look whether the applicant is applicable for bonuses, which are extra points on his/her current rating. These bonuses include whether the applicant has won Top Ten at a previous PennApps, a top award at another hackathon, or is a Campus Ambassador.
Once all the applications are graded, we find the right threshold, accept everyone above that line, waitlist those that were near the threshold, and reject everyone else. To ensure there are no extra spots we ask that all accepted hackers RVSP their spot a week after decisions are released, and accept waitlisted people in waves until all spots are filled. This year our target is to have 1200 attendees at PennApps, out of which 1000 are non-Penn students and 200 are Penn students.
This iteration we also had two possibilities for auto acceptance. One is through the auto acceptance giveaway for five teams on our Facebook page, as we felt this would encourage more applicants to apply to PennApps. We also provided auto acceptance to up to four members of any hackathon organizing team who would like to participate in our hackathon organizer meetup. Organizing a hackathon is challenging, and through a hackathon organizer meetup we hope to create a sense of community and learn from one another. This was announced through MLH’s organizer slack workspace and organizers who reached out to us through email before applications closed were recorded on our list.
Thank for reading! If you enjoyed this post be sure to clap for this post! If you have any other questions regarding the application process, feel free to send us an email at contact@pennapps.com. We hope to see you at PennApps XX (or a future PennApps)!
With ❤,
Nina Chung, Ally Zhang, Jules Pierce, and the PennApps Team
