Undergraduates at Penn will be charged $30,490 for tuition, fees, room, and board next year — an increase of 3.9 percent over the 1997-98 charges. Tuition and fees will cost $23,254, which represents a 4.5 percent increase; the average room rate will be $4,560, an increase of 3.0 percent; and the standard meal plan will be $2,676, which represents no increase at all.
According to Dr. Judith Rodin, CW’66, president of the University, the 3.9 percent increase — the lowest in three decades — is “slightly below last year’s average family-income growth rate of approximately four percent across the nation.” Noting that “with Cornell, Penn continues to have the lowest student charges in the Ivy League,” Rodin said that the University’s “continuing efforts to reduce costs and limit price-increases are clearly working.”
Penn received 16,651 applications for the Class of 2002, an all-time record and an increase of almost eight percent over last year, at a time when most Ivy League schools reported flat or declining applications. The 4,837 students accepted (29 percent) boasted average SAT scores of 1,401, up from 1,383 last year.
