u/ryansbuss

Fellow WL Warrior

I called Penn’s Admissions Office a few minutes ago and they said that they will soon take some people off the WL!!! Good luck everyone

I emailed Penn & got the following response:

Hi <Redacted>,

Thanks for your message. At this time, we do not have any updates regarding our waitlist. Any activity regarding the waitlist will be shared directly with students that have accepted their spot on the waitlist. Since there is no guarantee that we will be able to admit any students from the waitlist, we strongly encourage all students to secure their place for the fall at an institution to which they have been offered admission. 
 
We appreciate your continued interest in Penn and wish you all the best in this process. 

Sincerely,
Penn Admissions

Does this mean that most of the class is full bcs they have no WL updates?

can someone pls call them and ask? i’m an international so i won’t be able to call them

or we gotta wait till Monday?

Historically, UPenn releases its first wave of waitlist offers on the first Thursday after May 1. Since no waitlist offers have been released yet this year, could this indicate that fewer admitted students accepted their offers and less students committed to UPenn than expected and hence UPenn is taking additional time to assess more students than usual?

Traditionally, UPenn releases its first wave of waitlist offers on the first Thursday after May 1. Since no waitlist offers have been released yet this year, could this indicate that fewer admitted students accepted their offers and less students committed to UPenn than expected and hence UPenn is taking additional time to assess more students than usual?

Posting this from my brother’s Reddit account because my throwaway doesn’t have enough karma to post here.

Hi, my name is Nirvaan. I was born and brought up in New Delhi and now I’m a sophomore at Stanford studying Economics and Computer Science. Over the past 8 months, I’ve been researching the Indian startup ecosystem under a Stanford economics professor, and honestly, the deeper I looked, the more disillusioned I became. These are my brief thoughts after researching the Indian startup ecosystem for 8 months.

India loves calling itself the “next Silicon Valley,” but most of the ecosystem feels fundamentally broken.

The biggest difference between India and Silicon Valley is that Silicon Valley was built around innovation first, money second. India often feels like the opposite. In Silicon Valley, investors are willing to fund insane, high-risk ideas with long time horizons. Companies like Google, NVIDIA, OpenAI, SpaceX, and Stripe emerged from ecosystems that encouraged deep research, experimentation, and technological ambition. Failure is tolerated because investors believe that one truly transformative company can redefine an entire industry.

In India, the startup ecosystem feels far more transactional. Most VCs don’t seem interested in long-term scientific or technological breakthroughs. They want quick profitability, fast growth, and copy-paste business models. As a result, founders optimize for valuation inflation instead of solving hard problems. Every year we get another food delivery app, another fintech clone, another quick-commerce company burning investor cash to deliver groceries 10 minutes faster.

The government constantly talks about “Startup India,” innovation, and entrepreneurship, yet policies are still incredibly hostile toward actual innovation. Bureaucracy, inconsistent regulations, compliance burdens, and poor research funding make it difficult to build genuinely ambitious companies. It often feels as if the system rewards scale and replication more than originality.

India's Shark Tank reflects this mindset. Somehow food stalls, snack brands, and local service businesses are constantly marketed as “startups,” while deep-tech, scientific research, or genuinely novel ideas barely get attention. There’s nothing wrong with small businesses, but calling every D2C pickle brand a revolutionary startup completely dilutes the meaning of innovation.

And then you have giant conglomerates like Reliance dominating entire sectors. When billionaires like Mukesh Ambani can leverage enormous capital, political proximity, infrastructure control, and predatory pricing, smaller startups often don’t stand a chance. Instead of fostering competition, the ecosystem becomes increasingly centralized.

Another massive difference is the university ecosystem. Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, and other top US institutions are deeply connected to startup culture and frontier research. Professors launch companies, students work in labs pushing the boundaries of AI, biotech, semiconductors, and robotics, and venture capital actively flows into university research ecosystems.

Meanwhile, India has brilliant students but surprisingly weak research output relative to its talent pool. Even elite institutes like IIT Bombay produce far fewer globally influential research publications than top universities in the US, Europe, or China. The ecosystem incentivizes placements, salaries, coding interviews, and FAANG jobs over discovery and invention.

At a structural level, India still seems optimized for cheap labor, outsourcing, and mass production, not for building transformative technologies that change the world. We’ve become extremely good at services and scale, but not at frontier innovation.

TLDR: From the findings of our research over the past 8 months, We have kind-of concluded that right now India has zero potential in the tech start-up scene. India has incredible talent, and there are founders doing genuinely world-class work. But right now there’s still a massive gap between the narrative Indians tell themselves about innovation and the actual reality on the ground.

Curious to hear what others think, especially people working in Indian startups or academia.

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Hi, I’m an international student from India waitlisted at UPenn SEAS for CS. Recently, a student from a feeder school in India who had already committed to Penn got off the waitlist at Caltech and is now going to Caltech instead. Since we’re both international male CS applicants from India, does this open up another spot at Penn for waitlisted applicants like me?

Historically, the first (and the biggest wave) of WL offers are out on the 1st Thursday of May.

I’m a rising freshman and only recently learned about RSI. I know it’s ridiculously hard to get into, but if you do get accepted, are you almost guaranteed admission to an Ivy League or T10 school?

I’m a rising freshman and only recently learned about RSI. I know it’s ridiculously hard to get into, but if you do get accepted, are you almost guaranteed admission to an Ivy League or T10 school?

I’m writing a research paper for one of my classes and was curious: what types of SAT-style EBRW (Evidence-Based Reading & Writing) questions do LLMs usually struggle with the most?

I’m a rising high-school freshman from India, and I’m planning to participate in this year’s national selections for the Indian WSDC team. Till now, I’ve watched a few YouTube videos and now understand the format, speaker roles, and structure of WSDC debates. However, I’m still unsure about what else I should be doing to improve my chances of making the team. What things should I focus on, and how can I prepare more effectively?

Hi, I’m a rising freshman at a feeder school in India, and I’m planning to work with a college admissions counselor for my applications. I wanted to ask if anyone here has experience with Viral Doshi and whether you’d recommend working with him.

Hi! I’m a rising high-school freshman who’s really interested in mathematics. Recently, I started learning about mathematical research, and it seems incredibly fun, so I wanted to try exploring it myself.

Right now, I’m studying topics like number theory through a math circle run by a Stanford professor (it’s been an amazing experience so far). I emailed her yesterday asking for advice on how to get into mathematical research, and she kindly agreed to help me out. One of the main things she suggested was building a very strong foundation in mathematical proofs before transitioning into mathematical research.

I wanted to ask: what are some things I can do independently (apart from building a strong foundation in proof writing) to prepare myself better for research in the future? For example, would reading proofs carefully, solving proof-based problems, or studying certain books/topics help? I’d really appreciate any advice from people who’ve done research.

i’m 18m and my girlfriend is also 18, and we’re planning to have sex for the first time. since we both live with our parents, we decided to book a nice hotel room and stay the night.

i’ve already made the booking in my name, and she’ll be arriving about 30 minutes after me. i was thinking i’d check in first, take a shower, and get everything ready before she comes.

what i’m unsure about is how to handle things when she arrives without making it awkward. for example, would it be weird if i suggested she take a shower too and maybe change into lingerie? i don’t want to come off as controlling or make things uncomfortable, we’re both new to this and i just want it to feel natural and good for both of us.

any advice on how to approach this in a relaxed, non awkward way?

which is the best math camp (experience wise)

hi everyone! i’m an international student about to start grade 9 at a british school that follows the igcse and ib curriculum. my school also offers a wide range of ap courses, and i’m trying to plan my academics early.

i’m currently interested in pursuing a degree in mathematics and philosophy, so i want to choose courses that will best support that path and also be competitive for university applications (likely us/uk). which ap courses would you suggest for a student applying for math & philosophy?