Penn: Thank-You Note

150-200 words

Write a short thank-you note to someone you have not yet thanked and would like to acknowledge. (We encourage you to share this note with that person, if possible, and reflect on the experience!)

What it’s really asking

Penn wants a real, specific note to a real person you actually owe thanks to. It is testing your character and your eye for the people who quietly shaped you, not your resume. Note that this prompt is only required for first-year applicants.

Why they ask it

Admissions officers learn an enormous amount from who you choose to thank and how you talk to them. Gratitude is hard to fake, and the people we overlook reveal what we value. This is Penn checking whether you are a good person to live next to in a dorm.

Three ways in

The quiet adult

A coach, custodian, librarian, or teacher who did something small that mattered more than they knew.

The person you leaned on

A peer or family member whose ordinary act of support you never named out loud until now.

The near-stranger

Someone whose single moment of kindness changed a day or a decision for you, even though you barely knew them.

✕ Weak opening

“I would like to thank my parents for everything they have done for me throughout my entire life.”

✓ Strong opening

“Mr. Okafor, you probably do not remember unlocking the music room at 6 a.m., but I do.”

✦ Annotated example · The lunch-lady note. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →

Dear Ms. Ferraro, For three years you stood at the end of the lunch line, and for three years you called me "professor" because I read at the table by the window. I never corrected you, and I never said thank you. ¹I want to now. Not for the extra meatballs you slid onto my tray on the days I looked tired, though I noticed those. ²I want to thank you for the September my dad lost his job, when free lunch suddenly meant something different in our house, and you handed me my tray exactly the way you handed everyone else's. No softer voice. No careful look. ³You let me keep being the kid who reads at the window instead of the kid who needed something. ⁴I am leaving for college soon, and I have decided I want to study the policies that decide which kids eat. ⁵I doubt you will remember me by name. But I will be in a dining hall somewhere, reading at a window, and I will think of you. Thank you, professor. With real gratitude, Marcus⁶

1Opening on a concrete, recurring image (the end of the lunch line, the window table, the nickname) signals the specificity Penn rewards over generic gratitude. We learn who both people are in two sentences.
2Naming a tiny, almost embarrassing detail (extra meatballs) makes the warmth feel real rather than performed. It also gently undercuts the obvious thank-you, setting up a deeper one.
3This is the emotional core: a quiet, high-stakes moment told without melodrama. Penn rewards genuine warmth, and dignity-without-pity lands harder than any adjective could.
4A single clean sentence that states the gift abstractly after we have felt it concretely. The callback to the window table closes the loop.
5Turning gratitude outward into purpose shows growth and gives the note forward motion, but it stays modest (one line) so the thank-you does not become a resume.
6Reversing the nickname (calling HER professor) is a small, earned twist that ties affection to the essay's first image and ends on warmth instead of a thesis.

Stuck? Start here

Who is one person whose help you accepted without ever naming it out loud?
Think of a hard week in your life. Who quietly made it survivable, and how?
Whose small, repeated action (not one grand gesture) do you still think about?

Before you submit

Is this a real, specific person, not a celebrity or a category like 'all my teachers'?
Did I include at least one concrete detail only this relationship would have?
Does it sound like a note I would actually send, not an essay about gratitude?

Drafted it? Get an honest, admissions-style read, free.

Score my essay