I heard about Penn from some of my friends who were older than me. I only applied to Penn and Princeton, and Penn was my first choice because I have just heard so many wonderful things about it. I thought if I didn't get into Penn during its early decision round, I would apply to Princeton during regular decision.
Course Curriculum
The faculty at Penn is pretty great - although you do have your fair share of not-so-awesome professors, mainly because they don't really have the right methods of teaching. On the other hand, I have had some amazing professors who taught me so much.
Exams
I don't know what Penn's minimum score is for the standardized tests but I took the SAT and ACT and knew I probably needed to get, at the very minimum, a score over 2000 and 32, respectively. I forget what I got on my SAT but I think I got a 33 on my ACT - I took the SAT twice and the ACT one time.
Placement
I don't really know much about this outside of the jobs that were available at Penn. I worked at an organization within Penn and got paid pretty well for the easy tasks I was required to complete. I ended up staying at that job for four years because it was so flexible and very easy to accommodate into my schedule.
Internship
I never ended up applying for one due to the nature of my major, but Penn has lots and lots of opportunities for undergraduates to attain work/internship experience. Science majors will generally find research positions for the summer relatively easy while non-science (aka business) majors will probably have better luck finding an internship after their sophomore year.
Fees
I did not apply to any loans or scholarships but I had friends who reached out to Penn in order to find out more about their various financing options and which organizations would accept scholarship applications from international students. Some students also received a lot of funds through Penn rather than from outside sources.
Hostel
I loved on campus with some roommates for all four years because my parents thought that would be the safer option and the on-campus residential buildings were slightly closer to the buildings.
