Ian SchefflerMatt Fallon’s Journey From Penn to Paris
Only about 200,000 people have competed in the Olympics since their revival a little over a century ago. In the same time frame, roughly 13 billion people have been born. In other words, the odds of becoming an Olympian — setting aside the fact that some countries have produced disproportionately many, and that the most recent Games were the first to achieve gender parity — are about 0.0015%.
Put differently, it’s hard to get into Penn — the Class of 2027 had a 5.8% admit rate — but it’s about 3,800 times harder to become an Olympian, which makes it all the more awe-inspiring that Matt Fallon (CIS’25, W’25) has done both.
This past summer, Fallon represented the U.S. (and Penn!) at the Olympic Games in Paris, coming in 10th in the 200-meter breaststroke, after setting an American record in the event and winning the national title at the U.S. Olympic Trials, his third in a row.
“It’s tremendous,” says Chinedum Osuji, Eduardo D. Glandt Presidential Professor and Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, who represented Trinidad and Tobago in Taekwondo at the 2004 Athens Games. “The odds of even a very, very good athlete making the Olympics are slim, so it’s an absolutely incredible achievement.”
Read the rest of “Engineering an Olympian,” and other stories from the 2024-2025 issue, on the Penn Engineering magazine website. Photo by Steve Boyle.