I don’t see a thread, yet, for 2025 so I thought I’d start one. (Apologies to the moderators if I missed it.)
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I’m happy to start. My oldest child will be starting senior year in the fall at an urban public high school. They’ve visited the campus a few times over the last year, and Yale is first on a list of ~10 schools that they will be applying to. I would categorize four of those schools as reaches. The remaining six are a mix of reaches/targets, targets, and safeties. These schools were selected based on the reputation of a particular field of study, so there’s a real mix of schools (large, small, urban, suburban, rural, private, public, etc.).
Significant financial aid would be required, and we’ve found the online net price calculators to be quite helpful. In fact, we eliminated a few schools earlier on based on estimated aid.
At this stage in the process, child has completed drafts of their Common App essay, as well as drafts of a couple of other school-specific essays and has had various people look them over. I expect much of the summer will be spent on essay writing and tweaking.
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Yale prior to this year wasn’t even a possibility for me. I have a really great GPA, and am a fairly strong essay writer; my only downfall is my test score. I will only have the opportunity to take the ACT once (NYC is being very confusing with when/if they can administer tests). I guess my main question is- will my application be worth it?
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Anyone applying Yale SCEA?
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me
@pubschoolparent what is the field of study on which you chose Yale? You mentioned all of your 10 schools were chosen based on field of study.
Me too! Good luck - I really hope it works out for all three of us!
Does anybody have a read on how many 2025 seats will be consumed by this year’s gap year/enrollment deferrals? Harvard said they had 20% of incoming freshmen deferring. The key question is whether the school then pulls off the waitlist in order to fill this year’s (2024) class. Assuming that total enrollment numbers are essentially inflexible, it would mean that for every enrollment deferral and associated waitlist pull, a kid graduating in 2021 won’t have an opportunity to attend Yale at all.
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I have a rising senior applying to Yale SCEA. I don’t know exactly how they will do it, and anticipate a reduced class size by some amount for this year. However, I don’t think they would let these kids apply if they were not going to admit any of them. I have a sophomore at Princeton and they had 13% deferrals from all classes this year.
Not necessarily. AFAIK Yale has not publicly released the number of students who deferred enrollment, but there USH no indication that they went heavily to the WL to fill those slots. I will quote what I wrote on the Harvard thread about the prospects for C25 Harvard applicants.
"[Harvard] did not pull from the WL to fill those 340 spots. IMO they made the decision to take the tuition hit this year. So while C24 will be 1660-340 students, C25 will be 1660 (target class size) + 340, balancing out.
Of course then they need to figure our swing housing since all those 1st years won’t fit in the freshman dorms.
Applications may rise due to test optional, so the acceptance rate may decline."
My guess is the situation will be similar for Yale.
@skieurope, thanks for the info. I had been extrapolating from bits and pieces I’d read about other schools. Surely, some schools can’t afford not to have a full class this (and every) year.
It is not a sustainable strategy. But Yale can afford to do it for one year.
Good luck! I have a first year at Branford.
FWIW, 1,267 first years enrolled with 341 deferring, so the total class size is consistent with past years (1,600±). https://admissions.yale.edu/sites/default/files/2024classprofileweb.pdf So the potential space squeeze for next year’s entering class will be Old Campus with the residential colleges having more space since the sophomore class will have fewer bodies.
Ah. Thanks for that, @BKSquared. So it looks like this year’s class size of 1608, though topping the previous high-water mark of 1579 in 2017, is not too far outside the range of previous 3 years. I hadn’t realized that in 2017 they began an enlargement of their student body by 15%.
^Actually the Class of 2023 was at 1605 including deferrals. https://admissions.yale.edu/sites/default/files/2023classprofileweb.pdf and the Class of 2022 was 1638. https://admissions.yale.edu/sites/default/files/class_profile_2022.pdf. The student body was enlarged with the opening of 2 new residential colleges.
I was going by Yale’s CDS data:
https://oir.yale.edu/common-data-set
Don’t know which one is more accurate but the your sourcing has the advantage of comparing apples to apples.
-Jim
^The pdf’s I shared come straight from Yale’s Admission’s office and has the added data of students deferring enrollment. There are sometimes minor discrepancies with CDS numbers as there may be some students who pull out by the time the latter of the 2 sources are published. But the key point as @skieurope pointed out above is that Yale did not try to fill in a full matriculating class, so it seems they are planning to accept a full number of admitees for next fall. They will likely need to shuffle some housing around like they did this year with first years living in the colleges and the juniors living on Old Campus for those colleges that normally house first years on Old Campus. There may be a need for more sections for introductory level courses, but Yale has plenty of resources to handle that. The total bodies on campus will be similar to previous years (assuming we are back to normal), so overall space and resources should not be constrained.
I have a Yale student who is taking a gap year this year (now will be class of 2025). Don’t forget that in addition to many incoming freshmen taking gap, we heard that around 15% of the sophomore class is also taking a leave. So that group will become part of the class of 2024 next Fall. The result is a smaller class of 2021 and 2022.
In terms of total bodies for next year, the question is how many seniors took a gap year as they potentially represent the extra bodies. Everyone else is body count neutral as they move down one class but create room in their original class. Overall, Yale is at 85% enrollment https://news.yale.edu/2020/08/19/yale-prepares-welcome-students-fall-semester-2020#:~:text=In%20all%2C%20about%205%2C200%20Yale,Another%201%2C700%20will%20study%20remotely. I have not seen a class by class breakdown, but anecdotally based on my son’s observation as a senior, fewer seniors are not graduating with their class. The largest number of deferrals in the upper classes seem to be sophomores as they have to go remote for 1 semester this year.
In any event, this from Yale:
"Despite the nearly sevenfold increase in students taking gap years, Director of Outreach and Communications Mark Dunn said that “the admissions office has no plans to reduce the number of admissions offers in the coming year, despite the larger group of postponing students who will join the class of 2025 next fall.”
When asked how the University could handle a potentially larger class size for the class of 2025, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan said, “I think that’s something we have to worry about a little bit later down the line. I think right now we are preparing to have a larger first-year class next year.”