Against my better judgement, I have been perusing a series of previous results threads on this website. Of course, CC has a massive confirmation bias in attracting high stats type A kids to threads like these, and this shows in their detailed acceptance posts. I am noticing more and more that about half of the students from this site accepted into Yale provided supplemental letters of recommendation, and am becoming increasingly concerned about my lack thereof.
For those more knowledgeable and less stressed-out than me, what is your opinion on submitting a supplemental letter? I know Yale does not recommend them, but I am worried not including one from my employer or such may hurt my chances, especially considering other students I know personally have done so. I am very sorry for spamming the forums but any help would be appreciated-- do you think I should ask somebody who wrote a letter for me before to just send it off to Yale or do you think it would be better to just leave my application as is?
Don’t worry about it. Everything I was told was that most supplemental letters don’t really swing the decision, and that they draw time away from your core application. If Yale wanted additional letters, they would ask you to submit that number. Remember, most Yale students have significant extracurriculars, research or work when they apply, and if Yale felt like it would be important to have a letter from these activities, they would request it.
If your employer is going to say something significant which isn’t apparent from the rest of your application, then include it. Most students don’t fall into this category though.
I didn’t submit any supplemental letters and it didn’t make a difference to me. It didn’t really occur to me at the time that I should. If I’d been in that mindset, I can think of two letters I could have submitted (music teacher and national program director for a v. well known international competition). Then again, I think those letters would have just re-iterated things which came through in other parts of my application, and it’s better that the admissions officers spent more time on my essays. Your application doesn’t necessarily get more time just because you send in more materials, so think about what you want the admissions officers to get out of your file.
DS decided, after considerable back and forth, that a supplemental letter from his summer mentor, with whom he received authorship credit on a peer reviewed journal publication, was worth asking for AO time to read. It provided an insight into his nature that a teacher recommendation probably couldn’t. Still, it was a close call.
Generally, IMO, less is often more.
S did not send in any supplements, although he considered sending an LoR from the principal as he had active leadership positions in his HS and he had some concern that his GC knew him much less well than the principal (he went to a large public HS). He opted for less is better and got in SCEA. If you have not yet viewed this video on the admissions website on supplemental materials, you should do so and see how your situation fits. https://admissions.yale.edu/advice-putting-together-your-application#supplementary
@Meaningoflife42 - What I noticed looking through the previous results thread from last year is that some admitted students GPAs and standardized tests scores were occasionally lower than deferred or even rejected students’ stats. Usually such students had significant ECs or other “hooks” that made them attractive candidates. In these cases, perhaps supplemental letters bolstered the applications because they addressed non-academic accomplishments or students’ character traits that were not revealed through teachers’ and GCs’ letters of recommendation. In my case, my supplemental video, submitted to the music faculty, was accompanied by a letter from my music teacher. My guess is that an additional letter of recommendation will be welcomed by AOs if it includes information about you that isn’t conveyed by the rest of your application. Best of luck!