This afternoon I received an email from the “Associate Director of Admissions and Director of the Alumni Schools Committee” at Yale asking me to send in two letters of recommendation from academic teachers. The admissions officer emailed me personally about my previous letters from two other teachers and wanted to see two more from academic subjects. I emailed him back to say that I do not have any in-person academic teachers (math, sci, english) this year and he responded promptly. I will get two more letters from past teachers, but I am wondering if this has happened to anyone else? I have never heard of anything like this before – does anyone know what this could mean?
Are you home schooled?
I am a dual-enrolled high school senior. I take three non-academic classes through my high school and five college courses through one of my state’s universities. So I have had a few professors but each for one semester – not enough to build a relationship with at freshman-level courses.
I am just thinking it does not seem likely that Yale would just personally email me to get more letters unless they were considering my application seriously. I am from Idaho which typically has very few applicants to Ivies (in the single digits or fewer than 20) – maybe it was close between two students and they asked both of us for more letters? I don’t know.
It would not be between two students. They could accept both if strong. It is that they are carefully evaluating your application, a good sign, but don’t feel they got enough information about you from the two letter writers you selected. Maybe the letter writers are not used to writing letters for schools like Yale. They look for key words and phrases like “more potential than I’ve ever seen” or 'brilliant" or detail that indicates the candidate knocks their socks off. MIT has some sample letters of rec. I’d provide those example to the letter writers you select. People who write tons of these letter for very competitive positions have a code. Those that don’t may not know it.
Here is the link. It is relevant for any of the top schools. “Hard worker” and “diligent” won’t cut it. http://mitadmissions.org/apply/prepare/writingrecs
If you go to that link you will see some great example and then some not so great examples. Your writers may have lead to this:
“Critique: This is an example of an evaluation in which we really don’t know what the writer is trying to tell us. The comments provided certainly do not give much substantive information. We are left wondering whether there is just not much to say about this student or whether the teacher just didn’t bother to put much effort into the recommendation. This is a situation where we will probably form our impressions based on the pattern of all the recommendations. If all are equally uninformative, we will assume there wasn’t much to say, but if the others are better, we will assume this teacher did not give much effort to the recommendation.”
The problem was that the letters came from non-academic teachers – my journalism and art teacher. I did not realize they had to be academic subjects. So they asked for two more from academic teachers. I really hope it is a good sign – definitely adds stress either way.
I will pass that along to both of my other recommenders. One is my AP Bio teacher and the other is AP Stats. Both of the other letters were fantastically written – I am just so unclear on why they would ask and just not toss out my application altogether.
Well obviously they are intrigued by your application but need some verification that you are what you seem. So fingers crossed for you. Good luck! Also don’t sell your self short by attributing the interest Yale has in you to being from a particular state. They don’t need to accept anyone from your state or they could accept many.
I hope sooo – it’s crazy. I am so nervous
If I were you, I would not try to read the tea leaves. Yale did you a huge favor by asking you to complete an application that was submitted without following their instructions on LoR’s. As you said, they could have simply considered the application as incomplete and moved on.
Submit the LoR’s they requested ASAP, and then shift focus to your last weeks of HS. Good luck.
I agree – I’ve never heard of this happening before. I am definitely thankful for that email