<p>How would you gauge yale's admission process. YES both are taken into account, YES the vast majority can't get in without or the other, but for those with experience, which would you say prevails in terms of importance?</p>
<p>Grades are the first filter, although there is not cut-off for GPA and they do read the entire application for everyone. If your GPA is very high and your courseload the most rigorous offered, then then your extracurriculars and essays come into play. Grades are the most important, but since there are so many applicants who meet the transcript criteria, they move on to other factors.</p>
<p>But if there is no criteria, how can they be a filter? Is it done on a comparative basis- i.e. that they read all the applications and then pick the strongest academic results first before starting to trim that list with ECs, recs and essays?</p>
<p>Of course there's a filter, undisclosed. Even in a first read, it's obvious which are completely unrealistic in comparison with what will be perceived to be the academic achievement of the applicants. A 3.0 GPA applicant has absolutely zero chance of advancing in the realm of transfer applicants (which I recall you've been inquiring previously). I'm sure that file gets placed in the reject pile pretty early -- even without reading all the apps.</p>
<p>Both are important. There are no grade cutoffs, though.</p>
<p>The admissions officers are familiar with many of the schools that applications come from. They know which schools have severe grade deflation and a 3.7 GPA is acceptable. They know which schools have 50 valedictorians so a 4.0 doesn't mean much. If they are unfamiliar with your high school, they can refer to your school's profile which tells them about average SATs, % to four year colleges, etc. All this tells them what your GPA really means. Even for new admissions officers, there's a lot of inherited information about schools in their territories. When I said there is no official GPA cut-off, what I meant to say is that they don't say, "Anyone below a 3.9 goes immediately to the reject pile." They probably have ranges of acceptable GPAs for different high schools and know the lowest you can go with a great hook, for instance.</p>
<p>Does your rank really matter that much if you have a superb GPA? If you are in the top 5%, are you really okay?</p>
<p>Also, does it look bad if you did not have an interview?</p>
<p>It depends on where you are in the top 5%. Top 5% of a feeder school, fine. At a school with severe grade inflation, low percentage of students attending college, low test scores, etc., you'd better be one of the top couple of students, not just in the top 5%.</p>
<p>It doesn't look bad if you don't have an interview. There are more requests for interviews than alumni interviewers can handle and in rural areas there are no alumni to conduct interviews. Yale knows this and therefore won't hold it against you. However, if you think you can make a good impression, I think it's foolish not to try to get an alumni interview.</p>
<p>There must not be any GPA cutoffs at Yale, when someone with a GPA of 2.0 just got accepted to the class of '11 after being recruited as an athlete. It created quiet an uproar at the dude's high school. Obscene, in my opinion.</p>
<p>... how do you know if your school is a feeder school? mine is competitive, but it only sends about 2 to H, 2 to Y, 4 to P.... but to the other ivies and top schools (S and M).. in all, about 40-45 go to those top schools. Would that count as a feeder school??</p>
<p>Explode--If you're sending 40-45 per year to top schools, your school is definitely on their radars and top 5% is probably fine. Depending on what's going on in the region you live in, 2 people to Yale each year is a feeder.</p>
<p>Is it ok for a counselor to attach a note or something of the sort explaining a lower top 5% rank in a non-feeder school? My circumstances are pretty strange so I think I will need to explain why I'm not at the very top of my class even though I am considered the most "intelligent" grade-wise at our school. We have really weird GPA policies and GPA-mongers, ie the kids who pile on easy AP classes just to have a higher rank.</p>
<p>spiffy--I think your proposed attachment is a bad idea. You're asking your counselor to knock other students (even if it's legitimate...) which he or she probably won't do. If you're considered the most intelligent person in your class, your teacher and counselor recs will likely state that. Yale understands about people who take easier classes and get higher GPAs. I think anything that looks like making excuses will be unattractive.</p>
<p>Got it...just getting a little paranoid I suppose</p>