<p>I'm on the fence on whether to apply to Yale SCEA or RD. The reason I would want to apply regular decision is because I know most students who are recruited for sports apply early and are accepted at that time. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the already super-competitive application pool is even more competitive for EA and there's a tighter limit to how many people they can accept at the time. Long story short, I really love Yale, but I would like a better chance. What would you do?</p>
<p>I’d apply Regular Decision. I hear Early Action is very cut throat and straight A, AP, Honors kids who are perfect applicants get cut during the process. I strongly suggest applying Regular Decision.</p>
<p>Dont use your early applications on a dream. Use your early applications to get into safety schools and low-reach schools that you would love to go to. And by low-reach schools, I mean all the schools on your list that are of Ivy-League caliber, but not Ivy League. After you get in, apply only to Yale during the regular decision round. If you waste your early app on Yale and you get deferred, you’re stuck in this situation where you’re very uncertain which schools you can depend on getting into. In my opinion, anyone who isn’t a national level athlete or of that caliber is very foolish in applying SCEA to princeton, harvard, or yale. Would you rather apply to Yale during the regular decision round and have other colleges that you can depend on under your belt? Or would you rather use the one-shot to apply to Yale knowing that, on the extremely possible chance you may be deferred, you would be in a very bad position compared the previous scenario. Also, if you’re confident that you can get in during the EA round, you should be a shoe-in for the RD round. Using your early applications on other schools just gives you a safety-net just in case you’re not as good of an applicant as you think you are.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for the feedback! I’m going to take the advice and apply to Yale RD and apply to some non-restrictive EA schools instead. Thanks again!</p>
<p>Great advice from schlagg which I second - SCEA has no benefits to the applicant - spend your EA on some great opportunities, possible honors/scholarship programs, and have an idea where you stand before the end of the year. Then try RD for every IVY that you like and see what happens.</p>
<p>It really depends on whether you have other schools on your application list that your would like to apply EA but would not be allowed to if you applied SCEA to Yale.</p>
<p>It may be more worthwhile to apply EA to several other schools in order to increase the chance of getting an early safety that could allow trimming down the rest of your application list. (Of course, if all of your other EA schools are covered under the exceptions of Yale’s SCEA rules, then there is no real disadvantage to applying to Yale SCEA.)</p>