<p>Continuing to beat yourselves up about what you may or may not have done wrong in the application process is not healthy and not a good use of your time, energy and brain power.</p>
<p>Concentrate on your other applications. Re-look at your essays, fine tune them, take chances, make them stand out. I say take chances (I am not saying to lie about your credentials or embellish things beyond reason) because the odds of admission to HYPS are so very long to begin with that you really have nothing to lose by getting creative with your essays and personal statements.</p>
<p>Reevaluate your school lists and make certain that you have one or two TRUE safeties on the lists. I have seen so many lists on the Yale threads that are filled with high reaches and reaches and that lack any real safeties that it really concerns me. There have been far too many cases illustrated on CC in the last four years of people not getting into any of the schools on their lists. </p>
<p>I know you are all high achievers but think about this one fact. There are over 36,000 high schools in the US all of which will have Valedictorians and Salutatorians and multiple high achievers in their ranks. There aren't enough spots in all the Ivies COMBINED to handle just the valedictorians. Add to that the fact that your lists indicate that most of you are applying to multiple Ivies and some people are applying to as many as 15-20 schools that are all highly selective and it spells a recipe for disaster.</p>
<p>I know of a person who applied to all the Ivies, Stanford, Amherst, Duke and Willams about five years ago and got into all of them. Everyone who knew him was shocked because they didn't see him as a good candidate for any of the schools. What few people knew was that he was able to use URM status (on his mother's side-she was from South America) and that he actually had an Hispanic first and middle name that he never used except on the applications and on top of it all, he had overcome a severe learning disability. His GPA wasn't stellar nor were his test scores, in fact they were well below most of what I see in your posts but he ended up being 12 for 12.</p>
<p>While he clearly is an exception to the rule, he also used up ALL of those offers of admission when he knew that he would only attend one of several of them if all else failed. He didn't even like Cornell or Columbia but applied anyway...he was arrogant and was collecting skins.</p>
<p>I realize that it helps to vent but make sure that your venting, anger and frustration isn't consuming you. You have a lot of work to do (that I know you really don't want to be doing) before the January 1 deadlines. Don't put it all off to the end because it will only add to your stress and frustration.</p>
<p>
[quote]
shalashaksa -- You must know some huge egos. Every stellar candidate I have known has applied to a balanced list of reaches, matches, and safeties. None would have dreamed of applying only to 3 or 4 reaches RD.</p>
<p>The term "superstar" is a subjective one. Any applicant who uses the strategy you suggest runs the risk that none of his choices will share his self-assessment.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>If you call JHU a safety....</p>
<p>And they all got in everywhere, so this is a moot point.</p>
<p>I also applied ea to yale and i got deferred. you said you could have done more for the "why yale" section but really, I still don't understand what schools are looking out for in this section. i know my answer wasn't that good (something about the university inviting world leaders to engage in discussion) but looking back, I could not have managed anything much better.</p>
<p>personally, i chose yale because I saw it as a school with a strong faculty, international exposure and very honestly, because of its prestige. but during my alumni interview, i was posed the question "aren't many other good schools like that as well?"</p>
<p>i'm really quite troubled over this and i still haven't started on the rest of my essays. anyone can offer any idea into what exactly was Yale looking out for?</p>
<p>Maybe Yale was looking to start reeling in the candidates that they knew would absolutely have many fantastic choices come April, and used the early admissions as a kind of 'likely letter'. </p>
<p>D was deferred and we're ecstatic. It says her application is solid and with a balanced list, she'll have options in April. I don't think it helps to beat yourself up over a deferral (or denial) - there probably isn't one single piece of your app that left it in the deferred pile. Yale didn't want to fill as much of their incoming class during Early Action as they did last year, so the number of admits had to drop. I look at it this way: the admissions people know who they're admitting, and if your app doesn't make it into that pile, you probably wouldn't be happy with that group of people. If you've visited Yale, you could easily fall in love with the architecture, professors, opportunities. But what if the incoming class is full of people who don't share your interests/hobbies/sensibilities? Admissions might be doing you a favor if they ultimately pass on your app. I'm not one of those people who think 'things happen for a reason' (unless the reason is the universe is random) but I DO think that if your app was good enough to get a deferral, you're capable of getting into an excellent college (maybe Yale) and getting the most out of the experience.</p>
<p>"if your app was good enough to get a deferral, you're capable of getting into an excellent college (maybe Yale) and getting the most out of the experience."</p>
<p>I agree with Lefthand & T26E4 - Yale could have easily rejected and not deferred you. They deferred you for a reason. You have a shot at RD at Yale and many other great schools, so think positive and get the rest of your impressive apps out!</p>
<p>that's exactly what I mean. most/all of the reasons I wrote about in my Why Yale? seemed like they could have been applied to a lot of the top schools. In retrospect, I have heard that it's really important to NOT do this, and to speak to the school individually - especially in the early pool - because they are also looking to keep their yield high. if it looks like you were just using yale as a backup for harvard/princeton/etc. , they're not going to want to accept you early.</p>
<p>Anyways, the important thing to do now is learn from your mistakes as you're filling out the rest of your apps. almost all the colleges I'm applying to now have a "Why ___?" question, so it's helpful to know that I probably really have to sound more passionate about specific details of the college.</p>
<p>If Yale deferred people who were 'likely' or who they thought would actually be excellent candidates and seriously considered all of the deferrees in the spring, the admit rate for deferees RD wouldnt be 8%. </p>
<p>I gotta say that while a good portion of deferrees are definitely great candidates who might get all of HPS (and even some rejects get that), a fair portion of the deferrees are soft-letdowns. Yale knows it wouldnt have let you in RD, but it thinks that because you either showed you really love Yale or you have some strong connection, they are stringing you along. Deferrees are Yale's safety - in the event that RD goes completely haywire, Yale has deferrees to fill in the spots. I'm saying that deferrees should focus on other schools, because statistically speaking, Yale doesnt really need them, but many other schools do.</p>