<p>The only people that have gotten into yale at my school from past years were valedictorians with 4.0's. This places me in a position of uncertainty. I have about a 3.9 gpa (4.4 W/96.2 avg) and have had 3 B's (2 freshman year and one sophomore year). But they were borderline grades (90-92) and resulted from classes required at my school that I had no interest in. In stark contrast, I've gotten A's in classes like AP physics (where maybe 3 out of 20 kids get an A and the class is taught by a past Berkeley/Caltech professor) and AP english (where about ONE in 20 kids get an A). The problem is will these admission officers inspect this closely, being that my school will have 3 other SCEA applicants with similar GPA's yet situations vice versa to mine?</p>
<p>Yale will look more closely at grades from your junior and senior years, and even more closely at grades that come from difficult classes like your AP’s. If you had two B’s in freshman year, one in sophomore year, and none in your junior year, then you are showing an upward trend in grades. That is good.</p>
<p>Then why are you applying SCEA? What wow-factor is in your file that is going to make an Admissions Officer take you when, in previous years, they have only taken valedictorians?</p>
<p>You might want to rethink your strategy. Rather than apply to Yale SCEA and waste your early slot, hoping that you will buck the trend at your high school and be the lone non-valedictorian to be accepted, have you considered applying to a broad group of non-binding colleges in the early round and applying to Yale RD? With your school’s track record at Yale, that would seem to be the smarter way to go.</p>
<p>The only reason valedictorians have gotten in is because, historically, they are among the only people in my school with 2200+ sat’s and 35+ ACT’s. The rest of the kids in the top 10% leave something to be desired. They are usually lacking either commitment to extracurriculars, a good relationship with teachers, or even nuance in their essays. This is not always the case as a girl who was neither val nor sal 2 years ago got into princeton early (asian and non URM). Our school,however, is a good school but is not honestly designed from freshman year to optimize chances into top colleges. Very few people at my school know of CC or even bother to take the SAT. That being said, I believe I have very solid body of work,grades, test scores (see my chance thread) and a very unique extracurricular that will grant me a closer look.</p>
<p>Which brings me to another question.
Do these schools purposely keep a trend?</p>
<p>Trend? Do you mean does Yale et al feel any obligation to give an admit here or there? None whatsoever. Their applicant pool is so distinguished that your school might admit four this year and then zero for the next ten years. The strength of the individual applicant is what matters. They aren’t trying to look good in the eyes of school districts. They care little about that. This doesn’t preclude the fact that some schools consistently “feed” good applications to top schools and consequentially, regularly get admits.</p>
<p>^^ And truth be told, some of that “feeding” comes from the relationship between a high school’s college counselor/guidance counselor and the college Admissions staff. For example, I know of one college advisor at a public high school that speaks 2 to 3 times each application season to select college admissions staff at HYPSM. The Admissions Director will call up and say “We’re thinking of taking these kids. Have we missed anyone?” That is when having a GC in your court matters. That’s why some schools act like feeders – it’s not only the caliber of students, but the years of relationship with a college that sometimes tip the balance.</p>
<p>@aksoccer Thank you for your response! That is exactly the case with me. All A’s junior year in a schedule full of AP courses.</p>
<p>@T26E4 That just confirms my speculation. A couple years back we had two Harvard, one yale, one columbia, one stanford, and two princeton matriculants in the same class with the valedictorian going to yale. That next year, one went to Dartmouth.</p>
<p>@gibby I’ve never heard of my GC meeting with these people but oh well.</p>
<p>But my question was still not answered. If I have superior ec’s, recommendations, and a more interesting background than the val or sal at my school, will those applicants’ class ranks be held as more important? The truth is that I spent more time on my activities outside of the classroom instead of trying to raise my average from a 96 to a 103 and fighting for every point.</p>
<p>No, if schools like Yale counted grades above all else, they could fill their classes with vals several times over, but they don’t. You do need to be in the top 10%, and more likely the top 5% of your class.</p>
<p>It depends. Class Rank is listed as VERY IMPORTANT in Yale’s factors in admission in their Common Data Set (C7 Data: <a href=“http://oir.yale.edu/common-data-set[/url]”>Common Data Set | Office of Institutional Research). So, generally speaking, if a student doesn’t have a huge “wow-factor” and is NOT in the top 2-3% of their class, there is a good chance that Admissions may defer the SCEA applicant to the RD round to better compare them with the rest of the applicant pool. If you are in the top 2-3% of your class, then you should consider applying SCEA, as your application WILL NOT be overshadowed by other equally strong candidates from your school and other schools. But, if you are not in the top 2 to 3 percent of your class, then applying SCEA to Yale might be a waste of your early slot.</p>
<p>My school district by law does not let our school rank. The GC can tell the college whether I am valedictorian or saludatorian or can give deciles (top 10%,20%,30% etc.). I fall in the top 10% but my GC cannot comment beyond that. I’m not sure whether this puts me in a state of disadvantage but my GC will most definitely rate my schedule as most demanding. I got A’s in classes like AP physics and AP Chem which are known to fail half the students while giving maybe 3-4 out of 20 A’s. And because our school ranks on an unweighted system, kids knowingly take easier classes to pad their gpa’s.</p>
<p>About what you said about the 2% thing, could you help explain my situation? My school also doesn’t rank, but I have a 4.0 UW and 4.8 W (toughest schedule), but at best my school would only say I’m in the top 25 percentile. We also don’t pick valedictorian or salutorian till after admissions. How would Yale recognize if I’m in the top 2-3%?</p>
<p>And sorry for kinda jackng your thread Mario :/</p>
<p>If a high school doesn’t rank, a college Admissions office can get an inkling of ranking several ways:</p>
<ol>
<li>Admissions can simply put all the SCEA or RD applications from your school in GPA order from highest to lowest and then compare the course rigor of each student’s transcript.</li>
<li>Sometimes a school that doesn’t rank will present information in their high school profile that gives an inkling to ranking. For example, a high school profile may present a chart showing how have students have a 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, or they’ll publish the average or mean SAT Math, CR and Writing score of the graduating class. The high school profile will usually tell a college how many AP classes they offer, or how many National Merit Scholars or Intel finalists are in the graduating class.</li>
<li>If previous students have been accepted into the college, Admissions certainly knows what GPA’s they’ve accepted in the past.</li>
</ol>
<p>BTW: If your high school uses Naviance, or some other software to track college acceptances, you can try to gauge your chances by looking at previous years data from your high school. For example, my son is a rising junior at Yale; he graduated from high school in 2011. His high school does not rank, but looking over the data from his graduating class:</p>
<p>In 2011, 33 students applied SCEA to Yale with GPA’s ranging from 97.33 to 90.19.</p>
<ul>
<li>Yale accepted 6 students SCEA with GPA’s ranging from 97.33 to 95.79 (my son had a 96.83)</li>
<li>Yale deferred 16 students to the RD round with GPA’s ranging from 97.26 to 90.45</li>
<li>Yale rejected 11 students in the SCEA round with GPA’s ranging from 97.09 to 90.19</li>
</ul>
<p>Based upon just those statistics from 2011, if you applied SCEA to Yale in 2012, you could assume:</p>
<ol>
<li>your chances of being accepted/deferred/rejected with a 95 or above are about equal</li>
<li>Your chances of being accepted with below a 95 are highly unlikely</li>
</ol>
<p>In fact, when I go back and check the 2012 actual data, the lowest SCEA Yale acceptance in 2012 was 94.98. And in 2010, the lowest SCEA Yale acceptance in 2010 was 95.30. So, it pretty safe to assume that from his high school, Yale is not taking SCEA acceptances with GPA’s below 95. But, looking over the RD data, they have accepted students with below a 95 in 2010, 2011 and 2012.</p>