Basically, Yale is my dream school, been there and loved it! I am going to do SCEA for it, but I am wondering how to get in contact with my admissions officer to create that connection before I apply this year.
How should I go about this? Call and ask?
Thank you!
“demonstrated interest” is not a factor in admissions at Yale, so no need or advantage in contacting an admissions officer.
Furthermore, Yale purposely does not release this info to the public. You would be much better off emailing a professor and asking questions about the school or building a relationship with your recommenders. If you email a professor, don’t take too much of their time.
I would disagree with this. They have enough to do, and will likely just get annoyed by emails that they will perceive as spam. If you have a genuine interest is a professor’s research, certain ask questions about that. But general questions about the school (beyond what can be found on-line) should be directed to admissions, with the goal of learning more, not improving your application.
The best way to make a pre-application connection is to attend a Yale information session in your school or area during the fall. Usually the AO responsible for the region your school is in will be the Yale representative. Understand though that they will meet hundreds (maybe more) of potential applicants so the impact of the connection if any is likely negligible. You can always attend the info sessions on campus and you might get lucky and have your regional AO at the session. However, the impact of that is going to be infinitesimal given the thousands of students and parents that attend those.
@skieurope you’re right— I misspoke. For example, I emailed Richard Prum, Yale’s ornithology professor, for questions specifically relating to his lab work as I have a strong ecological interest. You shouldn’t ask them how residential colleges are or how the workload is like— nobody will take kindly to schmoozing.