<p>My son may be recruited by a Yale coach. His scores and grade are competitive with the overall admitted students. I was trying to evaluate his chances if not recruited. The way I look at it is maybe 40% of admitted students have a major or minor hook such as recruited athlete, performing arts with professor support, legacy, urm, developmental, very influential parents, underpriveleged, or highly unusual life story. Another 20% have great grades/scores and just jaw dropping ECs/awards and are easy admits. That leaves just 40% of the spots for the applicants that are just your normally competitive students. These are just guesses but it seems most applicants are competing for a relatively small number of spots.</p>
<p>I am not sure “performing arts with professor support” should be included on your list. Maybe a few applicants in this category get Likely Letters, but so do some exceptional scholars and prize winners in other fields, but these are not official hooks.</p>
<p>Your question is a good one, but my sense is that the statistics are impossible to break down. Unless I am mistaken, Yale and most colleges avoid publishing the stats of those admitted under the official hooks. Also, stats are muddied by the two acceptance periods, and also by “enrolled” vs" accepted" data, and the waiting list data.</p>
<p>Others here may be be able to help you with a broad range of percentage likelihood of non-hoooked acceptance. If you re-start a thread on the Parents Forum, you might be able to attract a broader audience, and there are definitely stats hounds on this site with interest in this very question!</p>
<p>Class of 2015
1351 students
51%male;
11% international
13.5%legacy
9.3% African Americans
19.8% Asians
11% Hispanic
3.8% Native Americans
58.1?White</p>
<p>Less than 500 slots for a US non-legacy male;approximately 300 for white males, including athletes;
- subtract athletes, first in family going to college, perfect scores, and whatever other hooks and it comes to ~170 slots for white unhooked males, similar to ~240 for Harvard</p>
<p>See: [In</a> College Admissions, Athletes Are the Problem - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/13/why-do-top-schools-still-take-legacy-applicants/in-college-admissions-athletes-are-the-problem]In”>In College Admissions, Athletes Are the Problem - NYTimes.com)</p>
<p>Performing arts is not an official hook, at least according to Michele Hernandez in the above article. Hooks = athletic recruits, legacy’s, underrepresented minority’s (URMS) and developmental cases (donors).</p>
<p>At Yale, the percentages are:
Recruited Athletes = 13% [Recruitment</a> caps strain teams | Yale Daily News](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/jan/27/recruitment-caps-strain-teams/]Recruitment”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/jan/27/recruitment-caps-strain-teams/)
Legacy’s = 8.7% [The</a> Decline of Legacy Admissions at Yale - Innovations - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-decline-of-legacy-admissions-at-yale/29338]The”>Innovations: The Decline of Legacy Admissions at Yale)</p>
<p>If you assume 11-13% for URM’s and donors, hooked applicants (not including those students that may overlap) are less than 35% of each enrolled class.</p>
<p>Don’t think being female, asian, or international gives you any advantage over white males. International is probably a disadvantage. I don’t want the thread to be a debate about hooks. My point was that if you don’t have a hook, the odds for being admitted for a typical competitive student might be longer than you think. I certainly don’t want to discourage anyone from applying and hundreds of typical competitive students are admitted every year. I just want to be realistic.</p>
<p>Thanks Gibby. I was my own using a very loose definition of hooks. It may very well be that some of the things I listed are not an advantage at all at some schools.</p>
<p>Legacy is 13% the data is from the official Yale class of 2015 profile and it is similar for the previous classes. The distribution are +/- very close per race/gender/whatever hook.</p>
<p>As for females, actually they are at a disadvantage at Yale as there were ~3k more female applicants recently. I assume a factor is that there are more females involved with theater and Yale always is suggested as an option due to its top department.</p>
<p>It is a mistake to think that you compete against the whole applicant pool. Do not forget that admissions creates a class, not just admit the top students. Even though nobody wants to officially admit it, the percentages for each subcategory remain the same every year +/- few points and it is very similar to other schools, something that would be statistically impossible if they did not have some general quotas. You compete against other similar students who belong in your own pool of students. As an ivy league admissions officer recently told me, you might have identical stats, or even better, than another applicant who is on the admit pile. But if they have already reached the allotted number for students with your profile, then you go to the reject pile. So there is an element of luck as well in the whole process.</p>
<p>^^ I agree. </p>
<p>Hooked and unhooked applicants are not competing for the same “roles.”</p>
<p>What does that mean? Well, think of a high school musical director who is choosing a cast for a show. Let’s use “Urinetown” as the example. The director needs to cast so many males, so many females, so many sopranos, altos, tenors etc. They need to cast for particular roles – Officer Lockstock, Officer Barrel, Bobby Strong, Hope Cladwell, Caldwell B. Cladwell, Little Sally etc.</p>
<p>Admission to a top college works pretty much the same way. In a very real sense, you aren’t competing against everyone in the applicant pool for admission; you’re competing against those who can play the same “role” or “roles.” So, at most top colleges, about 15% of the places will be reserved for athletes. If you’re not an athlete, those spots are not for you. About 10% will go to internationals; if you are a US citizen, those spots aren’t for you either. Some places will go to underrepresented minorities (URM’s). Again, if you’re not a URM, that’s not a role you can play. </p>
<p>If you’re applying solely on academics, then you are competing only for that “role” (not that of an athlete, a legacy, a URM or a developmental case).</p>
<p>“As an ivy league admissions officer recently told me, you might have identical stats, or even better, than another applicant who is on the admit pile. But if they have already reached the allotted number for students with your profile, then you go to the reject pile.”</p>
<p>How are apps read? (In the order they were received, in alphabetical order, by department of interest?)</p>
<p>Can’t there also be overlap? </p>
<p>Can’t a legacy also be an international or a recruited athlete?</p>
<p>Yes, which is why in post #4 I stated "not including those students that may overlap.</p>
<p>gibby: that was an interesting article about declining legacy admission rates at Yale. Looks like my grandchildren will have to get in on their own merits!</p>
<p>“How are apps read? (In the order they were received, in alphabetical order, by department of interest?)”</p>
<p>It depends on the school-some do it by alphabetical order, others as the applications trickle in the office and are complete. Everything depends on the size of the admissions staff. Some schools hire outside readers for the first round. Plus, there is the subjective factor of the reader’s mood that minute!</p>
<p>^Yes, but I was talking about Yale in particular.</p>
<p>@collegeinfo1994
What… what about the waitlist? I find it hard to believe that the process is so unidirectional.</p>
<p>Momof95,
As a parent of a recruited athlete who received a likely letter and was admitted SCEA for the Class of 2016, I’m responding to your initial post. It is worth remembering that Yale’s pool of recruited athletes must have Academic Index (AI) scores within 1 standard deviation of the admitted non-athlete pool. In practical terms, this means that coaches are always looking for that “solid player” with a really good AI score. These candidates are needed to boost the AI of the entire recruiting class in a given sport. It is not uncommon to have several recruited athletes in a recruiting class who have exceptional AIs. allowing the coach to recruit someone with a somewhat below average AI who is nationally recognized within his/her sport.</p>
<p>The upshot? Your Son may be a necessary part of the recruiting class in his sport because he boosts the team AI. So, even within the athlete pool, some recruits are VERY good Yale candidates without their athlete hook. Maybe your son could be a fit that way?</p>
<p>classicgirl: Yale and its competitors do not rank their waitlist and again applicants move out of the wait list based on what specific profile is still needed to mold the class that specific year.</p>
<p>Yes, the process is undirectional.
This is from NYT about Duke last year:</p>
<p>"Another reason the list is so long this year, he said, is that he and his colleagues were so overwhelmed by the volume of applicants that they ran out of time.</p>
<p>What we could have done, had we had another week, he said, was to look at everybody on the waiting list and say, Do they all need to be on? </p>
<p>Christoph Guttentag, the dean of undergraduate admissions, likened his task to that of a sculptor finishing a work of art and the waiting list to his last palette of materials.</p>
<p>I have no idea what Im going to need to finish sculpting the class, he said, his voice echoing off walls of native knotty pine. From an institutional perspective, its important that I have some flexibility.</p>
<p>Like its competitors, Duke does not rank students on its waiting list. Instead, decisions about who will rise to the top are often a function of what the admissions office perceives as deficiencies in the next freshman class. There might be, for example, a surplus of aspiring engineers and not enough potential English majors, or too few students from Florida. Or there might be an unexpected shortage of oboe players."</p>
<p>This is from Ask the Dean at CC:</p>
<p>Typically, colleges do not rank their waitlisted candidates and then pluck them off the list one at a time, starting at the top. Instead, they are likely to use the waitlist to meet institutional needs i.e., to make up for deficiencies in the class that has enrolled so far. In other words, if the class seems short on males or females, on members of particular minority groups, on students from the Northwest or Southeast, on science majors, swimmers or soccer goalies, etc., then those students may be the first to be selected from the waitlist. Priority may also be given to children of prominent alumni or other VIPs (who may have been creating a stir with friends in high places since the decision letters went out). So, if youre on a waitlist but dont think you fill a particular niche (i.e., if youre a middle or upper-middle-class white kid from an overrepresented part of the country with a common choice of major and no unique talents), then you may not be one of the first selected. But if youre not applying for financial aid, that can be a plus especially at colleges that are not as rich as the Ivies and other elite schools. Conversely, if you need a lot of financial aid, that might hurt you.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that some colleges put more than 1,000 students on their waitlists, so dont get your hopes too high, although this year I do expect to see a lot of waitlist action, so dont give up either.</p>
<p>Also be aware that, although admission folks may insist otherwise, some practice what is known as Courtesy Waitlisting. This is when students who ordinarily would be denied are added to the waitlist instead for a variety of reasons. Typically, these are the children of alumni and VIPs. Sometimes they are applicants who have overcome great obstacles in life, and admission officials want to soften the blow of a denial. Courtesy Waitlisting may also be used to show respect for a high school counselor who has advocated vigorously for a particular candidate who, nonetheless, never made the final cut. So ask yourself if you might be a courtesy kid. If so, youre not entirely out of luck, but your odds of success may be even steeper.</p>
<p>Could someone answer the question of what order Yale reads its apps in?</p>