Is 32 ACT good enough for Yale?

Colleges & Universities A-Z Yale University
21

@skieurope Quads are newsworthy from the day they are born. Pretty sure that Yale and every other school could anticipate that they would generate publicity and you may doubt it, but since when don’t colleges thrive on publicity?

Why are celebrities and other high profile applicants coveted?

Why do you think they were accepted to so many places? Do you think they all would have been accepted to Yale and their overall results would have been the same if they were 4 unrelated applicants?

They seem like great kids, but so are thousands of others with the same stats that piled up rejections last year.

22

I don’t think they would have all been accepted if they were not quadruplets.
Their stats wouldn’t have held up. You are correct.
They were all accepted because they are quadruplets.
I understand that Yale accepts some low Stats for their athletes. Who knew that if you had quadruplets your kids would have an equal chance, irregardless of their work in school and test scores, or athletic ability to the high achieving 32-36 ACT and 1490-1600 SAT applicants.

23

There was a whole thread here on CC about those kids and their essays were even published. I thought 3 of the 4 were great and it was interesting how they seemed like 4 pieces of a puzzle and were even better as a whole reflecting the interwoven dynamics of being a multiple.

24

If you are an unhooked applicant, don’t waste your early admit card on Yale with a 32 or 33. If you are a URM, recruited athlete, or legacy go for it.

25

I am, overall, very proud of Yale. Their willingness to offer acceptances based on PR value is not something I’m proud of as a parent of a Yalie. That said, they are not alone in this failing.

26

These kids were the result of 4 eggs fertilized and carried to term. I’m sure their essays were good. just as most all applicants to Yale are. Why would they publish their essays? This is rather private and they run the risk of octuplets , septuplets , whatever 6 embryos are carried to term , and quintuplets, copying their essays in some form. Are we now saying that IVF implantation and natural multiple births are more worthy of acceptance to the most selective universities , just because their embryos and fetuses survived?

27

I made the distinction in my post. Celebs are newsworthy before they even applied. But even celebs have to be able to handle the work once admitted. I personally doubt that Yale or any of its peers would accept a Kardashian Kid solely based upon celebrity.

The Wade brothers may have been locally newsworthy at birth in their hometown, but the national attention came only after their acceptances. Whether Yale would have only accepted 2 or 3 based upon their application and URM hook and chose to take them all so as not to split them up is something only a Yale AO would know. Maybe they did. Maybe not. Perhaps some people are just more cynical than me.

28

@skieurope , you were the first to mention that the quadruplets are “African American”. I understand that Universities want to be perceived as all inclusive. Which they should be especially since many different cultures,“races” have been abused, segregated and disinfrachised in our country. My point is that now quadruplets are considered a hook. I don’t remember in our history that quadruplets have been diminished.
I think we should get back on the subject of the Original poster. Apply to Yale even if you aren’t a Valeticorian or a Quadruplet.

29

@Houston1021 , it is not a waste to apply to Yale with an ACT of 32. If the applicant doesn’t apply they will not be accepted . If the applicant does apply they have a chance just as my original post stated. Don’t be a Debbie downer.

30

I’m all for people applying aspirationally, but that has to be weighed against the odds. I don’t know OP, but with an otherwise flat application, i.e., not spikey, they probably should look for better odds elsewhere. Nothing precludes a “wing and a prayer” RD application later, but they should make the best use of whatever advantage early applications provide. I’m generally an optimistic guy, heck, I buy lottery tickets knowing the odds, and nobody would call me a Debbie Downer, but OP, play the hand you got dealt.

31

Perhaps I was too blunt. After having gone through the college admissions process with my D last year, I learned there are many schools ranked in the top 20 that take very large portions of their class ED. If an unhooked applicant EDs at many of these schools with a 32, it seems the applicant has a better chance of being admitted to those schools ED than at Yale SCEA. If you SCEA Yale, you cannot ED at these other top schools. RD admits at schools in the top 20 are much harder than ED admits. Foe example, EA and RD admits at U Chicago last year were almost nonexistent. A student only has one early card to play, and it should be played wisely. I will add as a caveat that some of these schools have ED2. If your heart is set on Yale, certainly apply. Just be aware that SCEA may foreclose other good options.

32

I agree with everything but the number “one.” There are a number of other schools that you can apply to early. The most common use is a state flagship (e.g., DS applied concurrently to Yale and Michigan EA). So, in DS’s case, he got to apply at the same time to one “reach” and one “match,” increasing the chances that he would be able to feel less pressure to apply, apply, apply during his senior year. As it happened, he got lucky :slight_smile:

33

Chance yes, equal chance (32 vs a 34 candidate) highly doubt it. While the ACT scores are not broken down into similar detail, if we look at the bands published in the Yale CDS, you can see a significant falloff in matriculates with subscores below 700 on the old Sat. I suspect if Yale (or any highly selective) were to publish a distribution graph, we would see more scores bunched towards 33/34+ than below.

So, yes applying RD with a 32 is not irrational. Agree with @Houston1021 and @IxnayBob that applying SCEA with a 32 is not smart for the reasons they elaborate, and it also forgoes the opportunity to put OP’s best foot forward if OP can achieve a higher score than 32 on either or both the Oct 28th and the December 9th tests.

34

@IxnayBob my “one card” statement was referencing other highly ranked private schools like U Chicago, Duke, Penn, Vanderbilt etc. that offer a significant advantage for ED applicants. A 32 might not cut it at those schools either. As you point out, Yale does allow a student to apply to a state school, a school with rolling admissions, colleges outside the US etc. while applying SCEA at Yale. However, some kids are not interested in applying to or attending a state school–even one as great as Michigan. It is a gamble, if the student strikes out with his/her SCEA bid he/she may not get into some of his/her other choices RD or might be waitlisted everywhere else. The process is very stressful. It all worked out in the end for my D as you can see from my avatar.

35

The applicant needs to remember that he/she is competing against others in the same pool of applicants, not against all other applicants. If your pool is exceptionally strong, then you need to be extremely strong in your application to have a chance. If your pool is weaker (pools can be divided by athlete/legacy/race/sex, further factors include international and socioeconomic condition) then your overall application can be weaker. Don’t get me wrong, there can be extremely strong applicants in all pools, but some pools are weaker than others. As pools are divided admissions start to look like a meritocracy as the strongest applicants in each pool are selected for admission. Still there are the essays and how much your particular AO likes them will affect outcomes, so there is still wiggle room for holistic admissions even within a pool. So to answer the original question a 32 can get you into Yale as long as its competitive in your pool.

36

Was on an interesting conference call the other day with Yale’s Dean of Admissions, Jeremiah Quinlan. He provided some interesting insights on the process that I think posters here often speculate about. The process he describes is similar to the Wesleyan process described in the “Gatekeepers” and even in the film “Admission”.

The Yale admissions officers are each given a region. The regions are at least largely geographic because he spoke in geographic terms and probably defined by the number of applications they anticipate receiving from that region to even out the workload. After a first sorting by the officer responsible for the region, there is a second reading to get the list down to candidates that would go before the Committee. There was no suggestion that each region got an equal number of candidates in to the next round. Of the 33,000 applicants for the class of 2021, he described 20,000 as academically qualified. By the time they got to the Committee, the list was culled to about 6,000. So yes, while candidates are considered in pools of various sorts, the first 14,000 cuts of qualified candidates is done primarily by 1 or 2 individuals that are looking through a geographic pool. I am sure they have subpools in mind when they go through their portfolio, but when you deal with decisions made by 1 or 2 persons, human subjectivity will be a bigger factor since the decision is not based on a large group consensus. As they go into Committee, each Regional officer is tasked with prioritizing their list of candidates who are being considered and is the advocate for those candidates. It is not hard to imagine that there are candidates which fly through the Committee by dint of their accomplishments and how they presented themselves through their essays, LoR’s and EC’s (these are likely the kids who get admitted into multiple highly selectives). I suspect it is at the next level of candidates when the Committee is trying to build their “ideal class”, that comparison based on subpools becomes a larger factor. I would also hazard a guess that based on the sheer number of applications each officer has to go through in the first round, the first sorting (conscious or unconscious) will be based on objective stat’s, and the further you fall down that curve, the greater the need for something in the subjectives to jump out to move on.

37

My understanding is that ONE of the four had a 29 ACT. IIRC, two had 33s. I am not certain of the other score, but I think it was a 32.

38

First, one of the quads was on CC for some time. I don’t remember now how much he revealed publicly here, but in a set of PMs with him, over a year ago, he revealed activities and accomplishments beyond ordinary, recognition in important individual (competitive) ways (not just the usual list of hs honors or clubs.) Piecing later posts together about the four, each was more than “ordinary.”

So, to be blunt, I wish folks would stop assuming -and promoting - the idea it’s just because they’re URM or quads.

What BKSquared shared is what I see, also, another school. But though there can be what’s called two reads, more are involved with their opinions, crossing regional lines, backing up reactions or questioning. The first pass is a harsh, fast cut, but still leaves many thousands more than, say, 6k.

The number who “fly through” is miniscule. The number actually reaching a final chat is much smaller than assumed, re-culled by that rep or team.

But a 32? Part of holistic is to look at the sub scores, in the context of what the applicant wants and how he prepared for that. OP thinks his reading/science scores may be lower. Of course that can be a problem, for a stem wannabe or a major that requires a high level of reading skills. And at any tippy top with a deluge of top candidates.

And OP previously said he has a 3.9, but I don’t know what courses/rigor. Nor what activities distinguish him. No matter what “pool,” as an individual, we don’t know enough.

All we can say is, before any early app, he needs to better understand his match. The sort of questions he’s posed hint he doesn’t have that feel. The risk is an app/supp that’s a blind shot.