<p>My dad is an alum at Yale and he received a letter today basically saying that they were glad that his daughter applied and that they would be sure to read the application carefully. </p>
<p>I assumed that this was just a mass letter sent out to all legacy applicants, but then I started getting paranoid. This isn't some consolation letter to the alum parents of defer/reject candidates so that they won't get mad is it? I don't actually think it's a big deal, but I just wanted to post on here and see if anybody knows for sure!</p>
<p>It IS a mass letter for all alums who might have kids applying. However, that doesn’t reflect anything about you – it’s really about mollifying potentially miffed alums who see their kids rejected. It’s not done with any relation to the true strength or weakness of your application however.</p>
<p>Don’t sweat it – good luck. I’ll be getting your dad’s letter in about four years.</p>
<p>My mom is an alum too, and she received the same letter last week. I was a little weirded out – I assumed that any correspondence with my parents would either be extremely good or extremely bad – and it turned out to be in middle of the road. I think they’re trying to maintain alumni relations regardless of the outcome of their child’s application. Also, my letter was dated before my alumni interview, so unless they decided my fate before the interview, it seems like it isn’t tied to admission outcome.
But the legacy admission rate was heartening, between 20-25% compared to the standard 7%. I’ll take those odds.
Good luck!</p>
<p>Haha, good. That’s what I thought but it didn’t hurt to make sure!
Before I started over-analyzing, the letter did make me feel special for like, two seconds, which was still nice. xD</p>