<p>What is the "minimum threshold" for Yale? I feel like there's a minimum that's referred to a lot, but I don't know what it is.
Is it possible to get in with a 3.7 GPA? If it's an upward trend, that is ...
I don't know how representative CC is, but I'm wondering if students do get in with those scores.</p>
<p>(I mean that a 3.7 GPA after having OK grades at a very tough school freshman/sophomore year, and then 3.8-9 junior/senior)</p>
<p>is that a 3.7 weighted or unweighted?</p>
<p>Unweighted.</p>
<p>I doubt there is any firm “minimum”, so long as whatever stats you have are justified for whatever reason (your upward trend sounds promising). In any case, at this stage you can’t really do anything about your GPA so just put in the best possible app you can and hope for the best.</p>
<p>Thank you! But you still think I have a chance?</p>
<p>There’s no definitive answer. My answer, however, would be yes, so long as you don’t have a horrible SAT score or ECs.</p>
<p>There’s always a chance for anything (the planet might explode tomorrow morning) – the question is how good is that chance? Silver Turtle’s analysis of previous years’ results (you can find the thread on here somewhere if you look) showed that, at least for SCEA, your chances are quite small unless your stats are quite good, somewhere in the 3.9+ GPA, 2300+ SAT range (assuming, of course, no bona fide hooks like recruited athlete, URM, legacy, development recruit, in which cases the standards are lowered anywhere from somewhat to a lot). Best advice I saw from someone is to be both optimistic and realistic and let that guide your actions (i.e. by all means be hopeful but make sure you have other choices, etc).</p>
<p>Keep in mind though, the majority of kids who get accepted into Yale don’t post on CC. Who knows, maybe if one had the statistics of all of the SCEA acceptees, one would find that the standards are actually lower. A reason for this is matriculation rate. The statistics of CCers are generally stratospheric. Yale may consider them overqualified and defer them (which Yale does A LOT) because it believes that a lot of those kids will end up at Harvard or Princeton or another school that kids perceive to be “superior.” A surprising statistic I got from the 371 best colleges book from Princetion Review evinced that 68% (I think) of kids who get accepted actually matriculate. At first glance, this figure seems friggin’ low! However, by college standards, it’s actually really good. Still, it is 68% and Yale may be aiming to up the rate to compete with Harvard’s (around 85% I believe). Matriculation rate is considered by colleges to be extremely important because it constitutes a significant part in rankings. The higher up a college is in US World and News Report, the more prestige it naturally gets. So basically what I am saying is, don’t panic if you see phenomenal kids get rejected by top schools–they may simply be too good. I think people overestimate the quality of kids who attend Ivies because let’s just face it, we don’t know anything about the majority of those kids. The few kids who actually come out and reveal themselves, like on CC, are usually the more dedicated ones–they actually bothered to search out sites like these. I think what happens to the more surprising rejectees on this site is that every school thinks that that particular individual will get into a better school and so defer or waitlist them, Harvard happens to run out of space, and so by an unfortunate twist of fate the excellent student is somewhat stranded. Another possiblity could be that that individual came off as extremely proud and arrogant (it happens a lot if one gets 2300+ SAT’s and is the leader of no less than 50 billion meaningful EC’s). This is no fell-sweep generalization, this is simply my guess at what happens to some very bright kids.</p>
<p>moosemaster3000, I absolutely agree with you. The stats on CC represent the top of the top, and should by no means be taken as the average. As moose mentioned, the fact that these students seek at sites such as CC demonstrates dedication, and strive to boost their chances of acceptance. We tend to overlook this minor detail!</p>
<p>^This implies that Harvard is more prestigious than Yale, which I don’t think is a commonly held belief (even though Harvard’s yield is a little higher - I think I remember seeing 73-ish%, not 85%). I doubt that Yale often worries about over-qualified applicants (do you really think people are over-qualified for Yale???), although you are right that CC represents a unique (and generally better qualified) portion of the applicant pool with a significantly higher admittance rate. The issue is that it is hard to tell on this website how good an applicant is because we have significantly less information than the Yale admissions office. In response to the OP, there is no general threshold: a 3.7 unweighted, although not ideal, definitely does not decimate your chances.</p>
<p>I was replying to moose, not ParTeeGrl</p>
<p>so are you saying that it’s a disadvantage to have a 2300+ score? :S that seems incredibly odd.</p>
<p>dan92: you do understand that decimate means to reduce by one tenth right? so, theoretically, a 3.7 could decimate your chances</p>
<p>if you’re talking about the preverted definition(to completely destroy), then I agree with you. I doubt a 3.7 ruins your chances</p>
<p>As for Harvard being “better” than Yale, I mainly go off of College World and News rankings–even if it imperfectly represents the quality of colleges (inevitable, given all the different needs of an increasingly diverse student body), it’s the first thing most people turn to to determine who is at the top. And I wish I emphasized this more in my first comment but the “overqualified” theory was meant by me to apply to only some kids. I personally believe the majority of kids get deferred for other reasons, but I can never know for sure–I’m no admissions officer. Still, there are always the “shocker rejects” or deferrals that always have people scratching their heads. These kinds of rejects, if for the overquailification reason, give kids the wrong impression. And yeah, even though the Princeton Review book is copyrighted for 2009, i recall that it does seem to be out of date as far as facts and statistics are concerned–I apologize for any confusion.</p>
<p>To address the original threshold question, Olivia567, does your school provide a class rank? If so, then don’t worry about your GPA number, worry about how you compare to the other kids in your school–that’s what competitive colleges care about. Your GPA could correspond to all B’s but if you are #1, it won’t matter, you would still be treated as though you had a shiny 5.0 or 4.0 GPA. If your school does not rank but if you would be ranked highly if it did, then definitely ask your guidance counselor to emphasize your academic standing compared to your classmates. Once again, high selective colleges don’t care about absolute number, they care about how much better or worse you are than your fellow classmates. This way of treatment makes sense because not all high schools are equally challenging. If almost everyone only gets a 3.5 GPA, then a 3.7 GPA would be extremely impressive.</p>
<p>Umm ya…like others have said, to actually have a serious shot at Yale ur gonna want to have a 3.9+ and 2300+. However, I would even go farther than that. If you arent hooked and attend an non-outstanding high school, you gonna want to have a 4.0. If you have that, than the best advise has already been given to you: be optimistic but realistic. No one should seriously be expecting an acceptance letter on the 15th. By believing you will certainly get accepted, the odds are you will be accepted. So, stay positive but no excessively so.</p>
<p>all students that attend normal publics HAVE to have a 4.0? my rank is good (top 2%) but i have a 3.86. i think that my retake of the sat will be 2300+, but without the 4.0, should i bother applying?</p>
<p>Of course you should apply…but if you attend a no where high school, they prbly wanna see that 4.0</p>
<p>Moosemaster, There is actually an empirical basis for some of what you say in your first post. A revealed preference study conducted, I believe, by a couple of Wharton professors a few years ago concluded among other things that some schools including Yale, Princeton (the worst offender), and Stanford (but not MIT) were gaming the USNWR rankings by lowering the admit rate for students just below the very top tier. The speculation was that they were concerned too many of those students would attend Harvard, reducing the matriculation statistics to an unacceptable level. Interestingly, this phenomenon didn’t affect students at the very top, presumably because the schools had to get some of those super elite students to maintain their own super-elite status and simply had to take the risk of competing for those students head to head against Harvard. It also didn’t affect students another notch below, presumably because those students were less attractive to Harvard in the first place. BTW, that analysis also determined that 2/3 (IIR) of all Yale/Harvard cross admits choose Harvard (and notably Yale fared signficantly better than any other school against Harvard, including Princeton). I’m not sure that phenomenon still exists, though. In fact, I think SCEA may be an alternate route to achieving the same end. I think the idea in SCEA is to admit (among the unhooked) primarily students who are statistically likely to also be admitted to Harvard – with the twin ideas that (1) the school will have a few months to woo those students before the students even know whether Harvard will take them and 2) because the students have self-selected Yale, there is a relatively higher likelihood that they will prefer Yale to Harvard (as compared with students who have not so self-selected) irrespective of the wooing process. The first of these two ideas potentially explains the “single choice” feature of SCEA. At any rate, this explanation is consistent with Silverturtle’s observed phenomenon that very few CC’er below 2300 or 3.9 are admitted SCEA since only those students are likely candidates for Harvard. And, while it’s almost certainly true that CC’ers have higher stats than nonCC’ers, even within that relatively select group a cutoff of sorts seems to apply. Of course, all bets are off in RD – and I’ve never seen an analysis of those outcomes.</p>
<p>Very interesting, STMoore.
So maybe I had it backwards–CCers were not getting defered because they were too good, but because Yale was actually looking for better.
This makes much more sense than my original hypothesis.
What I feel is certain though, is that Yale does exhibit some sort of unfair bias due to competition with perceived “superior” schools or perceived equals.
Thanks for the more reliable info!</p>