Hi everyone. I really want to get into a Yale as it is my number one school. I’m a female of mixed race (Jamaican/American) and I also happen to be of Jewish religious affiliation. My unweighted GPA is a 94.0625 and my weighted GPA is a 97.8542. My ACT composite score is a 32. My class rank is 20 out 407, which I know isn’t the best but is still in the top 5%. I am currently taking 5 AP courses and 1 college course. I’m involved with my schools National Honor Society (I am the President), National Foreign Language Honor Society (I am the treasurer), Student Government, Mock Trial, and I am a competitive dancer (I dance 5 days a week for 2 hours+ each day.) I also am the treasurer of my schools chapter of Glamour Gals which is a volunteer organization in which we go to nursing homes and talk to and paint the nails of the residents. I will be volunteering at an assisted living home this summer and working as a camp counselor at a week long STEM camp in my area this summer as well. Do I stand a fair chance?
I’d get my ACT up and try to highlight some special accomplishments because your write up seems all over the place. But you have some great stuff. As URM in multiple ways, I’d say your chances are way better than the average applicant.
I’ve written this before, but here it is again:
Let’s do some math, as this will help you concretely understand whether you have a fair chance. Harvard is a bit more forthcoming than Yale – and as Harvard and Yale are competing for approximately the same applicant pool, I think it’s worth investigating what William Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s 40+ year Dean of Admissions, has stated.
Harvard is on record as saying that 80% of applicants can do the work on their campus, and fully 40% of them are top students with exemplarily credentials.
Now, last year almost 40,000 students applied to Harvard. If 40% of them are tippy-top students, that means 16,000 students are the best-of-the-best from across the country and around the world – truly stellar students with top grades, test scores, recommendations, EC’s and essays. However, Harvard only has room for 1660 students in their freshman class, which means over 14,000 terrifically qualified students are rejected every year – and everyone one of those students had a chance.
It’s the same at Yale and every ivy league school. So, do you have a fair chance at Yale? No! Any student applying to a school with a single-digit acceptance rate does NOT have a fair chance. As you can see, the mathematical odds are stacked against you.
That said, do you stand a chance? Is it worth your time applying? Sure, especially if you boost your ACT up to 34+. But again, are the odds in your favor? No, as the odds are not in anyone’s favor. Unless you’ve won the Intel Competition or Google Science Fair, or your mommy or daddy has a building named after them at Yale because they’ve donated millions to the school, your chances are somewhat akin to buying a lottery ticket.
Actually, I disagree with the argument that no students have a fair chance at Yale. It’s not like every student has a 5% chance at getting in. Heck, it’s not even like out of the 25% who are qualified to attend each of these applications has a 20% chance of getting in. I think it is broader than just the people winning Intel or Google. As a broad observation from interviewing and mentoring applicants, as well as attending, if you have international level academic achievements with state or national level extra curricular accomplishments and don’t make yourself sound arrogant or out of touch in your essays, you have a fair chance. I mentored one student who had the academics and extracurriculars who didn’t get in anywhere, and he submitted essays that showed very distorted priorities (against advice). Everyone else I know who met these criteria got into multiple top 5 universities. There is a reason why quite a few students get accepted to most of their tier one schools. It’s not just because they had an x^n probability of doing so.
^^ To a certain extent, I agree with you. Yes, a top student, with good recommendations and essays has a fair chance of being accepted to multiple top universities. However the criteria for acceptance at a school like Yale is extraordinarily subjective. Ditto with the rest of the ivies. And many of those subjective criteria are driven by institutional needs, which vary from college to college. That is why many students are accepted to one ivy, but not another. Or, why some students are accepted to UChicago, Georgetown and Williams, for example, but rejected at all the ivies. The OP was specifically asking about his or her fair chance at one particular school (Yale), and I think we can agree that very few student’s have a fair chance of being admitted by one particular school. If anyone could predict with certainty that a student had a fair chance of being admitted to one particular school, that individual could stand to make gazillions in the college application consulting biz. Even folks like Michele Hernandez, who charges more than $30K a year to guide students through the college applications process, does not make those kind of claim – because they are impossible to make!
Dont need state or national level ECs. That’s the same sort of hierarchical thinking many hold, that your thing has to somehow measure as better than someone else’s. Instead, it’s more to do with the nature of the challenges one chooses, what that shows about an applicant’s vision and energy, how they “reach,” etc.
OP needs to learn what Yale sees as stretch and impact. It’s more than some hs clubs and titles and a little time spent with seniors.
Hindsight tells us some students had a better than fair chance of getting admitted because of multiple acceptances at the most selective schools, much higher than the straight statistical probability that @gibby is trying to illustrate. Putting aside the incredibly talented with national/international recognition and the scions (who are not idiots, and maybe some who are!) of the unquestionably super rich (known to be generous) or powerful, there unquestionably are some students who because of superior academic stats, great essays and recommendations and meaningful EC’s (and maybe some lesser hooks, like legacy, URM, first gen, etc…) have in fact a very good chance of getting in the top institutions. Most of the kids my son hung out with at Bulldog Days were weighing multiple choices from the tippy top schools (1 chose H, another P and another S). So in that respect, with the benefit of hindsight, @exyalie15 is correct.
However, for purposes of this board, there is no way anyone here can with foresight state that anyone has more than the type of probability that gibby was illustrating. No one knows or can judge the quality of the applicant’s subjectives, particularly the essays and the LoR’s. A very good counselor (school or private), who has the benefit of years of historical data points and perhaps worked as an AO of a highly selective institution and has seen how the sausage is made, and who has access to the essays and perhaps the LoR’s of the candidate, can more precisely gauge a particular candidate’s chances. Even then, I suspect very few, if any, counselors, will advise the student that it is “safe” to only consider and apply to schools with single digit admissions rates.
My point wasn’t that you need international level academics and national level extracurriculars, but that if you do, it makes it much easier for adcoms to evaluate your application because there’s less judgement and debate needed to assess that portion of your application. You do need compelling essays, but sometimes for certain applicants that’s more about showing your perceptiveness instead of outlining a life full of hardships.
I know this is a moot point because the OP isn’t looking at winning a prize at the IMO or performing on major TV channels. I just wanted to mention this in case applicants find this thread and are using it as a resource. There is definitely an element of subjectivity in every application, but if you can demonstrate excellence to the highest level objectively, there’s less interpretation adcoms have to for that portion of the application and your application will have a pretty good chance of some good acceptances, though nothing is guaranteed.
If you’re reading this and feel like this is you - great, but stay grounded. Having a strong application doesn’t correlate perfectly to excellence in college and beyond. Some people bloom later. Some people never had the opportunities you did.
There is absolutely nothing objective about admissions to top tier holistic institutions with single digit admit rates. With 30,000 to 40,000 applicants, like @gibby said, at least 16,000 may have perfect scores, 4.0 or higher GPA’s and stellar recommendations. They also may be a legacy, URM, athlete, etc. Well 85% of legacies are not admitted, thousands of URMs receive denial letters. Athletes - well they are another category of their own but that is the case at any school.
Because of the intangibles, there is no way to predict that this OP or any particular candidate will get into Yale or any particular school. Is it very probable they will end up at a top tier school? Yes, it is very probable. We just keep cautioning students about having “dream” schools. There is no school out there that is perfect for everyone.