I’m a junior looking to apply to Yale early next year and just want an honest opinion of my chances of acceptance. Here is just a short resume. Any input is greatly appreciated.
ACT: 31
Subject tests: taking physics and math 1 this summer
GPA W:4.2
GPA UW: 3.93
Number of AP courses: 14
Ethnicity: African American
Others: varsity 4 years baseball, hockey(captain), swimming. Senior Vice President, National honors society VP, co founder of a club and an official window washing business. Member of various other clubs and volunteer organizations.
I will also have strong recs and essay.
Thank you again
It is impossible to chance for a school with a 6% acceptance rate as there is not enough room to accept all of the well qualified applicants. You look to have many positive attributes but I would try to get your ACT up a bit as right now you fall below the 25th percentile. https://admissions.yale.edu/what-yale-looks-for
Your ACT is VERY low for Yale. To have a shot you need to raise it by about 3 and you need more depth in your ECs. Still, apply, though, of course. It is a reach for you, just like it is for everyone else.
The well publicized Yale quadruplets had similar profile with ACT 29-32 and they got into all the most selective colleges. You can check on their thread on this board. I think if the OP has an interesting profile ACT 31 is not “VERY low”. Of course, ACT 33 and up is always much better.
ACT 31 is 25th percentile for Yale according to the most recent Yale common data set. https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/cds2015_2016_0.pdf Not the best odds, but not impossible.
It is very low considering the OP has no standout ECs.
The OP is a URM, so that will help. Without more detail on the EC’s, I think the EC’s are fine. Not everyone is a national (or even state winner) of some academic or artistic contest, or started a company or charity that has made/raised big bucks. It shows a dedicated student athlete. Baseball, hockey and swimming all require a huge time and energy commitment, and in these days of specialization, the three sport varsity athlete is rare. The athletic EC’s would be more impressive if he (assuming gender because of baseball) were a starter all years and won some honors (e.g. All District, All State). Being just a participant is less impressive. Also if he goes to a large school, three sports is more impressive than if he goes to a small school.
OP’s stat’s don’t provide class rank and size to put context to his GPA. Being 5/400 is much different than being 15/125.
All that being said, unless he is a recruited athlete, Yale is a reach no matter what the stat’s or details behind his stat’s and EC’s. What OP can do to enhance his application that is within his control:
- Take the most rigorous set of courses his senior year that his school offers and make A's
- Study hard to get his ACT up a point or more, focusing on the section(s) where he scored the lowest. Try to score in the 700's on 2 SAT2 tests
- Choose his recommenders wisely. They need to be recent teachers who will write more than just superlatives but can and will attach examples to back up the superlatives. Let's face it, many recommenders have templates that they use, especially "popular" teachers who are asked to do multiple recommendations every year.
- Write great essays that shows who he is, tying and making sense of his personality, academic and EC record.
Finally, make sure you have researched and applied to a good range of safety, target and reach schools. Especially look into honors programs in your state’s (or other state’s) flagship universities.
@jzducol slight correction. The publicized Wade quadruplets had a 29-33 ACT score range. One had a 29, one a 32, and two a 33. (I just looked at their thread).
The two 33s were about average for Yale in terms of scores. The 32 slightly below but admissible on his own merit, and the 29 one was within the 25% range-- but all were ranked highly in their class (I think in an article somewhere I read that they all had 3.9+ unweighted GPA’s and ranked in the top 25 students in their class of 700)
I personally “only” got a 31 and will be attending Yale in the fall, so don’t lose hope! Never forget that you scored higher than roughly 96% of test takers so your score is still impressive. At a certain point (I think around a 31 or 32), adcoms are like “alright we get it, the kid can take a test-- what else can he do?” So you just need to find your “what else”.
Truthfully, for HYPMS it could go either way. I posted this several years ago and haven’t had the chance to update it with the class of 2020 and 2021, but you should look through those decision threads as well.
If you look through the College Confidential Harvard and Yale Class of 2019 Decision Threads and just focus on test scores, you’ll see that URM tests scores are just about the same as non-URM test scores. So, there seems to be very little bump from being a URM based on test scores.
Harvard Class of 2019 SCEA Decision Thread http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/1714730-official-harvard-university-2019-scea-decisions-only-p1.html
Harvard Class of 2019 RD Decision Thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/1752941-harvard-university-class-of-2019-rd-results-p1.html
Yale Class of 2019 SCEA Decision Thread
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/1713050-yale-class-of-2019-scea-decisions-p1.html
Yale Class of 2019 RD Decision Thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/1752938-yale-university-class-of-2019-rd-results.html
Granted, you really can’t make a judgment based on 32 data points on College Confidential, however every year The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education posts an interesting chart about African American acceptance rates at various colleges vs. the overall acceptance rate: https://www.jbhe.com/2017/01/black-first-year-students-at-the-nations-leading-research-universities-2016/
As you can see – depending upon the college – being a URM can boost an applicant’s chances, but by how much depends on the school. For example, at Cornell, the African American acceptance rate was 17.6% vs the overall acceptance rate of 14.1% – so a slight advantage. At Vanderbilt, the African American acceptance rate was 18.9% vs a 10.7% overall acceptance rate – a large advantage. However, at the University of Chicago the African American acceptance rate was 8.3% vs the overall acceptance rate of 7.9% – not that much different. And, at UCLA, the African American acceptance rate was 8.7% vs the overall acceptance rate of 17.7% – not very encouraging at all. So a URM’s milage will vary depending on the school. Unfortunately, there isn’t published data for the African American acceptance rate at HYPMS. If I had to make a guess, I would think Yale’s African American acceptance rate would be similar to UChicago – so not much of an advantage.
Bottom line, I think your chances at HYPMS depend LESS on your GPA and test scores and MORE on the strength of your essays, the quality of your teacher recommendations and guidance counselor Secondary School Report and your interview report – basically what everyone else’s chances are based upon.
Best of luck to you.
It remains to be seen how much a boost being a URM is at highly selective schools. Using the acceptance rate of a group without knowing the range or median scores of that accepted group does not tell the whole story. For example, even if the acceptance rate for URM’s is the same as the overall rate, if the median standardized test scores of accepted URM students are materially lower, then there is still a significant bump. The data provided by the plaintiffs in the suit against Harvard suggests a significant bump for African American applicants (450 SAT bump vs. Asians and 310 vs. Whites using the 2400 scale is the one most often publicized), although the data may be dated. If the more recent data sought by the plaintiffs from Harvard for the admissions cycles from the fall of 2009 through the Spring of 2015 is ever made public, we will have a clearer understanding of the magnitude of the bump, at least for Harvard.
I love that @gibby put so much detail into the response. One thing that sticks out to me through all of that was the reality that they are only scores. There is so much more that is considered over that. My own daughter in scores was not as impressive in scores as many that were denied. She is not an URM. She had a 2220 SAT. She was 4th in her class of 300 but not first or second. However beyond the numbers she was a humble yet awesome kid with passion and purpose. Scores are just scores. It’s a starting point and that is all. Great scores help but won’t make or break you. There is no realistic formula that says that if you check off the boxes and do what others did that will make your chances greater. Your essays are huge but writing like art is subjective. You have to be the total package…that fits in the puzzle that creates the next class of students. So basically you can be the whole deal but if there are two that meet your stats, and they need another cheerleader over a baseball player, you will lose. It’s so limited in chance. But try. Always try. Not just now but in life in general. You just never know.
^^ Correct. Let’s do some math, as this will help drive that point home. Over at Harvard – which has a similar, but lower acceptance rate than Yale – Admissions 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 top students, that means there were 16,000 truly stellar students with top grades, test scores, recommendations and essays in contention for a slot, students who had a big chance. However, Harvard only has enough beds for 1660 students in their freshman class, which means over 14,000 terrifically qualified students – students who had the full package – were rejected. That’s how limited a chance an applicant has when a school has a single-digit acceptance rate.
As the lottery expression goes “You can’t win it, if you’re not in it!”