@oldschooldad - Your son sounds like a terrific young man, and any school will be lucky to have him enroll. Many more experienced parents of Yale students, as well as Yale alums, have written helpfully on this thread about the importance of drawing a clear line in a student’s essays from their early interests/activities to their reasons for choosing Yale. I think if your son can show ad coms that he has always had that kind of focus, perseverance and love for his interests, and therefore why Yale is the right “fit” for him, then as @gibby explains, the ad coms will see him as someone who will be able to transfer that focus to his college-level study of Psychology, Economics, etc., and therefore flourish at Yale and enrich the larger Yale community as well.
I don’t agree with @AroundHere that “it takes a certain kind of arrogance to think your kid is Yale material,” anymore than I would assume that @AroundHere or her daughter are arrogant for submitting an application to MIT. In fact, I think that MIT and Yale applicants are the opposite of “arrogant” because they pursue their interests - athletic, artistic, scientific, etc.," with a level of devotion that requires immense amounts of self-criticism and humility. This level of devotion is exactly the quality that I think Ad Coms look for in applicants. And in my experience, the students I have met at Yale are like this: they are unflaggingly passionate and devoted to their studies, their friends and their larger community.