just wanting to know if it’s worth it to apply SCEA to yale. would it give me any advantage at all or am I better off taking the extra 2 months on my application? Im sure this has been posted before, but I can’t find it
The Admissions website gives good advice.
“Applying Single-Choice Early Action does not increase the likelihood of being admitted to Yale. Historically, the rate of admission among early applicants has been higher than the overall admission rate because many of our strongest candidates, from a wide range of backgrounds and interests, apply early. We therefore offer this advice: Apply for Single-Choice Early Action if you want to receive a decision in mid-December and you are confident of the credentials you will be presenting to the admissions committee early in your senior year. An Early Action applicant must meet the same criteria for admission as an applicant in the regular pool. A thoughtful college search and a careful assessment of your readiness to present a strong application as early as November 1, are key. Candidates who need more time, for whatever reason, will be better served by our Regular Decision process.”
Other factors to weigh since Yale SCEA precludes you from applying ED or EA anywhere else (except for public universities, schools with rolling admission and some other exceptions you can see on the website).
If you have legacy status somewhere else, it may be to your advantage to apply there early. Penn specifically calls out a legacy advantage if you apply ED there.
If there is another school you love more than Yale, and it is your first choice and it is ED, there is likely a real advantage applying ED there (how large or small depends on the school).
Are your grades, test scores and other parts of your application going to give you a legit shot at Yale? If your objectives are not above average (call it top 2%, mid 1500’s or 34+) and you are not a recruited athlete, have a major hook (development prospect for huge bucks, not just legacy), winner of some nationally acclaimed award, etc…, chances are you will not be admitted and most likely deferred (or even rejected). Even students that hit those criteria will most likely be deferred, and that is the group you will be compared against. In that situation, you are better off using your EA/ED bullet on a low reach/high match school where you have a better chance of actually culling your application list.
If you are a tippy top student and you will have your app in as good of a shape as it can be by Nov 1, and Yale is one of your top choices, I’d go for it, not because there is an advantage, but there is some chance you can significantly reduce your application list and have pretty much a zero stress rest of senior year.
DS applied SCEA to Yale, and also to Michigan. I’d never call Michigan a safety for anyone, but there are students for whom it’s a strong match and an acceptance would not be a surprise. As it happened, he was accepted to both, but the thinking when applying was that having an acceptance to UMich would relieve a lot of pressure. His senior year was relatively unstressed.
Check out a thread called “The Plague of ‘Early Decision’” from post #395 through the next few pages. You’ll find some sophisticated analysis, using real numbers, of the advantage of applying to Yale SCEA vs. RD. Spoiler alert: an advantage exists, but it’s much smaller for unhooked candidates than the headline numbers would suggest.