Should I SCEA?

Hi!

I’m perplexed whether I should do SCEA or not. Yale is my absolute first choice school so I want to make sure my application is perfect for it.

I have a near-perfect transcript, good ecs, and my test scores are yet to come, but they should lie around 31 on the ACT. i will also do subject test in december

Problem is i just started on my essays and am worried about the hurried quality of the ps and supplements. I’m considering applying RD, so i can send in a better quality essay.

But I know SCEA has a better statistical edge, so I’m wondering whether I’ll be losing that advantage if i postpone to RD.

What do you think?

“Hurried essays”

That alone screams no SCEA, IMHO

Good idea

Yale is clear that they won’t accept anyone SCEA that they wouldn’t have accepted RD. Your ACT, if it is in fact a 31, is at Yale’s 25th percentile, which makes me think they’d probably defer you (at best).

If your application isn’t ready, and it doesn’t sound as though it is, don’t submit it. You are roughly 93% likely to be rejected in either case. A lot of life is regret avoidance, and you don’t want to wonder if you should have waited until the application was ready.

Thank you all for your advice.

I know schools say applying early doesn’t make a difference, but a lot of Yale alum I’ve met personally seem to say it makes a huge difference - given the statistics, availability of finances, and smaller applicant pool.

I’m doing testing again in November so I can still send that in for early. Also, I don’t know if having the extra time till December will particularly improve the quality of my essay.

What do you think?

You should definitely wait until RD when you can send in your best application. Also, not applying SCEA to Yale will free you up to apply EA at some lower ranked, but still excellent schools (eg, Boston College, Northeastern, etc).

My daughter is a tour guide at Yale. She is constantly asked about SCEA and RD and what has better chances, what scores she had and so on. She said that they are not allowed to discuss that because the truth is that she doesn’t even know what made her stand our among so many others. I suspect that the Alumnae that you are asking are no different. Each year the selection pool changes and each year kids are compared against different stats and resumes. I suggest you make your very best file, submit it and be at peace that you did your best regardless of the outcome. If that means waiting and applying to another school that has a better chance of acceptance and best shot at financial aid then do that. Everyone has a small chance at Yale. You can expect the SCEA pool to be the very best of the best. If you don’t feel you are that, then wait.

When you knock out all the hooked applicants and the spots they take in the SCEA round (particularly recruited athletes, but also other applicants the university really doesn’t want to lose), there’s still a statistical advantage for unhooked applicants, but it’s much less than it appears. That said, this may be a particularly good year to apply SCEA to Yale because the new colleges are opening and I would guess that the university will tilt toward accepting a somewhat greater proportion of the (newly-expanded) class than normal from the SCEA pool, in order to lessen the risk of a significant decrease in yield due to more offers being handed out overall.

The question you have to ask yourself is whether your profile’s good enough to use your early bullet on Yale. It seems to be your first choice, but you may want to use the statistical edge of an early application somewhere else if Yale looks like it’s out of range.

i don’t think Yale has a reason to misrepresent whether SCEA improves the odds. Yale says

In Quora https://www.quora.com/Does-Early-Action-single-choice-truly-increase-your-chances-when-applying-to-Yale, Parke Muth opined

IMO, if you don’t think that your application is as good as it could be with more time, don’t SCEA. The only benefit to submitting prematurely, and I don’t mean for this to sound as snarky as I know it will, is if you need a soothing “excuse” for the 93% likelihood of a rejection (i.e., “I submitted the application before . . .”)

I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying, @IxnayBob. I note, though, that Yale accepted 795 SCEA applicants to the class of 2020, which is the most in at least the last eight years (the previous high was 761). This represented a 17% SCEA admit rate, also the highest in the period (during which time the SCEA admit rate has been slowly creeping upward). Also, SCEA admits as a proportion of total admits (at 40%) was the highest it’s been in at least the last eight years.

Maybe that means better and better kids are applying early, causing the SCEA admit rate to rise (with this year’s pool being particularly good); alternatively, it could mean that the university is ever so slightly increasing the tilt toward SCEA applicants (possibly with the aim of getting the yield over 70%, which was achieved this year). I also continue to believe that, all else equal, applying SCEA in 2016-2017, which is the first admissions season for expanded enrollment at Yale College, may be a better bet than in any other year.

All that being said, though, the big picture’s the same: you generally need to be extremely strong and/or well-hooked to get into Yale (or its traditional peers) whether you’re applying SCEA or RD, because close to 19 out of 20 applicants are ultimately denied. Adjusting for ~200 recruited athletes reduces Yale’s SCEA admit rate from 17% to ~13%; adding 100-150 legacies reduces it to ~10%-~11%; other special cases reduce it further, so the advantage is much less than it appears. It’s also logical to assume that the SCEA pool is stronger on average than the RD pool - so you would expect the SCEA admit rate to be higher than the overall admit rate of ~6% (although the RD admit rate is lower, of course).

Accordingly, as you say, applying early might modestly raise someone’s (already low) odds, but not by a lot, and might lower them if their application isn’t as strong as it would be if they’d waited. I think the more relevant question is whether someone realistically believes that they’re in the top ~5%-~10% of the Yale applicant pool. If they’re not, they might be better advised to maximize their chances at a more appropriate reach school by applying early there (particularly if it’s an ED school, where the advantage of applying early is typically much more pronounced).

“I have a near-perfect transcript, good ecs, and my test scores are yet to come, but they should lie around 31 on the ACT. i will also do subject test in december”

OP - given that you do not have any test scores yet, I would not apply SCEA and wait to see what the ACT is (and how you feel you did on the Subject Tests) before you apply RD.

It seems to be accepted fact that SCEA pool is stronger than RD pool. But there is no actual evidence to support it. Logically, I don’t see why it is the case.

Applying SCEA requires more discipline and savvy from the applicant (who needs to have completed their tests earlier than for RD and finished their application before November) and their school (which needs to understand the process and make sure the rec letters are done and submitted on time) - so you would expect the early applicants to be, on average, better candidates from better schools, all else equal. Also, as noted, you get a disproportionate number of hooked applicants in the early round, which makes the pool stronger.

I think the most compelling evidence, though, is that 53% of Yale’s SCEA applicants this year were deferred and only 29% denied. In other words, after admitting 17% of the SCEA pool, the admissions office thought that 64% of the rest had a realistic chance of being admitted RD, and therefore deferred them instead of denying them outright. When you consider that only ~4% of the RD + deferred SCEA applicants were ultimately admitted, that would seem to indicate that the SCEA pool is superior.

Actually, the evidence comes directly from Yale Admissions. You need to “read between the lines” of statements like this one: http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2014/01/24/early-programs-not-created-equal/

Although, the article goes on to say

Here’s the way I look at it. Although Ivy League Conference rules allow member colleges to recruit a maximum of 230 athletic recruits per year, it’s been documented in the Yale News that Yale recruits far fewer athletes – about 180 every year. And virtually ALL of those recruited athletes apply in the SCEA round.

So, If you take those 180 recruited athletes out of the mix – by subtracting them from the overall total SCEA applicant pool and overall SCEA acceptance numbers – you get something like this.

Class of 2020 SCEA Applicants = 4,662 ((minus 180 athletic recruits) = 4482
Class of 2020 SCEA Acceptances = 795 (minus 180 athletic recruits) = 615

So the overall acceptance rate taking recruited athletics out of the mix = 13.72% (615/4482), which is less than the stated 17.05% SCEA acceptance rate. If you also subtract out Questbridge applicants, and legacies, the real SCEA acceptance rate for the non-hooked student probably falls to about 11-12%.

Now, the question becomes . . . is the SCEA pool that much stronger to warrant an additional 7%-8% increase in acceptance rates from the RD pool? And I think it does. I’ve said this before, but I’ll post it again.

@gibby thank you for all your insight always on these forums! First, did your kids have any hooks? It gives me some hope for my child if they did not. Last, when you state 8 APs and 6 SAT subject tests - was this at time of applying or at end of senior year?

^^ @hcmom65: Other than attending a feeder high school to the ivies (which is a huge plus factor), my kids did NOT have any hooks. FWIW: Stuyvesant is a high-octane ultra stressful magnet high school where the top 10% of a graduating class takes 10 or more AP courses and the corresponding AP tests. In addition, the school strongly suggests that to stay competitive any student with a 90 average or higher who is taking a “regular class” take the appropriate SAT Subject test at the end of a course. So, that was their record at the end of junior year and both my kids found college to be so much easier than high school! See: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/13/making-harvard-feeder-schools/

I imagine those same high schools are represented by the same percentages at Yale and Princeton.

@gibby Wow. Well my daughter is top 1% of her class and has 6 AP TESTS and 4 sat subject tests (us history, world history, math 2 and Chem) at end of junior year. She will have 5 more APs at end of senior year. 8 subject tests by end of junior year is amazing. Would be curious what those were that your child had? We are not a feeder into Ivys but I suspect my child when pooled with others from her school will be very competitive. Thank you for all your info!!!

My way of looking at SCEA is as follows. Suppose a very strong applicant applies early, so Yale knows it is his/her first choice, and there are plenty of available spots, so this applicant is accepted. Now assume the same applicant applies in the regular round. There is a larger pool of applicants, and a reduced number of spots available. And the fact this strong applicant didn’t apply early means Yale is probably not his/her first choice. Overall, there is definitely a higher probably he/she will be rejected. After all, Yale and similar schools reject well qualified applicants in large numbers as there are simply not enough space to take them all. So for a well qualified strong applicant, applying early does give him/her a slight advantage. I do agree that those applicants not as strong probably don’t gain any advantage by applying early.

@hzhao2004 , I see the reasoning, but I wonder if yield management matters much to HYPMS. Bragging rights for cross admit advantage might come up over a beer, but I don’t think it drives much else. Perhaps I’m naive, but the schools that ignore “demonstrated interest” and use EA rather than ED, I think also tend not to give much bump for EA. I don’t think HYPMS are worried about being unable to compete for great students.

Yale is studious about not projecting that they’ll confer SCEA advantage @hzhao2004 The reason is they don’t want buckets of kids choosing SCEA just to game the system for some perceived reward. They constantly preach: a kid accepted during SCEA would have been accepted in RD and vice versa. They know their yield numbers stay relatively static – and aren’t concerned about it one way or another.