Congratulations – you’ve done it! If you’re feeling a whole slew of emotions, for the next few days, try to focus on the positive ones. You’ve worked hard and you deserve to feel good for a few days without stress. The nitty-gritty of decision-making can wait a short time.
The Yale experience is great, but not perfect. It would be unreasonable to expect it to be. There will be things that sometimes make you miserable at Yale, and you will go through times when you are unhappy. This is natural, and most people will have the same experience. The reality is that college is hard, and does involve a lot of changes. The best thing you can do here is to avoid blaming the university, certain classes or particular people. Tackle the root of the problem with humility.
Your idea of what college will be like will not match the reality of your experience come graduation. Things change a lot. Most of you will change majors, many of you will discover new pursuits, some of your friendship choices will surprise you. Accept this, but make sure to hold onto what you value.
Finances matter – a lot. As a teenager who hasn’t worked full-time, you will unlikely have an understanding of what it’s like to pay off debt. Going to the cheapest university may not be the best option, but look at the monthly repayments of any loans you are considering. Large amounts of debt will change the course of your life. It will change what job you take, whether you can go to graduate school, whether you can buy a car or a house, whether you can pay medical bills. Yale’s financial aid is generally excellent, but I had a few classmates who took out six figure loans. If you’re sharp enough to get into Yale, you should have other options too.
Ask for help. Don’t be too proud - I was. During freshman year, I wasn’t on top of my stuff and didn’t get the help I needed because it felt like a dent to my ego. Come the end of the year, I wasn’t happy with how I had performed. Sophomore year, I made a resolution to go to every office hours with all of my questions written down. My study skills improved, and my junior and senior year GPAs were each in the mid 3.9s.
Grades matter – to a point. They have diminishing marginal returns, and stressing about a 3.75 vs a 3.85 isn’t worth it. However, some students – particularly freshmen – seem to think that the Yale brand negates the need to have good grades. If you want to pursue investment banking, management consulting or certain graduate programs, it’s best to aim for a 3.7. Most Yale students don’t meet this threshold but still have great careers in different industries.
Try not to buy into some of the comments on College Confidential. There is some really good advice on this website, and I’m not trying to negate that. However, I have seen plenty of perspectives of Yale get perpetuated because people base their opinions off what they read, and then post, and the cycle continues. If you want to judge the strength of a program, the best thing you can do is close this browser and do some investigating on your own. Get up LinkedIn and search based on the jobs or graduate programs that sound interesting to you. Find the names of recent graduates in your field and see where they’re doing their PhDs if you’re interested in academia. Reach out to seniors or recent alums (last 5-10 years) who know the Yale program well, and are aware of where their peers went.
To students who were rejected or deferred who have opened this thread, rejection hurts, and it will hurt for a while. Nonetheless, the odds are that the pain will heal with time. Remember, rejection feels personal, but it rarely is.
And to all of the 17 year olds who were like me seven years ago, the worst thing you can do is compare yourself to those around you – no matter how successful you are, you will find a weakness somewhere. Instead, put your head down, work hard, and don’t look sideways. The accolades will follow with time.