URM + trained classical musician looking for advice for YC, Oberlin, Boston U

Colleges & Universities A-Z Yale University
1

Hey, my name is Jay. First post on this site but I’ve lurked for a really long time before this. I’ve read so many obnoxious chance threads and hopefully this one isn’t super annoying to read. Will be applying SCEA to Yale and looking at BU, Oberlin, Columbia, Rutgers New Brunswick, Northwestern, Vandy, King’s College London. Looking for advice on improving my application/what I should do since my test scores/GPA aren’t as high. Apologies if this is hard to read, I don’t know how to bold things because I haven’t used a forum in years.
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Objective:
GPA: 3.81 (UW); 4.03 (W)
SAT I: 1400; 740 CW and 660 M (will update with new stats once I get my scores back)
SAT II: will be taking this in August because I haven’t yet had time to take it (my conservatoire meets on Saturdays); will be taking Literature, US History, and World History
AP: World History (5), English Language, Chemistry, US History (latter three are junior year, this is a typical course load at my school which offers about 10-12 APs total)
Senior Year Course Load: AP Computer Science, AP English Literature, AP Art History (self-study), AP European History (self-study), AP Calculus BC, AP Spanish Language
Percentile: 1, we don’t formally rank

Subjective:
EC/Summer: National Honor Society
Theatre Society (President since 2016)
Manhattan School of Music Precollege (lead in musicals/operas, select chorus, soloist)
Boston University Tanglewood Institute (summer 2017, principal baritone on merit scholarship, raised half the money)
Broadway camp (sophomore year; worked with a lot of famous Broadway people and premiered a bunch of new works)
Student Leadership cohort member (we don’t really have an elected student government in the traditional sense)
Ethnicity: mixed race over several generations (black and Latino)
Gender: M
Income: middle to upper-middle (my parents work good jobs despite not having degrees)
Hooks: URM, first-generation college
Personal statement: uses a musical term (chiaroscuro) as an analogy/extended metaphor/conceit for my experience growing up between wealthy white suburbs and poor urban neighborhoods

Sorry if this is long. Let me know what’s unclear/could be clearer.

2

Glad to see you have a good mix of schools.

To be brutally honest, test scores are at the very low end for Yale, below the 25th percentile (need to be close to 1500). Converting your scores to the old SAT scale, and comparing it to Yale published statistics for entering students, the 740 translates into a 1410, so just using a simple average, puts you at 705 each, which would put you towards or even slightly below the 25th percentile. The 660 is more problematical as it converts to a 640 and puts you well below the 25th percentile. https://admissions.yale.edu/what-yale-looks-forhttps://admissions.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/class_profile_2020_8-29.pdf Admits at the lower end of the 25th to 75th percentile range, and those below, most likely have some super hook, like athletic recruit, major national award winner or recognition, child of truly big bucks donor or some national/international leader, etc… Have you taken a practice ACT under timed conditions? Some students do better in one vs. the other.

As far as your GPA, it is hard to tell because there is no reference to relative rank. If your 1 means top 1% (or you are ranked 1), that’s great. If that is just a typo, to be competitive, you need to be at least top 10%, maybe 5%. Course rigor seems ok if that is comparable to that of other top students at your school.

URM, first gen will help. It is unclear the amount of boost that they provide.

EC’s look fine, but typical of thousands of other applicants who will have better objective stats. The essay and LoR’s will be more important, and if your key EC’s are woven into the essays and LoR’s in a reinforcing way that bring life to both, you will serve your application well.

Bottom line, Yale is a reach for anyone. From what I see, the single most important thing you can do to enhance your chances is to improve your test scores, especially math, either through the SAT or ACT. Next, keep up your grades senior year. Write thoughtful and interesting essays that use your EC’s to bring life to the qualities that you are trying to promote in the essays. Choose LoR writers who know you well personally and can use real world examples of what you have done/accomplished to support their recommendation. “Band-Aid” fixes like adding more EC’s is not going to be productive.

3

I appreciate your reply. I’m taking this all in stride because I really want to make my application as strong as I can. Thank you for the feedback about the mix of institutions. I’m glad to hear that my list does not seem too difficult or too full of reaches. I worried about that at first.

If this isn’t already clear, I intend to major in humanities, probably the classics and music, or something literary and musical. My transcript and scores reflect this. I definitely try to market myself as “black kid who likes Brahms, Eliot, and Homer”. Have demonstrated my interest in Directed Studies to admissions folks.

We don’t formally rank, but I am in the top 8% of the class. Course rigor is very typical of the rest of the class, and may even be stronger for senior year than the top of the class. Same with my SAT score, almost everyone near me in rank or position had 1430 and 1450. There was one 1470 and one 1500. I will put my new SAT scores up when I receive them on 12 July. I had a lot of issues with the math section the first time and I breezed through it the second time, so my prayer is a much higher score this time on math and a slightly higher English score.

I have made the acquaintance of several kids who had lower SAT scores like me and still made it into YCP. They’ve all said the same thing to me about essays. My personal statement references my precollege conservatoire, my love of opera and classical music, and my particular experiences racially and socially in it. It’s very important to me that my essays show my unique authorial voice and convey my unique perspective. I am also sending in a music supplement, because I am a musician of high caliber. I’m working very hard to select good repertoire that is extremely polished, as well as establishing connections with voice faculty for potential lessons. I was told by admissions that it cannot hurt to ask. I definitely will be entering into vocal competitions and for scholarships. I don’t know if this will necessarily help, but I think it is a good idea, regardless.

I definitely have selected LoRs very carefully. My counselor recommendation is coming from the head of the college counseling department at my school who’s forged a very close relationship with me. I also plan to receive a recommendation from my APUSH teacher and possibly another from my Calculus teacher this year. I’m a bit late to the LoR game (almost everyone has selected their teachers already), so I’m relying on the faith I’ve built up.

My school tends to encourage one humanities and one STEM recommendation, though I would rather have two humanities. I’ve been told this can make me look too pointy. Is this a fair assessment? Personally, I think my AP Spanish teacher knows me much better than my Calculus teacher does, though based off the brag sheet I’m sure she could write me a competent letter (she does know me well, but not as well).

Additionally, without being terribly specific, I’ve built up rapport with senior members of the admissions faculty and was able to speak to them at great lengths during my last visit. It was a sort of mock interview, and I think it served me well in the process.

4

You are definitely going down the right direction in working your strengths, and understanding the need to tell your story in the essays.

I don’t necessarily agree with your school about the necessity of having 1 STEM, 1 humanities LoR writer. Yes, ideally if you have 1 teacher in each category that can write something personal and great about you, that is the first choice. But I think having a “formulaic” letter from your Calc teacher vs. a deeply personal one from a second humanities teacher would not serve you well. Take my advice with a grain of salt since I am only a parent. Your school’s guidance counselors do this for a living. But I point to this section from the Yale page I linked above:

"Academic Ability

Yale is above all an academic institution. This means academic strength is our first consideration in evaluating any candidate. The single most important document in your application is your high school transcript, which tells us a great deal about your academic drive and performance over time. We look for students who have consistently taken a broad range of challenging courses in high school and done well. Your high school teachers can provide extremely helpful information in their evaluations. Not only do they discuss your performance in their particular class or classes, but often they write about such things as your intellectual curiosity, energy, relationships with classmates, and impact on the classroom environment. Obviously it is important to ask for recommendations from teachers who know you well."

Note the last 2 sentences. I would say though that having 2 teachers of the same (or closely related) subject would not be the way to go. I note you don’t have a music/choir teacher on your list. That would have seen logical given the attributes you want to highlight.

All of the things you mentioned, the music supplement and getting know some AO’s are helpful, but recognize that these are things I consider “tie breakers” unless the musical talent is truly extraordinary compared to all of the other applicants who are submitting supplements who also feel that theirs is special. Also remember the AO’s in addition to having to review 30,000+ applications, probably will have talked to thousands of applicants either on campus or at school/regional visits.

In terms of school selection, I see you did not include any LAC’s other than Oberlin. I know many of them have sponsored Diversity Weekends in the fall where they pay for transportation, house you, feed you and have organized activities. The process is selective, and a high percentage of participants get admitted. In addition to seeing one of these schools when it is in session, it might give you an early read of the strength of your candidacy based on whether you are selected.

Good luck!. Hope you get good news July 12.

5

This is a bump, but wanted to write that I was ultimately accepted. Objective stats didn’t improve much, but I write well and ultimately it’s that and my recommendations which got me in. Thanks for your advice!

I ended up severely pairing my list down to USC, Juilliard, Northwestern, BU, my state school, Princeton, and Yale. Got an audition at USC, accepted to state school, rejected from Juilliard, not audition at Northwestern, BU, etc. because accepted to Yale. Ultimately, I withdrew my applications from the other schools and will go to Yale. It’s still very much a betting match in which the odds say you’ve already lost, but my writing definitely saved me.

6

Thanks for updating us. Enjoy your years at Yale!

7

Thanks! I’m anxious to know what my residential college will be and all those other things. It’s all so exciting and dreamlike. Still haven’t gotten used to it. As I withdrew other apps yesterday, I got anxious because I wondered if I really was accepted. I have the letter right in front of me and still, I’m in awe. What does one do now?

8

Congrats! Enjoy your senior year. Obviously you can’t totally slack off on school work, but spend quality time with your friends and family. You only have 1 senior year of HS.

9

@jayofbrooklyn . as has been stated often on CC, you will be assigned at random to the best residential college. It won’t matter which it is, it will be the best of them :slight_smile:

I second BKSquared’s suggestion to enjoy your senior year. Keep your grades up. Read some books that you’ve been wanting to read for a while. Socialize. Find the sweet spot for saying “Yale” in the right tone when asked where you’re going to college (trust me, it takes a while, at least for a parent).

DS was similarly dazed for a while. Enjoy it; I’m sure you earned it.

ETA: You won’t be the first or last Yale student who suffers from Imposter Syndrome. I have no factual basis for this view, but I think Yale selects for it.

10

I didn’t notice this thread before. I want to highlight how wrong and uninformed the above comment was. People say that kind of thing on CC all the time, and it’s corrosive. The OP’s dedication to vocal music and level of accomplishment was not “typical” of thousands of applicants anywhere, much less thousands of applicants with better stats than his already-excellent stats in any context other than a HYPS application.

He was already an excellent student at school. That, plus his cultural background, plus his focus and achievement in music, plus his writing ability, plus (honestly) his gender (fewer boys willing to double down on the humanities and vocal music), made him a strong candidate for a place like Yale. If he had any meaningful improvement in his SATs, that would have made him a really strong candidate. When I read the first post, I thought “I bet this kid gets in.”

To the OP: Don’t worry about which residential college you are assigned to. Whichever one it is, it will be the best. Also, think hard and inform yourself about Directed Studies. I did DS back in the Stone Age, and so did my spouse. We both had a good experience with it, but I am a little ambivalent. It had a somewhat different design back then, and as a practical matter I couldn’t both do DS and take English 25. In retrospect, I may have preferred to take English 25.

11

The OP’s vocal accomplishments are pretty insane. Good luck at Yale, and enjoy the next few months - you’ve earned it!

12

Congrats!! I just saw this post. As a parent of a musician at Yale, I’d say you are heading to an amazing place where you can dive into your academic pursuits and have many, many musical opportunities as well.