Yale Advice and Chances of Admission?

Colleges & Universities A-Z Yale University
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Hi! I am fairly new to the college confidential community, but I recently joined due to my anxiety over my upcoming applications to college. I am currently a high school junior. I will include my stats below and I was hoping to gain insight on what I can do to better my chances of getting into Yale (or abandon my efforts). It has been my dream school for years but I know that it is EXTREMELY competitive.

Grade: 11
Gender: Female
Race: White

Freshman year: all IBMYP classes and earned all A’s and was 10/997 students in my class. Extra curriculars included community service and theatre productions

Sophomore year: all IBMYP classes with an IB math SL class(I was a year ahead in math) with all A’s in these classes. I had the same ecs in addition to International Thespian Society, editor for my highs school newspaper, and Science National Honor Society.

Junior year (current): all IB/ AP classes: AP European History, TOK, Newspaper, IB SL II, HOTA HL I, Spanish SL I, English HL I, Physics HL I. I currently have all A’s in these classes except for Physics in which I have a B:( In addition, I was the lead in my school play and am in leadership of my school’s physics club. I am also heavily involved in my school’s nonprofit club that promotes women empowerment. I was recently selected to be a United States Senate Page for the spring semester so I will be moving to Washington DC to intern for the Senate for the spring semester. The program is extremely selective so I hope this will make me stand out among applicants. Unfortunately the classes that I will be taking there are only 4.0 classes so my class rank and gpa will go down severely; however, I am hopeful that the fact that I will be working directly for senators will outweigh this.

Scores: I took the SAT once with no preparation to see where I stood and I got a 1390. I am hoping to study and bring this score up to at least a 1500 and I think that if I put my mind to it, I will be able to accomplish this. I also plan on taking the AP Euro and AP Calculus exams this year.

Most notable EC
-Editor of award winning high school newspaper
-extremely active in theatre
-accepted into the Stanford High School Summer College (I did not end up going because it was too expensive)
-US Senate Page
-President of my high school physics club

Senior year: I hope to take as many AP classes as I can.

Is there any advice you can offer?
When is the best time to apply to Yale (EA, ED, Reg)?
What are my chances and is Yale a realistic goal for me?
What is the financial aid like? (middle class, both parents in home)?
Is there anywhere else I should consider applying to? I am definitely planning on applying to UNC and maybe a couple schools in California. I really want to live in the Northeast so I would ideally like to go to a university in the northeast.
Anything else I need to know in regards to Yale or the college application process as a whole?

Thanks so much!

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Bring up your SAT and you’re in the running, consider taking an ACT practice test to see if you get better scores on that. If you don’t take the ACT, take some SAT subject tests.

Yale financial aid is excellent, but you might get more merit aid from a school where you’re ahead of most of the student body. If you google ‘Yale NPC calculator’, you’ll find a website that your parents can plug in their financial information and find out a rough idea of what Yale expects them to pay for your education. All US colleges have this, so if there are other schools you’re interested in, you can find their net price calculators somewhere on their websites through google.

There are a number of other places that you should consider applying, but to help you decide we need some more information. Do you want city/suburb/country? Have you decided on a tentative major? Are you continuing theater and are you thinking about a BFA? Is a university of 10k something you want, or would you be happy with a smaller population? Are you open to women’s colleges?

Your ECs are kind of all over the place - theater, physics, politics. If you’re interested in majoring in one of those, check out the CC forums on that. For theater, the music theater forum is more active than the regular theater forum.

From your stats and your ECs you have a good shot, but Yale rejects people with perfect scores and GPA every year. So work on that list of backups, and good luck.

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Thanks so much! I am pretty certain that I want to live in or very close to a city. I also prefer medium sized schools. I am also planning on applying to Georgetown and other safety state schools. I am open to all women’s colleges but I don’t think they would be my first choice. I have no idea what I want to major in, I change my mind once a week. I go back and forth between something in business and medicine.