<p>cutiedida: And what sport is that?</p>
<p>What I have been most surprised by is Yale’s yield rate. It was 68% last year. Harvard had a record-breaking yield rate of 82 percent, and Stanford saw a record-high of 76.7 percent. Dartmouth, the Ivy League school with the lowest yield, posted a 48.5 percent rate. Ironically, all these SCEA Yale applicants are striving to gain admission and 32% of those admitted last year matriculated somewhere else…</p>
<p>The admission process for recruited athletes is separate and different than for non-athletes but I think that at Yale, most enter with the SCEA pool. </p>
<p>My kids’ high school sends about 2 to 6 kids out of 250 or so every year to Yale but has never sent a recruited athlete. Very few of the kids who go are our high school’s multi-sport varsity athletes. In fact our high school’s guidance counselors recommend that kids who are serious about upper echelon schools cut back on sports stuff by Junior year so they can spend more time on academic or service oriented extracurriculars.</p>
<p>I should also mention that other than for sports I have never heard of any other category of Yale recruiting - not for music, art, dance, etc. Some suspect that the “likely letters” are targeted at STEM majors but I know of several examples where that wasn’t the case.</p>
<p>The yield rate was for all admits, not only for SCEA admits.</p>
<p>eeship: Of course. My point was that if you scan this thread, you can easily see the enthusiasm that scores of SCEA applicants have toward Yale. I suspect that well over 90% of them may ultimately commit to Yale if admitted. Meanwhile over 30% of all admitted applicants to Yale last year chose to go somewhere else in the end.</p>
<p>It would be interesting though to see how SCEA admits compare to RD admits in terms of yield.</p>
<p>My D would be happy to increase Yale’s yield rate :)</p>
<p>keesh17: Maybe what you say is technically accurate, but whether it can be called “recruiting” per se or not, our local Yale admissions rep did emphasize that they in admissions do hear from various departments within Yale They may hear things like, “We really need a quality concert pianist this year… we’ve heard that ____ applied, how does she look on paper?” She claims that they hear from those in need of musicians, dancers, actors, artists, etc. and that they hear from departments that are already aware of stand-outs in their areas. </p>
<p>The Brown admissions rep said the same thing.</p>
<p>Who knows what weight this interest or enthusiasm carries, but Admissions is in contact with various Yale departments. They are actively trying to balance out needs and fulfill that goal of molding a well-rounded freshman class.</p>
<p>And even if Emma Watson’s stats had been less than stellar academically, I have to suspect that applicants who are also celebrities of significant enough status (actors, singers, etc.) do warrant special attention and are sought out, sought after and finally admitted.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>How does that department hear a specific applicant applied?</p>
<p>EricMetubiev2: Good question. I don’t know. Maybe the applicant is a known commodity and toured the school and the department specifically, or auditioned in person or just told the department head that they are interested in going there. In today’s world, a true celebrity can just tweet about their interest in a specific school.</p>
<p>But this is the example the Yale’s admissions rep gave… and it was similar to the example offered by the Brown’s rep… she talked about a sought after Cellist. In both cases, they used musicians as an example, but they implied that many departments show interest in specific applicants or just in the idea of an applicant excelling at something they need or want.</p>
<p>If you won a Grammy last year, and you also really want to go to Yale… maybe you might want to tell the Music Department that you are applying. But you also probably would not need to do so. Winning an Emmy, Oscar, Grammy, etc. would likely be status enough.</p>
<p>In Emma Watson’s case, she likely did not tell anyone, but it certainly spread like wildfire that she had applied to Yale, Brown and Harvard. The higher your celebrity status, the less you would likely need to try and persuade people to influence admissions.</p>
<p>Kind of related but not really-</p>
<p>Onto other “hooks”. What hooks are better than others? </p>
<p>Is being a URM significant? </p>
<p>/anxiety</p>
<p>It is to an extent. You will still need to display the scores, grades, passion, etc, but you are competing with a smaller pool of applicants. Don’t bank on it, though. URMs at schools like Andover, Exeter, and St. Paul’s seemingly always get in (feeder schools), but I’m not sure about non feeder schools.</p>
<p>I wonder if applying to MIT as an English major is a hook or anti-hook.</p>
<p>EricMetubiev2: It would likely aid your candidacy slightly.</p>
<p>The Brown Admissions Rep, who was very wiling to stay behind and answer an unlimited # of questions (more so than any other college info session we have attended), did explain that applying with the intent to major in one of the least popular majors could help a borderline candidate to gain admission. </p>
<p>She also found it interesting or even amusing that applicants and their families seem to think that the admissions office operates in a vacuum. She says that this is not the case at all and that various school departments do urge the admission of candidates possessing certain qualities or candidates seeking to study certain things or sometimes just certain candidates in particular. She joked that she often wishes that admissions could operate in more of a vacuum.</p>
<p>viv158308: The simple answer seems to be whatever an individual schools perceives as its greatest need or want. They are trying to balance out things and mold a well-rounded freshman class in all areas… so if your candidacy helps to fill a need or meet a priority, then your “hook” can assist you in getting in…</p>
<p>WWWard: Enough with the “…” already! We have enough suspense in our lives at the moment! </p>
<p>Kidding :p</p>
<p>Honestly that’s a fun question though. I don’t have any hooks at all so it never really occurred to me that some might be more hooky than others. Wonder if legacy or URM is better…</p>
<p>See? Now you got me to start doing it too!</p>
<p>@viv158308 Being an URM will mean you might have a higher chance than someone who does not simply because there are not that many URMs. However, you still need to be just as competitive as other applicants.</p>
<p>It is unfortunately even more complicated for some. Asian or predominantly Asian applicants actually face an anti-hook backlash. They are probably the only group that is statistically worse off than the over-achieving, un-hooked white female applicants. Admissions officers at most elite colleges strive to create student bodies that roughly mirror the population as a whole. But the large number of academically qualified Asian or Asian-American applicants genuinely threaten to overwhelm their schools student demographics. They thus have no other recourse but to raise the bar for such applicants & cap the # they can accept. Fair or not… it means that such applications will be subjected to a higher standard of admission. Years ago… this was the case with over-achieving white male applicants. There were just too many such applicants back then. Now there are too many well-qualified Asian applicants. The cruel reality is that quota’s exist… and some groups then have to suffer unfairly. </p>
<p>URMs must be qualified for admission, but they do gain a slight advantage in the eyes of most admissions offices… to a point - until they locate or accept a sufficient # of them. Qualified white males seem to be relatively neutral in the process these days, neither suffering unfairly or being advantaged. Qualified white females suffer because there are way more than they can accept… so you better have an extra component to your application file. Most such applicants are unhooked, so way too many are turned away. And the qualified Asian applicant seems to suffer the greatest apparent disadvantage. These are the realities… whether any of us like them or not.</p>
<p>The good news… we are nearly down to the final 8 days.</p>
<p>Does it help to be of a certain ethnicity that is never or rarely seen on campus (e.g. armenian, kurdish, mongolian, estonian etc)? I’m not talking about internationals, but u.s. citizens or permanent residents of backgrounds such as these.</p>
<p>What are you meaning by “URM”, I have not heard that acronym before. Please clarify, thanks.</p>
<p>underrepresented minority</p>
<p>@Rkahn1: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/52585-abbreviation-thread.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/52585-abbreviation-thread.html</a></p>
<p>Examples would be?</p>