Yale Comp Sci applicant?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Yale University
1

I applied to Yale and indicated computer science as my intended major, and showed a strong interest and background in it. Could this give me an edge at all? The only reason I ask is because I recently ran across a video from one of those college application consulting companies, and they talked about “strategic positioning” and “matching your strengths with their weaknesses.” Like showing a strong interest in CS at a school which is specifically trying to expand and improve their STEM departments (ahem, Yale). The logic was that this makes you different and memorable, and not just another econ or poli sci student, whereas at a school like MIT for example, CS is nothing special, but econ or poli sci would be different and memorable.

And no, I did not apply to Yale just because I thought being CS major would help me. I genuinely think Yale is a great fit for me, and I actually decided not to apply to MIT after visiting, because it didn’t seem a good fit. lol

And yes I know that Yale doesn’t admit by major and doesn’t require major to be declared until end of 2nd yr, and actually prides itself on that, imo almost to the point of discouraging students declaring a major early on so that they have the freedom to explore academically.

And yes I understand that even if it were true that showing strong interest in CS did give me a bit of an edge, the chances are still low as it is for everyone…

So now that I’ve cleared that up, I’m just asking because I’m curious what people think of this “match your strengths with their weaknesses” strategy, if it works, if having an uncommon/unpopular academic interest for a certain school does make you more different and memorable, if that can help up your chances. Thanks!

2

How old was this video? This might have been accurate a decade ago, but these days the computer science department at Yale is bursting at its seams with computer science majors, and many of the classes are popular among non-majors too.

That said, being a computer science major won’t disadvantage you - Yale generally accepts that most prefrosh will graduate from different departments to what they had originally indicated. And if you go to Yale, you will be in good company - Yale places strongly into Google, Microsoft and Facebook, as well as many data science firms and quantitative finance roles.

Edit: To add to all of that, even roughly a decade ago when I was entering Yale, there were plenty of excellent computer science students enrolling. One of the very first people I met at Yale was a multiple IOI medallist.