<p>Im an international student and am interested in applying to Yale for engineering mainly because as it is not regarded as the best amongst top schools it will be slightly easier to get into it. So am i right or not?</p>
<p>My stats are here: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/808868-am-i-good-enough.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/808868-am-i-good-enough.html</a></p>
<p>You are excepted to the college as a whole not specifically to the engineering program. So I don’t believe that any perceived weakness in their engineering program would help you</p>
<p>Slightly easier than what. Yale’s admission rate for engineering is usually somewhat higher than its overall rate and likely you can say it is slightly easier than getting into MIT but it is still Yale and difficult to get admitted. In other words it will still be a lot harder to get into Yale than high ranked engineering programs like Michigan, GTech, or Illinois.</p>
<p>no</p>
<p>you apply for yale college
it’s not like columbia or cornell where you actually apply for SEAS and it’s a separate engineering dept</p>
<p>In between. Yes, you are applying to and accepted by Yale College, not the engineering school. Yes, Yale has spent ungodly amounts of money on refurbishing its engineering school and faculty in recent years, and it wants students to make use of that. No, it doesn’t get as many top-quality engineering applicants as some of its competitors, like Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, MIT. No, it won’t lower its standards to get more prospective engineers, and no, it doesn’t have a commitment from prospective engineers to actually study engineering. </p>
<p>But does it accept a somewhat higher percentage of engineering-oriented applicants that meet its standards, compared to other sorts of applicants? Probably.</p>
<p>But even with expansion, Yale’s engineering program is much smaller than most of its competitors, and much much smaller than some of them. It doesn’t need to accept as many prospective engineers as they do. It is probably NOT easier to get accepted at Yale as a prospective engineer compared to Columbia, Penn, or Cornell.</p>
<p>At a local info session our area’s admissions rep actually almost slipped up and used the word “struggle”, saying something like “In the past several years, Yale has invested a lot in its engineering programs. And we have strugg… made great efforts… to attract students who are interested in engineering”.</p>
<p>If you are genuinely interested in engineering and your application reflects this, and if you are already qualified, it will nudge you towards admission. That is to say, the “crapshoot” aspect of the admissions process is reduced slightly should you fit the aforementioned profile, not that Yale is relaxing standards to ensure engineering students are accepted.</p>
<p>Vicariousparent: I heard something similar at a local info session a few weeks ago. Though I do not recall the exact words, it was not put across as struggling or trying hard to fill the engineering school, but the sentiment expressed was along the same lines. Same adm officer perhaps?</p>
<p>Sounds like an arbitrage opportunity, no? Get accepted into engineering due to a lower threshold, and move on to your desired major of choice. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!</p>
<p>But it isn’t a lower threshold! The only way in which it is conceivably easier is that, in general, they wind up rejecting or waitlisting about 1/2 of the people who are fabulous candidates and basically indistinguishable from the ones they accept. If there’s someone whose application shows a strong inclination towards engineering, they probably don’t reject every other one after all the rational cuts have been made. (Especially because the yield on those people is going to be low – lots of them will wind up at MIT, Princeton, Stanford, etc.) But those people still have to make it into the group worth accepting, and the admissions staff is going to assume that they won’t necessarily stay focused on engineering.</p>
<p>JHS-</p>
<p>Would you say the same is true about people who are say biology majors?</p>