Yale RD Chance Me Please

Colleges and Universities A-Z Yale University
1

Hi,

I am a high school senior at an NJ Magnet School thinking about applying to Yale RD. Could someone please tell me what my chances are?

Since my freshman year of high school, I have studied at my high school, a local community college, and my state school. My high school offers college courses through the local community college instead of APs. I have taken 22 undergraduate courses and 1 graduate course, in total. This is the most coursework that any student in my class has undertaken.

Personal Info:
Ethnicity: white
Not low income
Applying to be a psych or neuroscience major

Stats:
GPA: 3.96 (high school), 3.93 (community college), and 4.0 (state school - undergrad/grad GPA combined) note all GPAs are unweighted and out of a 4.0 scale
ACT: 33 (36 reading, 31 math, 30 science, 34 english, 7 writing)
SAT II: Bio M: 780

ECs:

  1. Class President at my high school (4 years)
  2. President of high school NHS chapter - created my school’s first peer mentorship program (highlighted a lot in my essays)
  3. Published staff writer at a teen health magazine with tens of thousands of readers.
  4. Summer scholar and visiting student for three years at state school. I completed a minor (5 classes) in psychology and took one graduate neuroendocrinology/behavioral neuroscience course.
  5. Teaching assistant at state school for two semesters
  6. Curriculum advisor at state school for the same class I TAed for. Helped replace outdated course materials and redesign the course. (both 5 and 6 are positions held normally by grad students)
  7. I completed a medical research internship at Stanford Medical School. Undertook a summer’s worth of research and I am still working with my lab remotely.
  8. Science Bowl Team member at my high school
  9. International Youth Neuroscience leadership
  10. MUN club founder and president at my high school
  11. Primary author on a research proposal for a graduate-level Behavioral Neuroscience research project.

Letters of Rec:

  1. Graduate neuroendocrinology professor - 10/10
  2. Research advisor at Stanford - 10/10
  3. Gen Bio II professor - 9/10

I would love to attend Yale, however, I am not sure if it is a realistic prospect. I welcome any thoughts on this matter.

Thanks in advance.

2

Your college coursework and your test scores tell two very different stories. On one hand, university level psych/neuro classes, Stanford medical internship, science bowl, “graduate level” neuro research, etc. On the other hand, 30 on ACT science and 780 on SAT bio this is a really good score, but I’d think most neuroendocrinology grad students could smoke an 800 out of this test.

That being said, chance-me’s for schools like Yale are useless. Your test scores and ECs basically average out to a decently solid candidate. You will probably be rejected, along with thousands of others perfectly capable students. This says nothing about your ability as a learner, just about how selective Yale is. Good luck.

3

Yea @ydd777 is right, it’s a crapshoot. Yale admissions at this point isn’t really determined by qualifications. Yes, everyone admitted is qualified, but so are most of the rejected applicants. Go for it if you want, but don’t expect much.