<p>I'm most likely going to apply to Yale SCEA. Anyone out there hoping to do the same?</p>
<p>I’m strongly considering it, not close to 100% sure though.</p>
<p>Where else are you considering?</p>
<p>Yale SCEA as of now is my favorite/most likely option, but I may go EA to Georgetown and some other schools so I can get as many acceptance letters as possible in December. I would consider applying early to Brown or Northwestern (two more of my top choices), but those are ED, and I do not want to commit to a school so soon.</p>
<p>Have you started your applications yet? (Just wondering, I certainly haven’t…) Good luck!</p>
<p>Nope. I should start writing essays this summer, but I’m waiting for the right inspiration. Hoping I get in (like everybody else)! I know the chances are slim, but it would put a lot less pressure on me in RD round.</p>
<p>Is Yale your top choice?</p>
<p>I am! What do you think your essay will be about?</p>
<p>I don’t know. I feel like I don’t have the most interesting life, and talking about any problems I’ve had will only make me sound whiny. Hopefully, the inspiration will come to me because Yale is my dream!</p>
<p>I’m doing SCEA =D go Yale! my dream!</p>
<p>“I feel like I don’t have the most interesting life”</p>
<p>my88keys, don’t worry! This is a worry I think a lot of high school seniors face, that the story that they have to tell isn’t as good or intriguing as the next teenager applying to the same school. Chances are, you actually do have some very personal, interesting things to say. It just may be hard for you to think of them that way because, to you, they’re so familiar!</p>
<p>I think that, deep down, most people know what is important to them. What is something you love? What is something you think about a lot? If anything comes to mind, try finding a way to write about that! </p>
<p>My personal statements were about pretty ordinary things (one essay was about a piece of furniture in my house, the other was about a lesson I learned from a botched musical performance). You definitely do not need to talk about some fantastic thing that you did or the way you changed the world. Instead, think about how the world changed you, even in seemingly mundane ways. If you can use ordinary experiences as a springboard for deeper reflection, I think you’ll be golden!</p>
<p>sorry for the essay, haha, and this is also a little bit out of place, because I’m NOT applying SCEA for the class of 2018, but it was a piece of advice I received before I started my applications that proved to be very valuable, and I hope it will make you successful as well!</p>
<p>I’m probably going to apply for SCEA to Yale. Its seems like fun :)</p>
<p>I’m stuck between this and Stanford 
At first I was dead-sure about doing Stanford SCEA, because I’d most likely get closure (Stanford defers very few of its early applicants, while Yale routinely defers over 40% of them) and a deferral would seem to be a waste of an early application.</p>
<p>^^ Believe it or not, a deferral does NOT equal a rejection. I got deferred SCEA and ended up being accepted to Yale RD.</p>
<p>Besides, what difference would it make whether you had closure (rejection) or not (deferral), besides maybe to an anxious mind? Chances are you’ll be so eagerly awaiting the finality of the RD decisions that it won’t really matter to you whether you got a deferral vs. a rejection. </p>
<p>Honestly, don’t over-analyze little details like this one. Go with your gut.</p>
<p>Do you think this year will be more or less competitive than last year?</p>
<p>Interesting question. Even though the high school-age population has been decreasing for several years, application numbers have gone up every year at the elite schools. There are three possible explanations for this: first, that kids are applying to more schools every year; second, that recruitment efforts are getting kids from new areas to apply; and third, that a growing number of international students are applying. (Number of international vs US students applying is not part of the common data set). At the highest level schools, yield seems to be increasing as well, making it unlikely that the main cause for increased application numbers is a decreasing pool of students who are applying to ever-larger numbers of schools. I suspect that the international pool has grown faster than the domestic one. If that’s the case, then the ever-worsening application statistics may be at least somewhat misleading, since international students are in a separate applicant pool competing for a relatively fixed percentage of the spots. But… who knows.</p>
<p>^^^
But then why does it really matter? I oftentimes discover that when I worry about competition and over-analyze statistics, whether that be sports or academia, I often underperform and don’t achieve my desired result. Instead of spending time worrying about acceptance rates, you’d probably be better served working on essays, extracurriculars, and school. People, myself included, often waste so much time on CC posting things like these. Work your tail off this semester, apply AND THEN maybe worry about others. Time is precious.</p>
<p>Don’t worry. I wasn’t going to try and use this info to mold my application. I was just curious.</p>
<p>I want to apply SCEA, but looking at previous result threads, a majority of the posters were deferred, and many of the ones who were accepted had ECs including sports or national awards (none of which I have at this moment).</p>
<p>Hey. I actually started this thread, but now that this thread (<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/1536587-yale-class-2018-scea-discussion-thread.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/1536587-yale-class-2018-scea-discussion-thread.html</a>) is around, we usually talk about Yale SCEA on there. Just easier to keep all conversation on one thread.</p>