I’m an international student from a country that (as my counsellor told me the other day) hasn’t been represented at Yale in the last 25 years. I’m not sure if I should apply SCEA or RD next year - my grades, extracurriculars, volunteer work, internships, etc. are all definitely Yale material, but I’m not extremely unique in any way.
On one hand, SCEA would be good, because Yale is my dream university and it would mean less stress if I did get in, but I’m just scared that I won’t stand out enough. With RD, the applicant pool might be slightly less qualified (and also less legacy kids), but the problem is that the other Ivy League applicants who applied early to UPENN or Columbia will apply to Yale RD so I’ll have to compete against them! Another factor is that Yale makes around 1/3 of its acceptances in the SCEA around only around 1,400 offers are then made for the approx. 20,000 people applying RD.
First off, you need to understand that international applicants do NOT have the same odds as US applicants.
Yale, and their peers (the rest of the ivies, Amherst, Stanford, MIT et al) restrict international students to about 11% of their incoming class. So at Yale, with a freshman class of about 1300 students, that means there will only be about 143 matriculating international students per year – and most of those applicants will be from 6 countries (Canada, Great Britain, Australia, China, Korea and Japan). So, your odds of being accepted as an international student applying from a country not represented at Yale in the past 25 years are next to zero. That’s true for you and your classmates, no matter what stats you or they may have.
You should speak to your guidance counselor and find a college that HAS accepted students from your country more recently and apply to that college EA or SCEA and then apply to Yale RD.
Thank you for your help @gibby and yes, I do understand that international students don’t have the same chances as US students.
I come from one of the smallest, richest countries in the world (35,000 residents), that’s why every year we only have maximum 4 or 5 Ivy League applicants. I don’t even think that in the past 10 years someone has even applied to, for example, Yale or Princeton - everyone’s choices have always been Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, UPENN and Brown (and we’ve had a few acceptances in the past years).
Overall, are you saying that coming from such a small country will harm me in SCEA and will perhaps be more interesting (or even more of a hook) in RD?
Is it true that no student from our country has applied to Yale or Princeton in the last 10 years?
If #1 is false, how many students from our country have applied to YP and have been admitted?
Does my high school have a relationship based upon prior acceptances with HYP or Stanford?
Based on what you know about my transcript, GPA and test scores, where do you think I have the best chance of being admitted SCEA?
Your GC is the expert on college acceptances from your high school and your country. They are better at providing you with sound advice rather than an internet stranger who does not know you, your country, the students at your school or the other students from your country who might also be applying to HYPS. Trust your GC’s advice, as they have to write you a recommendation and rate the rigor of your course load in the Secondary School Report (SSR). See page 2 of SSR, especially the top portion of page 2: http://www.du.edu/apply/media/documents/2012CASSR.pdf