bro submit it asap! I also waited a long time to submit my css profile and I got some email a few weeks ago nagging me to submit. Don’t wait decisions are releasing in a few weeks try to get it done
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Are you assuming all legacies are admitted in the SCEA round? I have never seen an official breakdown. While there are a high percentage of legacy acceptances in the SCEA round, it is far from all.
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My two cents is “auto accept” is likely a vanishingly small category at Yale, and almost everyone admitted had to go through committee, or at least a pre-read, with some sort of meaningful discussion.
So I think the meaningful categories are likely something like:
- Did not pass initial screen/pre-read;
- Did pass initial screen/pre-read and an interview was deemed sufficiently potentially informative to the committee’s discussion such as to justify an interview invite;
- Did pass the initial screen/pre-read and an interview was deemed not necessary for the committee to have a well-informed discussion.
If this is right, admits in any round could come from a mix of (2) and (3).
And in RD, I would really have no guess as to whether (2) or (3) was a better starting point for your committee discussion. But of course if you get an interview invite, presumably you are not in (1). Whereas if you do not get an interview invite, you could be in (1) or (3). Although actually, if you have a realistic understanding of Yale’s admissions standards you can probably more or less know if you are in (1) or (3). So like the one actually piece of information I see in all this is if you were applying to Yale rather underqualified by their normal standards and hoping for a miracle, and you actually get an interview invite, that would seem like good news, although the odds could still be very low. And technically therefore it is bad news if you don’t get that invite, although it is just going from need a miracle to need a miracle-squared.
Where I think it gets even more complicated is SCEA, for the aforementioned reason I suspect recruited athletes and maybe some legacies and possibly also some other really well-advised people who are particularly good fits for Yale are going to end up in (3) due to the filtering effects of all that. So maybe in SCEA specifically, a disproportionate number of admits end up in (3) versus (2) due to this effect.
But again, you should know if you are a recruited athlete or well-qualified legacy. If you are not, then is it pretty much like RD? Possibly, but again I do wonder about the less formal ways people could end up being particularly good fits in SCEA anyway.
Like, consider the following scenario. An experienced counselor at a feederish HS has had good success with steering certain types of applicants one direction or another, based on their exact course mix and grades, test scores, activities focus, academic interests, teacher recommendations, maybe even essays (although I suspect that is usually a latter step), and so on. People are particularly likely to listen to this counselor when it comes to ED/REA/SCEA selection. This is almost like a type of pre-read, and interestingly I think colleges might well put some weight on such counselor assessments, including if they actually call up the counselor to discuss these applicants (which I understand still happens).
So, in a very concrete sense, isn’t it possible your counselor is basically filling roughly the same sort of role as a Yale interviewer? If so, maybe applicants like that are also more likely to be put into category (3).
Again, all this is increasingly speculative. I just think ED/REA/SCEA admissions can be influenced by these other factors, and they may intersect with Yale’s interview process in a way that means the same interview logic will not apply in both SCEA and RD.
Agree! I always see people lumping recruited athletes with legacies for the early pool. But I’ve seen, anecdotally, just as many legacies apply/admitted in RD. If not more.
Many many legacies have a different first choice school than their legacy school. Lots get rejected and apply to legacy school in RD.
The commonly asserted advice that legacy only “counts” in ED is not exactly true. I’ve seen legacies at all the Ivies get admitted RD.
Supposedly Yale has informed alums with kids applying to Yale this year of a few different things of relevance:
(1) Legacy status does still matter to Yale, and recently legacies have been admitted at a rate of 20% versus 5% general (note that 5% is now generous), but that is not controlling for qualifications;
(2) Yale applies the same standards in EA as RD and only admits people EA if they are confident they would also admit them RD;
(3) Interviews may provide admissions committees with impressions that consistent or inconsistent with the impressions they get from the rest of the application; and
(4) Interviewed candidates are not admitted at a higher-rate than non-interviewed candidates other things being equal.
As usual, that last proposition is not quite as informative as we would like given our lack of transparency into what would make other things equal, but it is basically supportive of what we were discussing above. In that sense it is actually a touch more informative than what they say generally about interviews, and I do wonder if that exact same proposition would apply outside the context of legacy applicants.
Anyway, presumably it is a good bet well-qualified, well-fitting legacies disproportionately apply SCEA, and that the legacy pool acceptance rate in SCEA is therefore higher than 20%–eventually. But how much higher it is in SCEA specifically is going to be very hard to determine, including because of the deferral option.
So . . . I am personally not at all sure how many legacies are respectively admitted SCEA, deferred SCEA then admitted RD, or both applied and admitted RD. I do suspect–with no confirmation–that legacy admits in SCEA may be disproportionately represented in the “other things being equal” (or indeed more than equal) non-interviewee admit pool. But exactly how much, who knows.
As I was just noting, Yale at least seems to be communicating to alum parents it doesn’t actually matter to them in which round legacies apply.
Yes, alums with kids applying get a letter from the AO. The main gist of the letter is how competitive the pool is, especially among legacy applicants, who generally have better stats than the general applicant pool. It’s more like a preparation for an eventual let down. Even at a 20% acceptance rate, it means 80% are rejected.
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I think this is pretty standard practice. I agree it’s a case of making everyone aware that no one gets in “just because” while showing appreciation for the parents ties and loyalty to the school.
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This is what I mean by “auto admit”, I misspoke and did not literally mean auto admit. You could also admit in Athletes and Development cases to the no interview group, but I suspect as you intimated this is a smallish population, as I suspect the apps in point 3 are.
Substantively I think the distinction is just because the committee thinks it can have a full discussion without an interview doesn’t mean we (or they) know how that discussion is likely to end.
Like, all they seem to be saying is in no interview cases, they already have confidence in the application-only personal/fit assessment, apparently because the application is creating a consistent picture already. But, is that confidence in a consistently good assessment? Consistently not-so-good assessment? And what about the other factors in admission?
The alum letter seems to be saying something like that if you control for other factors in admission, then the interviewed/not-interviewed pools have the same acceptance rates. So, that sounds like just a shorter and longer path to roughly the same place in the end.
But if that is all that it means, then an arbitrarily large number of admits could follow the shorter path. And we cannot assume it is proportionate to the number of people not interviewed, because of that other things being equal qualification.
This is pretty close to our situation. D24 has Yale as clear cut #1(she did not want to ED1 anywhere to improve her chances) and wanted to give her shot even though there really does not appear to be a big advantage to SCEA, she was supported by GC. I believe we had 3/4 get in last year and 2/3 attend out of a class of 90 and about 20 applications. GC and I agree that deferral is most likely outcome for my daughter even though deferral is used less and less now. If D24 gets deferred counselor will communicate with AO to determine if we need to change strategies. Girl from last year had nearly identical stats, similar interests and similar personalities and characteristics(think EPP major with activities and leadership that correspond).
That being said, I realize that I am engaging in a high level of tea leaves reading and not of it means squat to a tree.
Do you have any thoughts on the interviewing of legacy?
I would think not interviewing alumni children may be more of a headache than not doing so. I think alums would be upset if a rejection came and “they didn’t even bother to interview my child.”
Despite any official party lines, I get the impression schools prioritize alumni when allocating interviews.
Not sure how you can change strategies at this point as the application is already submitted. My daughter was deferred last year and all she did was to send in a letter of continued interest. Yale recommended or rather prefers that we don’t send in any additional documentation unless its something new and worthy
@Parent-in-Georgia What I meant by change strategies is to reevaluate top choices and decide if she should drop down a tier and apply ED2 more strategically to a school she has a better chance and gets the ED bump. The other option is to hold the line and trust the process. If I remember correctly from surveying other chats last year, you were in a similar situation and things went very well for your daughter?
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Yes, we were in exactly the same situation. Yale was clear cut #1 choice for my daughter. She got deferred to the RD round and then rejected eventually. But the RD round turned out to be better than we expected. She got into a few ivies (she committed to Princeton) and also Duke, UCB, UCLA etc… So, I would say not to focus on Yale SCEA too much as the chances aren’t better than the RD round, unless you’re a legacy or a recruited athlete. I wish her all the best and I hope that she gets into Yale in the SCEA round, but there are other great schools out there and I am sure she’ll end up at a school she loves.
Honestly, out of the HPYSM, Yale is the only one giving out too many clues(?) and confusing the applicants. As you can see, Yale thread is the only one out of those 5 with portal astrology discussions. And this happens every year.
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@Parent-in-Georgia That is what I thought and a great outcome. Focusing on the SCEA is more of a function of wanting to have answers and end all of the speculation, second guessing. We have all heard/read the horror stories of kids get rejected from their top choice schools and end up at “safeties”. I know most kids land where they belong and are happy where they land but it is hard to stay completely logical about your kid’s future and not let emotions get the best of you. You are an example of how the system can work well even if one’s first choice is not obtained(no one can argue with your 2-5 choices as well). Fingers crossed they D24 and others here are that fortunate.
Yes, she’s very happy at Princeton. But I did the exact same thing last year. I was on this thread every day and trying to find clues. Now looking back, it was a waste of time… but like you said, when it’s about our kids future, it’s hard to stay logical. Every kid will find their school and will love it. No doubt about that. All the very best! Hope it turns out the way you want.
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Ha Ha, parenting 101. Do as I say, not as I do. The only regrettable part is that these next two weeks will be very long but the following 6-9 months will go by in a flash. D24 is only child. As the great American philosopher Mike Tyson says “everyone’s got a game plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
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Congrats!
Everyone here can only see the sky from the bottom of a well. Who can piece together a big picture about top 10 or top 20 colleges as a whole?
First, there’re 27,000+ high schools in the United States. If Yale’s 97% came from top 10%, the sample would be more than 400,000 in total.
On average each school has 2 applicants for Yale, leading to a total of more than 55,000.
Top 5 colleges admit less than 9,000. Top 10 recruit 19,000. Top 20 accept ~60,000 in total.
Who can do a modeling using eagle’s eye from the macro-perspective to describe top 3 students in any U.S. high school can have a what probability of landing in a top 5, top 10, or top 20?
Some 20% come from families of the first generation of college student.
Stats: 1/6 applicants have an interview. 1/6 interviewees will be admitted. Colleges also use interviews to convince students to come to their own school, based on dynamics of competition between any 2 schools. And most importantly, interviewer’s comment only represents 1 aspect/factor on a 1-to-7 scale at Yale. The only difference might be extremely negligible since so many factors such as teacher 1’s letter of recommendation, …unless interviewer found the vey applicant is a liar.
Say, if a student got a perfect 7 for the interview but another only 5, this difference can’t even sway the committee’s decision. So, don’t worry about too much on interview invite.