Hi all,
I’m a current junior looking at colleges, and Yale is one of my top choices right now. I’m a prospective math-physics major and just had a quick question for all of you as I’m trying to decide whether to apply early next year. I know for some RD applicants, they get sent up to Yale for a YES-W science weekend. I think that this weekend would give me really great insight into Yale and if admitted would really help me with making a decision. Therefore, I was hoping for opinions from those who attended the weekend about whether it’s worth not applying early for a chance at the weekend.
I was also hoping for more insight into the weekend itself in deciding whether or not to apply early. Did you feel like you gained major insight into Yale via the weekend which helped in deciding whether or not to attend? What kinds of activities did you do? Did it help you meet other like-minded people who might be attending Yale, make connections with professors, etc.?
Thanks so much!
Does anyone have any opinions based upon having been to the YES W weekend either this year or a previous one? Any advice would be much appreciated!
My student was accepted early and thus was not invited to the weekend. He is a STEM major and did not feel disadvantaged by not attending.
That said: In my opinion, there are more important factors than the science weekend that should go into your decision about applying early. As you already know if you have read the admissions website, “if you apply for Single-Choice Early Action at Yale, you may not simultaneously apply for Early Action or Early Decision to any other school with a few exceptions.” The question you should ask yourself first is: Am I willing to sacrifice applying early elsewhere in order to apply early to Yale?
It has been well documented that applying SCEA to Yale, which is non-binding, does not improve your chances of admission; rather, that Admissions accepts only the early candidates that they absolutely know that they want even had they applied RD. Again to quote the website: “Applying Single-Choice Early Action does not increase the likelihood of being admitted to Yale. Historically, the rate of admission among early applicants has been higher than the overall admission rate because many of our strongest candidates, from a wide range of backgrounds and interests, apply early.”
If you know all this, your question implies that you feel you are a phenomenally well-qualified candidate who is likely to be offered admission in the early round. If that’s the case, congrats on your accomplishments, but I would caution you that anything can happen. I personally would not recommend making a decision about where to apply early based on the concern that you might be accepted early and miss out on an admissions event, informative as it may be. A better reason to apply RD would be to leave your options open to apply early elsewhere, if Yale is not your clear first choice. If that sounds like you, go ahead and apply RD and then if accepted you may get a YES invite. I assume you know the admissions statistics on all these schools, though. As a parent who has been through the admissions cycle with two children now, I encourage you (and all college applicants) to cast a wide net. There are many wonderful schools beyond Yale and the other Ivies! Good luck to you.
@Mathinduction My son got in SCEA this year and so wasn’t invited to YES-W, which he would have liked to attend. I think not being able to go may have affected his college decision, and I wish SCEA applicants had been invited too. Find out as much as you can before making the decision about which school to apply to early—we knew a lot, but not as much as we thought we knew. And this year was a particularly problematic one for Yale’s computer science department; if my son were making the decision about which school to apply to early now, based on what he knows today and on all the difficulties CS students seem to have at Yale, he would have applied RD to Yale instead—and perhaps been invited to YES-W, which might have convinced him. As it was, though, Yale and his second-choice school (which had actually been his first choice for a couple of years, until he visited Yale) were always very close in his rankings; the other school has a top-ranked CS department in an ideal location, so it ultimately returned to being his first choice. I strongly feel that Yale should invite SCEA admits to YES-W too—just because a school is a student’s first choice in September does not mean it will be in April, and Yale should do whatever it can to convince all accepted STEM students to attend.
@bookmobile and @Planner , thank you both so much for taking the time to write those responses; I really appreciate them, and it gives me much more insight. @Planner , I’m finding the exact same thing as your son with the difficulty in whether to apply early and do agree that they really ought to let EA STEM oriented students attend YES-W as I feel like it would give them a huge amount of insight. Based upon this, I’m probably leaning towards applying to Yale early and then if I do get admitted going to Bull Dog Days instead. Thank you both once again for such great insight!
@Mathinduction Glad it helped! The only problem is that by the time Bulldog Days happens, you may already have made up your mind…