Hello,
I am a freshman in high school and it is my dream to go to Yale. However, at the start of freshman year my grades were mediocre and now I am going to have a low GPA for Yale. It is recoverable, however it will be almost impossible for me to get valedictorian/salutatorian. If my GPA is higher sophomore and junior year will it be understood that I had a slow start? Should I be worried that a low freshman GPA will decrease my chances of acceptance?
Thanks for all of your replies.
What is your overall GPA now? If it is not in the range or close to the range of accepted students at Yale, then yes, it will be difficult to get in even with an upward trend. However, the GPA is only one aspect of an application. How are your extracurricular activities and standardized testing score?
Yale and all highly selective colleges do take into consideration trends in academic performance, but absolute GPA/class ranking and rigor of courses will probably matter more absent some highly unusual circumstances that can be substantiated through third party sources (e.g. counselor or teacher recommendations). I and many other posters on this site believe, unless there is a major hook like being a recruited athlete, famous person or child of famous person (but even then there are still fairly high minimum standards), there are minimum objective cut-offs in GPA/class rank and test scores that put you in the pile that merits serious consideration where they will take the time to do the full holistic evaluation. The schools publish those statistics on their admissions page for a reason. Here is the 2020 freshmen profile page from the Yale Admissions website https://admissions.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/class_profile_2020_8-29.pdf.
While the profile page uses the top 10% of the high school class as a cutoff, I would guess a much greater part of the 95% are in the top 5%. You do not mention how badly you did freshmen year, but can you realistically climb up to the top 5%, at the very least top 10%? Further, as you scan the results pages here for all the highly selective schools, you will see candidates with perfect or near perfect GPA’s and test scores who have been rejected. With that, Yale is a great school to aspire to gain admissions, but the odds for even the top students to get in are low. Every student needs to set up a strategy of applying to reach, target and safety schools, and keep in mind that your success in college is much more dependent on your efforts there, not which college you attend. Good luck.
I am definitely in the top 10% right now, maybe even in the top 5. My Weighted GPA right now is a 4.7 which is about .15 below the point where applicants from Yale are accepted. I am able to reach the average GPA of Yale students, but I would like to be above the average. I will have a very strong performance the next two years, but I would like to know if they will go look at the individual classes and the grades that I have achieved. What I mean by this is: Will they look individually into freshman, sophomore, and junior year?
Also, I am working at building up my ECs, I think they are average for freshman year, but I plan to greatly improve them over the summer.
Respect and sympathy, but 100% wrong.
Not about Yale, and not specifically about ECs, but read http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/applying_sideways
“but I would like to know if they will go look at the individual classes and the grades that I have achieved. What I mean by this is: Will they look individually into freshman, sophomore, and junior year”
@IxnayBob, you will have to tell me how to do the fancy box shading.
Admissions at all the highly selective schools specifically cite class rigor as an important factor. That can only mean they look at the individual classes you take (and what is available at your school – have you taken the most challenging set of courses offered at your school). This also includes the classes you take senior year. A mid year report from your school is required (if you are on the semester system, a report won’t be available for EA or ED applicants prior to decision dates in December, but if you are deferred or are applying RD, it will definitely factor in, or if you totally blow it, the school may even rescind your EA/ED offer). Your application will also include a list of courses for the entire year. Your final admittance is conditioned on receipt of your final school report and the schools reserve the right to rescind your offer of admissions. Rescission is rare, but it can happen.
Substituting [ for ( and ] for ) (i.e., square corners rather than rounded), you copy the text that you want to highlight, and
(quote)text(/quote) or, optionally,
(quote=“whomeveryou’requoting”)text(/quote)
There are many other nice HTML tricks, such as (spoiler) for text that is to be hidden unless the reader clicks on it, (b) for bold, (u) for underline, (i) for italic, etc.
Thanks for the article! I have read it and I have heard many similar things. By strengthening my ECs I mean getting generally more involved with my passions. I am trying to start a competitive HS Overwatch (A video game) Team, for example. By strengthening my ECs I didn’t mean that I would pursue random things that I wasn’t interested in. Also, BKSquared, all of my classes except one are at the most difficult level this year, and sophomore year I will be moving up in that class so my schedule will be the most difficult my school has to offer. With that said, if I am able to excel in sophomore and junior year and my GPA is raised, do you think I will be able to get accepted to Yale (assuming I meet all other qualifications)?
The most anyone can say is if you are in the range (better to be at the high end) for GPA and test scores of admitted freshmen, your application will be seriously considered. Then it will become much more of a qualitative assessment of your essays, EC’s, awards and recommendations, and other factors that become part of a holistic process. There is no magic formula or set path that guarantees admissions in the highly selective colleges. As I mentioned above, there are plenty of cases of kids with perfect or near perfect academic records and test scores and a seemingly impressive set of awards and EC’s who do not gain admissions. There are plenty of kids who get into Y but not H (or any other selective school and vice versa). Like I said above, every college applicant needs to have a realistic set of reach, target and safety schools. HYSPM and others are a reach for even the tippy topmost students.
Thanks a lot for your advice!
Several years ago I posted my daughter’s stats. I think you should take a look, as she’s a Yale reject: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/1619966-ivy-standards-for-rigor-of-highschool-curriculum-p1.html.
FWIW: Give it your best shot going into sophomore year, but as the competition is so fierce for a spot at Yale, you may have to adjust your sights when it comes time to applying to college.
When an Admissions Officer looks at an applicant’s EC list they are looking for engagement, meaning have you devoted a significant amount of time (measured in years) to something outside of academics. The idea is that your drive, commitment and energy is a “transferrable skill” that could be re-purposed to another activity in college or later in life.
If you have shown a long term devotion to something beyond academics, you’ve made the first cut (EC wise). However, then things get a bit random and totally out of an applicant’s control. For example, let’s say one of your EC’s is playing an instrument – violin, piano, tuba (it doesn’t matter). And last year, the Admissions Committee accepted 12 students who play your instrument, well that doesn’t bode well for your chances this year. Ditto, with any other EC you can imagine. So, sometimes a student will be accepted on the first-cut, only to be rejected for a random reason such an oversubscribed EC from a previous year or this year.
Bottom line: Forget about the word “passion” and just do what you love to do. If you end up being accepted you will have done it because the things you are doing are close to your heart. If you are rejected, you still will have done the things you’ve loved, which will make for a much better, more satisfying high school experience.
Best of luck to you!
I looked at your daughters grades and am very curious what the rest of her app looked like. I did notice there weren’t an abundance of APs or anything like that. Are you sure there isn’t something you were missing? Also, are you saying that I don’t have much of a chance?
Nobody has much of a chance with a 94% rejection rate.
@StudyFoxx, that’s Stuyvesant HS. Different scale from most HS.
^^ DING, DING, DING – thank you @bodangles! @Studyfoxx: Even if you graduate with a 4.0 unweighted GPA with perfect test scores, you do not have much of a chance.
FWIW: My daughter attended a high school where the top 10% of the class takes 10 or more AP classes, but ultimately the decision came down to this: Yale did not want her. Princeton felt so-so and waitlisted her. Harvard loved her and admitted her. Now, why does a student with top grades get treated differently by every university? Because they each look for different qualities in an applicant.
So the challenge basically is finding which school wants me the most. Are you saying that if I am not what Yale is looking for, I’ll fit the criteria for another school, maybe even a school just as good?
^^ Unfortunately, applicants don’t know what colleges are looking for, as institutional needs change from year to year, and Admissions Offices everywhere are far from transparent. So, applicants have to throw a wide net in hopes that they’ll fit the criteria one college is looking for in the year they apply. That means students should apply to a wide range of colleges – safety, target and reaches. HYPSM are considered reaches for all students, even those with perfect GPA’s and test scores. So, you should not focus on one particular college. Instead, you should apply sideways to a number of good colleges: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/applying_sideways
Ok thanks for your advice. I do plan to apply to a wide range of colleges but will my lower grades freshman year affect my chances of getting into schools on the same caliber of academics as Yale even if I improve them throughout the next 2 years?
^^ Please define low. What was your unweighted GPA freshman year? And what is your approximate ranking (Yale considers a student’s ranking when reviewing an applicant’s file)?