Chance Me - SCEA Yale or ED Dartmouth - Social Sciences and Humanities, 3.7 GPA, 1570 SAT

Chance Me / Match Me
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As a general aspect to consider, although your topic title mentions humanities, some of your specifically expressed interests, particularly those in political science and economics, are in social sciences.

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So
if you apply SCEA to Yale (which seems to be your top choice
is that right)
you can the still apply to places like Dartmouth and Georgetown in the RD round. Right?

If you apply to Dartmouth ED and get accepted, you are done and will be going to Dartmouth.

So
some of this might come down to whether you want some choices come May 1
.

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Thanks so much for your advice!! And yes, I have a lot of safeties/targets for the rest of my list. I was just wondering about whether it would be wiser to apply to Yale or Dartmouth for the early round (along with several state schools).

As for my SAT score, I actually got 790 for math (780 for reading). So maybe that will help the math side of my application?

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Don’t ‘strain’ your family to the point it impacts their future please. There’s a lot of merit out there at great schools - and you can do many great things from great schools. And if you’re planning further schooling, that’s more money. You are talking about $400k.

I also think you need to focus on safeties. I gave some - Pitt, Charleston (apply for Charleston Fellows, they have the incredible Mroz Institute, and you asked for LACs. Look at Rhodes (safety) and Denison (match) and not an LAC but small - Elon as another PPE safety. For large, in addition to Pitt above, check out Binghamton for PPE - many say it beats Rutgers in state pricing - and it’s smaller.

If DC is an interest, many colleges have a DC semester. For example, mine attended Charleston’s through the Honors College and interned at a prominent think tank. Had 7 DC area offers, 5 paid so not sure you have to strain your family that much financially to get great opportunities.

How a family spends, of course, is personal, but with your stats, there are schools as low as $20k and upwards of $100k per year with tons in between - and all produce great grads and mall produce grads who struggle. There are no guarantees.

What is your post grad goal? If it’s more school, you have to factor that in too from a cost POV.

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Thank you! I totally get the tiredness - I just couldn’t come up with a way to throw my question out here that didn’t feel like a whole lot of info coming at once. Sorry for that! I am applying to a lot of other schools (like Georgetown, Columbia, Barnard, Wellesley, etc.) + safeties/state universities EA of course. I was just wondering whether it would be wiser to apply for Yale SCEA or Dartmouth ED in the early round. Thanks so much!

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There’s nothing to ‘game’ here. Choose the school you like best and apply there. As others have said, if you want to be sure to have choices, don’t ED.

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Yes, for now I have these as safeties - Rutgers New Brunswick, Widener, Charleston, etc. Of course, my family and I are still figuring out the financial side of things. However, my parents have told me very adamantly that if I did get accepted into a school like Yale/Dartmouth they would want to pay for it. As for my post-grad plans, I want to attend law school, so that is another huge consideration. But again, my parents themselves are very insistent on doing whatever we can if I get accepted into a top school. Thank you for your advice!!

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Yale because it appears that is your preferred. I always say only your #1 school should be your Early School.

But Dartmouth likely gives you better odds with a more 20% ED acceptance last year although you don’t know how many were hooked - athletes, etc. 625/3009.

But you say this and while you didn’t ask about finances - it matters more than any other consideration - “so I’m not completely sure but I know if I did get in we would put together whatever we could.”

In this case, without a definite upfront plan, the answer is Yale because you are not bound whereas Dartmouth you would be.

Good luck.

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Look at Harvard, Yale, UVA - top law schools. Kids from hundreds of colleges are there - from U of Alabama to Youngstown State abd every school you can imagine in between including schools like Fairleigh Dickinson, Georgia State, Samford, etc.

Your GPA and LSAT (which you’ll do great) will be the biggest impacts here. Top schools will be over represented because they had top kids to begin with but you’ll have every chance at a top law school if you deliver undergrad.

That’s another $300k.

Harvard has 147 colleges represented in this years class. UVA 144. UPenn 122 (239 in the overall JD program-not just first year).

These aren’t large programs either. Penn, as an example enrolled 248 first year for those 122 schools.

So Arkansas (5 at UVA this year) or Amherst don’t necessarily give you an advantage. Your LSAT and ethnicity - absolutely do.

So plan for 7, not four years financially!!!

Good luck.

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Yes, that’s exactly what highly selective colleges mean by “context” - it gives them an idea of the school’s rigor and thus relative value of an A, a B
 It’s also possible your school is a “known quantity” so that your regional rep would immediately know what your transcript “means”.

Since Yale is a great fit thus your top choice and is SCEA it seems like the easy answer to your question wrt Yale v Dartmouth.

I don’t think Widener is a good safety for your interests.
You might want to look into Drew and Goucher, perhaps Seton Hall (??), but they’d be super safeties.
Run the NPC on Macalester, Grinnell, Denison, and Kenyon to see if they’d be more manageable financially.
Absolutely run the NPC on each college since they all calculate differently.

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@bloobery88 I was just joking :slight_smile: I was not tired, only imaging being you!

Sounds like you have a lot of good “fit” schools if Yale doesn’t work out. Good luck!

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There are so many strong candidates, most applicants
so really- your chances are the acceptance rate as an unhooked applicant. Maybe give or take a percent or two. It’s a crapshoot, and at that point 3% vs. 5%, it’s all the same anyway.

ED rates, especially at Dartmouth, are heavily inflated due to athletic recruits. Dartmouth being smaller, but still competes in D1, has a lot of hooked applicants in the ED round.

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Here is the quandary. First, be honest with yourself and decide if it is an ivy you are after or a specific school. There is nothing wrong with wanting just an ivy in my opinion but knowing this helps build a plan. If it is just an Ivy than ED Dartmouth. If it is Yale than I would SCEA Yale. But unfortunately your scores make you a bit of an outlier for admission. The strength in your application is your narrative of service and EC’S outside of school. Spend your time crafting the perfect essays. Why Yale, think outside of the box on the who your would bring to dinner one and make them see you as a Yale student. I am a mom of Yalies.

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OP- in your other (now closed) thread you asked if it’s possible to overcome the 3.7 gpa and still possibly get in. It’s unlikely but possible. The last person at my D’s school to get in to an Ivy (in 2023) had a relatively low gpa. They got in RD so more likely to be unhooked than if it had been ED. So it’s possible. But very unlikely. We’ve also had at least 10 apply to Ivies this year and I know several have 4.0. None got in. So yes it’s possible to get In With a 3.7 but not likely
also unlikely to get in with a 4.0. Give it a shot but don’t expect to get in and plan accordingly. Best of luck.

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With your interest in History, Politics, and Law, you need to add Washington & Lee to your application list. Great contacts on Wall Street as well as D.C. - especially D.C. Doesn’t have to be your top choice but with your stats, you should have a strong chance to not only gain an acceptance from W&L, but possibly get some aid as well.

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I’m not sure this is attainable, but William and Mary also checks off these interests. They have the Washington Center and students there can easily do internships while doing the semester in DC. Or longer.

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Agree. I am no expert in this area, but I would guess that if an unhooked applicant does overcome a lower gpa for Yale, it would be with cool ECs and awards. OP - you have quite the list of ECs and awards. I can’t imagine how you have time for it all! Perhaps focus you application on these endeavors. Look for ways to organize all those activities and honors in a cohesive way, perhaps grouping them by area.

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I agree, I think admissions wise it is perhaps a match, I wouldn’t be surprised if this student got accepted. But probably not a financial safety
.or even close. Check it out.

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If you are confident you would choose Yale over Dartmouth then you should not ED Dartmouth because it is indeed possible you would get into Yale. Likely? No. But possible.

And then it will probably make sense to SCEA at Yale, but I want to warn you that although they do not do this as much as they used to, they still defer more people than accept in SCEA, and then they very much do accept some deferred people RD. Like, a kid at our feederish HS was deferred and then accepted (and is going). So it very much happens.

OK, so just be prepared for a possible second round of this, where if you are deferred by Yale you have to decide if you want to ED2 anywhere.

Otherwise, people are obviously eager to help you identify other colleges that would be much more likely to admit you, and you said initially you were interested in suggestions, but in subsequent posts you seem to be more saying you just want answers as to the Yale SCEA or Dartmouth ED question. That’s fine, but this is in fact an excellent place for a fuller discussion if you would like.

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Thank you so much! I am leaning more towards applying SCEA to Yale based on the feedback I’ve gotten and discussions with my parents. If you do have any other suggestions for other colleges, I’d still love to hear them! I have some on my preliminary list for now; do you think there are any that I could have a reasonable chance at getting accepted into? Here are some of the very slightly “safer” reaches that are currently on my list for RD (and EA for applicable state schools):

University of Michigan
Wellesley College
Georgetown University
New York University/NYU
Boston College
Boston University

And here are some of the other hard reaches I’m looking at:

  • pretty much all of the Ivies
  • Stanford
  • Barnard College
  • Carnegie Mellon
  • University of Chicago
  • Oxford University (UK)
  • University of Edinburgh (UK)

Thank you so much for your time, advice, and effort!