I didn’t think there was much new in the article, except for the “voting machine.” I wonder if that still exists. Other than that, it’s pretty much a description of how the holistic process is generally understood to operate.
I don’t think that the hockey player is that far off. My kid is friends with some athletes that joke about how low their high school gpa was and how they bombed their SAT’s. Many are recruited as young as sophomore year. There is no way to compare what they have done academically at that age to a kid applying after a full high school career. They were obviously courted because of their skill and not their academics. She recently was asked on a random coffee date by someone that she didn’t find intelligent at all. She was genuinely concerned that she was being played and that he wasn’t actually a student at Yale. She cut the date short because she was that uncomfortable with the conversation. In the end he was not only a student but the roommate of a friend of hers. He was not an athlete but someone with great connections.
Personally I loved the article. We know someone that used to read the applications for Yale and help sort them out with comments and a grading system of what is worth holding and what is not. The comment about the private school students that are packaged was dead on. She said they are the easier ones to read because they know exactly what is being looked for and how to package it. She also said that a lot of gems are lost because their school does not know what to send, recommendation letters are not written the way they need to be in order to compare and with so many applications and guidance departments really need to be taught how to submit their candidate. There is simply not enough time to look deeper into ones you have a hunch on.
The basic thing I learned from reading this was that if you are not a recruited athlete, URM, or legacy, then don’t waste your time applying.
Sure, you may get in unhooked - if you find a 5 percent chance appealing.
If you like those odds, then go for it, Han Solo!
It still amazes me today how my kiddo with his very Asian last name got into Yale.
@Nerdyparent, DS is a completely unhooked applicant who got in. Nobody likes the odds, but the prize is wonderful if you are accepted. That’s not to say that other schools aren’t wonderful also, but there just might be a correlation between low acceptance rates and quality (eg, why are so many great restaurants expensive and require reservations far in advance?).
There are many unhooked kids at Yale. Some who look like they are hooked one way, may be hooked another. Also some students who may look "unhooked’ may actually be first generation, from an underrepresented State or be the best bassoonist in the world. Each and every Yale student is special in some way or another. It is just that some traits stand out more than others so people tend to gravitate toward them.
Also, count the number of legacies that actually get in. I can count the number of Yale folk that I know whose kid subsequently went there on less than two hands. Ask any alum, the admit rate for legacy kids (much different than developmental) is abysmal.
The only kid in the Class of 2020 that has the ultimate hook is young Ms. Obama. The same as young Ms. Clinton had years back after her daddy was Prez.
@Tperry1982 What about Malala Yousafzai?
Who is that? Trust me, there are plenty of rich, pampered, famous parent having students at Yale. None can cherry pick their own school. Ms. Obama on the other hand, will go to whatever school she chooses. We are hoping for Yale, but since neither parent went to Yale, I doubt it will happen.
^^ The 18-year old Nobel Peace a Prize Laureate for standing up to the Taliban, not exactly a rich, pampered legacy of Yale.
Looks like Malia will choose Columbia or NYU if rumors are correct. She wants to do film studies.
Yale class of 2019 got Dante DeBlasio, I believe.
Everything have read over the last 10 years says that ad mins at the most competitive have to look for students that they can reject, as there are more than enough “qualified” students to fill each entering class twice over. ]
Its just a function of the # of heads and beds.
If you have hundreds of friends, and a table that seats ten, who do you invite for dinner? It’s like that.
1 who can play, 1 who can give an inheritence, 1 whose parents came to dinner before, 4 non-whites so I am not slammed for being non-inclusive at a minimum.
@texaspg, that may be some of what colleges do. But if you were really organizing a dinner party, you’d do something like that. You wouldn’t always invite the best guests (by whatever standard), or your closest friends. Sometimes you’d want some new people, or maybe somebody who was recently widowed and could use some attention, or perhaps a really interesting person you just met. You might want people with a variety of interests. You might say, “Don’t invite four lawyers or four doctors–they’ll engage in shop talk all evening.”
If, on the other hand, you were a swim coach deciding which four swimmers to put into the county meet, you’d pick the fastest swimmers–those most likely to win their events.
My point is that crafting a college class at a selective university is more like setting up a dinner party than it is like choosing the fastest swimmers.
Thank you @Hunt. I think a lot of people just don’t understand the holistic system (I’m not even sure I do all the time). But that is the perfect analogy. And what I was saying about Malia is, being the daughter of the sitting President is one thing. Yale and Harvard have quite a few celebrity and famous students (either in their own right or their parents). Most of them are not auto-admits though. There are plenty of normal, unhooked folk who get into one or both of them.
Freshman year at Yale, my son’s entryway mates (12 men and 12 women, affectively calling themselves the 24-pack) instantly bonded — so much so that all 24 of them stayed together for their entire four years of college. These kids not only roomed together, they went on ski trips together, spring break trips to Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New Orleans together. They even spent summer vacations together! Half the group have slept over on the floor of our living room. During senior week, many of the families threw graduation parties where we got to see all 24 interact together and had the opportunity to meet their parents. Of the 24 students, 3 were legacies and 21, like my son, were unhooked applicants.
One similarity each of them had/has was “an aura” — there was something special about each of their personalities that you were immediately drawn into their circle and their conversation. Each student was not only bright, but kind, outgoing, and a generous “old soul.” And that is what I think Yale Admissions looks for – the dinner party analogy!
The key to finding those kind of people IMHO is to comb through student essays, teacher recommendations, guidance counselor recommendations and interview reports. And based upon my son’s experience, Yale Admissions does a phenomenal job of finding those rare “old souls.”
@gibby So no athletes or URM’s in your son’s group of 24?
@suzyQ7: No, there were no recruited athletes in the group of 24, but 4 kids were URMS.