<p>I’m white, my parents have an MBA and Ph.D, and am not poor to enough to be disadvantaged (although I did get extremely good financial aid), I had no stellar ECs nor awards, and I got in. I did apply for engineering and wrote my supplemental essay about it, so that might have helped, but besides that, I had absolutely nothing that made me appear special in any way. Yale wants to accept ostensibly “hookless people”, because they don’t want to have everyone in a class special; that is, they want some of the class to be normal people that are smart, as they contribute just as much as those with an underrepresented ethnicity, musical talent, or athletic ability.</p>