<p>What was the lowest SAT/ACT score of an admitted Yale applicant?
I know that other factors contribute to the admission decision, but I was curious after hearing about other ivy schools admitting students w/ low stats…</p>
<p>According to the 2010-11 common data set:</p>
<p>3% of matriculants had CR scores between 500-590
2% of matriculants had M scores between 500-590
2% of matriculants had W scores between 500-590</p>
<p>There is no way of know if anyone is in two or more of these groups nor what the statistics for admitted (vs. attending) students were. It is likely a matriculant with a low score in one section had higher scores in the other. A ballpark on a combined SAT low score would be about 1800.</p>
<p>The Yale CDS does not contain ACT bandwidths like this.</p>
<p>Just to make things clear: 2% of matriculants = 3 people, and 3% of matriculants = 4 people.</p>
<p>Yale’s overall yield is about 70%. The yield for people with high scores (i.e., the ones who are most likely to have gotten accepted at Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton, too) is much lower than the yield for people with lower scores. </p>
<p>So what I think this means is that Yale accepted somewhere between 5 and 12 people, and most likely 10, with at least one score in the 500-590 range.</p>
<p>In all likelihood, each of them was either a highly-recruited athlete in a major sport, or someone with a really special story. My daughter knew a kid with a total score under 1200 (1600 scale) who was accepted ED at Wharton. He came from absolute poverty, and was a stunning, shining leader, someone the newspaper wrote stories about. Plus, he had the highest GPA at his (terrible) high school in the past 30 years. She said if you met him it took about 5 minutes to conclude that he was the greatest kid ever, and in the course of his activities he met a lot of Penn alumni movers and shakers who recruited him and went to bat for him. His acceptance was conditioned on his doing a lot of remedial work to prepare – it’s not like they just sent him a letter saying welcome to Penn. Anyway, that’s the kind of non-athlete who could get accepted to Yale with scores in that range.</p>
<p>The low SAT scores given are most likely recruited athletes - who have a SEPARATE admissions than “regular” applicants but still get considered in the overall count. If you are a recruited athlete you will probably be notified by your coach as to what SAT score you need. If you are NOT a recruited athlete then your score should be around the 2300’s. But GPA is still more important than your SAT score.</p>
<p>JHS:</p>
<p>I believe there are about 1300 matriculants each year. Thus 2% is approximately 25 people and 3% about 40 people. This would mean about 90-100 students have at least one SAT section below 600.</p>
<p>Of course you are right. But that makes me think that there’s more overlap in those low scores than we thought. I don’t really believe there are 100 students with an SAT score in the 500s.</p>
<p>Another source of low scores, though, especially CR and W: international students and immigrants. I know a young woman who was admitted to Yale 7 years ago with a CR SAT in the mid-600s. English was her fourth language, she grew up in an impoverished, war-torn environment, and she didn’t live here until she was halfway through 9th grade. The first time she took the SAT, she had 800 M and 480 CR. She took the test twice more, and raised her CR score almost 100 points each time. The quality of her thought was great, and she was a tremendous student, but it took a few years for her English to get effortless.</p>
<p>I know someone who got in with a 550ish in the Math and Verbal section. And no he was not an athlete.</p>
<p>I think the better question is what his race was.</p>
<p>Below are data from Yale class of 2015, which show that the lowest admitted applicants were two people with scores below 500 on the CR and W tests, only one of whom chose to matriculate. First number in each row is number of admits; the second number (in parentheses) is number of matriculants. The third number shows the percentage of applicants in that score band who were admitted. </p>
<p>Score: Critical Reading </p>
<p>Below 500 2 (1) 0.3%
500-600 27 (23) 1.2%
600-700 318 (227) 4.8%
700-750 675 (428) 9.7%
750-800 800 (472) 14.9%</p>
<p>Score: Math</p>
<p>Below 500 0 (0)
500-600 19 (17) 1.2%
600-700 288 (224) 4.8%
700-750 466 (319) 8.2%
750-800 1049 (591) 12.8%</p>
<p>Score: Writing</p>
<p>Below 500 2 (1) 0.4%
500-600 29 (27) 1.5%
600-700 266 (187) 4.3%
700-750 551 (361) 8.5%
750-800 974 (575) 14.9%</p>
<p>I agree with JHS that people in those very lowest bands are unusual. They aren’t just URMs–if you look at the results threads, you find rejected URMs who have scores better than those lowest bands.
They are most likely either recruited athletes (and even then, the the academic index ensures there won’t be many of them), development cases, or people with very, very unusual stories.</p>
<p>And I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that the kid with low scores who didn’t matriculate went to Harvard instead.</p>
<p>If I recall correctly, I know someone who had a score in the 1800s who was not an URM though was socioeconomically disadvantaged.</p>
<p>*extraordinary circumstances play more than a major role</p>
<p>Thanks for all the information!!</p>