Should I have applied SCEA if I am poor? Or was I setting myself up to be def/rej?

Colleges & Universities Yale University
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<p>I am an Asian male student who applied SCEA to Yale; my financial situation is not very bright (24,000 for 4 members of my family). I included this information on the Yale Fee Waiver Request forms, so adcoms MIGHT see it and take it into consideration. Will this hinder my chances for admission, even if just in the SCEA round? (Since colleges want to boost their endowment, and my annual combined income is less than half of Yale’s total yearly cost)</p>

<p>Here are some of my stats, they might shed more light on why I chose to apply SCEA as opposed to just RD. </p>

<p>Note about my school: We are an inner-city school that sees a 60% graduation rate, and then about a 10% to 4-year college rate, if even that. </p>

<p>Objective:[ul]
[<em>] SAT I (breakdown): 2380, 800 CR, 780M, 800W (2 sittings)
[</em>] ACT: N/A
[<em>] SAT Subject Tests:800 M2C, 760 USH, 740 WH, 750 Literature
[</em>] Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 4.0
[<em>] Weighted GPA: 4.31 cumulative 4 years
[</em>] Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 4/1000
[<em>] AP (place score in parenthesis): 5’s in AP Comparative, AP USH, AP English Language, AP Calculus AB, 4’s in Biology, World History, and Chinese (Independently studied Comparative and Chinese – my home language is a dialect of Chinese that is not mandarin and i indicated this on the application)
[</em>] IB (place score in parenthesis): N/A
[<em>] Senior Year Course Load: AP Physics, AP Calculus BC, AP Econ, AP Literature, AP Psychology, AP European History
[</em>] Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): Speech awards: National Semifinalist Forensics (Speech/Debate) – first ever qualifier to nationals and indicated on my application, State Semifinalist Forensics, District/Regional Champion Forensics, All American Forensics, Academic All-American Forensics, Questbridge Scholarship
[/ul]Subjective:[ul]
[<em>] Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis): Debate (President 2 years) – first All American, Academic All American, and national qualifier – coach students and spend most of my time on this activity (elaborated more in essay)
Senior Class President, Junior Class President, Sophomore Class president
Founded a community service organization at my school (don’t want to name) – but we developed partnerships with various international chapters of said organization to deliver sustenance aid – VP 4 years
Student Tutor afterschool, 4 years
[</em>] Job/Work Experience: Paid part-time job (still going on) with local government official. He wrote my supplemental letter of rec.
Director of a political action committee (again, don’t want to name, but it is somewhat well known)
[<em>] Volunteer/Community service: Library Literacy Tutoring, Local Seminars with one of my clubs (that I don’t want to name because it is very identifying)
[</em>] Summer Activities: ^ Part Time job, Internship, debate camp
[<em>] Essays (subjects and personal opinions):[list]
[li] Common App Main Essay: About Debate and how it changed me from a reticent freshman to someone more involved and aware in the world around him ready to take on new challenges 8[/li][</em>] EC Short Answer: About eating dinner with my family and how it has impacted my life (traces the background – first gen college, parents dont speak english, low income – of my family) 9
[<em>] Why Yale?: 10
[</em>] Short Takes: 10, funny
[<em>] Additional Essay:[/ul]
[li] Teacher Recommendation 1: 10 best in their career[/li][</em>] Teacher Recommendation 2: 10 best in their career
[<em>] Counselor Rec: best in their career
[</em>] Additional Rec: from local government official, elaborated on what work I did and what I established
[<em>] Interview: not yet
[/list]Other[list]
[</em>] State (if domestic applicant): CA
[<em>] Country (if international applicant): USA
[</em>] School Type: very poor-performing public with stellar students (top 5)
[<em>] Ethnicity: Asian Chinese
[</em>] Gender: M
[<em>] Income Bracket: 24,000
[</em>] Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): first gen, questbridge, national-level ‘talent’ in debate, disadvantaged background (although i did not really elaborate on it, i felt as though the family income reported would show that i have not had as many opportunities)</p>

2

<p>If anything, being low income will help your application. Yale doesxnot discriminate against low income students.</p>

3

<p>Your 1st gen college/low income profile will help you at Yale. Good luck.</p>

4

<p>“Since colleges want to boost their endowment…” </p>

<p>Yale’s own analysis says it costs Yale approx $100K to educate each student per year. Would they love everyone to be full pay? Sure, but not at the expense of getting the best possible students. The endowment exists to educate students. Yale has need blind admissions.</p>

5

<p>Why do you suppose the fraction of the undergrads receiving financial aid dropped so precipitously this year? It dropped from 58% to 53% - which seems like far more than a random drop - particularly given the state of the economy and Yale’s professed commitment to “need-blind admissions.”.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/aug/31/yield-rate-falls-fifth-straight-year/[/url]”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/aug/31/yield-rate-falls-fifth-straight-year/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

6

<p>cotton mather asked:

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<p>One factor is a policy change: </p>

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<p>You’d expect fewer-but-larger awards, which is what happened:</p>

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<p>Average award needed to go up anyway because Yale’s cost/year went up, but the decline in number of awards probably hurt applicants from families in the $130-200k range; some of them probably turned Yale down for a better financial aid offer elsewhere.</p>