<p>It remains a mystery. Honestly. Beyond good grades (more As than not), good test scores (700+ on each section of SAT), extracurricular involvement (could be anything) and good teacher recs (ie, NOT “Jimmy has had a productive semester and has learned not to be a complete ******* in class,”) no one knows what Yale “looks for.” There are literally thousands of students who are pretty much equally qualified to get in, but only about 1800 do. How they decide this, no one knows. The only “shoo-in” I ever knew was (not kidding) a legacy, URM, athlete with excellent grades/scores/recs from a top school who was also incredibly nice and modest. Whew. But yeah, short of that, it’s up in the air.</p>