I’m sorry but you honestly have a 0% chance of getting into Yale (right now).
Personally, I would take the advice of a person who has not been through the process with a huge grain of salt.
Please ignore @worcester22’s comment, as they have not been through the college applications process and have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Your stats are competitive . .
That said, your ACT is at the low end of Yale’s scale. Admissions might give you the benefit of the doubt as a first-gen student with English as a second language, but if you can boost your ACT a point or two (32-33 composite), that would indeed help your chances.
Just because anecdotal evidence is subject to selection and other biases, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a place. Frankly most of my friends who spoke openly about high school academics were either valedictorian or salutatorian. Some were presidential scholars. Many had perfect IB scores or had topped their countries’ standardized tests. This doesn’t mean that a student ranked 18 doesn’t stand a chance at Yale, but it means that most of my peers who spoke about this did better. It doesn’t mean it’s the most important metric in college admissions either. One of my good friends exemplified this - he was ranked ~11 in a large suburban high school, with no significant extracurriculars, and was a white male from a middle class family. He thrived at Yale, graduating with a GPA of ~3.7 in a hard major, and was also president of an on-campus group he loved.
I do know how data is defined - after working in a quantitative field and graduating from Yale with honors and distinction in STEM, it would be real problem if I didn’t ;).
You and my son both graduated from Yale in 2015, but must have travelled in different circles. I don’t believe any of my son’s Yale friends fit into that category. My son certainly didn’t. He graduated from high school with a 96.7 GPA which placed him about 20th in his class. He did have a 36 ACT, which no matter how much colleges say it doesn’t matter, it does help.
hhchubbycheeks #10 has an inaccurate statement about how you would convert a percent GPA to a GPA on a 4.0 scale.
Your school may give grades that are percents, but also indicate the ranges that correspond to letter grades, e.g. 94-100 = A, 87-93 = B, 78-86 = C, 70-77 = D, below 70 = F (my high school’s scale). Or there may be a more generous scale, with lower cut-offs for A (90 and 93 are both fairly common). Or your school may assign 97-100 as A+ (or 98-100, or 99-100).
On a 4.0 scale, there is no bonus for an A+ grade, although your high school seems to have one, AnthonyZ, based on the unweighted GPA you have posted.
If your school has guidance on the percent ranges that correspond to specific grades, then you can convert the percents in each class to a letter grade, and then convert the letter grades to 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, and average them, taking into account the credit-based weighting when you are averaging, if some classes carry more credit than others. (But don’t include an extra weight for honors or AP classes). You should also eliminate phys ed and other classes of that ilk when calculating the GPA on a 4.0 scale.
If your school has percent ranges for A-, B+, . . . then you can make A- = 3.67, B+ = 3.33 (but A+ = 4.00) and then proceed as above.
With a percent GPA of 95.09, it is entirely possible that you have a 4.0 unweighted GPA on the 4.0 scale. That is, you might have scored above 94% in all of your classes.
There are no schools with which I am familiar that require 100% for an A. For one thing, that would be ridiculous! So the conversion suggested by hhchubbycheeks in #10, which would require an overall unweighted average of 100% for a 4.0 is way off.
Of course, with grade inflation and extra credit in high schools . . . but still it would be rare for a student to have 100% in every course, with no weighting for level.
If your school has no percent range to letter grade conversion suggested anywhere, you could compute an unweighted GPA on the 4.0 scale using one of the standard sets of ranges, to get an idea of where you actually stand. It would probably be better to use a more stringent conversion than an easier one.
Many schools may just take your school’s reported unweighted GPA on the 4.0+ scale.
I found an article on how to convert from a percentage scale to a 4.0 scale because my school does not report grades on a 4.0 scale. I calculated my unweighted as 3.89 and weighted as 4.53 (only counting my core classes, disregarding phys Ed). Those other numbers I posted in my thread came from a website that did the conversion, which must have given a bonus for my A+ grades, but I think the way I calculated my grade is more accurate. Thank you for your lengthy response!
You are welcome, AnthonyZ.
What makes a direct conversion between percents and the 4.0 scale impossible is that
one person might have obtained an average of 95.0 by scoring 95 in every class. That is normally at the “A” level, so that performance would be a 4.0. Another person might have obtained an average of 95.5, obtained by scoring 99 in half of the classes and 92 in the other half. At my old high school, that would give the second person a 3.5 unweighted average on the 4.0 scale, even though the average GPA in terms of percents is actually higher than the first person’s. Which one is the better student would be open to interpretation. This just illustrates the extremes that could be involved.
My old high school resolved this problem by converting all GPA’s of 94.0 and up to a 4.0 unweighted. That would be conceivable, because someone might have 94 in every since class, and it would have been a true 4.0. However, more likely, a person with a 94.0 average has some grades below 94 (making them B’s at my old school), and other grades above 94.
If ranking is based on percents, and a student is after a very high ranking, it might make more sense for the student to turn in 97-99 performances in most classes, at the cost of an occasional 92, rather than scoring 94 or 95 across the board.
I don’t think any means of conversion would be 100% fair, though the long way that I suggested would probably be the most accurate.
But, more than likely, Yale will look at the 4.07 unweighted as reported by your school, and move on to other aspects of your application.
I’ve heard that Yale does not request a score conversion, but I could be wrong. Regardless, thanks again!
^^ Student’s should follow the directions on the Common Application and report their GPA as it is listed on their transcript. Students – no matter what college they are applying to – should NOT recalculate their GPA to another scale. Instead they should let a seasoned Admissions Officer do the recalculation, if it is done at all: https://appsupport.commonapp.org/link/portal/33011/33013/Article/64/Reporting-Class-Rank-and-GPA
I totally agree with gibby #29. I was just posting a way for a student who wants to see whether his/her GPA is in the admissions ballpark on the 4.0 scale, if the grades on the transcript are in percents.
This could still be useful for AnthonyZ as well. With a 4.07 unweighted GPA listed by the school, he might like to see what that would correspond to in Yale’s terms, not to enter on the application, but for personal information.
Yale would probably view two applicants with 4.07 unweighted GPA’s slightly differently, depending on whether the applicant had a long string of A grades and occasional A+ grades, or a long string of A+ grades and an occasional C+. A student with 7 A+ grades and one C+ grade each year would actually have a 4.08 GPA, if A+ = 4.33 and C+ = 2.33. Yale might be totally happy with the latter way of achieving the average, but they might want to know where the C+'s came from. Also, if there is no bonus for an A+, but rather A+ = A = 4 in Yale’s GPA computation, then the first student has a 4.00 on the Yale scale, while the second student has a 3.79. (Yale College itself does not have grades of A+.)
If a student is comparing his/her record with the data reported by Yale, then it would sometimes be useful to run the long calculation.
@gibby
How can you call these stats competitive for a school that accepted 6.7% this year?.. I’m sorry that I am being brutally honest, but a 31 is right at the bottom of Yale’s Middle 50%. Also 18/593 class rank is very good but its nothing special from Yale’s point of view. What difference does it make that I haven’t been through the college process? It doesn’t take very much intelligence to see that this scenario presents a very very slim chance of acceptance. I agree with you that test scores certainly don’t make that much of difference past a certain threshold (34+ in this case), but they are certainly used to readily eliminate applicants that don’t meet the mark.
I disagree. An 18/593 class rank places the OP within the top 3% of their graduating class – something very impressive for a student who is a first generation american student who is bilingual (English and Russian). While Yale (and HPSM) could fill they classes with valedictorians and salutatorians – they do not. Instead, Admissions selectively cherry-picks students based upon teacher recommendations, guidance counselor’s SSR, essays and interview reports. Six years ago, for example, at my son’s high school Yale passed over the valedictorian and salutatorian and instead took students with lesser rankings, including my son who was also ranked about 18th in his graduating class. FWIW: According to Yale’s Common Data Set, 94% of admitted Yale students were in the top 10% of their graduating class – so the OP fits very nicely in that category. So, your earlier comment in post 20 of this thread is dead-wrong and disingenuous. See: https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/cds2016-2017.pdf.
Yes, the OP’s ACT/SAT scores are low for Yale – which is what I stated. However, the low scores are because of his/her reading and writing, which might be due to the the OP’s first language being Russian – and Admissions takes those things into account when examining a student’s file. As Jeffrey Brenzel, Yale’s retired Dean of Admissions stated on the College Board website: https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/get-started/video-transcription/whats-the-most-important-part-of-the-application
@gibby
I think your claims are still ridiculous to say the least. The OP’s ACT subscores are pretty even across the board. His English score (32) is even higher than his Science (31), so idk why you think their 31 composite is due to being Russian. Your mention your son who “ranked 18th in his class” but you even said earlier that your son scored a perfect, and let me repeat perfect 36 on his ACT. HYPSM can only afford to “pick and choose” as you call it once the students are past a certain threshold in their GPA and test scores or they have a major hook. I’m European too and first gen american, but I still don’t qualify that as a major hook for a school like Yale. It should be said that test scores serve to affirm the validity of grades in school. If you have a 4.73W but only are scoring in the 96th percentile then your test scores simply aren’t affirming that you’re qualified for Yale. I would also like to correct an error I made on my previous post – a 31 on the ACT is in Yale’s bottom 25% it isn’t even in the middle 50: (https://admissions.yale.edu/what-yale-looks-for)
I know you do a lot of posting on CC, but honestly you have to realistic with people… You even say in a previous post:
“It’s the same at Yale and every ivy league school. So, do you have a fair chance at Yale? No! Any student applying to a school with a single-digit acceptance rate does NOT have a fair chance. As you can see, the mathematical odds are stacked against you. That said, do you stand a chance? Is it worth your time applying? Sure, especially if you boost your ACT up to 34+.”
A 31 is simply not good enough, and you even explicitly state that a 34+ is needed to be competitive.
drops the mic, walks away
I agree with you when that student is white, from an upper middle class family that has the financial resources to allow their child to participate in activities like sailing and possibly test prep. (Yes, I went through your post history and looked at your chance thread,).
However, when a student is a URM or first generation college applicant, that is not necessarily the case, as those students often lack the financial resources for ACT/SAT test prep. That’s especially true now as Yale is actively recruiting more first generation students; http://news.yale.edu/2016/12/13/yale-helps-found-alliance-expand-access-college-50000-talented-students-lower-income-fami
Full Disclosure: My son is white and his family had the resources to send him for ACT test prep – and colleges knew that by looking at his zip code and the occupations and education of his mom and dad. And they will do the same to the OP’s application, as well as your application – that’s why it’s called holistic admissions.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Then I will assume that this is the end of the back-and-forth. Since no Yale AO’s publicly comment on this board, everything posted is simply an opinion. So please refrain from making this a debate.
Just thought I would return with an update- I did some research and found that I do not fit the definition of being a first gen student, so that is not something that will be working for me.
I do have one question about ECs if you don’t mind answering. I just started shadowing a physician and I’m wondering, how significant of an EC is that to Ivy schools? I’m planning on biomedical engineering with a Premed track. If you know anything about this, I would appreciate your feedback!
Sorry to respond to you on an old thread.
First off, one EC is not better or more significant than any other EC. Shadowing a physician is no different than volunteering at a hospital, or playing an instrument in the band, performing on stage, or competing on an athletic field, writing for your student newspaper, being a member of the debate team, robotics club or participating in ANY other activity.
That said, Extracurricular activities come into play several different ways:
When an Admissions Offer looks at your file, they are looking to see whether you’ve made a long-time commitment (measured in years, not months) to something outside of the classroom. The idea is that a student’s commitment, drive and energy to something beyond academics is a transferable skill that might be applied to another activity in college or later in life.
Once your application has been brought to the full-committee (most applications are not) then randomness comes into play. For example, if the committee has just admitted a dozen violin players and your application comes up next, and you play the violin, the committee might put your application on hold and look for an applicant with another interest, as they don’t want to admit too many students with the same EC interest.
My gut feeling is that shadowing a doctor might be pretty common for a student interested in pursuing medicine or biomedical engineering, and as you haven’t been shadowing for very long, that activity is not going to push you into the admit pile if your application is already straddling the fence.
Thank you!