What is THE Yale Admission Factor?

Cameron
Sat, 01 Sep 2007 19:08:15 +0000

I am glad you posed that question to AdmissionsAddict. Here are the questions that come up for me. If I were an admissions person how would I handle thousands of applications without going insane? What would I use to determine who goes or who stays? I couldn’t base it on the grades, or if I did then would an extremely talented young person get left out? What if I turned away the next Einstein? He came in at the bottom of his class at Tech College. If I had thousands of applications lying on my desk I would need some measure to start “weeding the chaff from the wheat.” What would that be? I don’t know if there is an academic cut-off, but there has to be some factor that creates a workload that admissions officers can handle. Grades and scores could be one of those factors. If Yale was an art school it would probably be the level of work produced in a portfolio or performance? In a way, aren’t those the same as the grades and test scores for academics. How do baseball players get picked for the majors? Don’t they have to perform at a certain level? Why should it be different for academics? Grades, test scores and EC’s could be looked at as our audition, our tryout, and our portfolio. However, there is an unknown factor- potential. How to you measure that? After writing this I have a new found respect for what the admissions officers have to do. I hope that AdmissionsAddict has the answer you are looking for. The more I think about it all I see is that there cannot be one answer. And, I bet at the beginning of every year the admissions workers must take a deep breath and pray (or whatever there equivalent is) that they make the best choices humanly possible, for the coming year.