what is YALE looking for

Smile614
Thu, 18 Dec 2008 23:50:28 +0000

[Q&A: College Admissions - Questions/Answers Blog - NYTimes.com](Q. and A.: College Admissions - The New York Times)

really interesting article you guys!
another poster–forgot who–posted it on another thread so I thought I’d share.

Some interesting quotes from it that might answer your question

On Grades/Test Scores:
At the same time, we are not particularly drawn to one-dimensional students who have made their sole or primary objective in life amassing the largest number of honors or AP courses conceivable, accompanied by multiple efforts to achieve the world’s highest test scores.

Transcripts:
Weaker transcripts face tough sledding in a highly selective college environment. They don’t automatically disqualify a candidate for us, but you have to remember that we have many thousands of applicants with extremely strong transcripts who are also just as exemplary in the other ways that count.

Geography:
It is not well understood that we are not aiming to pick out the best candidate in a particular school or from a particular area, as measured by some predetermined criteria. Rather, we are trying to assemble the most varied and most interesting class we can from an extremely diverse group of close to 25,000 outstanding applicants. We do not aim to compare a student primarily with other students from his or her school; we look instead for students who will bring something of particular value to the entering class.

Conclusion:
For us at Yale, for instance, standardized test scores generally do little to differentiate applicants, because virtually all our applicants score very well. Most important to us are the transcript and the school and teacher recommendations, which students can do little to influence once it comes time for an application.
Essays and interviews round out an application, and we look here mostly to see whether they convey information that enlarges or enhances, while remaining consistent with what we hear from counselors and teachers.

Anyways…I thought this was extremely interesting as you can see haha