Would Yale take a flier on a kid?

penandink
Sat, 03 Nov 2018 19:19:09 +0000

The consensus here sort of confirms what I suspected: that the [deliberately hazy] hypothetical student in the OP has a very, very remote shot (at Yale), even more remote than most of the 94 percent of fellow applicants who will also be denied. But remote is not the same as non-existent, so it’s worth a shot, keeping in mind that it’s a long one indeed.

I did not mean to imply that most applicants to Yale (or Ivies in general) are soulless overachievers. But I know some who made it a kind of life goal, since middle school, just to get accepted to a school like Yale. As far as I can tell, that is what drives them: external academic success, not real learning. They are great at being students, and work like crazy, do all those extra things, but I just wonder what they question, or what they still want to know. And, yes, I wondered if Yale might also want to pass on some of these kids in favor of… other types.

Maybe the best advice, all things considered, was to look harder at schools known to be more suitable to aspiring writers. Actually, that process is already well underway, and has been for a while. But somehow Yale kept popping into the picture.

I’m assuming most people commenting or even reading here are, or have been, near high school seniors around EA/ED deadlines, including the one that just passed. So you know the pressure, the stress, not just to get materials submitted while school continues full tilt, of course, but just the idea that you should know at 17 what is best. At least on the high school side of college admissions, the feeling is that this system is out of control. Yes, I know; it’s the system we’ve got, so we must deal with it.

I guess that’s really it. Applicants just need to do their best on the things they can control now (mainly essays), and hope that they laid the groundwork for the things they can’t control a long time ago. A little luck wouldn’t hurt, either.