Would Yale take a flier on a kid?

penandink
Sat, 03 Nov 2018 05:02:41 +0000

@gibby

If the choice came down to this student, or your hypothetical student, or my daughter (who was also heavily involved in theater but rejected from Yale), my guess is that Admissions would “hands-down” choose this student no matter their ACT score or GPA. Wouldn’t you?

I agree with you: Admissions would choose this student (mentioned in the NYT). It’s hard to imagine that, with an acceptance rate of around 6%, I could have underestimated the level of competition, but I suppose it’s possible.

@lookingforward When you say “They read the entire app package,” that’s really all an applicant can ask. I think applicants want to know that essays and recs and personal qualities really do matter, along with the two big numbers.

We’ve all heard admissions directors at elite colleges explain that 75, 80, or even 90 percent of applicants are fully capable of doing the work. At Yale, that would mean between 22,500 and 27,000 applicants are fully qualified and able to succeed academically at Yale. Since we know Admissions doesn’t create a priority list of around 25K students, it would stand to reason that they have lots of room to indulge some gut feelings about the applicants; they all come from an applicant pool of incredibly bright, outstanding students. Maybe they stick to a formula or at least a sytem of sorts, but with those kinds of numbers it can hardly be called a science. It’s easy to see why the Powerball analogy comes to mind. Knowing that gives some hope to the kid with less than knock-out numbers.