Yale Ivy Scholar

sarafina
Wed, 23 Jan 2013 21:13:17 +0000

My son’s experience was different from Momof2boys. He went the summer after his sophomore year in HS and was one of the younger ones (they only accepted kids finishing sophomore and Junior years in HS). The program has changed and has has been enlarged and diluted. The admit rate for his year was about 6%…and they offered scholarships…very generous ones for those who qualified.
The Director of the program left and someone else is running it.
My son is still close friends with some of the kids he met there and 6 (including him) are at Yale. They had a map of where they kids got into college…it was impressive (they created it on a private fb page) They still have Ivy Scholars dinners so its a real network that he enjoys.
That said, there were many (in the old form of Ivy Scholars) that were international and there were very few who looked like him (white jewish boy from LI) Heavy Asian-extremely smart. He loved and hated it…it stretched him further than school ever did…got up at 7AM and was still working with his team on projects at 1AM…he started the program straight from a month backpacking/camping so it was a shock to sleep in a bed, never mind sitting in lectures for hours. He is glad he did it and would recommend it. They changed the rules the next year and said that students should not come from other programs like outdoor adventures just before…
He went to a public school and took all the AP/IB classes he could and had near perfect SATS, ranked #1, but he was never challenged like Ivy Scholars challenged him. Its like a downscaled version of DS (Directed Studies…a year long freshman program)…some of his friends from Ivy Scholars are in DS…and from other countries…
Apply…but look at Telluride also…its an amazing program too…