My mom has a PhD from Yale. Will this affect my chances there?
I think she makes a regular monthly donation of a small amount, but I don’t think she’s made any huge donations.
Grad school legacy is considered. The small monthly donation won’t be considered. Good luck
It depends on what you mean by regular and small. I don’t know what the magic numbers are, but the Development office does submit supporting notes for kids of consistent donors/volunteers. Other than for huge $$$ donors, I doubt these notes carry a lot of weight. If your mother has a relationship with a Development officer, including someone who may be soliciting her personally, she should contact that person. If she does not have such a relationship, it may tell you that the donations don’t hit a magic number.
Yea, small regular donations do not mean much. The graduate legacy will get you to the second round most likely but not much past there. The admit rate for legacies still hovers around 11% so that mean that almost 80% are rejected. Most of them have very upset parents who donated to the school during their alumni years. Good luck to you in any case.
@Tperry1982 Do you mean 21% are admitted in order to have an almost 80% rejection rate?
^^ Yes, Yale rejects 80% of legacies. FWIW: In 2010-2011, legacies made up 10% of Yale’s incoming freshman class (130 students) vs URM’s who made up 14% of the incoming freshman class (182 students): http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/29/legacy-2/
I wonder which class of Sterling donors he meant, Sterling Associates ($10K – $15k annual gift) or Sterling Fellows (lifetime contributions of $1mm or more). The former would not be that surprising. In either case, given the number of alumni that contribute (over 41,000 donors in fiscal 2016, this number does include non-alumni donors) and the size of the endowment, it would take some major $$$ to move an applicant above the cut line if he/she was not well qualified based on his/her merits.
Yes, typo. Sorry. Either way, playing the legacy card is not that great of an advantage.
Even though most legacies are not admitted, still 20% admitted is about 3x the overall admission rate - I think that was around 6% last year?
All discussed exhaustively on other threads, but legacies have better odds because they’re generally more attractive candidates than the average applicant. By definition being the children of Yale grads, they’re coming from a family that (i) values education and (ii) is likely to be high-SES. Accordingly (i) they probably got a good education at a good school and had lots of educational and other opportunities (including tutors and test prep), so presented a strong application, and (ii) their parents may be involved/big donors, which would count in the child’s favor.
I’m a legacy. my stats are 1460 on PSAT (NM semifinalist). My school has historically sent 2-3 kids per year from a grade of 130. I have a 3.7/3.8 unweighted (yikes, i know). I attended yale young global scholars last summer (junior now). My ECs are: president of debate, vp of model un, have won awards at both on the national level. Also have been involved in my local debate league judging MS tournaments, volunteering, etc, and I’m on their student leadership board. Student council member, written for an online newspaper and school newspaper, 3 internships (2 city government, 1 jewish feminist organization, doing a 4th this summer), been on national leadership board of a jewish youth organization, as well as the teen leadership board at my synagogue.
Is the GPA a deal breaker? grading is notoriously difficult at my school (almost no one gets 4.0 and I’m in the top 5%). Hook is that I’m a gay woman in debate and I’ve done a lot of advocacy around that. Also I’ve been told i’m a very good writer and i have a good essay topic. do i have a shot at yale, it’s my dream school?
OP asked if it would affect her chances, not if she would surely get in.
In short, YES. It does improve your chances.