<p>Yale didn’t lie. They just didn’t broadcast the truth. Which is that half of the applications are dumped out immediately after perhaps a 2 minute read by one rep. And then out of a forest of unique, wonderful, brilliant trees, most are systematically chopped down. A few stand out immediately as must accepts, and then you have your athletes and your development cases and your international applicants. </p>
<p>I used to follow up the statistics, I don’t really care anymore, but look, you don’t have a 5.7 % chance of getting in, that’s not how it works. Yale never lied, they just made it seem like if you had the stats AND the personality, the vibrant, dedicated rec letters and essays, the passion, the awesome unique acheivement and art supplement, you would get in. But uniqueness has become trivial - In a blizzard of beautiful, unique snowflakes, all the snowflakes are equally indistinguishable, even if they are all one of a kind. Yale makes you think that if you are a special snowflake, you’ll get in, but the problem is, about half of their applicants are special snowflakes nowdays. </p>
<p>Everyone believes their special. You can say, “oh, blah blah I know I was rejected and I see where they are coming from”, but I can tell you are bitter both about your friends and your own, because you believe, despite your SAT or whatever, that you had some special, unique quality. And that is a good thing - understand that being one-of-a-kind is a great thing, but when 10000 people are special, no one is special. Let it go, it’s all a big game - not a gamble - but a strategy game, both for Yale and for the applicant. Part of Yale’s strategy is general obfuscation of how they are actually making decisions</p>