Thank you, I read about the Hampton Inn in Milford and that looks like a great option!
@tdy123 You’re right that the admission rate for EA is deceptive due to the number of hooked applicants in the early round, including athletes.
In terms of specific numbers it’s not 300 recruited athletes though. The Ivy League maximum is 230 athletic recruits and historically Yale has been well below that number.
This article quotes the Yale athletic director as saying the total number of recruits for the Yale class of 2015 was 177. It may be a bit higher now as President Salovey seems friendlier toward sports than his predecessor, but I’d be surprised if it’s over 200.
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/03/04/with-expansion-changes-to-recruitment-policy-unclear/
@bluewater2015 Thanks for the info. I had heard higher numbers from a Yale admissions officer, but I’ll certainly defer to a published number.
@tdy123 That’s interesting that you heard higher numbers from a Yale admissions officer. I’m not sure if he/she was talking in generalities, or alternatively including some applicants where potential varsity athletic participation might have played some role in admissions even though the applicants were not official recruits.
The Ivy League rules apply to the number of official recruits that count for Academic Index calculation purposes and that’s the 177 number the athletic director was referring to from a few years back.
The latest numbers I’ve seen are from the class of 2019 freshmen survey, though that’s obviously less official than the statement by the athletic director and is based on the 853 responses received. That showed that 11% of freshmen are athletic recruits, so with 1,364 in the class that would be 150 (assuming athletic recruits responded to the survey at the same rate as students overall).
http://features.yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/09/03/2019-by-the-numbers-on-and-off-the-field/
How important is Bulldog Days? We are west coast and can’t really afford the trip but if it’s really important our son be there we could make the sacrifice…
We didn’t do Bulldog Days. I think it’s great for kids who are undecided about which school to attend or who haven’t made contacts on campus before, but seemed like an unneeded expense for us.
@tdy123: I agree with others that the number of recruited athletes is much smaller than 300, though I’m pretty sure it’s higher than 150–I’d guess it’s somewhere around 200, though I really only know for sure about my sons’ teams.
Also, the Fact Sheet indicates that only 12 percent of matriculated students are the children of alumni. With a yield rate of 70 percent, that would put the total number of those legacy acceptances at around 170–from both EA and RD cycles.
Still significant numbers, but not 600.
@classicalmama @tdy123 I was thinking about the legacy number.
When we attended the Yale info session last February, a parent asked about whether legacy was an advantage. The student admissions rep said that Yale gives very little if any advantage to legacies. He said that legacy applications will not “fall through the cracks”. I suspect that legacy applications might have their own committee round, as this is what happens at peer schools, but that decisions are initially made by the first reader without considering legacy.
Princeton, which is arguably the most legacy friendly school in the ivies, just published its SCEA data yesterday afternoon. www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S45/02/99M42/index.xml?section=topstories
So this means that at Princeton, out of 785 offers, admitted 126 children of Princeton alumni. Yale made 795 offers, and I can’t imagine that their legacy admits exceeded Princeton’s especially given their stance of not giving a legacy preference.
So if this is true, and assuming 125 legacy, 175 athletes, that’s 300 total. As classicalmama said, still significant numbers when you are talking 795 offers in the early round.
@tonymom, @classicalmama is right about BDD. We live 100 miles from Yale, and it was a fun enough time for DS, but not something we would have travelled coast to coast and back for, unless there was some hesitation about the choice. You don’t seem to be in that situation.
As regards contacts, it would be nice to go to BDD, but Yale kids are so welcoming and inclusive, in our experience, that within the first few days everyone will have made a lot of friends if they’re open to it.
There are benefits to applying SCEA for kids without any of the hooks mentioned above, perfect scores or top awards… My S, solid candidate with very similar stats as others, was fortunate and got in. One huge benefit of submitting EA is that he had to get his essays done. Since then he has been revising and creating new ones for various scholarship and applications. If your student is the type that doesn’t start essays until they are due, I think EA is a great way to get jump started on the process for other applications and scholarships, independent of the outcome. Plus they do accepts some (not a lot but some).
@tonymom … Yale provided the air travel and a van ride to New Haven for my son… it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
I’d say that Bulldog Days is a fun, somewhat useful luxury. (I’d say the same about FOOT as well.)
Can I ask a stupid question, one that Im sure has been asked and answered on this thread and Ive missed it. Why does Yale, or any other Ivy, recruit athletes? I realize that they have to have players for “the game”, that ice hockey and basketball have devoted followings but why cant it be our walk ons vs, their walk ons? Ive asked many people about this and the answer seems to be “alumni giving”. Maybe Im naive but it seems that the costs of all these teams outweighs the amount of money that alumni give due to athletics, again, maybe I dont understand. But, for instance, I know several recruited athletes at Yale who are on teams at which there is little to no student body interest in their events. Further, Ive heard that it is very difficult to take certain languages (I wont name them) because there are too many athletes that apply because these languages are considered the easiest way to fulfill the language requirement. In many sports the practice and game schedule is very demanding and , again Im told, that athletes must take light course loads in easier subjects. At some point what is the point of attending Yale? I suppose having a Yale degree is its own reward and I certainly know many athletes, current and former, who have excelled at school and life. But Im unsure that is the case for the vast majority. Im really just curious why Yale would give space to approximately 10% of the class for this reason.
The Hyatt place in Milford is newer and really nice. We just hosted a class for work there and I thought about all of you traveling. It is right off of 95. I also believe that they have a shuttle that will take you to the Milford train station and the train takes your right into NH. I would also look into North Haven as its in the other direction and easier to get in and out of NH. Most head to Milford or West Haven but that is not as close and is also more traveled.
@tonymom Bulldog days will not be an expense for your son. As a parent, I went and saw a concert and reception because I was only an hour away but to be honest it was not meant for the parents. There are lectures and events but they are not really worth the money to travel there. It wasn’t worth me taking time off of work. Another thing to think about is that the kids are trying to figure out their place and what I saw was my daughter torn between entertaining me and making friends. I let her go be social. She is still very close to the friends she made that week. I say let him go himself and save the money for parents weekend when its really geared to visiting parents.
@wchatar2, I don’t disagree with you, but based on looking at some friends’ postings on FB, sports remains an interest long after they’ve graduated. I personally think that education and sports should be separated; they’re both businesses, let’s not kid ourselves, but they should be separate businesses.
That said, I think the Ivies do college sports pretty well, considering their visibility (see http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/05/yale-basketball-player-quits-team-to-join-prestigious-a-cappella-group). I don’t doubt that most of the Ivy athletes are of a caliber that could have been accepted without their sport, but probably fewer of them would have been accepted without it. That’s also true of exceptional musicians, artists, etc., although I think there’s a difference.
It’s hard not to get defensive when I read those kinds of characterizations of athletes @wchatar2 . but I’ll take a stab at some of your questions.
First, no one is getting into Yale who truly does not belong–that’s why there is an academic index for athletic teams–though it’s undeniable that some athletes might have lower overall stats than “regular” admits, the AI (grades plus test scores) must be within one standard deviation of the class as a whole. With standards as high as Yale’s, this means that the Yale athlete is academically at the top of his/her athletic peers. The athletes I know come to Yale as A students taking rigorous course loads just like their peers at Yale. Hang out on the CC athletic recruit board for a bit, and you’ll see what I mean.
Yale purposefully selects a diverse class of bright, solid students with a variety of talents and interests. While you might argue that students “walk on” to the Whiffenpoofs" or the Yale debate team, I’m pretty sure that admissions has looked for talented, experienced singers and debaters to fill in those groups. Likely letters and EA were reintroduced by Ivies at least partly because athletes at that same level of talent were being sucked away by top D1 programs well before the RD date for Ivy applications; right now, you see the same effort extended toward talented URM and first generation students. You just have to go after certain groups of students earlier than others.
And I’m curious about why we automatically see the discipline and skill of an athlete as somehow less than the discipline and skill it takes to be a great artist or singer or scientist. I’m not particularly athletic myself, but I’ve grown to appreciate the way that my kids efforts in sports bleed over into all of their other work. A kid who is willing to push himself on the erg until he throws up doesn’t give up when calculus becomes hard; he sucks it up, applies mental discipline and gets it done.
I certainly didnt mean to imply that most of these athletes dont “belong” at Yale, although I have to tell you that Ive met a very few who I felt didnt. My child would not have gotten into Yale without a special interest, one that demands his time at school, and I feel that is the case with a lot of students. But Im hearing the practice schedules for some of these sports (especially football…I mean come on its YALE football for Petes sake, they arent going to the Rose Bowl). It just seems like a strange bargain between the school and the athletes and I wonder what, at the end of the day, motivates Yale to throw what I would say are inordinate resources at this. I agree though, I think the majority of these kids are very smart and that the Ivies pick a different category of athlete.
@wchatar2, I think a good example might be the soccer team. I have no particular knowledge of the sport or the team, but from what I understand, the new coach has not been well received by all of the players, in part because of his ideas about practice. It has been reported that some players declined to return.
That I think is one of the differences between the arts and sports. Nobody (except maybe at RISD :)) ) tells an artist that they must be in the studio for 7 hours M-F starting at 7:30AM, that they’re expected to produce n works of art, and that they’ll be judged against the art at other schools.
Actually, I think sports like basketball and hockey are the truly crazy ones, with their game schedules. However, as the parent of Ivy athletes, I really like the way that Ivies protect their students from the kind of “athlete first” mindset that seems so prevalent at many D1 schools. I don’t see the kind of bargaining you’re describing at all. My sophomore, for example, has had nothing but light captain’s practices since Thanksgiving, giving him plenty of time to prepare for his final papers and exams. He has never avoided classes because they are too difficult for him to manage with his athletic schedule. The Ivy Manual strictly controls the number of hours that athletes can spend on their sport. It’s allI would not have sent my kids to any other kind of D1 program. The vast majority of student-athletes who choose Ivies over bigger name athletic programs choose them because they value academics. As far as meeting a few athletes who don’t belong…that’s no doubt true–but why not focus on the rule rather than the exception?
Also, I can tell you that even well funded programs do TONS of fundraising to supplement their programs. I suspect that athletics are there for good reason, budget wise as well as diversity wise.