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YALE UNIVERSITY IMPORTANT POINTS

Students and parents often look for a specific answer to the following question: If a candidate presents A, B, and C, will he or she be admitted to Yale? Unfortunately, so many factors are at play in the selection process that outcomes for most candidates in the pool are impossible to predict. We estimate that over three quarters of the students who apply for admission to Yale are qualified to do the work here. Between two and three hundred students in any year are so strong academically that their admission is scarcely ever in doubt. The great majority of students who are admitted, however, stand out from the rest because a lot of little things, when added up, tip the scale in their favor. The difference between a successful and an unsuccessful candidate at Yale is often painfully small.

What does matter in the admissions process? Yale is above all an academic institution, and thus academic strength is our first consideration in evaluating any candidate. The single most important document in the application is the high school transcript, which tells us a great deal about a student's academic motivation and performance over time. We look for students who have consistently taken a broad range of challenging courses in high school and done well in them. There are no score cutoffs for standardized tests: the median scores for admitted students on the verbal and mathematical portions of the SAT generally fall in the low-to-mid 700s, and the ACT composites in the low 30s, but successful candidates present a wide range of test results. While there is no hard and fast rule, it is safe to say that performance in school is relatively more important than testing. A very strong performance in a demanding college preparatory program may compensate for modest standardized test scores, but it is unlikely that high standardized test scores will persuade the admissions committee to disregard an undistinguished secondary-school record.

High school teachers can provide extremely helpful information in their evaluations. Not only do they discuss your performance in their particular class or classes, but they also often write about such things as your motivation, intellectual curiosity, energy, relationships with classmates, and impact on the classroom environment. Obviously it is important that you solicit recommendations from teachers who know you well.

Just as teacher recommendations are meant to give the admissions committee a glimpse of what you are like in the classroom, the counselor recommendation can provide us with a picture of your place in your high school class and in the larger school community. Your counselor can help us assess the degree of difficulty of your program, tell us what a particular leadership position means at your school, provide information on your background, and, in general, provide the sort of textured comments about you that would help your application come to life.

The Yale application tries to get at the personal side of the applicant through the use of two essays whose scope is broad enough to accommodate most writers. We encourage you to take the writing of the essays seriously and to write openly and honestly about activities, interests, or experiences that have been meaningful to you. What is most important is that you write in your own voice. If an essay doesn't sound like the person who writes it, it cannot serve him or her very well as a personal statement. As with every document in the application, we read essays very carefully and try to get a full sense of the human being behind them.

In the end, everything in an application matters. The good news is that so many little things figure in an admissions decision that it is fruitless to worry too much about any one of them.
Yale requires either the SAT I or the ACT. Students who submit scores for the SAT I are also required to take two of the SAT II Subject Tests. They may take any two subject tests of their choosing. The middle 50 percent of Yale's entering class this year had scores between 700 and 790 on both the verbal and the math sections of the SAT I.
Readers of your application will see all of the test results that are in your file, and they will supply the admissions committee with the highest scores you attain on each section of the SAT I or on the composite score for the ACT. However, if you take a particular test more than once, the readers may note for the committee that results have been achieved from repeated testing, and committee members may ask at any time to see all testing data.
n many parts of the United States and around the world, Yale Alumni Schools Committees (ASCs) serve as liaisons between prospective Yale students and the Undergraduate Admissions Office. As admissions applications are processed, each ASC receives the names of local applicants and schedules individual interviews over the course of the application season. Although the interview is not required, we strongly encourage applicants to take advantage of the opportunity if they are contacted. An interviewer can help students learn more about Yale and can share additional information about a candidate with the Admissions Office.

** Please note that students will not be offered alumni interviews until after they have submitted their applications to Yale.

While ASC interviews are available in most parts of the United States and in many other countries, there are places where we are not able to offer them. If an alumni interview is not available in your area, do not worry. It will not hurt your chances for admission. Each year many candidates are admitted without the benefit of an interview.
SOURCE:www.yale.edu

posted by ritz @ 9:57 PM