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Archive for: Admission to Yale

Yale Applicant


Yale Apps, Yale Applicants, Applicants to Yale, Applicant to Yale University

YouTube music videos aren’t always the best supplemental material in college admissions. Be mindful of what is included in these videos should you choose to post one!

Each and every year, students post videos on YouTube in the hope that it’ll help their case for admission to the college(s) of their dreams. Sometimes, the videos get quite a bit of traction online, though it’s the exception to the rule when such a video leads an admissions committee to change a denial into an admission. Remember Grace Oberhofer? She didn’t end up getting into Harvard, in spite of all of the hits to her YouTube video in which she sings to implore Harvard admissions officers to admit her.

This year, Yale applicant Jackie Milestone has given the YouTube music video a try as she tries to turn her Early Decision deferral into a Regular Decision greenlight. The daughter of an alumnus, Jackie has dreamed of attending Yale since childhood. In the video, she wears about a dozen Yale t-shirts and amusingly strips each one off (except the last). Her singing and lyrics are actually quite good (better than Grace’s for sure) and she’s definitely got some spunk to her. In a funny moment of the video, she called a local pizza place in New Haven to see if they’d deliver to her Philadelphia home. They wouldn’t.

Will this video that has attracted almost 12,000 hits already lead Yale admissions officers to admit her? Probably not. The video shows that she’s wealthy. Her bed is a king! And it’s a water bed. Her room is very nice as is the rest of her house. If anything, the video shows that she’s wealthy and privileged. A Yale admissions officer isn’t going to go to advocate for someone who sleeps in a nicer bed than he or she does. The fact is that many applicants do.  Take this lesson from Jackie Milestone. Also, one should definitely be proactive if deferred. And be strategic. Maybe she could have left out the fancy bedroom with the huge bed in the video after all!

Admission to Yale


Fewer students applied for admission to Yale through the school’s Single Choice Early Action (SCEA) program this year as compared to last year. And by fewer, applications are down by over 18%! That’s quite a big figure in the world of highly competitive college admissions and it bucks the trend we read about seemingly every year at every Ivy League school – how applications are up, up, and away.

Yale Admissions, Applying to Yale, Applications to Yale, Yale Applicants, Yale University Admissions

Applicants applying for admission to Yale this fall through Single Choice Early Action should know that the pool is down by a whopping 18+%!

So why do you think applications for admission to Yale are down this year? Well, it certainly has a lot to do with Harvard and Princeton’s decisions to reinstate their Single Choice Early Action policies. Harvard and Princeton, after all, compete with Yale for applicants and many students likely didn’t want to apply Single Choice Early Action to Yale when presented with the same option at both Harvard and Princeton.

But, while it may be logical, we still want to point out Yale’s spin on the bad numbers. If you’ll recall, we made a little bit of fun of Harvard and Princeton a while back for their PR spin on reinstating Early Action programs. According to the “Yale Daily Herald,” “Though the change represents an 18 percent dip from last year, two admissions experts interviewed said the change and accompanying decline is still positive for Yale because the reinstated admissions policies have forced students to weigh their restricted application choices more carefully.” Oh please! No school wants to see a dip in applications! It’s positive for Yale because the new policies force students to weight their college choices more carefully? Yeah, right.

Check out the article on admission to Yale in the “Yale Daily Herald” and let us know your thoughts on Yale’s PR spin by posting below.

Applicants to Harvard and Yale


Applicants to Harvard and Yale may be interested to know that the two universities ranked a the top of “Newsweek’s” and “The Daily Beast’s” list of happiest schools. And how do “Newsweek” and “The Daily Beast” rank the happiest schools? Well, such factors as campus housing grade (how students at the respective universities rank the dormitories), nightlife, average graduate indebtedness, average freshman retention rate, student-teacher ratio, campus dining grade, number of student clubs and organizations, and daylight hours that are sunny.

Harvard and Yale Applicants, Harvard Applicants, Yale Applicants, Harvard Admissions, Yale Admissions

A ton of California universities are ranked as the happiest schools on earth. And yet applicants to Harvard and Yale should know that these schools top the rankings.

Last year, Claremont McKenna topped the list followed by Harvard, Pomona, Rice, Harvey Mudd, Scripps, Stanford, Caltech, Yale, Bowdoin, MIT, Occidental, UCLA, Haverford, Wellesley, University of California – Irvine, Colorado College, Brown, Davidson, and Boston College. This year, Yale wins the rankings followed by Harvard, Rice, Stanford, Bowdoin, Pitzer, Occidental, Colby, Emory, University of California – Davis, Southern Methodist, Rollins College, Hamilton, UCLA, USC, Cornell, Wellesley, Colorado College, Smith, and James Madison.

One can’t help but notice a ton of California universities in the top spots. Maybe that number of sunny days per year factor needs to go to create a more geographically balanced ranking! Besides, Denmark isn’t exactly a tropical paradise and yet the Danes are frequently ranked at the very top for the happiest country on earth! We think social psychologists should thus have a say in the happiest schools in the country ranking!

Check out our post on College Rankings and have a look at our post on Harvard and LGBT Students.