Many applicants to the most selective university programs share high grades, high test scores, solid recommendations and generous doses of community service and volunteer activities. Yet, if they want to set themselves apart from the pool of exceptional students, a significant research experience in STEM or the social sciences helps.
An article in the 19 February 2020 Harvard Gazette, contains one of a series of articles called ‘Focal Point’ in which Harvard faculty respond to a fundamental question: ‘If you were to write a letter to your students, what would you want them to know?” In this edition, the faculty member is a lecturer in the physics department and a co-director of Graduate Studies for Physics, Jacob Barandes, and his remarks warrant reading and can be found at Harvard Gazette.
This year was filled with applicants applying to Yale University single choice early action (SCEA) and all were, of course, in search of information about how they might gain an edge in the application process. What this article intends to supply is as accurate a portrait of what Yale admissions is looking for in a candidate—most of which is taken directly off the Yale admissions website—
The competition for admissions, including early admissions, among the most selective colleges continues to be ever more competitive. While this fact is not particularly newsworthy, some of the facts behind it are.
Foremost, the number of seats available in selective schools are declining.. Looking at the Ivy League schools along with Stanford and MIT, the total admits for fall 2009 was 28,600. For fall 2018 the total number admitted was 25,360, a decline of 11% over the decade.
The life of an admissions director is not an easy one; a look through The 2014 Survey of College Admissions Directors confirms this reality.
The survey was conducted by Gallup (of political polling fame) using questions created by Inside Higher Education, a very useful online postsecondary news website. A statistically significant response of admissions directors, only one per school, from a range of colleges and universities, addressed recruiting, standardized tests, financial aid and student debt among a number of issues.
One metric for keeping score on the vibrancy of a college is its yield rate: the percent of students who have been accepted who do, in fact, attend.
In 2014, Harvard edged out Brigham Young University by 0.1%, to enjoy the highest yield in the country. BYU, which has been the yield champion in several prior years, accepts slightly fewer than half of those who apply, has a 19:1 student/faculty ratio, and tuition and room and board under $13,000. Great education, great football, and access to the Wasatch National Forest enable it to get 80% of those accepted to come.
An anonymous newsletter and website at Stanford named Fountain Hopper, has pulled together a five-step process for students to gain access to all their admissions records, including comments written by the admissions officers, under FERPA.
When FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) was enacted into law in 1974, its intent was to protect the privacy of students and ensure that students have the right to access their educational records and challenge the content, if necessary, while preventing the release of the records to unauthorized third parties.
Some people apply to the most selective schools as if it were the lottery.
One such recent case is that of Kwasi Enin. The son of Ghanian immigrants, Kwasi hit the proverbial jackpot by first applying to all eight Ivy League schools, and then, having scored a 2,250 on his SAT and placed #11 out of a class of 647 at William Floyd School, a public high school on Long Island, getting in to all eight.
Getting into Harvard with its 5.9% admissions rate is like winning the lottery.
After receiving over 34,000 applications this last admissions cycle (down 2% from last year), even an admissions office as sophisticated as Harvard’s admits there is a lot more art than science in the final admissions decisions. Don’t, however, dismiss the elaborate admissions decision process Harvard runs through each fall: it goes to great lengths to ensure all candidates receive a thorough and holistic review.
