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.
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—
A number of colleges don’t like the current admissions process.
What ignited their angst and reform desires was the launch of the new Common Application (called CA4) in 2013, which was so buggy that early application deadlines had to be extended, and worse, many colleges were exclusively tied to the Common Application: they had no alternatives.
The 2,600 four-year colleges in the United States are a mish mash of public, private, religious, and secular schools with their own unique, independent admissions requirements. Consequently, distilling a list of factors that might provide uniformity across their admissions practices is not easy, nor uniformly accurate. Regardless, the NACAC (National Association of College Admissions Counselors) periodically performs such a survey across this vast collegiate universe and posits the most important factors into a list called the ‘Factors in the Admission Decision.”
Portions of the college admissions process should be performed each year in high school. Steady, cumulative completion of set tasks is vastly more effective than cramming everything into the waning moments of senior year. Take control of your admissions process and it will entice you to take control of your future—that is a skill rarely learned in any institution and will serve you well throughout your life.
Thirteen years ago, Michelle Hernandez, a former assistant director of admissions at Dartmouth College, wrote her groundbreaking work on the selective school admission process, A is for Admission. The book contained a revelation about the existence of the academic index that is used prominently by seven of the eight Ivy League schools to rate applicants.
