Inside the Yale Admissions Office Podcast Transcripts

Episode 1: Reading

Hannah and Mark discuss how officers read applications, make notes, confer with colleagues, and prepare to present applicants to the Admissions Committee. Every year officers read more than 35,000 applications cover to cover and collectively make admissions decisions on each one. Admissions Officers Julian and John join as guests to discuss their strategies for reading and rating files.

Yale Podcast Network–
[Mark] Hello, and welcome to Inside the Yale Admissions Office. My name is Mark, and I’m a Yale admissions officer.
[Hannah] And I’m Hannah. I’m also a Yale admissions officer.
[Mark] Hey, Hannah, where are we right now?
[Hannah] We are actually inside the Yale Admissions Office on beautiful historic Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven, Connecticut.
[Mark] That’s where we are, quite literally. Specifically, we are in Reed’s office up on the third floor. He’s been generous enough to let us barge in here and record this podcast.
[Hannah] Thanks, Reed.
[Mark] And Hannah, why are we recording a podcast in Reed’s office?
[Hannah] Yeah, so what we wanted to do with this podcast is really just make the admissions process a little bit more transparent. I think that people tend to think that our work is mysterious, and it’s really not. We’re happy to open the door a little bit and let you know what really happens inside our office. And we always tell our applicants that, in their essays, they should try to show, not tell, so we’re going to try and take that good advice and show you what goes on in our office through this podcast.
[Mark] Yeah. I have found over the years that people sometimes imagine that we have some sort of vested interest in keeping things secret, that there’s some sort of insider knowledge that we don’t want you to know. And even worse, I think there are– I know there are people out there who try to sell their services, with the idea that they’ve got this insider knowledge. And I’ll just say right off the bat, I think that’s a total baloney sandwich–
[Hannah] Complete nonsense–
[Mark] –to put it in G rating terms. We want to tell you all what we do, and show it.
[Hannah] Yeah. So we’re offering you a free public service. Hopefully it’s helpful if you are a student thinking about applying to college, if you are the parent of a college applicant, a school counselor, a teacher, if you’re just a curious member of the public who wants to know more about selective college admissions at a place like Yale, this is the podcast for you.
[Mark] Yeah. And look, we know that there’s a lot of anxiety about the college admissions process out there. We are very sensitive to that. This is a world that we are in every single day. But in my experience, a lot of the anxiety revolves around an image of the process that is just not true. It’s not how things actually work.
[Hannah] Mm-hmm.
[Mark] So we hope that, by showing the process and explaining it, showing how it really works, that that might make people a little bit more comfortable with it and have a more positive experience as they’re going through it. Also, our work is just really interesting and fun. Hannah and I love our jobs. I think most of our colleagues do too. I think it’s a good sign that we like our jobs– that we’re going to make a podcast all about it.
[Hannah] Yeah. And just to be clear, no one asked us to do this. We’re not getting paid extra for this or anything. We actually had to pitch it to quite a few people and say, hey, let us do this podcast about our jobs.
[Mark] Some skeptical people–
[Hannah] Yeah. Yeah. We’ll show them. So we’re going to walk you through how we review applications, the Admissions Committee process, how we take the 36,000 applications that we get every year and get it down to the roughly 2,200 that we offer admissions admission to Yale to. We also do a lot of other stuff too in this office. We’ll talk about our outreach travel– we travel all over the world– events that we host, working with partners around the university.
[Mark] Yeah. We’ve had a lot to talk about. I think we’ll have multiple seasons of our podcast. We should go ahead and say, though, what we’re not going to do on the podcast–
[Hannah] Yes.
[Mark] –in episode 1. So first and foremost, we are not going to be talking about individual applicants. You won’t hear us say, oh, I love this thing that this young woman did in her essay, or I was so impressed with this activity. That would be tacky. It would almost definitely be illegal–
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] –as well. So we’re going to respect applicants’ privacy. It’s also not going to be a podcast that’s all about how to get into Yale. That’s not the goal of this. A theme that you’ll hear throughout the podcast is that we are interested in admitting students. We’re interested in meeting real people. It’s not about just playing the game with an application. So that’s not what this will all be about.
With that, it’s not going to be a bunch of application advice. We put a lot of that on our website. I think it’s pretty good. I run our website, so go check it out—admissions.yale.edu. But this would be a really dull podcast if it were just Hannah and Mark hashing through the website.
[Hannah] Right. We will not do that to you. So for today’s episode, we’re going to talk about reading. That is what we are spending most of our time doing. Right now it’s a huge part of our job, and in particular, this time of year, it’s what we’re doing when we’re not recording podcasts. So reading applications is a lot of work, but we take it one application at a time.
[Mark] There’s a lot of things we could cover with reading. To make this bit-sized today, we’ll go cover some of the basics. I think we’ll have lots of opportunities in later episodes to get into specific parts of the application, and things that tend to stand out for us, things tend to not work, but today we’re going to cover things like, how do we divvy up files? What actually happens when you click Submit on your application? How do we read those applications front to back, and what are we thinking about when we are reading a file and making our notes on it?
[Hannah] Yeah. So the most basic thing to understand is that, in our office, we read files based on geography. So we have about 25 full-time admissions officers here at Yale, and we are each responsible for a region. So we split up the entire US and the rest of the world by region. My region is parts of Europe, New Zealand, and Brooklyn, New York. It’s a little scattered. Some people have more cohesive regions.
But what that means is that I’m responsible for the applications that come from those places. I’m the first person to read those applications, and I’m the person who will shepherd them through the Admissions Committee process.
[Mark] Yeah. I really like the way that we do things here. Some schools do it this way. Others have a more deliberately random approach. What I like about it is that it gives us some area expertise. My area, for example, is a lot of the Southeastern United States. I grew up in Georgia, so it’s really fun for me to go back down south and represent Yale there when I’m doing outreach travel.
And then it’s fun for me to sort of be the representative of the South here at Yale as well. It also means that I have an office full of experts on different parts of the country and different parts of the world. If I’m getting an application, let’s say, from a student who’s graduating from high school in Alabama, but spent the first three years in Auckland, I would say, Hannah, I’ve got this student who’s talking about the all-greenbacks Kiwi rugby team. What is that? Can you do the second read on this file? So it’s a great resource for us. And what we’re going to do next is talk to a special guest, our colleague Julian.
[Hannah] Julian is another admissions officer and good friend of us. So he’s generously agreed to be our first ever podcast guest, so–
[Julian] Honored–
[Hannah] Thanks, Julian. So let’s dive right in. We want you to help us explain a little bit about how we read applications. So I thought the first thing that might be helpful to go over is you’re an admissions officer, you open an application. What is the order in which you read the information?
[Julian] Sure. So I don’t think reading applications is as impersonal as people like to talk about. I find that the order in which I read an application is kind of like introducing myself to someone in person. So I want to know where you’re from, your hometown, a little bit about your background– so where you’re going to high school. And that’s really where I start.
I want to make sure that students have the right preparation to do the work here and to succeed. So I will first dig into the transcript, check out the student’s performance thus far. And if I am unfamiliar with the school, I will make sure to educate myself on that school’s profile to make sure I have a good understanding of what’s going on in that community. Then I’ll dig into even more personal stuff, deeper in the application, like the essays and how they spend their time.
[Hannah] So when you said before that you introduce yourself to an application– to an applicant with their part of the file, that’s super important for you, because you read for so many different parts of the world.
[Julian] Mm-hmm.
[Hannah] So one of the first things that we see when we open up an application is some basic demographic information, like–
[Julian] Right.
[Hannah] –where the student grew up, what their parents do. This helps us get some context about where it is that the student is coming from, how they were raised, that sort of thing.
[Julian] Right. One piece is certainly their birthday. And I’ll think to myself, oh, the student is an Aries. And then I remind myself that I’m an admissions officer, and I should be thinking about their academic preparation, and not just their astrological signs.
[Mark] Yeah. Just for the record, let’s clarify. Your sign is not a factor in the admissions process.
[Julian] It’s true. It’s true.
[Mark] So let’s talk a little bit about the other parts of the application. Once you’ve gotten to know a student from what they’re providing in their part of the application, how does your picture of a student develop once you start to read from other sources– from the teachers and the counselors who are also writing on behalf of the student? How does that change or confirm the picture that you’ve started to get in your mind?
[Julian] Yeah. I think the person behind the application starts to become a little bit more vivid, knowing not only are they receiving these types of grades and marks in their classes, but how are they going about getting those grades? What’s their approach in the classroom? And the teacher recommendations are amazing, in terms of understanding a student’s intellectual flavor and how they go about digesting information.
We see, and I see, so many idiosyncratic differences across different students even within the same school, and even within the same class, which is great, because then it helps me imagine what kind of contributor they would be in classes, both small and very large here at Yale.
[Hannah] This is also a good place just to clarify that we read every single application that we get cover to cover. It’s not the case that, if there’s something we see in an application, we stop reading it. So those teacher recommendations, counselor recommendations, the essays students write, they are being read in full by a member of our staff.
[Julian] That’s something I’ve really liked about the way that we do our work here. We expect students to talk about themselves and present themselves in so many different ways. And since we do have teachers’ perspectives in the file, and normally guidance counselors or another school official, we get to understand the student through so many different lenses. And that’s why I think it’s on us to make sure that we are doing right by each applicant by really taking the time to examine every single piece that’s sent our way, and not just picking out certain materials that are most important to us, since I really do believe in the whole person evaluation process and understanding a student through these really different materials.
[Mark] What do you tend to write in your work cards while you were reading an application? What are you noting, and why are you noting it?
[Julian] So especially as the first reader of an application, it’s my job to present somewhat of a roadmap of the application. So not only am I documenting the objective information in the application, but I’m also trying to provide a sense of the student’s voice, how these pieces are coming together. So in real time, I’m hoping to analyze how gripping a student’s essay was or how teacher recommendations are in conversation with topics covered in the essay.
So not only am I describing what I am seeing– I’m also trying to analyze how a person emerges as I look at all of these things put together. And then, at the end of the day, I’m hoping to just give some pitch. This is a student– as a really short quip, a pithy little remark at the end of my card that tries to synthesize the really dynamic person that we meet all throughout in a way that puts my analysis in conversation with the admissions officer who may be reading the same application behind me.
[Hannah] All right, so you’ve probably noticed that we haven’t talked much about scoring applications. We use write-ups in our work cards to keep track of what we’re reading. And we use some ratings, but not really in the way that you would think.
[Mark] Yeah. I think most people imagine that the process is really quantitative, and that there’s a rubric that we’re using, and that, as an applicant, your goal is to maximize your score on each of these different sections. And you are thinking about dividing the application up into these different segments and trying to score the most points in these different areas.
And that’s really not how it works. So to talk about that, we actually are bringing on to the show a colleague of ours, John. And he is an expert on a very different kind of scoring system than what we use. So hi, John. Welcome to the podcast.
[John] Hi.
[Hannah] Hey, John.
[Mark] We brought you here today to talk about gymnastics.
[John] Oh my God.
[Mark] So folks probably don’t know John is a big fan of gymnastics.
[John] Huge–
[Mark] You, I think better than anyone in the office, could explain how gymnastics is scored.
[John] Yeah.
[Mark] So could you give a little quick explanation for how gymnastics is scored?
[John] Sure. It’s funny, because people in their minds are still thinking about the perfect 10 when it comes to gymnastics, and for NCAA gymnastics, that is still the scoring that is used. But in this current kind of Simone Biles greatest of all time era, there’s a different scoring system that still utilizes a perfect 10, but also a different score called the difficulty score.
So essentially, in the past, gymnasts weren’t really rewarded for how difficult their skills were– just how well they did them. And now, in this era of triple twisting double somersaults on the floor exercise, we need to reward that difficulty. So gymnasts now are awarded two scores. One’s called the D score, or difficulty score, which captures how difficult the routines are. And the other is called an E score, or the execution score, which captures how well they do those skills.
[Mark] That’s really helpful.
[John] Yeah.
[Mark] I learned a lot.
[Hannah] And I had no idea that’s how it worked, so thank you.
[John] I know. And then you add them together, and then you have the overall score.
[Mark] So when you’re reading applications, is there a D score, and an E score, or Q score, or a G score?
[Hannah] Can you get a perfect 10 when you apply to Yale?
[John] Right. And I think the answer is no. But people are always concerned with, how am I maximizing my difficulty? Or given that difficulty, how am I doing it perfectly? And if that was how we evaluated applicants, if that’s how we came to understand the people behind the applications, then frankly, we wouldn’t have a job.
[Mark] Right.
[John] We wouldn’t do what we do.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] Yeah. So give me a sense of what you are noting when you’re reading a file, and when you’re using ratings, what you’re using them for, because they’re not going to be added together at any point. It’s not going to be split into an algorithm, and we’re not going to rank candidates like we might rank you know gymnast floor exercises, where Simone Biles is obviously going to be at the top because of her largest combined score.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] So how are you using the ratings in your process?
[John] Yeah. I think the way that we– or a lot of us think about ratings are indicators to not only ourselves, but other people that are eventually involved in the admissions process for where strengths of the file lie. And so I think the main takeaway, when I’m rating parts of a file, is that they will never be standing alone as a number or a digit in a vacuum. These are ratings that we use to help us better understand the way a file has been read, the way a file may be presented. And none of those ratings are ever looked at independent of a full conversation with so many people in the room.
[Mark] And I think that’s a good transition actually to our next topic, which is about what happens to a file after you read it. So let’s say that you’ve read a file. You were excited about it. You’ve made all sorts of notes and ratings on it. What happens next?
[John] Yeah. I think the interesting thing about our reading process is it’s a process. Files are not just read once and then completely forgotten about. Files are read and then considered. So many different things can really happen to a file, but I think one important piece that some applicants may not know is that, when new information comes in, we consider it.
So once the file is read, sometimes additional pieces of information come in, and we note that and we update our comments as needed. Sometimes files continue to be read. The most competitive files in our process getting multiple opinions– sometimes two, three, four– as many opinions as our Admissions Committee feels is needed to really fully understand the candidacy.
And after a file has been read by a certain number of readers, then actually, all of the files that our office receives goes through what’s called a committee process, where the notes that have been taken the ratings that have been given are then considered and discussed by a roomful of people, including admissions officers, deans at Yale College, faculty members, and most importantly, an entire stash of snacks from Costco.
[Hannah] Most importantly–
[Mark] Most important–
[Hannah] Absolutely. But while we’re here, let’s talk a little bit about the reads that happen after the area officer reads a file. So in our office, we call this either outside reading or second reading a file. We use those interchangeably. And most of the time, a file gets outside read or second read by a random other person in the office, but we also have some areas of expertise. So if John, as an area officer, is reading a file and he thinks to himself, oh, I really want some other specific person in the office to read this because of their area of expertise, he can send that along.
[Mark] Yeah. And we all do outside reading ourselves. I have to say, I really like doing outside reads. It’s a nice break. I get to see a different part of the country, different types of students. Oftentimes, they’re involved in different activities. And if I’m suddenly reading someone from Southern California, they might be surfing, and that’s not something that I’m used to seeing. So John, what do you like most about doing outside reads? Or how is the outside world different than an area read?
[John] Right. I think one of my favorite parts about outside reading actually gets to the core of why I really enjoy this work in general. And it’s the fact that we as admissions professionals are asked to think critically and intellectually about young people from all across the country and around the world. And as cheesy as it sounds, it’s really fun. It’s difficult work. There’s a lot of critical thinking that goes into reading of any kind, but especially when you’re weighing in on a file that has already been read at least once, and especially for a file that is outside of your regional area of responsibility, there’s a lot of critical thinking that goes in that I think keeps a lot of us engaged throughout the year.
[Hannah] Yeah. And when we’re outside reading, just like when we’re area reading, we’re taking notes. We’re writing up little work cards. And all of that is to serve the purpose of directing the committee conversation, which is what is going to happen next.
[Mark] Yeah. Really, everything in the reading process is leading towards committee. That’s where the magic really happens. I think people tend to imagine that we as admissions officers are these deciders, that were going through, reading this, and saying, yes, this is good, or no, this is bad. And really, the reading process is just step one. It’s our job of really preparing for a conversation that happens in that committee room.
And I think that’s also a difference that people don’t always appreciate, that that write-up that we’re putting together– it’s really designed to facilitate a conversation and a lot of that critical thinking that you were talking about. It’s really, I find at least, centered around this question of, what do I want to talk about with my colleagues in the room?
[John] Yeah. And we all, I think, approach our work with a sense of humility, in that we may feel a certain way about a file, but our brilliant and thoughtful colleagues may feel differently. And that outside reading process really introduces multiple opinions to every file in a way that I think really is a wonderful, almost series of checks and balances, making sure that no one person is deciding the fate of a file all by him, her, or themselves.
[Hannah] Exactly– and that is really why we do this whole committee process, which we are going to talk about in depth next episode. We will take you inside the committee room. You’ll hear a little bit about what we talk about in the committee room, how we discuss applicants. So we’re really looking forward to sharing a little bit of that next time on Inside the Yale Admissions Office.
[Mark] All right. We just made history. This is the very first podcast recorded inside the Yale Admissions Office. Some final thanks to our friend and colleague Jill, who is both our sound engineer and a great admissions officer–
[Hannah] Thanks, Jill.
[Mark] Imagine that. Thanks to Reed for lending us his office. Thanks to former admissions officer Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our music. Check him out at AndrewBrickJohnson.com. And finally, remember that the views expressed here are mine and Hannah’s, and they do not necessarily represent the views of Yale University.
[Hannah] Thanks for listening.

Episode 3: COVID-19

As COVID-19 causes massive disruptions around the world, Hannah and Mark discuss how the Yale Admissions Office has adapted and will continue adapting to new realities for applicants, admitted students, and prospective students. Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan joins as a guest to discuss how high school students should think about the selective admissions process in the face of the global pandemic.

New Podcast Network–
[Mark] Hello and welcome to Inside the Yale Admissions Office. My name is Mark and I’m a Yale admissions officer.
[Hannah] And I’m Hannah, I’m also a Yale admissions officer.
[Mark] And we are recording this on April 29th 2020. It is week seven of social distancing here in Connecticut, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
[Hannah] That’s right. So, we are not reporting from inside the Yale Admissions Office today. All of our campus offices are shut down. So, Mark and I are a safe six feet apart in an undisclosed location but we felt we really wanted to talk to you a little bit about what our office is doing right now.
[Mark] We had great plans for this episode of the podcast, like a lot of the things that got sidetracked. We thought we were going to be talking about how we kind of finalize the [Yale] class and release decisions, that all happened a few weeks ago. So, instead we are going to talk about how we’ve adapted, how things have changed, and what things haven’t changed as well. And also a little bit about what we’re thinking about going forward.
[Hannah] Yeah, so we’re still dealing with a lot of uncertainty at this time. But we’ve moved through a lot of things and we want to talk to you about that.
[Mark] So, if you are listening to this and it’s months from now, lucky you. It feels like peak uncertainty for a long time now. If you can, send us a message back in time. We really want to know what things are like, is there a vaccine, is the baseball season happening this year?
[Hannah] Mark and I are really concerned about that in particular, as Braves and Red Sox fans.
[Mark]  It’s a burning issue for us.
[Hannah] Yes.
[Mark] Also though if you are listening to this in the future, keep in mind things may have changed. This is a fast moving story and we’re giving you what’s happening right at this very moment.
[Hannah] Yeah. So, our plan today, we want to talk to you about how we’ve handled three different kinds of groups of students through this whole experience. We’ll talk to you about how we worked with our applicants towards the end of reading and committee season in March. We’ll talk about how we’ve communicated with our admitted students throughout the month of April. And we also want to talk a little bit about how we’re working with our prospective students, students who might want to apply in the fall.
[Mark] And even during a normal year in the winter and spring months we are working with all three of these groups. So, they are in the front of our minds no matter what. And we have treated each one of these groups a little bit differently. So, let’s start with the applicants. The last time that we recorded a podcast we were still in the middle of reviewing 35,000 applications for first year admissions. We got pretty lucky with the timing for that group. Our last day that we could work in the office was the last day of our regular area committee.
[Hannah] That’s right. So, if you listen to our previous episode, you heard all about area committee and how that worked. We were super lucky with the timing that we were able to finish out those area committees in person, in our conference room in the admissions office. And then we all went home, took our computers home, took our monitors home and we did the final week leading up to the release of decisions over Zoom.
[Mark] We’ve done this before, sort of. We have had some success with remote admissions officers. We’ve actually had officers who have been presenting and voting in committee from different countries and from different parts of the world. But this was the first time that we convened everyone in a committee remotely from their different offices and basements all around the country.
[Hannah] The only thing I would say that we were missing was the snacks, I think, the committee snacks.
[Mark] We did not come up with an appropriate replacement for that, not even close. Everything else, totally fine. The snacks were missed a lot.
[Hannah] Exactly.
[Mark] This time of year it always involves a lot of guesswork. We are trying to guess how many students we should admit to get to our target class. This year obviously there was a lot of uncertainty about what that would look like. But I feel really good, I feel like we didn’t overthink it at the end of the day. We really didn’t change our approach to finalizing the class at all. Even though our yield, which is what we call sort of the process of admitted students choosing Yale over their other options, it was a really big question mark this year.
[Hannah] That’s right. But we made a pretty smooth transition to remote work, both in terms of just kind of the mechanics of it and also not changing up our process, not making any last minute drastic changes to the kinds of decisions that we were making.
[Mark] Yeah. And so far so good. We’re going to transition now and talk about that group of admitted students. So, we had some admitted students who found out early back in December. And they had made plans for coming to campus in April. We had to scuttle those plans around the middle of March. And we had to then operate for our newly admitted students who found out on March 26th, with explaining to them that they would not be able to visit campus this spring.
[Hannah] That’s right. So, full disclosure here, my role in the office is director of recruitment. Which in our terms means that I am responsible for all of the communications with admitted students, all admitted students on campus events. And before I held this role, Mark held this role for four years. So, April is the big month for you if you have this job. This is when everything kind of comes together. We usually host a three day on campus program called Bulldog Days for admitted students where 1,200 admitted students and 1,000 of their family members come to campus and have a jam packed three days of programming. Obviously, that did not happen this year.
[Mark] Yeah and we were bummed about that. There’s no way around that. It was disappointing for us to not meet most of our admitted students in person. It was sad to not have these wonderful events like a showcase of student performances and an extracurricular bazaar with hundreds of student groups trying to get new students to join their organizations. So, there was just no replacement for that. But–
[Hannah] But we kind of pivoted to move all of that stuff online. And I will just add, Mark said it was sad to make that decision, I remember so clearly the day. I mean, we had kind of known it was a possibility and then we knew it was a probability. And then the day when we kind of made the final call in mid-March it was just so sad. Because those three days when our admitted students come to campus it’s sort of the climactic part of the year for admissions officers. It’s our most exciting three days when we actually get to meet the students that we’ve been talking about all this time. So, we definitely spent some time mourning the loss of Bulldog days. And I’m sure our students did too. But we decided to take what is usually three days of programming at the end of April and turn it into 30 days of programming throughout all of April.
[Mark] And this was designed to keep high school students who we knew by April a couple of weeks into this they would be bored, a little stir crazy from self-isolating. And we wanted to keep them entertained with something to look forward to every single day. So, Hannah came up with a great calendar of events. She basically took those three days and spread them out over 30. We had master classes taught by real professors just for admitted students, panels with all sorts of resource centers, our Dean Jeremiah Quinlan did an “ask me anything” livestream that was a big hit, and there were a few creative ways that we engaged student groups and performers as well.
[Hannah] Yeah. So, usually we do this big performance showcase where we have student groups come to the Shubert Theater, which is a professional theater in downtown New Haven, and perform in front of the entire admitted class and their families. And since we couldn’t do that this year, we had those groups who were slated to perform record special kind of introduction videos for the class of 2024, introducing their groups, and then send us recordings of their favorite performances from the past couple of years and we shared that with admitted students. Similarly, we do this big in-person extracurricular bazaar. And in place of that, we had student groups record videos, 60-minute videos, kind of introducing their groups. They came up with a lot of really cool, creative things. I think that in this era of TikTok and Instagram challenges, there was a lot of inspiration out there for really cool videos. And my personal favorite, last night we did a virtual talent show. We called it 2024’s Got Talent. And this was really cool, because it’s something that I’ve been wanting to do at Bulldog Days for the past couple of years to give admitted students a chance to kind of show off their talents, but we’ve held off on doing it because if your talent is playing the cello, you don’t bring your cello to campus for Bulldog days. If your talent is tap dancing, you probably don’t have your tap shoes with you.
[Mark] Probably not. I don’t know, some might.
[Hannah] Right. So yeah, so we’ve never been able to do it in person but we thought this was a cool chance to do it virtually.
[Mark] It was awesome. I was just delighted by the entire thing. It was one of the things that was just so clear. No matter what the future holds, we’re doing this every single year. So, we pivoted, we found some new interesting things. At the same time, we look back and it’s not the same. We still want to bring students to campus. We, every year, invest lots and lots of money to bring students, particularly from lower and middle income households, to campus who wouldn’t be able to afford it otherwise. We still really believe in the value of the campus visit, but in a universe where that was not possible this year, this was definitely the next best thing.
[Hannah] Yeah. And what we’ve been calling the 30 Bulldog Days of April is really no substitute for visiting campus in person. But it’s been really cool to see how quickly and easily our Yale community has risen to the occasion. People did not need any convincing to sort of pivot their in-person events to virtual events. All of our professors and panelists who were signed up to be a part of Bulldog days were really eager and excited to do this virtually as well.
[Mark] Yeah, they’ve been fabulous. I’ll also say our admitted students have really impressed me. I mean, I can’t imagine the heartbreak that is associated with your last semester of your senior year just kind of being wiped out on all those special experiences. Compounded with all the uncertainty about what’s happening with college next year. I’ve just been so impressed with how upbeat and excited and wonderful these students have been. It’s been really, really wonderful to connect with them.
[Hannah] Yeah, totally and we’ve had some sort of interesting communication challenges as well, because there is just so much uncertainty about the next several months and the next year. Colleges are talking about how and when they can bring students back to campus. And we don’t have a clear picture of what that’s going to look like yet. We won’t have a clear picture of what it’s going to look like until June at the earliest. And yet we have a deadline of May 1st. So, that has presented a challenge, I think, for our admitted students, for their parents, and for us.
[Mark] Yeah, so we are grateful for the faith that people are putting in us. Obviously we share the frustration at this point. And again, if you’re listening from the future, please write back to us in April and let us know what’s happening. Like we’re all dying to know. There’s wild speculation at the moment. Pretty elaborate conspiracy theories about what Yale will look like in the fall. We don’t know, I don’t know, Hannah doesn’t know. We’re not holding anything away from students.
[Hannah] I wish we could tell you. I wish we could do a big reveal right now about that. We don’t have any more of an idea than you do.
[Mark] It’s a big shoulder shrug, but everyone’s taking it in stride. Which is similar shoulder shrug I think our prospective students are experiencing right now. During these months we are typically greeting thousands of high school juniors and sophomores to campus. Basically the period from March to August will bring tens of thousands of students to us and that is not happening this year.
[Hannah] That’s right. And we would also generally be doing a lot of spring outreach travel. I was planning to go to several countries in Africa in May. Obviously that’s not happening, super disappointing. But we had a lot of other trips planned as well. So, those of course have been canceled.
[Mark] So, what are we doing? Like everything else, like everybody else we’re pivoting. So, we are figuring out how to do as much as we can virtually. We’re taking advantage of our great virtual tour. We just launched virtual information sessions, which are live events that people can register for and connect with an admissions officer and a current student. And so far so good. And we’ve been participating in some virtual college fairs as well.
[Hannah] Yeah. Have you done a virtual information session yet? I haven’t done one yet.
[Mark] Me either.
[Hannah] I’m nervous.
[Mark] No, I’ve seen them though and they’ve been turning out great.
[Hannah] Cool.
[Mark] Again, no replacement for visiting campus but we’re doing our best. And a silver lining in this we hope is that we might be reaching some folks who might not have connected with us otherwise. I’m always interested in thinking about who’s logging into that session or taking that virtual tour who might not have considered Yale or ever been able to visit New Haven. So, I think there are some great opportunities there.
[Hannah] Yeah. We’re no longer limited by geography, anyone can tune in to these events.
[Mark] And as we look ahead, there’s a lot of anxiety about a lot of different things right now. I think the message that we want to present to folks is that: understand the world is different now. And so college admissions is going to be different now as well. We are not going to expect that students’ applications just sort of make it clear that they kind of breezed through this period, however long it is. We know that transcripts are going to look different, your extracurricular activities are going to look different, your summer does not look like the summer that you probably originally planned and we are going to understand that. And to talk about that, we are now going to actually call up our friend and boss, Jeremiah Quinlan the Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid, who is going to talk a little bit about his perspective on the admissions process going forward.
[Hannah] All right, so we have our boss, Jeremiah Quinlan Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid on the phone with us now.
[Jeremiah] Hi, guys.
[Hannah] Thank you for joining us, Jeremiah. This is not what we had pictured when we were thinking about your first appearance on this podcast. So, we appreciate you calling in.
[Jeremiah] Happy to be here.
[Mark] And we wanted you to talk a little bit about the future, and for students who are thinking about applying to college and how selective colleges, in the next couple of years, your thoughts. What would you tell a high school junior who’s concerned about their application and what it will look like next year?
[Jeremiah] Well, the first thing I would say is there’s a lot going on in the world right now and I would hope that your college application is not at the top of the list of your concerns. We in the Yale Admissions Office recognized that this global pandemic is going to have a lasting effect on schools and communities, academic records, and all the types of experiences in and out of school. And we are going to do what we continue to do best, which is to review students as whole people throughout the process, trying to get a deep understanding of the context in which they are applying, and read every single application we receive front to back, cover to cover. The thoughtful way that we do admissions in this podcast, which I know has been chronicled so well on this podcast, allows for this sort of thoughtful consideration and a lot of flexibility when we’re considering backgrounds and experiences of all of our applicants. And that’s not going to be different moving forward. In fact, that’s only going to be heightened in the upcoming admissions cycle. So, I hope that students understand that the way we approach this process is not going to change and we are going to do everything we can to understand the different challenges that students and families and communities have in terms of this pandemic and adjust our expectations and how we review applications, and what we think about these applications in light of that. Just because your college application that you put together in a few months is not going to be what you thought it was going to be a year ago, does not mean it’s going to be less compelling or less interesting. Know we are still going to be looking to admit incredibly talented, bright, motivated, accomplished, community minded individuals to the class of 2025 next year and there will be lots of different ways for students to showcase that, maybe different ways than we had previously thought, but still lots of ways for students to showcase that in the coming months on their applications. That’s all.
[Mark] And what about all the decisions that schools have had to make about academic records? You know transcripts are going to look different next year. What would you tell a student who’s concerned about what their transcript will look like after they had to make really quick changes to what their courses and instruction looked like this past spring?
[Jeremiah] Sure, I mean that’s a great question. Big picture: I just want to assure all future applicants to Yale that your schools and communities’ response to this outbreak and all the personal circumstances associated with it are not going to negatively impact your chances at admission at Yale. We are aware that schools are taking a diverse set of approaches to curriculum and assessment during this time. I mean, under normal circumstances we are very familiar with lots of different grading scales and lots of different assessment criteria that schools use and that’s only going to be amplified in the coming application cycle. Transcripts are going to look different for at least this semester. And you should know that regardless of the school’s decision, the school you attend, the decision that they made, we’re going to work really hard to understand that specific decision that you need context. And we’re not going to penalize students whose transcripts lack letter grades or students whose transcript type is something more inconsistent this year than previous. We’re going to not try to recalculate or re-rate GPAs. We’ll probably look a lot more closely at the academic performance of students before March, before all this happened. And we will obviously see the grades that the schools are giving this semester, but we’re going to understand this performance is being done under the larger umbrella of global events that might be having serious impacts on your health, your family’s health, and community’s health and we’re not going to try to trend up the expectancy that you’re going to be able to maintain the same academic performance over the past few months that they may might have had the first eight or nine months of the academic year. Also we also understand that this outbreak has caused a sort of cancellation of events, activities, sports seasons, programs, summer opportunities, just like it’s caused disruptions to families’ lives and even if it’s changed everyone’s opportunity to do different things, we understand that is the case. And while we wish you were right now wrapping up some of your longstanding interesting commitments, we are going to understand that those things were not impossible this spring and we understand the students are going to take additional responsibilities at home. We’ll see how many businesses, if it’s applicable. And we’re going to take that specific context into account. And if you tried to change your plans or change commitments, as every single applicant, to do that’s not going to be a negative. We’re going to try to update our advice to applicants as we move into the next admission cycle. But understand that we are still going to try to get a good sense of student’s commitments and their appreciation for how they spend their time when they’re not in the classroom. We understand that that’s more limited now than it used to be and we’re going to take that into account and community considerations moving forward.
[Hannah] Well said. I’m sure that would be reassuring for a lot of people to hear. So, thank you Jeremiah for calling in and joining us. I’m sure we’ll see you around a Zoom meeting soon and we’ll have you back on the podcast when we can do this all in person.
[Jeremiah] My pleasure. I cannot wait to be back on 38 HillHouse Avenue in the undergraduate admissions office in person. But in the meantime, everyone out there, take deep breaths. Good luck with finishing up your academic year. And we look forward to reviewing your applications next fall and next winter.
[Mark] Thanks, Jeremiah.
[Hannah] Well, thank you for tuning in. We hope this gave you a little bit of a look into what we’ve been working on and how we’ve been adjusting in the past several weeks. We also hope that wherever you are, you are safe and healthy and that we’ll be back to normal life relatively soon.
[Mark] Thanks as always to our friend and colleague Jill, who is our sound engineer and admissions officer. Jill walked me through how to operate the equipment today via Zoom, so special thanks to Jill. Thanks to Reed, who lends us his office when we are in the admissions office. Thanks, of course, to former admissions officer Andrew Rick Johnson, who composes our music, check him out at AndrewRickJohnson.com. Drop us a line at YaleAdmissionsPodcast@gmail.com to give us an idea for a future episode or to give us feedback on an episode you just heard. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are ours and don’t necessarily represent those of Yale University.
[MUSIC PLAYING]

Essays: What Doesn’t Work

Part 2 of 3. Application essays are an opportunity to speak directly to admissions officers and share meaningful insights and reflections. Unsuccessful essays miss that opportunity. Hannah and Mark share some of the ineffective choices that regularly appear in essays and discuss why each choice doesn’t work to the student’s benefit.

[QUIRKY MUSIC]
[Mark] Hello, and welcome back to Inside the Yale Admissions Office. My name is Mark and I’m a Yale admissions officer.
[Hannah] And I’m Hannah. I’m also a Yale admissions officer. On our last episode, we talked a lot about application essays. And today we want to talk to you a little bit more about that. Last episode we talked about what really works well in applications so be sure to listen to that first, if you haven’t already. And today we’re going to talk a little bit about what doesn’t work so well.
And just a general reminder from last episode, we want essays to be good. We love reading essays. We spend a lot of our time at our job reading them. So we have spent a little bit more time talking about what works in those essays because I think there’s a little bit more to say there. But we also wanted to give you a little taste of this as well.
[Mark]  Right. And as we said, last episode, there are certain choices that people make in their essays. We’re not going to be talking simply about topics. It’s really individual choices. Sometimes they’re big. Sometimes they’re small. And when those choices work really well, they lead to a really clear idea of who the applicant is, and gives us an idea of what that person will add to our community.
The other side of that same coin is that there are certain choices that just frequently lead to ineffective essays. What we mean is that as readers, we come across this and we kind of say, oh, man, missed opportunity.
[Hannah] Yes.
[Mark] We’re reading it and we’re like, I know that this student is more interesting and dynamic and there’s more to this person than what I’m seeing here. But those 650 words just came and went. And I don’t know a lot more about that person.
[Hannah] Yes. And we’re going to be talking a little bit about specific essay topics that don’t work as well, as well as sort of stylistic choices. But just in general, these are not universal things. And they’re never going to be the reason alone that you would be denied from Yale. We have admitted students every year who have made every single one of the choices that I think we’ll be talking about. So just keep that in mind, that choosing to do one of these things in your essay is not a death sentence. But we do recommend avoiding these things just because we think there are better ways to get your message across.
[Mark] What we’re also hoping to convey is that these are things that there’s pretty strong consensus about. We’ll talk about our little exercise that we went through this winter, Hannah and I, to come up with our shared lists of things that don’t work, but these are not just Hannah’s least favorite things, or Mark’s least favorite things. We think that there is some general consensus that these are just choices that don’t quite work as well as they could in that space.
[Hannah] When we talk about essays not working, we don’t mean that they’re bad pieces of writing. We talked about this in our last episode, that we’re not looking for perfect prose here. We’re looking to get to know you. So when we’re saying that essays don’t work, it doesn’t mean that it’s a bad piece. It means that it doesn’t quite do the job of helping us get to know you as well as it could.
[Mark] Right. So another push, if you’ve not listened to the previous episode, go back and have a listen. That will tell you all the things that you should be thinking about in order to be successful in this piece. I think probably the most common shortcoming, or feeling that I have when I’m reading an essay that’s not successful, is the sense of “so what?”
[Hannah] Yes.
[Mark] It can sometimes be a lovely piece of writing. It can be very well-polished. But I– and then I say, OK, that was nice. But so what?
[Hannah] I actually had an English teacher in high school who would use that as a way to get us to reflect more in our essays. We did a lot of personal reflection, which was awesome. But he would literally write “so what?” at the end of paragraphs.
[LAUGHTER]
I found it really annoying at the time. But now I really appreciate it andI find myself going through that same thought process when I’m reading essays a lot of the time.
[Mark] Yeah. You know, you’re on to something. It’s almost always, OK, this could be the start of something great. But we just ran out of space and we never got around to the “so what” here.
[Hannah] Right. Dig a little deeper and just a reminder that we always want our applicants to put our best foot forward. That’s the whole point of the college application, is you’re presenting your best self and we want that for you, too, as admissions officers.
So something that we’ll often do in the committee room is if we are presenting an application to the admissions committee that we’re really excited about for whatever reason, and they have one of these essays that missed the mark, we’ll often say, you know what? Don’t read that first essay. Just save yourself some time. Let’s skip it in the committee room.
[Mark] Right. Sometimes the case just doesn’t lie there and it’s our job as admissions officers when we are building a case for a student and putting together our work cards and presenting to committee– episodes 1, 2 of our podcast– again, sometimes the essays are a critical piece of the puzzle. And sometimes we say, guys, you’re not going to learn anything new there but you want to dig into the other parts here.
[Hannah]  Right. All right. Let’s get into it.
[Mark] All right so this is exciting. This is something that Hannah and I have been working on for a few months now. We had an idea for this episode back in January when we were right in the thick of application reading and we got together and we sort of agreed, yeah, there are probably topics that we will just come across over the next few months that we will not cringe, but we will come across and we’ll say, oh, man, that missed the mark and let’s try to keep a list.
So each one of us has kept a list. We’ve not shared them yet. Today is going to be the big reveal, almost six months later since we’ve started, of what we put on our list. Basically every time that we were reading an application essay and we said, oh, that just wasn’t– that wasn’t effective, it missed the mark, we wrote down what the thing was that we thought wasn’t effective.
I want to make clear before we get started, we have this little gimmick but we don’t take any pleasure in reading an essay that’s not effective, or reveling in what you might perceive as a mistake that a student made. Again, these are– we’re not going to be talking about mistakes or failures here. We’re really going to be talking about missed opportunities.
I’ll go ahead and say I think that anyone listening, if you were in the position of reading thousands of essays, I imagine you would probably come up with a very similar list. That’s the thought that is undergirding this entire exercise. There were always things that we have seen a lot, the predictable shortcomings there and we are going to share them in the style of a Boggle list.
[Hannah] Mark is really excited about this idea.
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] Are you comfortable explaining the idea of a Boggle list?
[Hannah] Yeah. It’s been a while since I’ve played Boggle but Boggle’s the game. You have the letters in the box that you shake up. Can we get an audio cue for that?
[BOGGLE CUBES SHAKING]
[Mark] Yep. I have my Boggle game right here.
[Hannah] There you go. And you make a list of all the words that you can see with the combination of letters. The way the game is scored is the players will compare their lists against each other and the words that I would have that Mark doesn’t have, I would get a point for. Is that right?
[Mark] Exactly right.
[Hannah] OK.
[Mark] All right. So should we dive into it?
[Hannah]  Yeah. You go first.
[Mark] OK. I’ll go first. Here’s one. This is the essay that’s written in the third person, or it usually starts in the third person and there’s usually a twist about two or three paragraphs in where you turn to, and you say, “that little girl was me.”
So with all respect to Senator Harris from California, this essay, I understand why you write this essay. You want to give the storytelling element of something and then you want to shift. You think there’s going to be a big surprise.
And it doesn’t quite work because I always know that it’s you. Right? The twist of like, that was me, I’m like, I’m never like, oh, wow. And I’m usually sort of scanning down and say, OK, when is the twist happening?
I put that first there. It actually connects to a few other things on my list later on. So that’s my first one. Is that on your list?
[Hannah] That’s interesting. I don’t have that specifically but what I do have is drama for the sake of drama, which I think maybe that what you just said falls under this larger umbrella category, which is feeling like you need to dramatize your story, or that you need to have some sort of tragic set of circumstances in order to stand out to the admissions committee. Overdramatizing your essay often gets in the way of what could be just a very simple and good story for us to hear.
[Mark] Right and I will say that I think that connects to one on my list, which is the essay that’s really all storytelling, the one that just sort of gives you a nice beginning, middle, and end. It’s usually a pretty interesting story, like I can tell why you wanted the story to be part of your application but oftentimes, it has been overdramatized and it has used up the space to tell the story, as opposed to using some of that space, at least, to reflect on the story there.
[Hannah] Yes. Yep. I didn’t have that, but totally. I feel like that’s such a big one is to leave time for reflection. Kind of similar, I have an essay that spends too much time in the past.
[Mark] Yes.
[Hannah] OK.
[Mark] Check, check.
[Hannah] Check.
[Mark] On my list. Yes. Stuck in the past.
[Hannah] Any admissions officer you talk to, I feel like this will be one of the first things they bring up, is that it can be so frustrating because if an essay is written about an experience that you had when you were five years old or when you were in seventh grade, a lot has happened since then. You’ve changed a lot. You’re 17 or 18. You’re applying to college now. So sometimes students will use that as a starting point and show some growth. But sometimes they’ll just get stuck in the past and we are just like, OK, but what about now?
[Mark] Yes.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark]  Here’s one. I call this the cover letter essay. This is the one that takes your activities list, what is sometimes called the activities brag, and writes the essay that’s sort of like a cover letter accompanying a resume. So if you apply for a job, you’re going to submit a resume with your professional activities and you’re going to use something called a cover letter to expound on some pieces of the resume. The cover letter essay does that and misses the opportunity to tell us something new.
[Hannah] Right. OK. So I don’t have that specifically but again, I think I have the umbrella theme, which is not using the space wisely in your application. What I mean– the way I think these two things connect is you have space in your application to tell us about your activities already. You don’t need to spend or waste your essay going– rehashing those so think about the overall real estate that you have in your application. And make sure that if you’re talking about your activities and expressing what they are in one spot, you don’t need to do that again in your essay. Often you could choose an activity that’s important to you to reflect on and that sometimes makes for a great essay. But that’s different from what Mark is talking about, this sort of cover letter-type thing.
[Mark]  Mm-hmm. Yes. All right. I’ve got a few that are in the small content pieces. So this is one. This is probably the most specific one I’ll get to. We just come across this so many times, I thought it was worth mentioning– the death of a grandparent essay.
[Hannah] Ooh. Yeah.
[Mark]  So I know why you write this essay. Death of a grandparent is a very challenging experience. I had a grandparent who died in high school. It’s often unsuccessful, though, because first of all, it is very predictable. Right? If I start reading the essay about this grandparent, I have a pretty good inclination that the essay is going to end with that grandparent dying.
So my piece of advice for this– it is an essay topic that can work. But my advice– it’s going to sound a little morbid–
[Hannah] Oh, no,
[Mark] : –is to follow Alfred Hitchcock on this, right? So another old movie reference. I’ve had a lot of these.
[Hannah] Is this a movie podcast?
[LAUGHTER]
[Hannah] What are we doing here?
[Mark]  Yes. It is also a movie podcast. The great Hitchcock classic Psycho is so good for so many reasons.
[Hannah] Hmm. OK.
[Mark]  One of the reasons it’s so good is that the main character dies way earlier than you expect, right? It’s less than 30 minutes into the start of the movie, which means the rest of the movie is not the movie that you expected and it’s much more interesting. So if you are going to use something like the death of a grandparent to get to something else, that can be great but make it clear that the event of that death, that should happen early in the essay, to leave you space for reflection and insights that are connected to that event.
So that’s different than just, my grandparent lived this wonderful life. She did all these great things. I had this nice relationship with her and then I was very sad when she passed away. That’s the typical arc of that essay and if you kind of compress all of that into maybe the first third, like the first act of your essay, you now have so much more space to give what could be actually some really interesting insights about you as an applicant now.
[Hannah] Again, I don’t have this specifically. But sort of semi-related is when I feel like I’m reading someone’s biography. That can be really frustrating and often it is a grandparent, living or dead.
When you are writing an essay about your relationship with another person– and again, we touched on last episode– make sure it’s reflecting back to you and that you’re not just sort of writing that person’s biography, because that may be interesting, but it’s not necessarily going to be helpful for us to figure out exactly who you are.
[Mark]  Yes. Absolutely. All right. Another little one from me. This should go without saying, but I’m surprised every single year. Bathroom humor, anything related to anything happening in the bathroom, it shouldn’t be in your essay.
[Hannah] Yeah. I don’t– I don’t get it. What is that desire?
[Mark]  I don’t know. Every year it happens. And every year we say: oh, no. So that’s pretty much like– the other ones sometimes have some wiggle room. That’s a red line here, don’t go there.
[Hannah] I feel like I have this one again in more broad terms, like going for the shock factor. I think that there’s this idea that if you shock your admissions officer, you’ll get our attention. Let me just free you of that expectation. You can’t shock us.
[LAUGHTER]
We’ve seen it all. So that’s not a great way to ground your decision on what to write your essay about.
[Mark]  Mm-hmm. Yeah. We love the fact that we work at a university that draws a really diverse applicant pool. Students have all kinds of different experiences and insights and that’s one of the reasons why, when I come across this line in an essay, I get a little frustrated. And this is the line that says, “Unlike most people…”
[Hannah] Oh. Mm-hmm.
[Mark] That always rubs me the wrong way because it’s suggesting some exceptionalism, right? Again, I know why it’s in there. You’re trying to use the essay to say what you think makes you unique. You’re trying to convey– I want to present myself as an individual. That’s part of the task. But when you define yourself in opposition to other folks, it can make you come across as pretty ungenerous to other folks, and make us really sort of concerned about what you’ll be like as a peer in a really diverse setting. Are you going to keep defining yourself as being just different from other people?
[Hannah] All right. My turn?
[Mark]  Yeah.
[Hannah] OK. This is– I feel like this is another easy prompt that could be a starting place, but that I don’t necessarily think really works well, is writing an essay as a letter to someone.
[Mark]  Oh, yes.
HANNAH: Particularly your future roommate or yourself.
[Mark]  That’s on my list.
[Hannah] Oh, really?
[Mark]  Yes. So that’s a shared Boggle list one.
[Hannah] Yeah. Yeah. The letter to self or the letter to the future roommate– again, I get it as a prompt. And it can be helpful as a little creative writing exercise, I think. But it’s just a little too gimmicky, I think. Yeah. I can’t really wrap my head around exactly what it is that doesn’t make those essays work as well. I don’t know.
[Mark]  Yes. I think people– you tend to get wrapped up in the gimmick. And again, I think it’s sort of comforting because it takes what has been a very nebulous prompt and makes it a little bit narrower and easier to dig in but I often find myself thinking that a huge amount of content in that essay has been devoted to propping up the gimmick of the letter. It has a salutation. And it has these little turns of phrase in the style of a letter. Yeah. It just often doesn’t use the space very well.
[Hannah] This is another one where I just feel like, ah, you missed this opportunity here– a story of failure without redemption and this is tricky because I think there’s actually a Common App essay prompt that says, tell about a failure, or a time you were wrong, or whatever, which is great. That can be a great prompt and a great kind of essay but if you spend the entire essay focused on the failure without getting to the redemption part, or getting to the redemption part too late, we say, well, we want to see how you came out on the other side of this. Clearly it was an important experience to you. So don’t dwell too much on the experience itself. Tell us about where you ended up afterwards.
[Mark] Right and this is clearly a fine line, because we talked about this in the last episode, about how an experience where you really weren’t at your best can actually be a really successful essay topic, because you’re willing to make yourself vulnerable and come across as a flawed human. But as we noted then, you shouldn’t just revel in that awful experience, whether it’s just connected to you or to something larger, right? There’s a lot of essays that deal with real hardship. And that’s something that can be very insightful for a student in reflecting about something that they’ve come through. You always want to make space for that reflection and that insight.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be that everything’s hunky-dory now, right? Like, it’s not the case– well, we had this challenge but, hey, it’s all better now. We understand that a lot of these things are still alive and real and raw but the essay shouldn’t just be an exercise in detailing the challenges or the failures or the frustrations. It should also be a chance to reflect and provide some insight on it. Again, to the very first point we got to– so what? So you’ve been through this. So you failed. So what? Where are you now as a result of all that?
[Hannah] Yep. Definitely.
[Mark]  That’s everything on my list.
[Hannah] All right. I have one more. An essay that feels “over-thesaurused”.
[Mark]  Oh, yeah.
[Hannah] Which is a word that I just made up. And I considered looking up an actual word for what I’m trying to say and then I realized I would defeat the whole purpose of what I’m trying to say. So what I mean is when you’re reading an essay and it’s just not using natural language. It’s using these big words that are kind of shoehorned in and it’s very clear that this person wrote an essay with a thesaurus by their side.
Again, you want to sound smart in your essays. But we would actually rather that you sound authentic than you sound very smart and sophisticated.
[Mark] Right and our applicants, they have big vocabularies. By all means, use full license to use that big vocabulary. But when you use a word like “alacrity,” when “speed” would work just as well, it’s hard for me to imagine that you hang out with your friends and use the word “alacrity” in conversation with them.
[Hannah] Right. Right. Yeah. Go for the conversational tone, I would say, over the overwritten tone.
[Mark]  Yeah. So we were coming back to some pretty consistent themes as we were going through these lists together. We don’t present this as some sort of secret list of things that will get you denied if you write about any of these things and as we said, I think if just about anyone read these essays like we do, they would come up with a very similar list.
These are guideposts for you, last episode and this episode, to think about, OK, am I moving more towards the roadmap that made it sound like these are more successful essays? Or am I veering dangerously towards one of these choices that often isn’t that successful?
[Hannah] Definitely. And you might say, you know what? Those Hannah and Mark people don’t know what they’re talking about. I’m going to write this essay about my deceased grandfather and you know what? Go for it. If you feel like that’s the right choice for you, I think you should follow your gut but certainly listen to what we’re saying. And listen to why we’re saying some of these things don’t quite work as well as you might think that they would.
Just overall, just a reminder since some of this episode has had a little bit of a more negative tone. It’s really a privilege, I think, to have thousands and thousands of students entrust us with their personal stories. I think about that all the time when we’re reading applications. It’s totally not lost on us how lucky we are to be able to read all these stories, many of them very, very personal, many of them things that the student hasn’t revealed to their friends or to their family or to their community.
So that is not lost on us. Whatever form these essays take, we– I regularly take the time to pause during the reading season and think to myself, oh, wow, this person is really sharing something special with us.
[Mark]  Yeah. Absolutely and it’s something that I remember being very uncomfortable about myself when I was in high school. It is weird to pour yourself out onto the page and then click it off into the ether, and don’t know what’s going to be on the other end so I think, as we’ve said before, imagining a real human person on the other end reading the essay can be one of the starting points to try to put yourself authentically into that space.
The essay is a snapshot. It is one piece of the puzzle. We are very aware of the fact that we are getting, hopefully, something directly from the student that is insightful but it’s just one piece of the puzzle.
Because of that, we have a lot of different pieces of the application. A little preview for next episode. We’re going to talk about all of the small pieces of the application that Yale admissions officers craft that we ask all our applicants to respond to in addition to those essays.
[Hannah]  They range from the size of your average tweet to a longer paragraph and every single one of them is on the application for a specific reason. We spend a lot of time in the summer crafting those questions. So next time, we will talk to you a little bit about those.
[Mark] Yeah. Thanks as always to our friend and colleague, Jill, who’s both our sound engineer and a great admissions officer. Thanks to Reed, who lends us his office when we are recording in the office. We’re still not back in the office yet. But thanks anyway, Reed. Thanks as always to former admissions officer Andrew Brick Johnson who composes our music. You can check him out at AndrewBrickJohnson.com.
[Hannah] If you have comments or an idea for an episode, feel free to drop us a line at YaleAdmissionsPodcast.com@gmail.com. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are ours and don’t necessarily represent those of Yale University.
[Mark and Hannah] Thanks for listening.
[QUIRKY MUSIC]

Episode 7: QuestBridge

The Yale Admissions Office is a proud partner with QuestBridge, a national non-profit organization that connects students from low-income backgrounds with leading colleges and universities. Mark and Hannah interview QuestBridge Founder and CEO Ana McCullough about the organization’s strategy for matching top low-income students with full-need scholarships at top schools. Admissions officer Corrine also joins to share how Yale admissions staff review QuestBridge applications.

[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] Welcome back to Inside the Yale Admissions Office. My name is Mark and I’m a Yale Admissions Officer.
[Hannah] And I’m Hannah. I’m also a Yale Admissions Officer.
[Mark] And today we are talking all about Yale’s partnership with QuestBridge. And you might have absolutely no idea what we are talking about, but this is an episode that we’ve really been looking forward to.
[Hannah] Yeah, so just a quick definition– if you haven’t heard of it, QuestBridge is a national nonprofit organization that helps connect students from lower income backgrounds to selective colleges.
[Mark] And Yale has been a very proud partner with QuestBridge for the last 14 years and I want to say right away that even if this is the very first time that you are hearing about this organization, and even if you aren’t a prospective student who would ever consider applying to colleges through QuestBridge, we still think this episode will be interesting and insightful.
[Hannah] Yes, we are not going to go over how one goes about applying to Yale through QuestBridge. We won’t talk about whether or not you should apply to Yale through QuestBridge. We just want to give you some insider info on our process.
[Mark] Right, we’re hoping that we can take you inside our process. This is inside the Yale Admissions Office. We’re going to try to show you why we are such big fans of this partnership, and also talk a little bit about what it’s like to read QuestBridge applications because students who apply to Yale through QuestBridge use a different application than other students.
[Hannah] Our hope is to reveal something about our process of building a diverse class, and to talk a little bit about a part of our work that’s much bigger than just our own student body.
[Mark] And I’m also excited because we have not just one, but two special guests joining us here today. Our colleague Corinne is going to talk about how we, as admissions officers, read QuestBridge applications but first, we are talking with Anna McCullough. She is the co-founder and CEO of QuestBridge, the national nonprofit organization. She has agreed to be our first-ever guest from outside the Yale Admissions Office. We’ve hit it big. We’ve officially booked our first outside guest.
[Hannah] So exciting. But before we chat with our guest, let’s just cover a few basics about the QuestBridge application. Being a QuestBridge partner, it means that Yale participates in something called the “QuestBridge match.” We said we weren’t going to get bogged down in the details, and we won’t, but we do want to give a quick overview so you’re not totally lost. So here’s how a student applies to colleges through QuestBridge.
[Mark] All right, step one– students submit a free application to the QuestBridge organization in September of their senior year. It’s a complete college application. It’s got essays, letters of recommendation, a transcript, and it also includes information about your family’s financial resources.
Step two, QuestBridge reviews all those applications and names a few thousand students as finalists. That happens in October. Then those finalists rank up to 12 colleges from 42 different colleges and universities that are QuestBridge partners.
[Hannah] Yeah, so “ranking” means that you are applying for admission and financial aid and you put however many colleges you are ranking in a specific order. We in the admissions office don’t see your rankings. Other colleges don’t see your rankings. We just know that you are applying to Yale as a QuestBridge finalist.
[Mark] Then November comes along, and all of those colleges review those applications. We do a full admissions review and we tell QuestBridge which students we want to match with and a match is exciting because a match means that a student has been offered admission and has been offered the school’s most generous financial aid award. At Yale, that’s something called a” Zero Parent Share Award”, which means that your parent or guardian is not going to be asked to pay anything for tuition, room and board, personal expenses, anything at all.
[Hannah] Yep and then finally in December, QuestBridge takes all of the information and crunches the numbers. So for example, if you rank three colleges and all three tell QuestBridge that they want to match with you, you’ll match with the college that was highest on your list.
[Mark] I know that all seems a little bit complicated, but I hope that you can see the appeal for students here. If you apply through QuestBridge, you are able to apply to a bunch of top colleges completely for free and you might get an amazingly generous scholarship and have your entire application and admissions process wrapped up by December of your senior year.
[Hannah] Yes, although that doesn’t happen for everyone and actually, most of the QuestBridge finalists that we eventually admit in a given year don’t match with Yale.
[Mark] That’s a really good point.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] If you don’t match, you’ve not been denied. That’s not the same thing.
[Hannah] Right. We’re going to do a whole other full review of your application and give you a final decision in March, along with everyone else and the most important thing about this is that the admissions process and the financial aid process is exactly the same, regardless of how or when you apply. You don’t automatically get a leg up in the admissions process or in your financial aid application just simply by applying through QuestBridge.
[Mark] Right. We know that the match process is really appealing for a lot of prospective students. From our perspective, though, that’s really just one piece of the puzzle. It’s sort of an on-ramp into our admissions process that helps us, hopefully, see a large number of really, really strong students who are from lower income backgrounds.
[Hannah] Yes. And we could go on and on about the mechanics of the process and that’s probably how, if you’re an applicant and applying through QuestBridge, how you’re going to think about it, but we want to talk a little bit about the larger goals that we have as a partner school and the larger goals of the QuestBridge organization itself.
[Mark] Right. At the end of the day, the QuestBridge partnership for us is all about these big picture challenges, these big picture opportunities and to talk about that, we are thrilled to be joined by co-founder and CEO of QuestBridge, Anna McCullough.
[Anna] Hi. Wonderful to be here. Thanks for having me.
[Mark] So we wanted to ask you some big-picture questions. QuestBridge is a large organization. You guys have a big full-time staff, and you all focus on really big issues of access, and equity, and diversity in higher education. So the first question I wanted to ask you is, how would you describe the big national challenge that QuestBridge works to address?
[Anna] Well, there is a great amount of talent throughout America, in every corner, in every region, that historically has not been able to gain access to the nation’s best colleges and universities. They number in the tens of thousands every year and so we realized that these students who are absolutely qualified are not applying because they just don’t have access to information. They often don’t know about the availability of, for example, generous financial aid that schools like Yale will offer to them. They also don’t realize just how much the schools really want those students on those campuses, and how much they can add to the campuses, and how much they can gain from that.
[Hannah] Yeah, so how would you sort of summarize QuestBridge’s vision for addressing that challenge?
[Anna] We work hard to find these students through a very extensive recruiting process that we engage in every year, and have been doing since we first started this organization back in the mid ’90s. Today, just in terms of scale, to give you a sense of that, we have over 8,500 QuestBridge scholar undergraduates attending our 42 college partners, and over 10,000 QuestBridge alumni who have already graduated from our colleges.
[Mark] As I know, it is very difficult to get 42 colleges and universities to agree on anything. We kind of all live in our own universes so I’ve always been impressed that you and QuestBridge has gotten us all together in a shared vision for this. So I’m kind of curious, what has your value proposition been for colleges? When you have gone out to talk to partners, what do you explain to them that they will gain by partnering with QuestBridge?
[Anna] I’m glad you shared your experience there because what I’ve found, and what we found even in the very early days, is that there are so many extremely sincere college admissions counselors, deans, leaders at our schools that really want these students and want to find them. And so one of the things that does– even though everybody has their own philosophy that slightly different approach, we find that the one thing that they commonly agree upon is that they want to diversify their campuses, and they want to make sure that their opportunities are made available and accessible.
So that’s the one thing I think that I see commonly that our colleges agree upon. And we also share with our schools that because of our long time doing this, 25 years, we have built long-term relationships with educators, with high schools, with community-based organizations, and other folks really on the ground who know these students well, and who know how to find them and to help us identify these amazing people. QuestBridge scholars graduate at exactly the same rate as other students that are college partners so they really are top students who are genuinely able to thrive at these universities and colleges.
We’ve also had QuestBridge scholars, for example, become the student body president or leader of the student body in a number of our schools and a lot of them actually go on to serve on the board of trustees or other important roles in the university and many of them also have done a lot of work to improve the university’s ability to support students like them.
One more thing I would add is because we represent 42 schools right now, 42 colleges and universities, it makes our message an encouragement to apply to college through QuestBridge a little bit different than what any one college could do alone and so the student will apply to QuestBridge because they’ve heard of one school in our network or maybe two, but through education during the QuestBridge application process, they open their minds to other possibilities. Often, students will find their ultimate dream school just by the exposure to the network of 42 schools.
[Hannah] That’s a really good segue to talk a little bit about the student side of this process. Mark and I have covered the basics of the match process and talked about the generous scholarships that students can get but what else do students gain by organizing their college application process through QuestBridge, in your eyes?
[Anna] Yeah, sure, and the financial aid is really one of the biggest incredible benefits of applying through QuestBridge and again, thanks to the generosity of our college partners, they can get a full four-year scholarship, we often say worth over $200,000, which covers tuition, room and board, and additional expenses. So that’s a really huge one, of course.
The QuestBridge application also offers more opportunities than some of the other applications out there to really tell your unique story and we designed the application very early in our process of building QuestBridge around specifically this kind of student. So it is really tailored and customized to try to engage and enable our students to share the best of themselves.
Also, very practically speaking, college application fees, as you know, can cost up to $90 per school and so that can be very limiting. So through the QuestBridge application, you can actually apply for free to 42 schools. And finally, we share with our students that if you become a member of the QuestBridge community, first as a finalist in high school, and then later on as an undergraduate and a graduate of college, that you are entering and participating in a very robust and supportive community of peers, and of really exceptional peers who oftentimes become lifelong friends amongst each other.
[Mark] Over the last 25 years, you all have had a lot of successes and you’ve done a really amazing job making these connections between students, and then colleges and universities. What are the most persistent challenges that students face?
[Anna] Yeah, it’s a great question, and actually something that we encountered in the early years of QuestBridge, when we used to have a residential summer program at one of our colleges. We kind of were able to distill from those many years and lessons that we learned from our students and their families what we call the “five roadblocks” or the five questions that sometimes can stop a student from continuing on in the application process. So the first question is actually, do these colleges even want me? And that’s actually an interesting question that a lot of times, it doesn’t even occur to them that they would even be attractive candidates to colleges like our partners and so we try to make sure that they know that, yes, the colleges are very interested in you, and want you to apply, and want you to be successful.
And then the second question is just a straight, am I qualified? We have over 70% of our population every year is in the first generation to college so they’re first gen in their families. They often don’t have anyone in their immediate family, often even in their community or anyone close to them, that’s actually gone through the application process for a top college or a top private college and so they don’t realize just how qualified they actually are. I mean, you would be surprised. Sometimes the students are so amazing, and they don’t even know that they would be so appealing as college applicants to the best colleges in the country.
A third question, one of the central questions, roadblocks, is, can I afford it? And as you know, there’s a lot of information out there online and other sources that say that these schools are just too expensive and they’re not accessible just from a dollar perspective. So we really try to share information about the generous aid that our schools give, and show that these schools truly are affordable.
The fourth question is, how do I navigate the application process? And as I said, the majority of them are first gen so they just aren’t familiar with it. So we do a lot of coaching. We do a lot of teaching, even in the process of asking our applicants to do certain types of research, and we support them in multiple ways in the process of applying to college.
And finally, the fifth question– let’s say that you were able to kind of address all the other four– yes, the colleges want me, OK, maybe I’m qualified, maybe I can afford it, and maybe I have some of the mechanics of the application process. The fifth question is, well, if I get in, are there going to be people like me at these schools or am I going to be alone? I mean, is this a place I want to be? Do I even want to live on a campus like this for four years? So that’s where our community of undergraduates and alumni are so helpful and valuable to be able to share. Yes, I’m either at the school or I graduated from this school. And yes, it was a life-changing opportunity. And yes, you will find people that you can actually be authentic with and genuine with. And even though there will also be a wide range of other types of students who maybe are less familiar to you, that you’re not going to be alone. And not only does the school want you to succeed, but there are other students who you can relate to who also want you to succeed.
So those are the five. But I would say the other thing that’s worth saying here is that even though we’ve been doing this for 25 years, we still encounter, when we talk to students and they say, oh, we got your letter in the mail, or we got the postcard, or we saw something about QuestBridge and the opportunity that it provides to get a full scholarship at a school like Yale or our other partners, they often believe it’s just too good to be true. The word, is it a scam, that surprisingly happens more often than you might think after all these years, but it still happens and so thankfully, it’s not a scam. There are lots and lots of students who have been through the process. And so again, that’s where it helps to have the real people who’ve been through it to prove that it’s actually not a scam at all, and it’s something that’s really very much available.
[Mark] Anna, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, more importantly, for the great work that you and your team at QuestBridge do. We love being a partner with you all and it’s such a great asset for us to have a great partner in you and in the 41 other schools.
[Anna] Thank you so much. It’s really great to be with you and of course, we were very grateful for the partnership with Yale. It’s made such a difference for us as we’ve grown and developed. So we’re really grateful for all that you’re doing and all that you’re doing for these students, as well. So thank you.
[Mark] After hearing from Ana you can tell why we are proud to partner with QuestBridge.
[Hannah] Definitely. Working with QuestBridge highlights one reason that admissions work is really interesting. Not only are we getting to individual students and their unique stories and backgrounds, but we also get to deal with these really big issues and policy challenges.
[Mark] Right. I consider myself a policy wonk. I’m the kind of person who can get really excited about a line graph or a pie chart that shows increasing representation of first generation or low-income students. But what we love about our job is that every data point is a person. Our selection process, as you’ve heard us say before– it’s all about real individual people.
[Hannah] Absolutely. I have seen you get really excited about line graphs and pie charts. I can vouch for that. But the same values, the same reading process, the same committee process, everything we’ve covered in previous episodes applies to QuestBridge applicants, as well. So we decided to invite our colleague Corinne to talk a little bit about how we go about reading the QuestBridge application. Hi, Corinne.
[Corrine] Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me. I’m super excited to be here.
[Mark] We are thrilled to have you, Corinne. Corinne and I really are the duo that directs our QuestBridge partnership for the office. So we get really deep into our QuestBridge work every single year. The two of us probably read more QuestBridge applications than anybody else in the office. So Corinne, we thought you would be the perfect guest to really talk about what our reading process looks like when it comes to reading the few thousand QuestBridge applications that our staff will review every single year.
[Corinne] Absolutely. I love reading QuestBridge applications and honestly, it’s not that much different from reading other applications, when you think about it. Overall, the basic information in any application that Yale accepts, including that QuestBridge application, is the same. Each of our three application platforms is going to ask for a student’s personal information, family and background context, their extracurricular list, transcripts, class details, all that kind of stuff and we also receive letters of recommendation from teachers and counselors in any of our applications. So all that’s pretty standard across the board.
The big difference, and where I get excited, is in the QuestBridge application and their essays in particular, we get a bit more insight into the student’s story. We often learn more about the student’s background, context, family, neighborhood, and sometimes even challenges that they’ve faced growing up. Ultimately, the QuestBridge application shows the admissions committee how being from a low-income background really gets to shape the student’s identity over time.
[Hannah] Are your expectations any different when you open up a QuestBridge application or present one in committee?
[Corinne] That’s a great question. And honestly, generally no. But more specifically, we’re looking for the same things as all other applicants. We want to find students who are the best fit for Yale academically and socially and we are particularly looking for students who can both add to campus and will actively take advantage of the resources we have to offer. It is important to remember, though, that Yale is proudly affirmative for students from lower-income backgrounds. While QuestBridge isn’t the only avenue for these students to apply, when we do come across a QuestBridge application in our reading, we know that we’re looking at the student through the correct lens when we’re thinking about their application.
[Mark] What advice would you give to students who are completing the QuestBridge application?
[Corinne] Honestly, just say, be your authentic self. Write for you about what’s important to you, not what you think we want to see. This is really the same advice I’d give to any student. When it comes to QuestBridge in particular, we do often read about students’ hardships. That’s one thing to think about but the goal of this application, or any application, really should not be to catalog hardships or tug at our heartstrings. For some students, their socioeconomic status has really defined a lot of their life. And for others, it’s not that big a part of their story or what they feel is important to share with us, even if it has been a factor throughout growing up. So there’s no right or wrong answer or approach here. Really just tell your story honestly and completely.
[Mark] Yeah, and I know Corinne, you and I, having read so many QuestBridge applications, we’ve seen lots of different types of students really use this application platform successfully. They all have some things in common. They are all very bright and impressive students academically. They are all students who happen to be from households that have lower income and often lower socioeconomic status that goes along with that. But past that, there’s an amazing amount of diversity within that group and we’re not just looking for one particular type of student or one particular type of story from students who apply through QuestBridge.
[Hannah] So Corinne, as a self-admitted fan of our podcast, you know we like to talk a little bit about the Admissions Officer experience. So tell us a little bit about what you like most about reading and presenting QuestBridge applications.
[Corinne] Oh, I was waiting for a question like this. Thank you, Hannah. My favorite part of my job is having the opportunity to advocate for students in reading, but really in the committee process.  I think that the QuestBridge application lets me do this on a more consistent basis than any of our other application platforms. I also really love the way that our office and Yale as a whole treat our QuestBridge students. We’re so proud of having this group on campus and continuing to support our Quest scholars after they matriculate. And so it’s become a really vibrant community at Yale, with over 100 incoming “Questees,” as they call themselves, in each class. I’ve gone to those meetings. They meet regularly. They eat dinner together, and they host events.
So when I read a QuestBridge application, it’s a cool feeling to picture who that student would be at Yale, and to provide someone with an opportunity to come here on the best financial aid package that we can offer. And I like to think that once in a while, the work we do in Admissions can change or transform someone’s life in a positive way. And I think that with our partnership with QuestBridge, that’s a place where I truly get to see that happen each and every year.
[Mark] Awesome. Well, Corinne, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. I hope to have you back for another episode sometime soon. And hey, thanks for listening. Someone’s listening out there. That’s great.
[Corinne] Definitely. Thank you all for having me. And I’m so excited to read many, many more of these QuestBridge applications and other applications this year.
[Mark] Well, we will be doing just that in just a few months, for sure. QuestBridge has really been a fabulous partner with us for 14 years now. As we’re wrapping up, there’s two final points that we want to make about what working with QuestBridge really does for Yale.
I think the first thing is what Corinne just said– it helps us to identify and respond to amazing students that make Yale better. It’s not just about Yale making their lives better. These students make Yale better. We believe that, and we see that in all the experiences that Corinne was just talking about.
[Hannah] That’s right. We want the best students, regardless of their ability to pay. We want the student body to reflect a diverse collection of experiences and our partnership with QuestBridge allows us to do this, and to make our undergraduate education better for everyone involved. Generous financial aid policies as well help a lot, but they aren’t, often, enough to overcome the significant barriers that many students face when applying. So QuestBridge really helps with that, as well.
[Mark] Right. I often describe this as we are really spoiled. We get to work for a university that has very deep pockets. We can provide great financial aid that really meets the need for every student. But we know that just having those policies– that alone doesn’t create the kind of diverse student body that you want. So this kind of partnership really helps us to attract these students and to respond to them, as well.
That brings me to the second point, which is that being a QuestBridge partner, it really helps expand the scope of our work. We spend a lot of time thinking about the Yale undergraduate experience, the Yale admissions process, but we know that we are operating in a much bigger ecosystem, that what we do plays a role in the larger questions about access and equity. And as an Admissions Officer, I’ve always said this– that it can be frustrating that the only kind of lever you have to pull is a yes or a no. You can say yes, a student is admitted, or no, they are denied. But sometimes, you’re frustrated that you can’t do more about the system that you’re operating in, that you’re seeing your applicants coming through, as well.
[Hannah] That’s right. But as a QuestBridge partner along with 41 other colleges, that means we kind of get to speak with one voice and help students consider a range of colleges with similar resources and priorities that they may not have otherwise considered.
[Mark] One of the nice things about QuestBridge is that when I see a student who’s applied through QuestBridge, I don’t know where else they’ve applied to, but I know they’ve at least gotten the message that Yale is not alone in offering this kind of great aid and in responding to these types of students in their applicant pool.
[Hannah] So if this has piqued your interest or you want to learn more, you can always check out questbridge.org and admissions.yale.edu/questbridge.
[Mark] We hope you’ll learn more. And thanks again for listening. Thanks as always to our friend and colleague Jill, who’s both our sound engineer and a great Admissions Officer. Thanks to former Admissions Officer Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our music. You can check him out at andrewbrickjohnson.com.
[Hannah] If you have comments or an idea for a future episode, you can drop us a line at yaleadmissionspodcast@gmail.com. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are ours and don’t necessarily represent those of Yale University. Thanks for listening.
[MUSIC PLAYING]

Episode 9: Recommendation Letters

Every application to Yale includes three letters of recommendation – two from classroom teachers and one from a counselor. Admissions Officer Moira joins Hannah and Mark to share advice on selecting recommenders and tips for educators when writing on behalf of applicants. The officers share how effective letters can bolster and enhance an application, and they express their gratitude to the educators who write for their students.

[Mark] Hello and welcome to Inside the Yale admissions office. My name is Mark and I’m a Yale admissions officer.
[Hannah] And I’m Hannah. I’m also a Yale admissions officer and today we are joined by our friend and colleague Moira. 
[Moira] Hi, everyone. My name is Moira. I’m another Yale admissions officer.
[Mark] And Moira, we’re delighted to have you here to talk about letters of recommendation. The episode today is primarily going to be for those educators who write for applicants but we’ll also give some advice about selecting recommenders and we will, as always, take you inside our reading and evaluation process.
[Hannah] Yep, all right. Let’s hit you with some quick facts about recommendations. Every applicant has three letters of recommendation, two from classroom teachers from core academic subjects and one counselor recommendation.
[Mark] And I want to start off just by saying yes, we really do read these.
[Hannah] We do.
[Mark] We do. In fact, they are my favorite part of the application. This might be because my mom is a teacher. I’m married to a teacher. I love teachers and I really love reading what they have to say about their students.
[Hannah] They can be super helpful. We spend a lot of time reviewing them. They can really tell us a lot about an applicant. And we are very, very grateful to the educators who take time to write these letters and especially to write thorough letters.
[Moira] Recommendation letters are one of those unsung parts of the job of being a teacher or a counselor. So we cannot underscore enough how much we appreciate it.
[Mark] Absolutely. They help us enormously. I know that as a teacher you might think that you are doing your student a favor by writing for them. You certainly are. But we really see it as an amazing professional courtesy that you’re doing to us to help us do our job better.
[Hannah] Definitely. So when we’re reading an application, teacher recommendations are usually towards the end of what we see so we transition from hearing from the student directly in their part of the application to hearing from the teachers and the counselor.
[Mark] And because it’s towards the end of the application reading process, we already know a lot about the applicant. We know about that applicant’s activities, we know about their academic interests and ambitions, we know their grades and we know what courses they’ve taken. We’ve already read a little bit from the students themselves. So Moira, can you tell our listeners a little bit about what we are looking for out of letters of recommendation?
[Moira] Absolutely. So the teacher recommendations can really talk to the contributions in the classroom, can talk to the student’s intellectual curiosity, talk to how the student might kick up the class discussion another notch. Sometimes teachers and counselors can maybe talk a little bit about the growth arcs, the resiliency, other things that may not come up in the application. We love hearing about community citizenship also and sometimes we get a little of that buzz around the school about the student from the recommendations and that’s great because that’s how the recommendations really help us to see, oh hey, this is a wonderful student or oh hey, this is a can’t miss student. They really fill in that buzz for us.
[Hannah] So let’s dive into a little bit of advice for applicants before we address all those educators out there.
[Mark] My go-to piece of advice here, very simple. Pick some teachers who know you and who like you.
[Hannah] Yes.
[Mark] Like that’s it. Do not go into some three dimensional chess thing beyond that. Yale asks for two letters of recommendation from academic core subjects. We don’t have any special requirements about if you’re planning to major in one particular area or anything like that.
[Hannah] No special combination of it should be this and this equals that. No, right. The most important thing is that the teachers who you choose are going to sit down and write a thorough letter for you that can touch on some of the things that we just mentioned.
[Mark] Exactly right. You do want to ensure for Yale that it is a core academic subject. And for us that generally means history and social studies, English, foreign language, mathematics, or science. Certainly something like computer science or something that may not fall in there but it’s pretty close will make a lot of sense.
[Hannah] And then we also have an opportunity for your counselor to write a letter of recommendation. I just want to say that this isn’t required. I know that some students attend schools where they have a counselor who doesn’t know them or has a giant caseload and is unable to write a recommendation for every student. And that’s fine. But if you do have a college counselor in your school, try to get to know them. Try to get to know them and help them get to know you if they don’t know you already. So maybe you share a little bit about your college plans. Maybe you make sure that the counselor knows what you do around school and home and why you do it, why it’s meaningful to you.
[Mark] I often tell counselors that what we look for in their letter of recommendation is more of a bird’s eye view of the student’s role in that community. The teacher can tell us specifically about your engagement with a particular subject, how you worked in a classroom setting of maybe 15 or 20 or so students. We’re hoping that the counselor can sort of say, in our community of maybe 1,000 or 2,000 students here’s the impact the student makes. Here’s what people are saying about this student. Here’s how her presence is felt day to day around the school building.
[Hannah] Totally. Now, this is really important. At Yale, we are not interested in piling on supplementary letters of recommendation. We do not need a third teacher. We only want two. A letter from your coach or choir director or club sponsor doesn’t really tell us much that’s new so we don’t ask for those types of letters. If there’s a person who insists on writing for you, it’s fine to let them but please don’t feel like you have to ask those people.
[Mark] In the category of letters that really don’t add very much, I would also put the letter from some Yale alum who happens to know your parents and has met you once or twice, not very helpful.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] The best letters are from people who really know you well and can speak from their own personal experience getting to know you.
[Moira] More is not necessarily better in this case and you hear our voices. We are actual people who have to read these letters, so make them have an impact.
[Hannah] Totally.
[Mark] All right, so let’s talk about some advice to writers. Again, thank you. Thank you so much for the time and the energy that you put into writing these letters of recommendation. We really do read every single word of what you write so thank you for making these letters count. As I said, this is my favorite part of the application. It’s my favorite part even when the letters are sort of generic and not as personal as the ones we’re going to talk about in this advice. I still enjoy it, I have to say. I mean, it’s a little bit like kind of walking down the greeting card aisle at the store. It might be generic and might be cheesy but reading from people who are saying nice things about other people, it just makes my day. I can be in a grumpy mood and reading a letter of recommendation will always cheer me up.
[Hannah] It’s so wholesome.
[Mark] So thank you. Thank you again. You make me happy by saying nice things about your students. So I want to start with this image. I think this is maybe the best way to orient yourself as a writer. Imagine that your letter of recommendation is something that you are writing to a student’s upcoming teacher, a colleague of yours at your school in your school building. Think about what you could tell your colleague and think what that colleague might already know that really doesn’t need to be in your letter as well. I think the most valuable and perhaps surprising piece of advice I have about writing letters of recommendation is to keep your letter in the first person. We read a lot of letters that are in the third person. Understandably, you’re thinking I’m writing about this student. So I’m going to say the student does x, does y, does z. But what we really want is your impression. We want your first person perspective on interacting with that student.
My wife, as I mentioned, is a teacher. She happens to be a history teacher, so we talk a lot about primary sources in our house and I like to think of letters of recommendation as primary sources. My analogy here is that the application is a little bit like a document based question. Those of you who are in an AP history class, you’re used to writing DBQs and every document in a DBQ is a primary source, which means it’s written from the first person perspective of someone in an historical moment.
That’s what a letter should be. It should be you as an educator writing in the first person about your impressions and your experiences. It’s going to showcase your point of view. And by giving some insight into who’s writing the letter, you’re going to avoid the sort of omniscient narrator style of the letter where it just completely sort of seems like it’s stating the facts and we don’t have a great sense of exactly how that relationship is developed.
[Hannah] Right, right. Sometimes there can be a little too much distance between the writer and the subject so we’re not saying that you need to spend half of the letter sharing your credentials. You don’t need to feel the need to do that but even if it’s your first year teaching, your point of view here is valuable.
[Mark] Yeah, so here’s some quick examples that I pulled from letters from a few years ago. Names are all changed here. This is a third person presentation of some superlatives for a student Steven is brilliant. A driven, energetic young man with a bright future. He combines a fierce desire to succeed with an inborn talent.
[Hannah] Good for Stephen.
[Mark] Yeah.
[Moira] Yeah, that sounds great.
[Hannah] I probably could have written that about Stephen though.
[Mark] Sure. Exactly right.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] Exactly right. I don’t have any sense of how, why, or what made those impressions. I’m just getting Stephen blank, blank, blank. So here’s an example of a style of letter writing where I feel like the narrator, the recommender is really reliable. I’m really understanding where he or she’s coming from.
[Hannah] Jenna has always kept me on top of my game. Week one when she took the pre-test before we covered anything in US history at all and she passed, I knew I was going to have to do more to challenge and engage her. She was constantly reading, researching, and staying after class to grapple with complex ideas. To find a student who enjoys learning this much is always a dream for a teacher but it also made me better. I can’t describe how much better she made me as a teacher and how much better I knew my content in preparation for Jenna entering my classroom every day. That’s the kind of letter that makes me think, wow this student could be a really great addition to our seminars and our classes or just conversations over a meal in a dining hall.
[Mark] And I think it’s a great example of how the specifics are so much more powerful than the superlatives. We read among our applicants things like “one of the best” a lot.
[Hannah] Mm-hmm.
[Mark] It’s a nice thing to say but that’s not all that helpful as we are trying to get to individual applicants.
[Hannah] Right. I mean, even if you say this is the best student I ever had, we want more than that. We want to know what about the student’s experience made her one of the best. Was it just that she got high scores or can you give us some more specific examples here?
[Moira] I love thinking of examples like, Alex wasn’t the loudest student in the class but when he raised his hand, you could see everyone around the classroom or the Zoom room as it is now kind of dialing in a little bit more, taking notes because we knew every time that Alex would kick up this discussion and that’s the thing. There’s an assumption that, oh well, the student has to be an extrovert. Nope. There are ways that all types of students positively impact the classroom.
Another great example would be someone saying something along the lines like, Sophia is an incredible asset to the class. She’s the one that I wouldn’t even have to ask to help others around her. She would just do it naturally and approachably and she would do it not because she was getting extra points or anything like that, but she just wanted to make sure that others understood the material like she did, others enjoyed the material like she did. Sophia is the one who brought extra articles, made a game, she made it a better classroom environment for everyone. Those are the kinds of letters that help us, the ones that talk about that positive impact in the classroom.
[Hannah] Yeah, as many specifics we can get about the student’s impacts, personality in the classroom is really helpful. What’s less helpful is if a teacher or a counselor is just sort of rehashing what we already know about a student. So for example, we do not need you to list out all of their extracurricular activities. The student has already provided that for us.
[Mark] I can always see this paragraph from a mile away.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] Almost literally because it always has the capital letters. It’s nearly always the third or fourth paragraph in the letter and I can tell that it’s just going to be what I already know because I can see capital P, president of the capital F, French club.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] Et cetera, et cetera throughout the sentences. We already know all of these things about the student by the time we get to your letter.
[Hannah] And it might be because it’s filler but I know that it’s not so much about the length. Again, it’s about the content. If we already have the information somewhere we don’t need it again.
[Moira] Yeah. That said, if you have something to add in terms of color about why that student is engaged in an activity, is it a really big deal at the school? Does the student’s excitement or commitment really come through to you? Has the student’s commitment to that activity changed things in the school environment? That sort of thing can certainly be helpful.
[Mark] Right. And if you are the faculty member who is the sponsor of an extracurricular organization or if you’re a counselor and you’re aware of the impact of this activity, by all means tell us about it. So I actually pulled an example out of my favorite instances where a teacher talked about how a commitment was really special and gave us some specifics that weren’t available in the rest of the application. OK, so here goes.
Jessica has taken it upon herself to make the school more interconnected. Last year she was able to bring a diabetic specialist to students when we were learning about diabetes as well as a rheumatologist to our science olympiads to discuss the immune system with them. For her magnum opus, she wants to build a career day. She knows our school has never achieved more than four speakers at one time so to help her out, she led the science Honor Society to pick up the slack. This is way more than what I asked of them. She already has six speakers lined up, including a surgical nurse and a rocket scientist.
[Hannah] That positive impact comes through so clearly.
[Moira] Yeah.
[Hannah] I love that the teacher calls it her magnum opus, like really lending some real impact to that story.
[Mark] Absolutely. I think with the student, all I knew was that she was president of the Science Olympiad. She had not written about this in other parts of her application. That’s something that we see plenty of times. But this is where I got those details and it had made such an impression on the teacher. I was happy to get those added in there.
[Hannah] Another thing that can be helpful for us to get from recommendations is a sense of how this student interacts with their peers. So a common committee question that can sometimes come up is is there any sense of peer engagement in this file or just does the student play well with others?
[Mark] Yeah, it doesn’t need to be in the letter but it certainly can be relevant, especially if it’s an asset for the student. And in some cases, it can feel conspicuously absent if we’re not seeing it in any part of the application. And I’ll say helping other students is great, particularly if this is a very bright student who’s tutoring others but even better from our perspective is someone who really can work with others, who can learn from others, who can champion others in the classroom. So if you have insights into those kinds of dynamics, we would love to hear about them.
[Hannah] Yeah. Remember, we’re looking for hints at what the student might be at Yale, who they might be at Yale, and who they might be to others at Yale. So those kinds of things really jump out at us.
[Mark] Here are a few areas to be especially mindful when you are writing your rec. Recommendations in our experience, can frequently raise some concerns that aren’t present in other parts of the application. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and we really appreciate your honesty and sometimes we will follow up if something is not clear. So there’s a reason that letters of recommendation ask teachers to give their email address. We often times reach out if something seems a little bit murky or just does not square with other parts of the application.
[Hannah] Yep. And we also just want you to be mindful of not sort of throwing up flags when you don’t mean to. So speculating about the details of a challenge that a student is going through if you’re not sure of them or projecting a student’s mental or emotional state. Steer clear of that kind of thing.
[Mark] Yeah. I think sometimes we find ourselves getting really confused when a teacher says, I think something was going on. I’m not quite sure. Or I have a feeling. We want your perspective but try to stick to the things that you really are certain of if you’re writing that on behalf of a student.
And if a student has shared some challenging details of an experience they’ve been through outside of the context of asking you for this letter of recommendation, I would advise you to connect with that student and say, are you comfortable with me sharing this background information that I have, yes or no? It might be very helpful for you to incorporate that context but a student may also say, I really would prefer that you not discuss that in the letter of recommendation.
[Hannah] Right.
[Moira] I really do enjoy reading these letters of recommendation because it’s one piece of this whole puzzle that we’re trying to put together and it’s incredible what comes out of some of the letters of recommendation that you almost think, wow. The student didn’t mention this at all. I’m so glad that the teacher or the counselor let me know about this because this is pretty cool or this is pretty impactful or, wow, does this student even know how incredible this is?
[Mark] And as we talked about before, there’s no point system. We are not looking for some rubric that’s going to say, well, this teacher said this or this teacher said that. It is also not simply a sort of seal of approval where if you just write and say, no concerns that that’s what we’re looking for. These can really give us more insight about the student and back to the bad physics analogy I used in our last episode, we want to see that there’s some constructive interference between what’s happening in the letter of recommendation and the other parts of the file.
So when this goes well, towards the end of the application reading, we pick up one of these letters and we say, ah yes. This is the same person that I met before. I can see that this is how the student has been making an impact in her classroom and in her school community and I’m not at all surprised to see that the people around her are writing these kinds of wonderful things about her.
[Hannah] Absolutely. And as a writer of a letter of recommendation, you are, of course, doing your students a great favor and a great service and in taking the time to do that. But you’re also doing as admissions officers a huge favor.
[Moira] Seriously.
[Hannah] It’s such a wonderful professional courtesy to a colleague in education and we really appreciate the time that goes into these thoughtful letters.
[Moira] Again, it’s one of those unsung parts of being a teacher or being a counselor and know that we read these letters and know that we really value these letters and the time that goes into writing them. So thank you.
[Hannah] Moira, thank you for coming and joining us on the podcast today.
[Moira] Oh, thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun and I’m so glad that we got to talk about recommendations because I really love them too.
[Hannah] Well, we’ll have to have you back soon.
[Mark] Thanks also to our friend and colleague Jill, who is both our sound engineer and great admissions officer. Thanks to former admissions officer, Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our music. Check him out at AndrewBrickJohnson.com.
[Hannah] If you have comments or an idea for a future episode, drop us a line at YaleAdmissionsPodcast@gmail.com. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are mine and Mark’s and don’t necessarily represent those of Yale University. Thanks for listening.

Episode 11: Mythbusters

The first installment in an occasional miniseries. Admissions Officer Jill joins Mark and Hannah to discuss and debunk some of the most persistent admissions myths. The officers review six common myths, covering topics that range from early action to demonstrated interest to online message boards. For each, they discus why the myth is inaccurate while revealing the small kernel of truth at its core.

[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] Hello, and welcome back to Inside the Yale Admissions Office. My name is Mark, and I’m a Yale admissions officer.
[Hannah] And I’m Hannah. I’m also a Yale admissions officer.
[Mark] And we are excited to introduce a new occasional mini-series we’ll be hosting on the podcast that we are calling Mythbusters.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Hannah] Yes. It even comes with a new theme song. Thanks, Andrew.
[Mark] And Hannah and I are delighted that the one and only Jill is going to be joining us for this Mythbusters episode today. Jill, how are you?
[Jill] I’m doing really well. I’m glad to be back. Thanks for having me back.
[Hannah] So here’s the idea behind this episode. There are a lot of myths out there that we hear about college admissions all the time. People come up to us and they say, I heard this. My neighbor’s cousin told me this. Is this true? And we wanted to address some of them today. We also see things like this regularly crop up on sites like Reddit and College Confidential. We’re not regular readers of these things.
[LAUGHTER]
[Hannah] But I did pop on and scroll through some posts recently for the purposes of putting this episode together.
[Mark] Yeah. So we’re going to tackle a handful of these myths today– some of the things that we have heard most frequently over the years. And we’re going to come back, and we’ll do more episodes like this every few months or so. There is no shortage of myths out there about the college admissions process and it’s understandable why there’s a lot of myths out there about college admissions.
I think first and foremost, I want to acknowledge that our process is one that is inherently opaque. And I think a lot of myths just come from the fact that people will connect the dots based on what they can see, which admittedly, is not a lot compared to what we see because we have the full picture of not only the full process but also the entire applicant pool.
[Hannah] And another thing is that selective admissions means that a lot of people inevitably are going to be disappointed at the end of the process. And it’s natural to try to find explanations for that, especially outside influences, and to come up with explanations that are maybe cynical about our process. So we totally get that. If you just take away one thing from this episode, let it be, be careful where you’re getting your information on our admissions process from. Remember, you can always go directly to the source– that’s us– to get the right information, rather than peers, or online forums, or private consultants, who claim to know more than they really do.
[Mark] And if you remember back to our very first episode, we created this whole podcast in order to give folks reliable information. We wanted you guys to get it directly from the source and provide this as a free public service. I will say, one of the craziest things that happens to me as an admissions officer is when I explain something to someone, sort of busting a myth, and they don’t believe me.
[LAUGHTER]
[Jill] Yes.
[Mark] And they will just shake their heads. And they’ll go back. And they’ll fight me on it. And I’m like, do you think I’m lying to your face? Like really. I’m not.
[Jill] It happens more often than you’d think too.
[Mark] I know. So there’s not a big conspiracy out there guys, I promise.
[Hannah] And we will also recognize that there is usually some small kernel of truth behind these myths. But usually, they get pretty distorted through the game of telephone– that is hearing from different people about the process. So we’re going to try to acknowledge where we think these myths come from, and let you know why they’re not necessarily true about our process.
[Mark] Yeah. Like most good gossip and most good rumors, there’s usually something true. But it’s been embellished. It’s gotten on to a life of its own. For the past few years, I’ve had this simple rule of thumb for whenever I hear a juicy rumor or a good piece of gossip and that’s that I simply just stand back and I say, that is a really good rumor.
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] It might be true. It might not be true. But just like actually when you hear something really juicy, just letting yourself say, wow, that’s really good. It is a chance to be like, hmm, I wonder why that’s so good. I wonder what’s happening. So as we go through these myths, we’ll try to unpack maybe why a particular myth is appealing. Why it’s persistent and how it’s gotten quite distanced from the original kernel of truth that’s underneath it.
[Jill] I really like that, Mark. I think I’m going to start using that.
[Mark] Good.
[Jill] Just a note on these online forums, like College Confidential or the Applying to College Subreddit, we totally get why these are tempting communities to engage in. Applying to college can be stressful. And you don’t know what you don’t know. So finding an online community and reading about other’s experiences may be comforting. But just remember, there’s a lot of misinformation out there.
[Mark] Yeah. All right. So are you guys ready to bust some myths?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Jill] Absolutely.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] All right. Let’s do it. I’m so excited. Let’s do it. We’re going to try to get through six of them in the episode today. And we’re going to have lots more in future episodes. Here’s myth number one. Is it easier to get into Yale if you apply through our Early Action program as opposed to our regular decision program?
[Hannah] Mm. A lot of people think that’s true. And guess what? It’s not.
[Mark] Busted.
[DING]
[Jill] Myth busted.
[LAUGHTER]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Hannah] Quick note. At Yale, we do Early Action as opposed to early decision. So it’s a non-binding program as opposed to some other colleges that do early decision. And if you get admitted through that early program, there’s an expectation that you’ll commit to the college. But at Yale, we do Early Action non-binding.
[Mark] And I have to say, this is probably one of the easiest myths for me to understand. We’ll get to some wacky ones later, where I’m like, ah, where did this come from?
[Hannah] Yes.
[Mark] This one’s pretty straightforward. And that’s because, if you divide the number of students who are admitted by the number of applicants, and you do that for the early pool and you do it for the regular pool, it’s going to look like the admit rate is higher for students who apply through early and this obviously makes people think that their individual chances of admission will be higher if they apply earlier. We don’t have time to unpack all of the math behind this. Maybe that’ll be another episode later on. We can do just a big geeky math episode.
[Hannah] For sure.
[Mark] But this is a classic statistical fallacy. So it assumes that these two pools of applicants are identical, and that the rate of admission is a probability. So neither one of that is true. If you want to imagine, OK, are these probabilities– these are jelly beans. And they’re being randomly pulled from different jars. You’re not jelly beans. [LAUGHS]
[Hannah] No.
[Mark] Applicants are real people and in our process is one that is not random. And so, you shouldn’t think about the rate of admission as being a probability and you also shouldn’t think about the pools of these applicants being identical for a whole bunch of reasons. They are not identical.
[Jill] If they were actually jelly beans, I think I’d have to choose them all and not be able to choose.
[LAUGHTER]
[Jill] So, glad they’re not jelly beans.
[Mark] Thankfully, they’re not jelly beans. Yes.
[Hannah] Good call. Yeah. I think one of the reasons why these pools are not comparable is that you all, when you’re applying to college, do a good job of selecting which schools are a good fit for you. The reason that people apply to Yale Single Choice Early Action is because Yale is their first choice. They’re really excited to apply. And they feel like they’ve put together a strong application. And you know what? Often that results in just a stronger Early Action applicant pool.
[Mark] Yeah. And I want to explain our incentives here. We have every reason to want to be conservative in our early pool, because we are operating with the understanding that we don’t know what’s behind curtain number two in the form of our regular decision applicant pool. And none of us want to get to March reading our regular decision applicants and say, doh, we’re out of spots. Oh my gosh. We wish that we could admit all these students. But we wasted too many spots on these early students.
That is why every year, we have a pretty sizable number of applicants that we defer from our Early Action pool and ultimately admit in regular decisions. When we were first looking at their applications, we wanted to be pretty cautious. We weren’t sure if at the end of the day, they would stand out. And then, once the rest of the pool fills in, we say, oh yeah, this student does stand out. And we are delighted to admit them.
[Jill] Yeah. And I also think a lot of students think, maybe we have different criteria for one pool and the other. And that’s just not the case. I think it really goes back to what Hannah was saying, that the first group of students in that EA pool is really a self-selecting group of students who really do feel like Yale is the place for them. And we do see that in those apps. But we on our end are not reviewing those applications in any sort of different way than we are reviewing our regular decision applicants.
[Mark] So here’s the takeaway guys. At least when it comes to Yale– and we’re only speaking for Yale here– The stakes around early action and regular decision, they just are not high. Despite what a lot of people think, despite what people who are paid to say things say, I want to tell you, do your thing. When we’re reading applications, we know that strong applicants who are a great fit for Yale, they’re going to stand out regardless of when they apply. So most importantly, when we say, there’s no advantage to applying early, please believe us.
[Hannah] Myth number two.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Hannah] Myth number two is that we have quotas or a set amount of students that we’re going to admit from certain high schools. There are few different versions of this, like no one’s gotten in from my high school before, so I certainly don’t have a chance.
[Mark] Mm-hmm.
[Hannah] Or another variation of this is, oh, someone from my school got into Yale, and then they opted to go to Stanford, or Harvard, or somewhere else instead. So Yale just hates my school now, and that’s ruined my chances. Or my frenemy Shelley is applying early, so there’s no way we’ll both get in.
[LAUGHTER] Or the reason I didn’t get in is that so many other students from my school applied. Anyway, there are a lot of different ways that you can paint this picture. But guess what? None of them are true.
[DING]
[Mark] Busted. This is another one that’s pretty easy to see where this one comes from. This is a classic example of the availability bias.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] You are going to try to think of explanations for outcomes based on what’s immediately available to you– and that’s usually what’s around you in your high school. So all these different versions of, well, it must have been because of something in my high school, that’s where your mind is going to go. That’s not how we operate though.
[Hannah] Yeah, let’s just sort of state this clearly. The applicant history at your school is not going to dictate how your application is reviewed or how your decision is rendered. We admit individual students to Yale. We deny individual students from Yale– not schools. So you don’t compete against other applications from your high school any more than you compete against any other applicants in our pool.
[Mark] Yeah. And I hope that you take a moment to think about this, it’s going to make sense. Why would we want to miss out on a great applicant just because they go to a particular school, or just because somebody else from that school is also applying?
[Hannah] Along with this, we see really strong and successful applicants from all kinds of schools. There’s a persistent myth out there that you need to attend a certain type of school to be competitive at a place like Yale. And that’s really not true. The students that we admit every year represent a wide, wide range of high schools in the US and all around the world.
[Jill] I’ve gotten a lot of calls when I’ve been on duty answering calls from prospective students and parents– from parents of elementary school kids, asking where they should send their students to high school? And it really does not matter. You should not be making that decision based on what you think the better high school to get into Yale is. Because I think, hopefully, as you’re getting from everything that Hannah and Mark are saying, there is no specific high school that’s going to be the best school to get into Yale. It’s really about what you do there, and not so much where you are.
[LAUGHS]
[Mark] Yeah. I think a phone call I got a few years ago takes the cake. I had a call from an expecting parent. So the kid hadn’t even been born yet.
[Jill] Oh my.
[Hannah] What?
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] And they were calling to ask where they should buy a house in a city that won’t be named to determine where the kid would go to high school. And slow your roll. Slow down.
[Jill] Yes.
[LAUGHTER]
[Hannah] You’ve got a lot of child rearing to do before a college application.
[Mark] Yeah. I mean, even if you’re talking about a middle schooler, let’s acknowledge– your school plays a really critical role in your development. But we as admissions officers, I will say, generally speaking, the role of high schools tends to be overplayed.
[Hannah] And to those parents out there who are thinking of making that phone call to see where they should send their student to middle school or high school, any admissions officer worth their salt will tell you that it matters much more what the student does at that school than the name of the school, or the reputation of the school, or anything like that. We’re looking for students who have thrived in their high school environment and wherever that is going to be for your child, that’s where they should go.
[Mark] Bingo. The little kernel of truth here, is that we as admissions officers, we do read applications, we do discuss them in the admissions committee in school groups and we think there’s important contextual knowledge about that high school. We get to know what’s offered, where students at that high school come from, what tends to be a big deal at that school. But that doesn’t mean that we’re doing direct comparisons within a school group or expecting that any student from a particular school has done x, y, or z.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Hannah] Our next myth, myth number three, is kind of related. And that is, the idea that it’s easier to get into Yale if you come from a rural area or an area with fewer applicants. So for example, if a family’s saying, we should just move to Wyoming, and then, it’ll be easier to get into a selective college. Not true.
[DING]
[Mark] Busted.
[LAUGHTER]
[Jill] Myth busted.
[Mark] Busted. Again, we are really lucky. We should acknowledge Yale as a school, running admissions for Yale, we’re very, very fortunate. We have an amazingly diverse and global applicant pool. So we get to see strong applicants from just about everywhere. We also see plenty of variation from year to year.
It might be the case that we get a lot of strong applications from one particular state or one particular country in one year, and then the next year, not so many. But there’s no rule that we have to admit someone from every state every single year, and that’s going to bump up an individual student’s chances, or anything like that.
[Hannah] Right. Just like we don’t have quotas for high schools, we don’t have quotas for states, or geographic regions, or anything like that. I think where part of this myth comes from might be that where you live can certainly be an interesting and important part of your background. But that’s not the case for everyone. And it’s certainly not the only important piece of your background or your story.
[Jill] Yeah. I like to say– for those of you listening– I read for different parts of Florida. And I see a lot of students whose upbringing in Florida has had a significant impact on who they are. And that’s super interesting to me when I’m reading your application. But it’s just as interesting to me as the student who lived in Virginia their whole life and then moved to Florida for their junior or their senior year. And so, context has a significant play in the application process. But again, it’s going to have more of a play for some students, and it’s going to have less of a play for others. And it’s definitely not that we are looking to only take a certain amount of students from any specific place.
[Mark] Yeah. Hannah, I remember you mentioning in a previous episode, that a successful essay can be one that conveys a sense of place.
[Hannah] Yes.
[Mark] And when students have a relationship to a place, that can become an asset for them, no matter what that kind of place is. I remember talking with some counselors in New York City. And they were saying, well, how can a student from New York City stand out? And I’m thinking, I’m from the suburbs of Georgia. If I grew up in New York City, that would seem super interesting to me.
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] Are you kidding? That sounds super amazing. Right?
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] So if where you’re from is something that– as you reflect on yourself– is an important part of your identity, and you think it’s something that as you’re applying to college could be something that you’re going to bring with you, you can make it an asset.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Hannah] Alright, Myth number four. Students who can afford to do fancy summer programs at colleges have a better chance of getting accepted. Again, this is just not true.
[DING]
[Mark] Busted.
[Jill] Busted.
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] Thank you, Jill.
[Jill] You’re welcome.
[Mark] Thank you, Jill. Good. Don’t leave me hanging out there.
[Hannah] Yeah. You know what? We want you to spend your summers doing what you care about– not building up a resume or anything like that. There is no system of bonus points for doing a particular summer program, even if it’s a really selective summer program.
[Mark] Yeah. I’m sure there are a lot of folks out there who run these summer programs who don’t want us to say this, because it’s a–
[Hannah] Oh, yeah. Sorry, guys.
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] It’s a great marketing tactic when you get this stuff in the mail, that oh, you’re going to do this program. It’s going to be on a college campus. And you’re imagining, oh, that’s going to help me stand out. Sorry. That is not– spending a summer signing up for one of these programs is not going to suddenly make you a super strong college applicant for us.
[Jill] Yeah. I think, also, attending a Yale-specific summer program is not going to make it easier to get into Yale. And I think I can probably say that about a lot of our peer institutions too. If you’re doing a specific program with them, that does not necessarily mean that you have a better chance of getting into that institution.
[Mark] Right. And something that’s not always clear in the promotional materials– a lot of these summer programs that are located on college campuses, they’re just renting space there. They actually have no connection to the university themselves. You’re not learning from university professors. You’re literally just renting their dorms in the summer so the university has someone in those beds during those months.
[Hannah] Yeah. And look, if you want to do a summer program at a college, that’s great. Good for you. But do it because you want to do it. And those can often be formative experiences where you meet a lot of cool people you weren’t exposed to before. You have this experience living on a college campus. And that experience in itself might be helpful for you as you think about where you might want to go to college and how you fill out your application. But just the fact that you did the program is not going to be a leg up for us. We will note that there are a number of hyper-selective summer programs, sort of a small handful of them, that can sometimes be a good indication of a student’s strength in their college application. And I think that is maybe a little bit of where this myth comes from.
But it’s never the only indication of strength in a student’s application. And while we might admit some students who have done those summer programs every year, we also reject students who have done those summer programs. And the majority of students that we do admit have not done these hyper-selective programs.
[Jill] Yeah, I think I also– when I’ve read an application, I get just excited about the student who has been doing something that’s maybe super selective during the summer as I do for the student who was scooping ice cream during the summer as a summer job. And those are two things that have no value on, I think, that they’re both great things to do during the summer. And I think it just comes down to what you guys said. Do the things that you want to do during the summer.
[Mark] Exactly. Yeah. It’s a very common question we get is, what should I spend my summer doing? And the answer is really, something that’s going to be engaging and interesting. Hopefully, that means doing something more than just getting a high score on Halo in your basement.
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] I’ll go ahead and say, we can differentiate some things from others. But caring for a family member, taking a student job, having an interesting trip doing one of these summer programs– those are all ways that students can grow, and be engaged, and potentially create some interesting experiences that they wind up reflecting on in their college application for us to learn about. We’ve seen it all.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Hannah] Myth number five is that if I meet my admissions officer in person or connect with them over email, my application is more likely to stand out. And we are here to tell you, it’s just not true.
[DING]
[Mark] Busted.
[Jill] Busted.
[Mark] Oh, so this is my favorite one to bust.
[Jill] Mine too. Mine too.
[Mark] That feels so good.
[Jill] I feel very strongly about this one.
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] So this is all part of a larger concept called demonstrated interest.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] There are a lot of very well-meaning counselors out there who will tell you, you’ve got to go get your name on the map with these folks. You’ve got to demonstrate your interest early on. You want your admissions officer to know you before they read your application. So here’s the thing. Yale does not track demonstrated interest. It does not influence our decision-making process. And we try to make clear– tactfully– that contacting us will not affect your chances of admission. And I’ll go ahead and throw on here too, that’s true for visiting campus, coming to an information session, et cetera. Those are all awesome ways to learn about Yale. Let’s say, listening to the podcast, too, great way to learn about our process.
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] But it’s not going to make a difference that you registered for one of these things, or download our podcast, we can’t track– don’t worry. We don’t know if you clicked or downloaded or anything like that.
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] It’s not going to make a difference in your application review process.
[Jill] Nope.
[Hannah] Right. We get why this is a myth though. Many colleges do track demonstrated interest. But for Yale, we absolutely do not.
[Mark] Right. The other important kernel of truth here is that learning more about a school really can make you a better applicant. Our work is not about just handing out trophies. We are trying to find good fits. Just like you as a prospective college applicant, you are trying to find a good fit as well. So we find when reviewing applications, that those applicants who have done their homework, reflected, and can say, yeah, I really like Yale, and I can tell you why, those students are definitely stronger than those who don’t have any idea what Yale offers. And we kind of can tell in their application what they’re looking for in a college is something totally different than what we are offering.
[Hannah] Yeah. And by the way, I’ll just say, Jill, Mark, and I love meeting prospective students.
[Mark] Yes.
[Hannah] Whether they’re coming to campus and we happen to be the person giving the information session that day, or if we’re on the road traveling, we love to meet you guys. But we’re not taking notes. And it’s not going to help down the line in your application process.
[Jill] Yeah. We’re super friendly. We’re super approachable. But we also have a lot of work on our hands, especially when we get into reading season. And so, absolutely get in touch with us if you have questions. We love answering questions. But like Mark said, we’re not in the business of making pen pals with anyone.
[Mark] Right. And we think there’s an equity component to this as well.
[Hannah] Yes.
[Mark] We don’t want to advantage students who have the opportunity to travel to campus or who just have the chance to meet us when we’re on the road.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Hannah] Myth number six. This is a really interesting one. I’m excited to talk about it. This is that people out there in the world, or someone out there on the internet, can let you know what your chances of admission are at a particular college. We know that there is this Reddit Confidential Culture called Chance Me– Chance Me for Yale, Chance Me for this other school. And we just want to talk about this practice a little bit. Because nothing good can come of it.
[LAUGHTER]
[Jill] No. Nothing at all.
[DING]
[Mark] Busted. Busted. Busted. I don’t know if the whole Subreddit’s going to dissolve now, because a huge collection of energy is spent on this sort of exercise.
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] But we’re here to tell you, it’s a fool’s errand, guys. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. We get why it’s a tempting thing to do. There’s a ton of uncertainty around this process. It would be so nice to have a better understanding of your chances of admission and someone seemingly authoritative out in the universe being able to tell you what your chances are based on a bunch of things that you type up.
[Hannah] But for so many reasons, it doesn’t work. I think one of the biggest reasons is, the people that you’re asking have no more expertise on the matter than you do. Most of them are your peers. Even if the people responding to these threads are private college counselors or current college students, that doesn’t actually mean that they have any more knowledge about you, your application, than you do.
[Mark] Yeah. And we are admissions officers. And we don’t play this game.
[Hannah] Right?
[Jill] Right.
[Mark] If you were to ask us, tell me my chances of getting in, and you gave me everything that was going to be in your application, we wouldn’t be able to give you an answer. There is so much context that’s important. I also want to throw out there, one of the biggest factors that you are not going to have any control over and that you can’t estimate the chances of, are the tens of thousands of other students who also apply. That is such a huge component of our work. And that’s never going to be incorporated into any of these chancing exercises.
[Hannah] Another thing I see on these sort of Chance Me threads are people rating their own essays or their own teacher recommendations which they haven’t actually read.
[LAUGHTER]
[Hannah] And for the teacher recommendations, you haven’t read them. You don’t know what your teacher is going to say about yourself. You’re also not a great judge of your own writing. You know what you’ve written about. But we’re not always the best judges of the work that we produce. So I’ll just throw that out there.
[Mark] Yeah. And as I was saying, the rest of the applicant pool is such a huge component of this. I think we all get questions from students after decisions are released. And they’ll say, why was I denied? What was weak about my application? What could I have done better? And I know this isn’t a satisfying answer, but it’s the true answer, which is almost always, it’s not because your essays were in 8 out of 10. And it’s not even because you got a b-plus in geometry in ninth grade.
The answer is almost always because we have this crazy big and crazy strong applicant pool. And for most applicants who are denied, you could go back and say, yeah, if there weren’t 35,000 other students who were applying this year, we would be delighted to have this student on our campus. That’s just inherent to the work of selective admissions and that’s the kind of context and nuance that is just not going to make its way into a Subreddit thread.
[Jill] Yeah. We’re super lucky that we have all of these applicants and that we do have such a strong pool. But at the end of the day, Yale is not the size of the entire planet. [LAUGHS] It is a specific size, and we only have so much space. And I think that’s important to recognize that it’s not that you did anything wrong. It’s just that we only have a certain amount of space on our campus.
[Hannah] So just to wrap up here, there is a lot of great information out in the world about applying to college. But there is also a lot of really outdated information and information that’s just plain wrong. So remember to check your sources.
[Jill] Yes. And I think the best source is us– the admissions officers, the admissions website, questions form, calling our office– whatever you can do to get in touch with the source is going to give you the best information.
[Mark] Yeah. I think a nice kind of in between of those are our current students. So current students are great sources of information for what student life is like, what it’s really all about to be a student on a particular college campus. But even though they were admitted through the admissions process, they are not great sources of information about admissions or how to be admitted. They don’t have really any more context than anyone else does. And so, don’t go to them, and don’t try to copy what they did because you think that’s going to make you successful in the process.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Hannah] Well, we hope that this has been helpful. Remember to check your sources and always be thinking about where information is coming from when you’re hearing it about the admissions process. And we’ll do one of these episodes again. This was fun.
[Mark] Well, thanks as always to Jill. You are a great sound engineer. You’re a great admissions officer. And you are a great guest on the podcast. So thanks for joining today.
[Jill] Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Hannah.
[Mark] Thanks also to Reed who lends us the office when we’re in the office. I am excited to be back in the office finally again today. So Reed, I’m enjoying your office again. Thanks for letting me use it.
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] Thanks to former admissions officer, Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our music. You should check him out at AndrewBrickJohnson.com.
[Hannah] If you have comments or an idea for a future episode, drop us a line at YaleAdmissionsPodcast@gmail.com. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are ours and don’t necessarily represent those of Yale University. Thanks for listening.
[MUSIC PLAYING]

Episode 13: What Stands Out

Most applicants to Yale are strong along many dimensions, but only a small group truly stand out. Hannah and Mark discuss how admissions officers try to gauge what an applicant would add to and take from the Yale experience. Admissions officer Keith adds insights about what makes applicants stand out in Yale’s large and diverse pool of prospective students.

[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] Hello, and welcome back to Inside the Yale Admissions Office. My name is Mark, and I’m a Yale admissions officer.
[Hannah] And I’m Hannah. I’m also a Yale admissions officer. And today we are joined by our friend and colleague Keith, who is also a Yale admissions officer. Hi, Keith.
[Kieth] Hi, everyone.
[Mark] You all probably remember Keith from our smash hit episode all about what works in essays. Keith is coming back today to help us answer one of the questions that is truly the– maybe the most frequently asked question that we get as officers. What makes an applicant stand out in our process?
[Hannah] Yes. I feel like every time I give an hour-long information session, this question always comes at the end. And it’s a really, really good question to ask. And one reason for that is that, as we’ve talked about before on this podcast, selective holistic admissions is not a process of amassing points on a rubric or anything like that. The selection process is inherently tied to the size and the composition of the applicant pool, and we go beyond just assigning the scores to different parts of the application.
[Mark] All right, as we’re reading, one of the most common reasons that we find that a student is denied is simply because there are tens of thousands of other very strong students who are applying in any given year. It’s not the case that there’s something that was wrong, or weak, or deficient about the application that we’re looking at. So this question of what stands out is a better question than maybe a question like, well, how do I get into Yale? Because the question, what stands out, recognizes that, in order to be admitted to a place like Yale, an applicant is going to need to stand out among this large pool of very strong applicants.
[Hannah] Yeah. And part of our job is reading a ton of files that are very, very strong across multiple dimensions. But when we stand back and we look at the complete applicant pool, we think, well know, if we admitted this strong student, we’d also have to admit many thousands of other strong students who fit similar profiles.
[Mark] And as a quick aside, denying admission to these strong students because they don’t stand out is not a fun part of our job.
[Hannah] No.
[Mark] I consider it kind of an occupational hazard that comes with the territory. And I think every admissions officer wishes that the class size was twice as big as what it is. And I know that, when I’m reading applications, one of the most frequent things that I will write at the end of one of these applications that’s very strong, and the reason why I know that the student is not going to be admitted is simply because they’re not standing out–
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] –is something like, our loss.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] Like, man, it’s a shame actually that we don’t have room for this student–
[Hannah] Yeah. I think we have that experience regularly. Right, Keith?
[Kieth] Oh, absolutely. And I want to echo this very important notion that Hannah and Mark introduced, and that standing out– when we talk about that, we’re talking about our duty to assemble the most compelling assortment of students in any given year from a range of wonderful choices. It’s not the first person who stands out, and then the next person until we get to the capacity.
I think of creating a large abstract mural every new season, with a wide variety of colors and textures. We can go wild with this. But we’re intentionally looking to create something that’s beautiful and comprehensive in a way. The truth is we could theoretically set aside our first attempt at the mural in the middle of the selection process and create a whole new masterpiece among the remaining applicants who weren’t included in the first piece. And that’s not just a line. It’s genuinely true. Remember that you will stand out, and whether in that moment in time, you’re selected to be part of a particular college’s mural, chances are you’ll be included in other great works of admissions art. More on this topic is coming up.
[Mark] Yeah. That’s a perfect segue way, Keith–
[Hannah] Well said–
[Mark] –because what we want to talk about next is the related question to what stands out, what are you looking for? And in fact, we have a whole page on our website that is titled what Yale looks for for more on this topic. Quick cliff notes version of it– there’s really two parts to what we’re looking for. We are looking for students who are going to add the most to the Yale experience and get the most out of the experience while they’re here.
[Hannah] Yes, exactly. And you can really understand our entire admissions process as sort of an exercise in trying to optimize for those two goals. And we know that this sounds a little bit cliche and a little wishy-washy, but it’s worth breaking down what this really means. So we aren’t necessarily trying to determine who is the smartest, who has the tiptop GPA, who has overcome the most hardship, who’s the most deserving in our process. That’s not really our job. And we’re also not trying to predict who is going to become the most successful entrepreneur or politician, or who’s going to be gracing the pages of our alumni magazines after graduation. And we aren’t even trying to predict who is going to have the best performance in Yale classes.
[Mark] Yes. We want to select students who are going to thrive at Yale, but we are not trying to optimize for the collective GPA of graduating Yale seniors. That’s not something we track or do backwards analysis on. And in my experience, a lot of applicants seem to approach the admissions process thinking that we’re selecting for something that we aren’t.
[Kieth] There’s a myth that more is better.
[Hannah] Mm-hmm.
[Mark] Mm-hmm.
[Kieth] More classes, more advanced classes, more activities, more recommendations, more awards and certificates–
[Mark] Mm-hmm.
[Kieth] I read an application yesterday where 54 PDFs of–
[Hannah] Oh, no.
–awards–
[Hannah] One of those–
[Kieth] –going back to third grade were included.
Oh, dear.
[Kieth] Listen, we are patient and we understand the pressure, but we want you to know that more isn’t always better. And Hannah talked about it too– best isn’t automatically better. A grade point average that is 0.000004 higher than your closest academic rival doesn’t mean that, in our eyes, you’re a stronger scholar. And the same with– unique isn’t always better, especially in terms of activities, accomplishments, even ways of thinking or expressing yourself.
Unique can be interesting and for some students, where that uniqueness is natural, it might make us think about how this student can add a different kind of flavor or experience point of view to the undergraduate experience, but it’s almost never a good idea to strain to be unique.
[Mark] Mm-hmm. Yeah. So in many ways, our work at hand is, I think, narrower and less ambitious than what people imagine.
[Hannah] Mm-hmm.
[Mark] Our job is not to render judgment on your eternal soul, dividing the sheep from the goats. We’re not even trying to name winners and losers in some big race. We are trying to create a shared experience for four years among a relatively small group of undergraduate students and I think, if you refocus what the task at hand for admissions officers is, it can help you think about what kind of things would stand out for that sort of endeavor, as opposed to something that might seem a little bit more lofty or ambitious.
[Kieth] I’ll just say that students who focus on introducing themselves just as they are tend to stand out a bit more than many who go to great lengths to try and showcase what they or others think college admissions officers want to see.
[Mark] Mm-hmm.
[Kieth] And we know this is all stressful. And we would feel the stress 100 times greater if we thought that our not being able to admit all applicants to Yale meant that they would not be able to go to any other great college–
[Mark] Absolutely–
[Hannah] Right.
[Kieth] –or college at all.
[Hannah] So probably every selective college with a strong residential community might try to optimize for the same things that we’re talking about, but at its core, these are going to mean different things at different colleges. So a student that we feel would add a lot and take a lot from Yale might not add as much or take away as much from another college. And our work is very specific to the particular contours and features of the place that we work.
[Mark] Right. Hannah and I have both worked exclusively at Yale, so we consider ourselves experts on the Yale undergraduate experience.
[Hannah] Yes.
[Mark] And our admissions work has been closely tied to that. Keith, you’ve worked at a few different places, so can you give us a sense of how those unique features of particular colleges can play out in the committee process?
[Kieth] What I’ve noticed at– being at wonderful places with– as Hannah suggested, that some of the same features are prized, but in different ways than many students, and parents, and other observers may think. One thing for sure is that most admissions offices and– on behalf of the college and faculty, can’t imagine not having an undergraduate population that’s diverse in every way you can think about– that we prized some qualities of students, not just their achievements– their curiosity, their willingness to engage– which doesn’t mean that you have to be an extrovert.
But I have noticed that different schools may have different personalities or stress different characteristics, which– students may be drawn to that, and quite rightly. There are specific programs sometimes that students even mention in their applications; it suggests that they understand the environment and personality of a place and they know not only is the major offered, but the activities, the research, and so on.
And this may apply to extracurricular activities, the– even the environment, the proximity to green trees, water, and so on. I think we would all prefer that students try their best to understand how they may thrive in these places. We try very hard not to anticipate what is best for students, but we do take into account, when they introduce themselves to us, whether or not for– I’ll use Yale as an example here– someone is so eager to take it accounting, and marketing, and so on, and study business at the undergraduate level, and then are shocked to find out that’s not the nature of the place.
[Mark] We’re going to unpack this idea of fit in depth in just a minute. Before we do, I want to take just a second to acknowledge that this conversation is probably kicking up a lot of big questions in your mind about, what does merit mean? And what’s the role of elite institutions in society? And how does this play into social mobility, and access to social capital, and all these things? And I want to just say that that is not lost on us. I actually really hope that we can dig into that more deeply in a future episode.
[Hannah] Yes.
[Mark] We’re going to try to keep this conversation a little bit more narrowly focused, but if you’re pulling your hair out, saying, why are they not thinking about this or that in these conversations, know that that is something that we think about a lot.
[Kieth] Yes.
[Mark] But let’s get back to this question of, when we are reading application after application, what stands out?
[Hannah] Yeah. So I think a lot of the stuff that Keith was talking about can be summed up very neatly in this idea of fit. And that’s something that you will hear admissions officers talk about all the time. So let’s unpack that a little bit, and let’s just start with the obvious. So what does it mean to be a good academic fit for Yale? There are a couple of ways to demonstrate to this to us, but like Keith was saying, not having this narrow, pre-professional focus, and instead having an understanding of multidisciplinary study and this idea of a liberal arts education that doesn’t box you into one area during college– that’s a good start, in terms of understanding why you might want to study at Yale in particular. By the way Mark, and I understand that we’re sort of mired in these terms in our day-to-day life. And it’s not the case that every successful applicant would be able to articulate that their approach aligns with the liberal arts philosophy–
[Mark] Mm-hmm.
[Hannah] –or anything like that. It’s more often that we sniff that sort of thing out from cues in essays and teacher recommendations, the way the student writes about their own interests, the way the teachers write about their approach in the classroom. So all of this is to say, you don’t have to necessarily be able to name these things in order to demonstrate to us that you fall into these categories.
[Mark] So academic fit is obviously a critical component of this, but there’s other elements of fit as well. One of them is what I just like to call playing well with others.
[Hannah] Yes.
[Mark] A student who’s a good fit for Yale is someone who is interested in engaging with and learning from others. That’s a huge part of our undergraduate experience– not the case at every college, university– definitely the case at Yale. That student also needs to be interested in sharing their own experiences.
[Hannah] Mm-hmm. 
[Mark] And so a student’s willingness to dig in and reveal themselves in an application can help us get a sense of, OK, this student is open to sharing where they’re coming from as well. And then finally, the sense that they’re collaborative, as opposed to competitive– you need to have the baseline sense that the people around me are great resources and they’re people I want to collaborate with, as opposed to just people I can jump over and surpass in the course of my undergraduate career.
[Hannah] Another way this can sometimes play out is an ambition and excitement for research or other learning experiences outside of the classroom. Yale is a place that is very, very rich in sort of resources. And it’s a place that really rewards initiative, and kind of requires initiative for you to get the most out of living and learning here. There are a lot of opportunities at Yale that rely on a continuous stream of innovative, student-generated ideas. So if you want to come to a place that your innovation can have room to grow and to thrive, this is a pretty good place for that.
[Mark] Yeah. Sometimes– and I’ll say this is rare– but sometimes a fit aligns around something very specific to Yale. And this might be that a student is passionate about a particular type of research a Yale professor does or wants to work with a particular collection that we have. And I want to make clear, that’s not the same as just googling something for Yale, saying, oh, I think I want to major in computer science. Let me google Yale computer science. And then you write in your application, I want to study with Professor Such-and-Such. She’s fabulous.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] It’s much more common actually that we get a sense of good fit not for something super specific, but actually because the student is saying, I don’t really have my academic path planned out. Yale happens to be really great for that kind of student as well. So even though sometimes there is a sort of alignment of the stars, and we say, oh my gosh, yes, this specific thing that we have this student is perfect for, more often it’s a more general sense of this student’s approach to undergraduate learning seems like it’s going to be a good fit for all the different places that they could go over the course of their four years.
[Hannah] Another thing that we get excited about when we’re reading and in the committee room is when an applicant demonstrates that they are a high-impact member of their community. One of my favorite lines to read in a letter of recommendation is, wow, the student will really be missed after they graduate, or this student’s impact on the school or on the community will be felt for years and years and years after they leave.
[Mark] I don’t want to dwell on pop psychology here, but you don’t have to be a super extroverted person to be a high-impact–
[Hannah] Right.
–community member.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] We see leadership and impact that comes in all kinds of different forms.
[Hannah] And I think that’s a good segue to talk a little bit about where in the application some of these things tend to come up, just to give you a little bit more specifics about where we find these things that we’re talking about.
[Mark] Right. If you’ve been frustrated that we’ve been having all this lofty talk– let’s drill down–
[Hannah] Yes.
[Mark] –because there are actual real moving pieces of the application, and different students can stand out in our process in different parts of them. So let’s start with essays. Side note– listen to the three episodes that we did about essays for lots more on this. But broadly speaking, a student can stand out in an essay when they do something like reveal themselves as a real thinking and feeling person.
[Hannah] Yes.
[Mark] I know it sounds a little bit silly, but that really stands out when, over the course of 650 words, I say, oh, a real person wrote that–
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] –a real interesting–
[Hannah] Yes.
[Mark] –person wrote that. That stands out. Similarly, an essay that can showcase a real genuine academic passion and curiosity really stands out. This is different than just saying, hey, I’m interested in this, I liked this class, or hey, look how accomplished I am in this area and all that I’ve done. And it’s not what I was saying earlier– like, here’s how I will study this at Yale, and be wildly successful, and go on to this profession and all that. I’m talking about showcasing, revealing, demonstrating that something really gets you excited, and that this curiosity and this passion is a really intricate part of who you are, and you’re going to bring that with you to Yale.
[Hannah] I think I mentioned this in one of our other episodes about essays, but if we can get to the end of an essay and think, not only do I feel like I’ve sort of met this person or I get a sense of what it would be like to have a conversation with them or be in the same room with them, but also I get a sense of why the student is really excited to come to Yale and make use of the resources here– so that is always a winner for us.
[Mark] Yeah. OK, next area, extracurricular activities– we are planning to do another podcast episode about this at some point in the future, so stay tuned for more about this. But things that can stand out from a student’s extracurricular activities– number one, certainly, if you have an exceptional level of accomplishment in a particular area, that stands out.
But I want to make it clear, we are interested in the person who’s behind that accomplishment. That accomplishment– it’s not just going to speak for itself, even if it’s super impressive. So we’re not just going to say, oh, well, this student is an Olympian– they’re in– or this student had some amazing science experiment and they launched a rocket from their backyard– they’re in. We say, that’s impressive. Who’s the person who did that? I want to learn more about them.
[Hannah] Right. And then your extracurricular activities are another spot where impact on your communities can really stand out. And I want to make sure that we say that formal leadership– a formal leadership position doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve had a strong impact on your community. And we’re more interested in exactly what you have done and how you’ve engaged with this extracurricular, or this group, or this community that you’re a part of then how many years you’ve held X leadership position.
[Mark] All right, next up, teacher recommendations– listen to our episode about this, but broadly speaking, letters of recommendation that stand out tend to break the formula that the student’s teacher might have for most of their recommendations, and takes the time to stop and say, I really want to advocate for this student, because they were truly special in my class.
[Kieth] And one of the things that I always note, Mark, is when teachers can express why they’re happy to have a particular student in their classroom, and sometimes that what they notice is– might be surprising. I might read from the same teacher who appreciates having Gwendolyn in the classroom, because though she doesn’t speak all of the time, she is so thoughtful and considers what’s going on. When she speaks, everyone listens and it may change the course of the conversation. The same teacher might say, I’m really happy to have Juan in my classroom, because he’s always buzzing with ideas, and isn’t afraid to suggest things that are original or an alternative point of view. And that generates lively discussion in the classroom, which is gratifying not only to the teacher, but the rest of the classroom. So those are the kinds of things we love to see.
[Mark] So there are some other things that stand out as well that don’t necessarily fit into one of those categories. For one, a student who’s achieved a lot despite lacking some resources, whether at home or at their school– and I want to make clear, this is particularly exciting for us, because to achieve a lot in an under-resourced environment demonstrates impressive resourcefulness and initiative that can just explode at a place like Yale. So when we see that a student has pushed beyond the boundaries of what you might expect from where they are coming from, it bodes really well for their ability to really take advantage of what they would find at a place like Yale.
[Hannah] We also seek students from backgrounds that have been traditionally underrepresented at Yale. And I’ll just say this encompasses a lot of different kinds of backgrounds and identities, and it’s never as simple as simply checking a box, and then all of a sudden, you stand out in our process.
[Mark] Mm-hmm. Yeah. A diverse student body– as you’ve heard us say, it’s essential to our educational mission. This animates what we do. This is not empty talk. This is a critical component of our work in admissions. It’s a critical component of the work that everyone does on our campus. This encompasses socioeconomic diversity, racial and ethnic diversity, geographic diversity, ideological diversity, diversity of interest, opinion, belief, talent, ambition, et cetera. We want to amass a group of students who are going to be interesting and different from each other. It would be super boring if our students were all really similar, so many applicants stand out in our pool in part because they would add something to the rich diversity of our undergraduate student body, in addition to being strong along a lot of other dimensions and usually standing out in some other ways that we talked about as well.
[Hannah] Yeah, absolutely. I will say, though, that standing out isn’t necessarily the same as novelty. So hopefully your takeaway from this episode isn’t that you need to do something super wacky or unusual that no one has ever done or thought of before to stand out.
[Mark] Yeah. We see students take that approach to their applications–
[Hannah] Yes.
[Mark] –and sometimes it’s interesting, but doesn’t always wind up being successful for the applicant.
[Hannah] Yeah, exactly. It’s almost always interesting, really.
[Mark] Yes. What you should take away is that, if you are an applicant in a pool like Yale’s, there are going to be lots and lots of students who are very smart, who are doing very well in their courses, and active in their activities, and who are on a path towards having a very successful college career. That is just the typical applicant in our pool. The students that we admit– they all stand out from that crowd for a reason. Some of those reasons are pretty specific to Yale. Others are probably true at every selective college.
[Hannah] So when you are working on your application, we want you to think about what you’d add to a college and what you would take away from it, because that is ultimately what we’re thinking about and how we’re framing our thoughts when we read your application. And even if you feel like, hey, I’m just an ordinary student, if you’ve identified a college like Yale or another school as a good fit, you can certainly make yourself stand out for that college by showcasing the things about you that resonated with your experience learning about that college– whatever led you to think, hey, this school is a good fit for me.
[Mark] So we’ve covered a lot here. This is one of our more substantive conversations. Keith, thank you so much for joining us and adding all of your wisdom today. We really appreciated it. Yes.
[Kieth] My pleasure–
[Hannah] Thank you, Keith. We’ll have to have you back on soon.
[Mark] Thanks, as always, to our friend and colleague Jill, who’s both our sound engineer and a great admissions officer. Thanks to Reed, who lends us his office here in the Admissions Office. Hannah and I are both back here in the Admissions Office for the first time in a long time, so–
[Hannah] Very exciting–
[Mark] –thank you, Reed. Thanks to our former admissions officer Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our great music. You should check him out at AndrewBrickJohnson.com.
[Hannah] If you have comments for us or an idea for a future episode, drop us a line at yaleadmissionspodcast@gmail.com. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are ours, and don’t necessarily represent those of Yale University. Thanks for listening.

Episode 15: Dealing with Decisions

With decision day approaching, Hannah and Mark share advice for understanding and processing each type of decision: denied, admitted, and placed on the wait list. They discuss what each decision means (and doesn’t mean) about an individual, the applicant pool, and what comes next. They share the wisdom of former Dean of Admissions Jeff Brenzel: “Almost nothing depends on exactly which college admits you. Everything depends on what you decide to do once you get to college.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] Hello, and welcome back to Inside the Yale Admissions Office. My name is Mark, and I’m a Yale Admissions Officer.
[Hannah] My name is Hannah, and I’m also a Yale Admissions Officer.
[Mark] And this is coming out right around decision day. So we wanted to do an episode all about how we think you should think about and process the news that’s coming out soon.
[Hannah] So, what we’re going to talk about today is based on our experience of working with students and parents. Just a quick disclaimer. We are not psychiatrists. We will not be doling out any sort of mental health advice here, but we do want to talk a little bit about how we suggest that you think about the decision that you receive from Yale or from another college, whether it’s deny, admit, or wait list and we’ll talk about what each of these three outcomes really means, and how you might think about processing them.
[Mark] Yeah. And our hope here is that we can provide you with some valuable insights that will help you deal with admissions decisions that you would get from any selective college, not just from Yale. And we are coming at this from our experience frequently encountering some folks who do not process their decision in a particularly healthy way. One of the things that surprised me most when I started working in Admissions is that we often get some, let’s say, feedback from folks after they are disappointed by their decision.
[Hannah] “Feedback” is a nice word.
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] It actually doesn’t come as frequently right in the moment afterwards. Like, you’d kind of think immediately, there would sort of be this white-hot rage, and the day after decisions went out, our phones would be ringing off the hook. That actually doesn’t happen all that much. Instead, what we find is that it’s often a few weeks later when we encounter folks who have just clearly been stewing over this and their brain has just gone to some pretty unhealthy places in the interim.
[Hannah] Right. They’re a little bit removed from reality by the time we start to hear from them. But we also encounter students who might draw the wrong conclusions about being admitted.
[Mark] Yeah. Sometimes, the students, sometimes their parents, sometimes their schools. They have a little bit too much hubris about what happened. They are patting themselves on the back a little bit too much. We also encounter students who experience some real imposter syndrome. And they think that the Admissions Office made a mistake. And they think, well, there’s no way that I could succeed at a place like Yale. And they wind up going through the month of April and into May, making their college decision based on some incorrect assumptions about where they would be able to succeed.
[Hannah] And then, we also, of course, see students who take the wrong approach to being put on our wait list. They might drag out the process unnecessarily, keep themselves from enjoying the end of their senior year, and miss out on some other great college options.
[Mark] So in this episode, we are going to give you some advice for dealing with each one of those decisions. If you are admitted to a college, fabulous. If you’re denied, how do you manage that disappointment, and then finally, if you’re on the waitlist. Before we dive into each of those, though, let’s give some general advice for just thinking about what an admissions decision from a college really means.
[Hannah] Yeah, absolutely. I think the number one thing, remember that decisions are not a reflection of your worth, your potential success in college and beyond, your effort in the process, your brains, or anything like that.
[Mark] These are not validations or condemnations of parenting choices or high schools or extracurricular activities or anything like that. It is really tempting to think about college admissions this way. It’s especially true if you get good news, right? But that’s a misinterpretation of our work. I will mention one of the things that has made me cringe the most is when I see high schools, particularly independent high schools, sort of advertise with their students’ acceptances.
[Hannah] (SIGHS) Oh yeah.
[Mark] Many years ago, there was a small school in a city I won’t name that literally had a giant billboard featuring a young woman wearing her Yale T-shirt and it was up for years. And I would drive to the city doing outreach visits, and I just couldn’t avoid it. And the young woman was fabulous. She’s fantastic. But the idea that this school was sort of taking credit for everything about her, and then advertising based on it– just completely wrong use of the college admissions process.
[Hannah] Remember that our work is narrower and less ambitious than many may imagine. Our goal is to try to select great young people for a very specific four-year experience, which is very different from saying who is the best or who is the most worthy in our process.
[Mark] Yeah. OK. Let’s go ahead and talk about each one of these decisions. We decided that we’re going to talk about these in order of frequency and no matter what your decision is, remember, you are in good company. There are tens of thousands of people who’ve gone through this process, who have been denied, who’ve been admitted, who’ve been put on the waitlist before. So, even though it’s probably going to feel very personal, remember that lots and lots of people experience this. All right. Let’s start with the bad news first. Let’s talk about how to handle, how to deal with being denied from a college.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Hannah] Right up front, let’s just acknowledge that this is not going to feel good.
[Mark] No.
[Hannah] It sucks. You wanted something and you didn’t get it. You probably feel like you made a big investment in your application and it wasn’t recognized and we also know that the way we ask you to reflect in your essays and everything means that you put a lot of your personality into your application. And that makes it hard to not take it personally when you’re not accepted.
[Mark] I find that to be one of the most challenging things, and kind of the biggest paradox about this, is that we’ve told you, be personal in your application. Be personal, be personal. And then, if you’re denied, we say, don’t take it personally. And that’s tough. We get that. You may feel really frustrated, right? And this classic frustration. You worked hard for something. You didn’t get the outcome you wanted. You can also feel kind of mournful. You’ve probably spent a lot of time imagining yourself at a particular school, and now that thing is gone. You may also feel like admissions officers are a bunch of dummies, and we don’t know what we’re doing. That is all fine. All those feelings that you’re going to have at the moment, there is nothing wrong with any of them whatsoever.
But your goal is to deal with the decision. You are trying to move on from it, and you want to get those initial feelings out of the way and get to a different place and the absolute best way that I have heard anyone talk about this actually comes from our previous Admissions Dean, a guy named Jeff Brenzel. I’m hoping that we can have him on the podcast soon. Jeff is such a thoughtful guy, and actually wrote a wonderful piece about how to think about admissions decisions that we’ve kept on our website. It’s called “What To Do After Colleges Accept You.” his advice on this is just so perfect.
He says the only way to deal with a denial decision is to say, your loss, baby. And that’s my best Jeff impression. That’s pretty good. “Your loss, baby.” [LAUGHS] That’s your goal. You want to get to this place where you’re saying, gee, Yale, you are missing out on an awesome person. Another college is going to be super lucky to have me, so your loss, baby.
[Hannah] Yeah. And you’d be totally correct if you reach that conclusion. And remember, Mark and I have talked about this before. But we feel like we’re missing out all the time. We can validate that. We are often really frustrated to have to deny students. The next piece of advice that we have is just to remember that you have absolutely no idea how close you came to being admitted. It’s not like we send a different letter for students who were pulled out as part of a final review of the class, or those who were completely uncompetitive.
[Mark] Yeah. You will never know what happened in the admissions committee room. It’s, I think, that fact that makes people’s brains kind of go into overdrive, because they try to imagine what happened, what mistake did I make? That is not what typically happens. That is not usually why a student is denied.
[hannah] Right. We’re never sitting in the committee room and saying, if only the student didn’t do this, they’d be getting–
[Mark] Exactly.
[Hannah] That doesn’t happen.
[Mark] Yeah.
[Hannah] So, our next piece of advice is go ahead and blame tens of thousands of other people, but don’t blame yourself.
[Mark] Yes. I have to imagine if you’re the type of person who listens to a podcast about admissions, you are probably as over-analytical as Hannah and I are. Right? And so you’re going to want to come up with an explanation for what just happened. But the only information that’s readily available to you is what you put in your application. So this is why you’re going to tend to say, well, what did I do wrong? What was it about this that didn’t work out? What could I have done better?
So, this is a classic fallacy that gets talked about in social science research a lot, of searching for your keys under the streetlight. So, quick aside here. This is a common critique of a particular type of research, where someone says, well, you were looking for the explanation of something, and you just looked for where it was easy as opposed to where the data might lead you.
And the analogy here is of a professor who has walked home from his lab at the end of the day and dropped his keys somewhere. Gets home, realizes he doesn’t have his keys, goes back to look for them. It’s dark out, and where is he looking for them? Well, under the streetlight. Not because that’s where he thinks he dropped them, but that’s where the light is.
So, you’re going to tend to look for things where it’s easy to look for them, and that’s going to be in your application. If you saw what we saw, though, which is an applicant pool full of tens of thousands of students, you would realize that the explanation is in a much different and much larger place than just what was in your application.
[Hannah] Exactly. And we have been through this process so many times and read so many applications that we can say with pretty good certainty that most applicants who are denied would be great at Yale, did nothing wrong in their application. It’s not that they made any wrong choices in their high school experience. It just comes with the territory of a very selective admissions process.
[Mark] So, go ahead and blame tens of thousands of other people around the world, but be careful. Don’t blame any specific person. This is another manifestation of that keys-spotlight fallacy, is finding someone who was admitted and saying, aha! You got my spot! We see this in high schools a lot and no good can come from it.
[Hannah] Yeah. And besides the fact that we don’t have quotas or try to admit a certain number of people from certain places or certain high schools, there’s probably a lot about your peers that you don’t know. They may have been admitted for reasons that you don’t know about and it may or may not be the case that you’d agree with these reasons, but we can guarantee that they didn’t affect your candidacy.
[Mark] OK. So, final piece of advice, here. Put that overactive brain of yours to work thinking about all the awesome things that you’re going to do in college, wherever you’ve been admitted. Do not let bad news from one school overshadow the great news that you’ve gotten from one or more colleges.
[Hannah] Right. Absolutely. Think about it. You only get to go to one college, so you only need one acceptance letter. And hopefully, it’s one that you’re really excited about. Focusing on that rather than dwelling on the places that you don’t get in.
[Mark] Exactly. You’re going to do great things in college, and do them for you. And just forget about the schools that turned you down. Remember, your loss, baby.
[Hannah] And just a few practical notes, before we move on to talking about other decisions. The first one, this is really important. There’s no appeals process. We do not go back and revisit applications after they’ve been denied. It just wouldn’t be fair.
[Mark] Right. Also, students have the option to apply again, but reapplying almost never changes the outcome.
[Hannah] And finally, I feel like we should say, you’re not going to hurt our feelings if you decide to unsubscribe from our podcast. That’s totally cool.
[Mark] We get it.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] It’s all right.
[HANNAH LAUGHS]
[Mark] OK. Let’s talk about something happier– how to handle an admit. You just got some good news from a college. It feels great! Enjoy it! Jump up and down. Hug your mom. Call your grandma. My first piece of advice here is get lots and lots of people to share in the joy of this moment. Share it with as many people as quickly as possible. They are going to love being part of that experience with you.
[Hannah] Totally. And this leads into, this is a great time to start recognizing all the people who helped you reach this place. Those teachers who write you recommendation letters, everyone who’s supported you. No one gets into Yale on their own. So be proud of what you’ve done, and also start thinking of the other people who helped you get there.
[Mark] Yes. Start saying thank you right away. There have been people on your team throughout high school that got you to where you are. You want them on your team when you’re in college, as well. Let’s talk a little bit about what a decision means and what a decision doesn’t mean in this case. So, this is going to be similar to what we’ve talked about in previous episodes. But the most important thing, I think, to keep in mind about what a decision means is that indeed, you stood out in our pool. There were lots of smart and accomplished students in our applicant pool, and among them, some things about you caught the attention of our admissions committee. Those some things that got us specifically excited were about four years at Yale, and what you would take away from those four years, and what you would add to those four years. This is a real vote of confidence for the Yale experience, specifically.
So, thinking about students who sometimes encounter this imposter syndrome, I want to say up front, this is a real vote of confidence. We are professionals. We think that we’re pretty good at this. We think we’re pretty good at finding students from all kinds of different backgrounds and connecting the dots and saying, yes, this student, for a whole bunch of different reasons, could absolutely thrive for four years in our environment, and graduate having gotten a whole lot out of the experience. So, we believe in you for Yale, specifically, if you’re offered admission.
[Hannah] What your decision does not mean. It doesn’t mean that you are smarter or that you worked harder than the tens of thousands of other people who were denied. We can pretty much guarantee you that someone smarter than you and someone who worked harder than you got denied. Just trust us on that one. We’ve seen it all. It also doesn’t mean that you deserved this any more than someone else, however you’d sort of define that.
[Mark] It also doesn’t mean that your life is now going to be a magical cakewalk, and that opportunities and successes will just magically appear at your doorstep for the rest of your life.
[LAUGHTER]
[Hannah] Still learning that lesson.
[Mark] In fact, there’s a pretty good chance that your time in college is going to be more challenging than what you’ve already experienced. You have our confidence that you’re going to do well, but you should think about really preparing yourself for that experience. You’ve got a lot more to do ahead of you. Your story is not done, by any stretch of the imagination.
[Hannah] So, we want you to take this news with a mix of humility and confidence, and don’t look back. Get excited!
[Mark] Yes. I think that’s a final piece of advice, really, for all decisions, is that, remember that this college admissions process, it’s a means to an end. It is not an end in and of itself. This is a process to get you to college. So, even if you find yourself at the college you always dreamed about, that’s time to go live out that dream. Leave the admissions process behind you. Hannah and I, we go back in the cycle, we do this over and over again. You only have to do it once. So move on and don’t look back.
[Hannah] All right. Let’s talk about that tricky middle ground of handling a waitlist decision. And I’ll also say that if you apply early action, some of the same advice can be applied if you’re handling a defer decision.
[Mark] Yeah, good point.
[Hannah] It might not feel great, confusing.
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] Lots of things.
[Hannah] Lots of things. You’ll probably go back and forth between relief that it’s not a rejection, frustration that you don’t have closure, and a whole lot of confusion and bewilderment about what comes next.
[Mark] Yes. This can be very confusing. So, here’s the big piece of advice. Despite the fact that you’ve not received closure yet from any particular school that puts you on the waitlist, act like there is.
[Hannah] Yes.
[Mark] Act like it’s not going to happen, not because you don’t have a chance of getting off the waitlist. You certainly do. But because you do not want to miss the opportunity to get yourself really excited about your other options. So, tuck that waitlist decision away. Try not to think about it. And spend your time focusing on the good news that you already have in hand.
[Hannah] Yeah. And another reason that advice makes sense is there’s not a whole lot you can or should be doing. There’s a reason we call it the waitlist. You’re just going to have to wait. And that can seem frustrating. As fellow control freaks, we get it. But it’s true. You were put on the waitlist not because there is some deficit to your application, but because your application was really strong and we would love to be able to admit you.
[Mark] Right. Part of this is also just practical. In the month of April, we as admissions officers are spending all of our time thinking about our admitted students and yielding them, as we say, trying to get them to choose Yale. The wait list is just really far down on our list of priorities at this time. So, you are not going to help your case by calling us, visiting campus, sending a million updates, or getting the whole town to write on your behalf and it helps to understand why we have a wait list. We have a wait list because we don’t know what yield is going to look like in any particular year.
We’re going to talk a lot about yield in a future episode, the programming that we do, and how we try to get students to think about Yale, among their other great decisions, and all the interesting work that admissions officers do in that space. But there are just some unknowns that are associated with this. We really don’t know how yield is going to affect the shape of the class. We want our class to be diverse along lots of different dimensions. And sometimes, our yield surprises us, and the class that we yield– the students who have said, yes, we’re coming in the fall– looks a little bit different than the class that we admitted.
[Hannah] We like having a waitlist. We want to go to the waitlist. But occasionally, there’s just not any room.
[Mark] Yeah. We have absolutely no idea how many students we’re going to go to, and we don’t know until after May 1, which is when students who have been admitted reply. So that’s why our wait list is not ranked. It’s why we have no idea if we’re going to be going for zero students or 100 students off the waitlist and that’s why there’s just not much that you can do in the interim.
[Hannah] And by the way, we do try to work quickly once May 1 comes around. We don’t want to leave you hanging indefinitely. Remember, if you’re waiting, just try to put it out of your mind.
[Mark] Put it out of your mind. Go get the sweatshirt for your new college. Go get excited about where you’re going to be living there. That’s what you should be spending your energy doing. If you get a call from a Yale admissions officer, that would be great. But you shouldn’t be spending your time worrying and thinking about, is that going to happen.
[Hannah] Well, that’s a lot to think about. Remember to separate out how you feel in the moment when you get one of these decisions with how you’re going to deal with it and move on from your decision. And everyone will move on from their decision, even those who have been admitted.
[Mark] And after you get your decisions, hey, you’re back in the driver’s seat. You get to decide which college will be lucky enough to get you for four years. You are the decider now. And you’re probably going to break some hearts at admissions offices along the way.
[Hannah] You absolutely will!
[Mark] It happens to all of us. Let me wrap up with one final piece of advice from former Dean of Admissions, Jeff Brenzel, who said this just perfectly. So, here’s a full quote from him. “After years of experience, here’s what I know virtually to the point of certainty. Almost nothing depends on exactly which strong college admits you. Everything depends on what you decide to do once you get to a strong college, and how well prepared you are to take advantage of the infinite opportunities you will find there.” That is absolutely what we believe and how we operate. So, take that good advice. I have not worked on an old movie quote in a while, either.
[Hannah] Let’s do it.
[Mark] So, here’s a quote from one of the best movies of all time. It is almost 80 years old, and it’s still spectacular– Casablanca.
[Hannah] Of course.
[Mark] I’m going to do my best Humphrey Bogart impression, here.
[OLD MOVIE MUSIC PLAYING]
[Hannah] This is quite the buildup.
[Mark] All right.
[Hannah] I’m excited.
(RASPY) “I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Here’s looking at you, kid.”
All right. All right.
[LAUGHTER]
Thanks to our friend and colleague Jill, who’s both our sound engineer and a great admissions officer. Thanks to Reed for lending us his office. Thanks to former admissions officer Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our music. Check him out at andrewbrickjohnson.com.
If you have comments or an idea for an episode, drop us a line at yaleadmissionspodcast@gmail.com. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are mine and Mark’s, and don’t necessarily represent those of Yale University. Thanks for listening.
[MUSIC PLAYING]

Episode 17: The Choices Game

In the process of putting together their applications, students make countless choices. To help applicants understand which choices are more or less likely to help their candidacies, Hannah and Mark invite their colleague John to join in a game of up-voting and down-voting common application choices. While none of these choices will make or break an application, the officers explain why certain choices are more or less beneficial during the review process.

[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] Hello. And welcome back to Inside the Yale Admissions Office. My name is Mark, and I’m a Yale admissions officer.
[Hannah] And I’m Hannah. I’m also a Yale admissions officer.
[Mark] And today’s episode is going to be all about choices that we regularly see students make in their applications.
[Hannah] Yes. We are going to talk about all kinds of choices. And your goal, obviously, is to make good choices in the application process.
[Mark] These pieces aren’t going to fit sort of neatly into one part of the application. We’ll talk a little bit about essays and recommendation choices, and all the things that you just might feel like as an applicant are choices that you are trying to decide, should I do this, or shouldn’t I do this.
[Hannah] Like we talked about in our essay series, these things are not necessarily going to be make or break. We are 100% positive that every poor choice that we discuss has been made by a student who’s eventually been admitted.
[Mark] Yes. I’ve absolutely advocated for students in the committee room when they’ve made every single one of the choices that we’ll sort of identify as maybe a less wise choice.
[Hannah] Yes. Right. In spite of this choice, we advocate for these students. Please don’t try to incorporate everything we talk about as a good choice today into your application. That also is not going to come off well. This isn’t about being prescriptive.
[Mark] Right. Our goal here is to do our best to show, not tell. And we’re also going to try to explain why some choices tend to resonate with admissions officers and others don’t.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] We know that students can wrap themselves up with some anxiety wondering like, should I do this, shouldn’t I do this.
[Hannah] Mm-hmm.
[Mark] What are they going to think? And so, we’re going to try to identify some of those key topics and give you a sense of how we tend to respond to them.
[Hannah] Let’s get into it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] OK. So we are going to set this up as a little bit of a game.
[Hannah] Ooh.
[Mark] We are going to do this kind of like that boggle list exercise that we did back when we were talking about essays, and a little bit like our Mythbusters mini-series that we’ve started as well. So here’s the idea. I have made a list of choices.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] And I’m going to pitch them to Hannah and to our special guest, John.
[John] Hello.
[Mark] Hi, John.
[John] Good to be back.
[Hannah] Surprise, John’s been here the whole time.
[Hannah] Welcome back.
[LAUGHTER]
[Hannah] I’m so excited. I have not seen this list.
[John] Neither have I, yeah.
[Hannah] So yeah, we’re excited to hear what Mark has come up with.
[Mark] So for each choice on this list, John and Hannah are going to talk about whether this is a wise choice or an unwise choice. We played around with a couple of different framings for this.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] So rejected ideas for this episode in terms of theme.
[LAUGHTER]
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] One idea was sort of like Project Runway and Heidi Klum. You’re in, you’re out.
[John] Auf Wiedersehen.
[Mark] Yes. And that’s lovely.
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] You nailed it. That was so good.
[John] I watched a lot of that show. Let me tell you.
[Mark] I have too. I’m a big fan.
[John] It’s a good show.
[Mark] But we thought that was too mean.
[John] Sure.
[Mark] It’s not a matter of being in or out.
[Hannah] Yeah. Similarly, we talked about swipe left, swipe right. We thought that could resonate with some people. But again, it’s a little too dismissive. That’s not the tone we’re going for.
[Mark] Yeah. I will say, as I was thinking about this episode, the framework that I had in mind was one of my favorite memes, which is of Drake from one of my all time favorite music videos, the Hotline Bling video.
[Hannah] Oh yeah.
[Mark] You can picture this. He’s in the puffy coat. And one side of the meme, he’s like, no.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] And the other meme, he’s like, mm.
[Hannah] Yes. Yes. Yes. The Drake meme. Yes. Yes.
[Mark] I’ve kind of been thinking about it in that way. But John actually had a good idea for this.
[John] Yeah. I spend a lot of time on Reddit, as some of you may also. And we like the idea of upvoting and downvoting.
[Mark] Mm-hmm.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[John] Because if enough people upvote, it doesn’t really matter if you downvote. Because the ground swelling is for an upvote.
[Hannah] True.
[John] And so, it’s not a definitive yes or no. It’s kind of, do you give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down.
[Hannah] All right. Let’s do that.
[John] Let’s do it.
[Mark] All right. And let’s say, before we get started, we’re going to use a little gimmick here. But remember, admissions officers– we love reading applications.
[Hannah] Oh yes.
[Mark] It’s a privilege to read absolutely everything that you put into an application. As I mentioned, all of us have advocated for– voted for candidates who’ve made every single choice that’s on this list.
[Hannah] Yeah. We just want to provide some clarity. You could wrap yourself up in wondering, should I do this, will they like that. And we just want to give you some answers.
[Mark] So here’s my list of choices.
[Hannah] I’m so excited.
[John] I’m so excited.
[Mark] Here’s the big reveal.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] All right. Number one on my list, a choice that an applicant might make, would be to use the additional information section to include a long resume listing every Science Olympiad or debate team competition they have participated in and their various awards or recognitions from them.
[Hannah] If you have been a listener of this podcast, hopefully this won’t come as a surprise. But I’m going to have to downvote this choice.
[John] I’m going to have to downvote with a little–
[BUZZER]
[John]–asterisk that we can explore later.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] But Hannah, why downvote?
[Hannah] So we give you space on the application to tell us the things that we want to hear of you. [LAUGHS] So we give you a place to list your extracurricular activities, to list your honors and awards. That space is limited and it’s limited for a good reason. More is not always better in these cases. We just want to see what has been the most important to you. And listing a resume in the additional information is often redundant and it often doesn’t give us more information that’s actually helpful to us.
[John] I agree. I think when you fill out pieces of an application, there’s meant to be a reflective process involved as well.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[John] Not just a brain dump. And aside from not wanting to read lots of extraneous information, we’re really keenly interested in what you’ve reflected on as important.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[John] And how you convey that.
[Mark] Right.
[Mark] Totally.
[John] Yeah. Now my one little asterisk is, if there’s kind of an acronym, or some detail that you couldn’t fit into the description box, that for some reason we would not understand, that additional information space can be helpful to provide some clarity.
[Mark] Next on my list.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] Here’s a choice. Getting an extra letter of recommendation from a research advisor who’s worked with you in a STEM research setting.
[Hannah] Ooh. Thumbs up.
[John] Yeah, I’m going to upvote that.
[DING]
[Hannah] Definitely. Yeah, for sure. Those letters can be helpful. This may be confusing, because I know that we say that we do not recommend extra letters of recommendation. But we do give this caveat that something from a research mentor can be the exception to that rule and can actually be really helpful in providing context to any outside research that you’ve done.
[John] Right. And the kind of descriptors that a research mentor might have of you, those provide new information.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[John] Other pieces of the application don’t. So as is the guidance with any kind of piece of information that you’re submitting optionally, make sure that it’s something novel.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] So similarly, another choice, including an extra letter of recommendation from a third or fourth academic teacher.
[Hannah] Downvote–
[John] Ooh, downvote.
[Hannah] –for me. Yeah.
[BUZZER]
[Hannah] Again, we have thought really hard about the required materials in your application. And we require two letters of recommendation from an academic teacher. If we wanted more, we would ask you for more.
[John] Right. And while a research advisor or mentor is providing a perspective that isn’t already represented in your application, a third or even a fourth teacher is kind of just redundant.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[John] Because we already have recommendations from two teachers.
[Hannah] Yeah. Keep it to two. Keep it simple. More is not always better.
[John] Yep.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] Confidently incorporating cultural references or allusions to literature in their writing.
[Hannah] Yes. Upvote for me.
[John] I’d say upvote.
[DING]
[John] It’s a little bit of a creative risk, but I think it’s one that often pays off. Because if you’re choosing to make that reference, it’s something that you’re especially interested in. I would maybe just add the tiniest little caveat, in that, make sure it’s not a cultural reference that is so obscure that it would be difficult to uncover what that is.
[Hannah] Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, so sometimes I will find myself– if I’m reading an essay that has some obscure reference that I’ve never heard of, sometimes I’ll Google it. I’ll be like, what is this kid talking about? And that’s totally fine. What I actually don’t love is when students make a reference, and then add a little parenthetical or a little asterisk where they explain it.
[Mark] Right.
[John] Oh yeah.
[Hannah] And I’m like, I don’t need that. You don’t need to hold my hand through this. I can figure it out myself.
[John] Right.
[Mark] Right. I mean, we incorporate a lot of cultural references on our podcast.
[Hannah] Sure.
[Mark] I think it can be a great way to make a connection with the person who’s reading your application.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] And I find that there’s all kinds of references that can work. I like references to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] But also Confucius and the Buddha. So if it’s something that speaks to you, and you feel like you know as I’m talking about this, this sort of larger work of literature, this larger cultural reference, is something that makes sense to me, it’d actually be a great way, I think, to loop in your application reader and be like, if you want to understand this, here’s a way that you can think about it with this reference.
[John] Right. And it’s such a great way to show not tell.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[John] If let’s say you love reading literature, you can make a reference. And that can be a way through which you convey to us that you love reading.
[Hannah] Yeah. And by the way, I had such a fun experience in a committee this year, where an applicant had written an essay about a novel– I won’t name it. But it happens to be one of my favorites. And other people in the committee room hadn’t read it. And they’ve now picked it up, and it’s on the reading list.
[Mark] Oh cool.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] Similarly, a student who chooses to incorporate humor into their writing.
[Hannah] Upvote?
[John] Upvote.
[Hannah] As long as you’re funny.
[John] Yeah. I’d say upvote, but then sometimes downvote.
[Hannah] Yeah. I mean, again, this is one of those things where it’s like, if you’re a funny person, and this comes naturally to you, go for it.
[John] And I think there’s different kinds of humor that you can incorporate into your application. Knowing that you have really no sense of exactly who’s reading your application or who in your committee might be reviewing it.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[John] Don’t go for that edgy dark humor. That could be offensive, I would say.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[John] Sometimes we see that. And that’s for me, an ultimate downvote. Because sometimes those jokes need a lot more context to land and you just don’t necessarily have that space in an application.
[Hannah] True.
[Mark] That’s a good point.
[Hannah] True. Yeah.
[John] I love a good pun though.
[Hannah] Oh yeah. We see a lot of puns.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] Here’s a choice sometimes students make. And I imagine, sometimes they agonize over it. Writing to update when you realize you’ve made a minor typo in some part of your application.
[Hannah] Oh, downvote.
[BUZZER]
[Hannah] Save us all some– save yourself some time. I mean, we are not keeping score of the typos in your application. I hope you’ve proofread your application and taken another look at it. But typos happen. And you do not need to send us an updated essay if you suddenly discover one.
[Mark] Similarly, here’s a choice students make.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] Updating your application a few months later with a new award, or recognition, or big news about a project that you’ve been involved with that’s occurred since you submitted your application.
[John] Yeah. I would say upvote.
[DING]
[John] If it’s along the lines of something that you would have reflected on and chosen to originally include in your application on your list of extracurriculars, or honors, or awards. But if the new development is something that you wouldn’t have even initially included in your application, then downvote, because it just feels like a lot of wasted effort.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] Here’s another choice. Using space in your application to humble brag.
[Hannah] Oh.
[John] Ooh. This is tough. I’m going to say downvote. But I’m going to say, I think sometimes students don’t know that they’re humble bragging, and it comes across as kind of bragging. So I think it’s good to put your best foot forward. And I think it’s good to share your successes with us. And we’re excited to receive them in the application and admissions process. But if you’re intentionally doing it in a way that is kind of braggy or showy, that ends up being a downvote for me. Because it feels less reflective and more just declarative.
[Mark] Mm-hmm.
[Hannah] Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I tend to want to give students as much leeway as possible when it comes to this kind of thing. Because we ask you to put your best foot forward in the application.
[Mark] Yeah.
[Hannah] So then, we can’t turn around and ding you for being proud of your achievements and bragging about them. That’s kind of what you have to do. So yeah, I guess it just depends on how it comes across. If it comes across as totally inauthentic, then yeah, it would be a downvote. But we also want to give you space to be proud of what you’ve done.
[Mark] Yeah. I think your point, John, about it being reflective is kind of the real difference maker. If the only reflection that you’re giving while you’re bragging about something is trying to make it humble bragging, which is like, oh my gosh, I was so surprised. And I never would have thought–
[John] It’s like a Taylor Swift acceptance.
[LAUGHTER]
[Hannah] Who me?
[Mark] That doesn’t qualify as reflection.
[Mark] Right.
[Mark] That’s just like trying to color the declaration of the bragging.
[Hannah] Sure.
[Mark] Right?
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] So actually reflecting and giving us some insight into who that person is that achieved that thing and then went on from it, that’s different than just trying to shade it in a way that seems humble while your point is really just to say, I did this thing, and it’s very impressive.
[Hannah] Yeah. And I guess the point that I was trying to make is, you don’t need to do that. You don’t need to add false humility.
[Mark] Yes.
[Hannah] Because we want you to, again, put your best foot forward in the application.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] Let’s talk about a few more writing choices. Writing one or more of your responses as a poem.
[John] Oh, I knew this was coming.
[Hannah] Ooh.
[John] Oh.
[Hannah] Downvote.
[BUZZER]
[Hannah] I’m sorry.
[John] I want to hear your downvote.
[LAUGHS]
[John] And I’m going to reflect back on something we started the podcast with. Yeah.
[Hannah] OK. So I get why students do this and sometimes students are accomplished poets and really good creative writers, and they want to show that off. However, I feel like whenever I see this, it feels like a missed opportunity. It feels like you are putting so much energy into the structure of the response that you’re missing out on the opportunity for the genuine reflection that we look for in these pieces.
[John] Mm-hmm. I would very much agree with that. The one caveat that I would offer is we started this podcast acknowledging that we’re 100% positive that every, quote, poor choice that we’re talking about has been made and even advocated for in committee.
[Hannah] Yeah. This is a great example of that. Yeah.
[John] Right. And this is a great example in that, I find that more often than not, the poem format does feel like a missed opportunity.
[Hannah] Mm-hmm.
[John] But every once in a while, for that student, it can work. I’ve rarely seen it work well in a longer essay. But for some of the shorter pieces, there have definitely been some–
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
[Hannah] I feel like we get a lot of why Yale poems.
[John] Right.
[Hannah] Yeah, odes to Yale. Which, if that’s how you want to show off your creativity, I’m all for taking that kind of risk. But I will just say, I do sometimes say, oh, I wish you had just written this as prose, so that I can really understand what you’re getting at here.
[John] And I think a big takeaway is, choosing to write in poem format should not be your ticket to standing out. Right? I think sometimes students will choose to write a poem because they think, oh, this is what’s going to grab Hannah or Mark’s attention.
[Hannah] Mm-hmm.
[Mark] When really, you should just write naturally.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[John] Write for you.
[Mark] We’ve talked about how novelty alone is not the thing that makes a student stand out. And this is actually a choice that’s maybe not as novel as you might think.
[LAUGHTER]
[Hannah] Yeah. That’s true. We see it a lot.
[Mark] You said, I knew this was coming, because we’ve seen it enough.
[Hannah] I know. We’ve seen it .
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
[Hannah] Yeah, and plenty of those students are now Yale students. So again, this isn’t a make or break thing. But just saying, it makes it a little harder for us.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] Similar writing choice– really intentionally upping the drama in your essay responses.
[Hannah] Yeah, I’m going to downvote that one, just because–
[BUZZER]
[Hannah] –I don’t think it’s necessary and I think it can actually get in the way of your honest reflection on something that’s happened to you or something that you’ve been through, if you’re just trying to drum up the drama. And you really don’t need to. We don’t need to be on the edge of our seats while we’re reading your essay.
[John] Yeah. And we all recognize that students have gone through some really difficult moments and some hardships but the phrase that sticks out for me in recent committee discussions is unnecessarily fraught.
[Mark] Yes.
[Hannah] Mm-hmm.
[John] And sometimes we’ll share that. Because it’s not that we’re digging the student. But we’re trying to wade through all of this added drama to really understand what the student is saying. But sometimes, there is so much additional drama that it’s tough to really understand what we’re reading about.
[Hannah] Right.
[John] So you don’t ever want the desire for literary drama in your writing to cloud the fact that you actually do have a very important story to share.
[Mark] Yeah.
[Hannah] Yes. Definitely.
[Mark] That’s a good point. And I find the best essays incorporate heart and head together in a nice balance. If it’s just all heart and all emotion and we never get to the thoughtful reflection on it, well, you may have given us a very dramatic interesting story that might make for a compelling memoir at some point. But you maybe haven’t used the space as effectively as you could have.
[Hannah] Right. And your the most dramatic, quote-unquote, thing that’s ever happened to you is not necessarily the best topic for your college application essay also.
[Mark] Yes. Sometimes the drama is simply in the telling of the story.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] And it becomes a super interesting story, like whoa, this thing happened to you.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] But sometimes, all 650 words are just telling that dramatic story.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] And then it’s over.
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] And it was like, oh, cool story, but I don’t know anything about the person involved in that story.
[Hannah] Right.
[John] Right.
[Mark] Yeah.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] Another writing choice: geeking out– I like to say this– geeking out with lots of details about something.
[Hannah] Oh.
[John] Ooh.
[Hannah] I’m going to upvote this. If you’re a regular listener of this podcast, you know we like to geek out. But yeah, I think that this can really display a deep interest– intellectual interest or passion– for the subject.
[John] Kind of related to the adding additional drama piece, I often find that the excitement with which students write about things they want to geek out on is palpable.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[John] And even if I’m not also interested in Battlestar Galactica or Python, I can still get a sense of that excitement. But you also want it to be a reflective piece of writing.
[Hannah] Sure.
[John] So it’s not just a brain dump of your geekiness. You still want to couch all of that wonderful geeky material with a sense of structure.
[Hannah] Yeah. Bring it back to you, always. Yeah.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] Here’s another choice that we see somewhat regularly– including a link to a personal website or a video with your application.
[Hannah] Hmm.
[Hannah] I’m going to downvote that.
[BUZZER]
[John] Oh, I was going to upvote that.
[DING]
[Mark] Oh, OK.
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] Discuss.
[Hannah] OK.
[LAUGHTER]
[Hannah] So here’s how I feel about this. Often, this is a link to a personal website that you’ve put together, and maybe you’ve put some time into it, and that’s fine. But I’ll go back to what I’ve said before, which is, we give you the space on the application to tell us what we want to hear on the application. And often, what I see on your personal website is going to be redundant, because you’re already going to have told us about it in your extracurricular list or in an essay. And also, I’ll just say that there is no guarantee that your admissions officer will click that link. You should know that. So anything that’s super important, please just put it in your application. Sometimes we click those links, sometimes we want to dig a little deeper. But it’s not a guarantee that we will.
[John] Yeah. I’m glad you explained that. Because I think, my upvote came from the place that I think sometimes students do have these unique qualities, or involvements, or skills, that it’s like, you kind of have to see it to believe it. And so, a cool YouTube video or something represented on a website can be great. I think what we want to avoid is the idea that compiling all of your accomplishments and awards into a website specifically so that you can upload that URL into an application.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[John] That’s really not what we’re talking about here.
[Hannah] You do not need to do that. We’re not going to be impressed if your website looks super polished or anything like that. I mean, there are– yeah. I just don’t usually find that this adds for me.
[Mark] Yeah. I find in the rare instances where it is helpful, it’s always a kind of digital artifact of something that’s been produced for something else.
[John] Yeah.
[Mark] Right?
[Hannah] Sure.
[Mark] So already you’re sort of arriving in your senior year, you already have something that’s been produced for some reason, and you say, oh, I’ll kick this in. That is different than as you were saying, spending your energy, and time, and resources, putting together something that’s completely separate from the application.
[John] Yes.
[Mark] And sort of it’s kind of like wishing for more wishes.
[LAUGHTER]
[Mark] With the genie.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] You’re like, you know what? I’m going to get to add more than just what’s in the application. This can’t contain me.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] I’m going to spend all this other energy on this digital space. And then, they’re going to go there and spend all the time getting these extra pieces as well.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] That’s not how it works.
[Hannah] Right. Less is more.
[Mark] Let’s talk about some other parts of the application.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] Using something like the additional information section to explain why you couldn’t enroll in all of the courses that you wanted to take in particular your junior or your senior year.
[Hannah] Yeah, I’d upvote that. I think that’s a reasonable use of the additional information section, unlike the resumes that we were talking about before.
[John] Right. And with that, I’ll give it a small upvote–
[DING]
[John] –in that I think it is a good use of that section. But we also do see, I think, a lot of students take it a little too far. So let’s say, you’re a die-hard engineer, and a legitimate scheduling conflict meant that you couldn’t take your calculus class for some reason. That would be a cool thing to share with us, just because that’s a question we may have. Explaining why you couldn’t take geometry in this particular period your first year, when you could take it in a different period, is not necessarily going to be consequential in any way.
[Mark] Similarly, using that additional information section to explain the context around a major life event or challenge that you faced.
[Hannah] Yeah. I think this is a strong upvote for me.
[John] Strong upvote, yup.
[DING]
[Hannah] Because that can be very important to students. And what we don’t necessarily want is for you to feel like you need to waste valuable space in your essays writing about this stuff if it’s not something that you would have chosen to write about in your essays. So in that case, using the additional information to get that stuff out there can be a good choice.
[John] Right. And not every student is going to need to use that space to add further clarification to certain contextual pieces of their lives.
[Hannah] Sure.
[John] But it is a great space to use it if you need it.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] Yeah. And I’ll mention, that space can actually be a nice break from the essay style. It can be helpful just to say, you might be wondering about x, y, or z. Here’s the deal.
[Hannah] Yes. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. You do not need to make that section an additional essay, for sure.
[John] A great example of that is– Hannah and I read a lot of international applications. And sometimes students move around a lot.
[Mark] Mm-hmm.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[John] And so, it can be kind of difficult to connect the dots of where they’ve gone to school and where they’ve lived. And so, some students will use that space to just very cut and dry say, hey, here’s a timeline of where I’ve lived and where I’ve gone to school.
[Hannah] Yeah. That’s helpful.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Mark] I think what I liked is that some of these things were pretty clear cut. Others were murkier. And I’m hoping that people hearing this can take a step back, take a deep breath, and don’t wrap yourself up in a pretzel agonizing about these choices.
[Hannah] Sure. Yeah.
[Mark] My advice here, the very wise Yogi Berra, when you come to a fork in the road, take it.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] Bingo.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] Bingo.
[Hannah] For sure. Again, the stakes for these choices are not as high as you might think. But navigating them with this information in hand in the most wise way possible can help you put your best foot forward in the application.
[Mark] Yeah. We also know that some choices are more about making you feel good and comfortable as an applicant more than actually moving the needle for us. And that’s fine. And so, once you’ve made your choice, move on with your life. Your hope is that you’ve got that application together, you click submit, and you go on enjoying your senior year of high school. We hope you can embrace the fact that most of our selection process at this point is out of your control. We’re going to read your application and do our thing. And you’re going to go on enjoying your life as a high school senior.
[Hannah] Exactly. John, thank you so much for joining us today.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[John] Of course. Always a pleasure.
[Hannah] It’s great to have you. Yeah, we’ll have to have you back soon.
[John] Please do.
[Mark] Thanks to our friend and colleague, Jill, who’s both our sound engineer and a great admissions officer. Thanks to Reed for lending us his office. Thanks to former admissions officer, Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our music. You should check him out at, AndrewBrickJohnson.com.
[Hannah] If you have comments or an idea for a future episode, drop us a line at YaleAdmissionsPodcast@gmail.com. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are ours and don’t necessarily represent those of Yale University. Thanks for listening.
[MUSIC PLAYING]

Episode 19: The Activities Section

As part of the whole-person review process, the Yale Admissions Committee consider each applicant’s engagement with “extracurricular activities” – pursuits and commitments outside of typical academic work. Admissions officer Reed joins Hannah and Mark to discuss how application readers evaluate extracurricular activities and how applicants can stand out in this part of the application. The trio expand on some simple advice for selecting and engaging with activities: Be active. At the right level for you. Doing what you like.

[Mark] Hello, and welcome to another episode of Inside the Yale Admissions Office. My name is Mark, and I’m a Yale admissions officer.
[Hannah] And I’m Hannah, I’m also a Yale admissions officer, and today, we are joined by Reed.
[Reed] Thank you so much for having me, even though we’re still not in my office.
[LAUGHTER]
And yet, you’re here.
[Reed] And yet I’m here.
[Mark] It’s finally going to happen. One of these days, the stars are going to align. We’re going to actually have Reed on the podcast in Reed’s office.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] But not today.
[Reed] I’m easy to find.
[Mark] Today, we are talking about extracurricular activities, which means all the stuff that a student does outside of their courses in school. And that is a mouthful. Extracurricular activity.
[Hannah] Yeah, we can’t say that.
[Mark] We’re going to just try to keep ourselves just saying activities.
[Hannah] Know that when we say activities, we’re talking about athletics, performing arts, jobs you might hold outside of school, volunteer work– it all counts.
[Mark] This episode has been on our list for a while. We’ve held off, though, because of the pandemic. So we are recording this. It’s summer of 2021, and things are looking pretty good for high schools this fall, but we should say there’s still plenty of uncertainty. We should also start by recognizing that, even if you’re listening to this years from now, we would bet that your activities outside of school have been affected, maybe pretty dramatically, by the pandemic.
[Hannah] Yeah, and if your activities outside of high school have been affected by the pandemic, as they probably have, it probably felt like a really big deal. Especially if you’ve not been able to do something that you really enjoy.
[Mark] Yeah, so we know this has been especially tough for students in this dimension. It’s not, however, something that you should lose sleep over when it comes to your college admissions process. And before we get into any specifics in the episode today, let’s try to calm some anxieties about the role that your activities play in the selection process.
[Hannah] It’s often presented as this, like, crazy competition or arms race, to just do, more do the most. Overextend yourself, join a million clubs, be the best at everything, win trophies. Because that is going to be how you get into college. But that’s not actually really true.
[Mark] Right. When this anxiety takes hold, people start stressing about these things before high school even starts. We have heard about parents who will turn their families’ lives upside down, and they might even throw money at people who claim to tell them what a student should do. So we want to try to keep things very simple and clear. You don’t need to do anything like that. Making yourself miserable, overextending yourself, spending your time doing things that you, as an applicant, don’t care about– it’s not going to help you get into college. In fact, as we’ll explain in this episode, approaching things with that kind of attitude will probably hurt your chances more than help your chances.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] So I have a little mantra that I came up with that I think we’ll come back to throughout the episode. I’m sort of stealing this style of advice from a food writer named Michael Pollan, and I would bet I’ve actually– I haven’t read any of his books–
[Hannah] Yeah, me either.
[Mark] I can’t say I know much about him, but I do know that he’s got this great piece of advice, which is just so simple and clear that it’s easy to remember. So, when he writes about food and sort of how you should approach food, this is his advice. He says, “you should eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” That’s pithy, that’s easy to remember, so I sort of adapted that for this episode. Here’s my advice for how you should think about your activities in high school.
You should be active at the right level for you, doing what you like. That’s the simple advice.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] We’re going to go into depth about a lot of this, but keep coming back to those things. Be active, do things, be active, yes. How many things, how much? Well, at the right level for you that makes sense. What should you be doing? The things that you like.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] Be active at the right level for you, doing what you like.
[Hannah] Right.
[Reed] Whether or not the plants are the things you like in your diet.
[LAUGHTER]
[Reed] –you think that, it is great advice for what you’re doing outside of the classroom.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Reed] I know plants might not be number one for me personally.
[Hannah] Right. Right. You’re welcome, Michael Pollan, for the free advertising. OK, let’s talk a little bit about how we actually review these activities lists on the application. No matter what application platform you use, there will be space to share your activities. The amount of text you can write is pretty limited, and let’s just say that is a feature of how this is designed, not a bug. So just keep that in mind.
[Mark] Yeah, this is going to force you to be intentional about what you include here. And we also want to encourage you to think about what you want to highlight. What do you want to put at the top of that list? This space in the application sort of in the lingo is called the brag. That’s appropriate, because you can’t avoid bragging about yourself.
[Hannah] Sure, yeah.
[Mark] But I do want you to think about this space as being pretty utilitarian. You want to make clear exactly what it is that you’ve done. And this is sort of unlike the essays. There’s just not a lot of space here for shading things, qualifying things. I think you should think of this quote. Apparently, it’s apocryphal, I was looking it up. It’s from Dragnet in the 50s, and the line there is “just the facts, ma’am.”
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] So you want to approach this part of the application like, just the facts.
[Hannah] This is actually one of the first things that we see when we read an application, and it’s really helpful to lay a foundation for the read, to understand where a student’s presence is felt. And it’s one of the first things we share when we read a work card to the committee. You’ve heard about our committee process in prior episodes, and our read and presentation of these things is pretty cut and dry. We say what you do, sort of maybe the level of commitment, and what kind of impact you’ve had.
[Mark] And we use a rating system. It is sort of a shorthand, though. I want to make clear, this is designed to help us communicate with other members of the admissions committee. It is not being fed into some sort of rubric somewhere.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] And we do not have a formula that’s going to award a certain number of points for being a varsity athlete or being the lead in the school musical, or something like that. It is a nine point scale, but the overwhelming majority of applicants, including admitted students, cluster right in the middle. We’re using it to communicate quickly to the members of the committee when they’re looking at our printed slate. So we talked about this in an earlier episode about committee. We can look down a sheet of paper at a series of applicants and get a sense of where the strengths lie in a particular application. It’s like I said, a little bit like reading the matrix, and this can be one of those things, where if we’re about to talk about an applicant and I see a really high value on this extracurricular rating, I know, oh, the student has really distinguished themselves there. But that is not the case for a lot of applicants, including a lot of our admitted students.
[Hannah] Right, right. So just so you know, if you completely left this section blank, you might get a one on that scale. A student who is active in a typical collection of activities without a whole lot of distinction might get a five, and someone who is extremely unusual in their commitment or distinction would get a nine, but that might be an Olympic athlete or a Tony Award winner or something like that.
[Mark] I have never seen a nine.
[Reed] Yes.
[Mark] I don’t know if you have, I have never seen a nine. I have never given a nine, I’ve never been in committee with a nine. I know they exist, but–
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] It’s very, very rare.
[Hannah] Right. Maybe one or two a year.
[Mark] Yeah, I would say probably 99% of our admitted students are rated somewhere between a four and a seven on the scale. And you heard that correctly, right. We admit students who haven’t really distinguished themselves with their activities outside of the classroom. It might be for some students a really important part of their application, or it might not be very important at all. There might be other parts of the application that are really making the case for the student. Remember, it’s not part of a formula.
[Reed] While this place is indeed a place to brag a little bit about yourself, I think it’s important to remember that this is only in service of a bigger goal, which is to help us understand who you are. The context that you’re coming from, and help us see how you’ll engage on our campus. College students are super, super engaged, active people outside of the classroom. Many people are going to tell you that they learned so much from their extracurriculars and their college activities, as sort of compared to their courses. They’ve learned lessons in leadership and collaboration and creativity. And so we want students who are really going to be engaged outside of the classroom here. You’re coming to learn, yes, but you’re also coming to live and to engage in a community.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] And in most cases, this kind of evaluation we’re doing, it’s not about matching up a specific applicant and their activity with a sort of Yale analog to that activity, right? There are more than 400 organizations on our campus. That’s going to be true at any place that you’re applying, and it’s not our job as the admissions office to make sure that every single one of those organizations has members who are interested and have experiences in those areas.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] So in a nutshell, to answer this question, what are we looking for here, I would describe it as we’re looking for students who are seeking to maximize opportunities around them and contribute to their communities in the process. I’ll say that again. We want to find students who are maximizing opportunities and contributing to their communities in the process. As we try to evaluate how your activities in high school might demonstrate this, we have to incorporate a ton of context.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] Right? Just the number of activities, the kinds of activities that are available, very dramatically from school to school, from community to community. For some students, their individual opportunities are limited because of maybe family commitments or work commitments. And let’s make very clear– those kinds of things can be just as valuable, or even more valuable, than traditional school-based extracurriculars.
[Reed] I can certainly think of many times when I’ve been deeply impressed by applicants and what they’ve done outside of the classroom, but so often, that is from the amount of hours that they put into a job or into taking care of a younger sibling, not just research accomplishments or music accomplishments or other things they’re doing that might be more in a traditional sort of academic lens.
[hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] Yeah, so the types of choices that students have available to them vary dramatically, and even just how much choice you as an individual applicant, is going to vary dramatically. When you have choices, though, what we hope is that this activities list reveals something about you. We hope that it shows how you’ve chosen to spend your time. We hope it reflects your interests, your values, and the kind of contributions that you’ve made to one or more shared experiences with others. And I think that’s a really important point. We are not just thinking about this in terms of your Individual achievement and sort of how you’ve gone along your own individual vector. We are very, very interested in how these kinds of activities have involved your work with groups of other people and your contributions to shared goals.
[Hannah] Yeah, which, by the way, is why it makes no sense to spend your time doing things you don’t enjoy only because you think it’ll help you get into college.
[Mark] I really dislike when I hear students sort of complaining about, oh, I’m doing this, and I’m doing this, and I’m doing this, because that’s how I’m going to get into college. It’s like, no.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] You’re approaching it completely wrong.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] You need to be doing things that you like doing. If you’re not doing things that you like, you’re making it harder for us to figure out who you are, right? If your activities list is full of things that don’t reflect you honestly and openly, we’re going to be scratching our head wondering, who is this person? This just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
[Reed] And I can promise you that once you’re in college, you’re not going to have the time, energy, or desire to pursue activities that you don’t want to do. And so it’s good practice to start saying no now.
[Mark] Yes.
[Hannah] Right. Yeah, definitely. So, we are going to get into some advice about if you are just starting out in your high school career and thinking about what kinds of activities to do, we have a little advice for you to help you find things that you care about. Before we get into that, though, we have some advice for seniors or juniors who might be actually putting together their application. They have all these hours of activities and experience behind them already. Just keep in mind that a busy list of activities doesn’t tell us a whole lot, and doesn’t help you stand out.
[Mark] Right. Whether you’ve identified one key area of commitment, or you have lots of activities, if you’ve been doing something for a while, your role will probably change over time. And when you are writing your application, you want to use that space– and it’s pretty small– to share that impact, and hopefully sort of demonstrate the importance of activity, not just that you did it.
[Reed] I believe the actual application asks you to list your activities in order of importance.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Reed] It’s a good time to reflect on what is actually most important to you.
[Mark] Please don’t overthink that.
[Hannah] Do not.
[Mark] We do a lot of head scratching sometimes when we look at the order on this list, and we say, you ordered it that way because you think that’s what we think is more important.
[Hannah] Right.
[Reed] There’s no 3D chess here, guys.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] Think about the things that you’ve probably spent the most time doing that have been most fulfilling for you. Please, please, put those on the top of the list. Even if something seems very impressive but it’s just not been a big, important commitment for you, it can go down the list. We’re going to read the whole thing, don’t worry.
[Hannah] All right, let’s move on and talk about some sort of just general advice.
[Mark] Yeah, I think this will be most applicable for folks who are starting their high school career. The options in front of you are a little bit different than those who are in their junior or their senior year of high school. But I’ll mention this might also be particularly relevant for folks who are kind of getting a fresh start with their activities, because they’re headed back to school after the pandemic. So if you find yourself with a blank slate in terms of, what am I doing outside of my coursework? What I want to get involved with, these are pieces of advice. We’ve got four tips for you.
Tip number one is find your people. I think this is the best place to start, in terms of, what should I be doing with my time? I think you’re going to find the most fulfilling, most valuable experiences if you start with finding people that you like spending time with.
I think we pretty consistently find that the people with the most compelling activities list are those that have really actively engaged with other people. Often, the activity itself is secondary to the experience of sharing time with other people and a shared goal. I think when you find your people, what you do together just becomes much more fulfilling.
[Hannah] And it’s also going to make it easy to find your people in college, even if that’s in a totally different activity.
[Reed] I also want to be clear that that doesn’t mean that we are prioritizing team-based activities over ones that are solo. You can find your people in activities that you are doing alone, because they have similar mindsets. They’re bringing shared values to the table.
[Mark] Absolutely. And you do not need to be constantly competing with your classmates to stand out. We’re not going to be lining up activities lists among applicants from the same high school. So instead of racing classmates into leadership positions, or trying to do the most service hours or being inducted into every Honor Society or every academic club, focus on the experience itself. Not how it’s going to look on a resume.
[Hannah] All right, our next tip is one I really like, which is just embrace small. So what we mean by that is, when you do something good and sort of relatively small, but then you try to pitch it to us as this world-changing endeavor, that’s when we start to get a little bit skeptical, and you sort of lose some credibility.
[Mark] Yeah, you don’t want the person reading your application to be looking at an item here and say, hmm, would this person have done this thing if it were never going to be on your college application?
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] And I will say, my biggest frustration is when someone has done something interesting, but the specifics about the actual day-to-day work of a project are conspicuously absent. So the space might be used to just sort of brag and say, oh, I founded an organization. It’s a registered 501(c)(3). Or we raised this amount of money, or we sent supplies to this number of children. But I never have any idea what you actually did.
[Hannah] Right.
[Mark] And that’s what I want to know about it, and that stuff might seem less impressive, but it’s actually much more interesting to me because I know that you are a busy high school student who is managing lots of different priorities. I can see that you are in a lot of rigorous classes and you’re doing well there. So I want to know, what did you actually do? Not just the accomplishments.
[Hannah] Yeah. I think that there is a myth out there that you need to have found something. Found an organization, or create something totally new to stand out, but a lot of the most compelling and successful projects that we hear about are small. They’re local, they’re simple. And it’s easy for us to see why a student had the idea to create something, and how they took initiative and got results.
[Mark] Yeah, I will say there are simply plenty of situations where founding something is just pretty meaningless. I will say, as a part of my regular review process, when I see that, I ask myself, OK, is this an organization that only has one member? And it won’t exist after you are no longer a high school student and a college applicant? I also wonder, was there really a need for this specific organization in the community? Like, were you listening to what was needed and jumping in, or were you just projecting what you wanted to do for your college application on it? And also, are you maybe at a brand new high school where everyone in every club is a founder, right?
[Hannah] Yeah, we see the word founder a lot.
[Mark] We see founder, co-founder, a lot. Without more information about what you did and why, that word– that title– it doesn’t mean a whole lot to us.
[Reed] I think a lot of students tend to forget that we can see the sort of legacies of these clubs and these foundings or co-foundings. Especially if we’re reading the same school year after year.
[Hannah] Right.
[Reed] I saw that someone created the physics club, and then it didn’t exist the next year, and then someone else created the physics club again another year.
[Hannah] Right, right.
[Reed] I get the picture.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] Yeah. And I’ll be clear, I would much rather see someone who’s committing their energies to a project that already exists, and they got inspired by that project and that organization and they wanted to make a really meaningful contribution to it, than someone who created something new just to create something new.
[Hannagh] Yeah. A good rule of thumb for this– and also just for so many other parts of the application process– is, if it’s not important to you, it’s not going to be important to us.
[Mark] Yeah. OK, so here’s our next tip. I think this is probably good advice just for life generally. Find something that you can actually fail at. And along with that, something that you can improve at. Get better at. I think people who treat this part of the application as this rat race to prove themselves to be super successful think that you need to have four years worth of high school just raking in awards where you’re first chair in this, and you’re a starter and you’re the lead in that.
And so you would need to then start your high school experience already super excellent at something that you began in kindergarten. And I think this approach leads to a lot of really sort of missed opportunities, some real risk aversion, and some withdrawal from the activities where you might not be the best at something, but being the best at something shouldn’t be your priority in terms of deciding how to spend your time.
[Hannah] Yeah. As fellow control freaks ourselves, we understand the impulse here. You want to play to your strengths, you want to find the opportunities that demonstrate those strengths. And there are also probably a lot of activities that aren’t especially accessible to folks without experience. Like varsity athletic teams.
[Mark] Right. Even if I really wanted to try and fail at an athletics endeavor in my high school, it was not an option for me.
[Hannah] You could fail at it, but you couldn’t try it.
[Mark] I couldn’t be on the team. There was no space for me, so I understand opportunities might be limited here. But the point here is that trying something new and working to improve at it– can be so much more fulfilling and illuminating just for yourself than just doing the same old thing over and over again.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Reed] I think the important distinction here is that there is a difference between just participating and growing and contributing. The fact that you participated in any given activity doesn’t actually tell us that much, but improving at something– the story behind it, contributing to the success or direction of a team– is far more telling.
[Mark] And I’ll also mention, it’s not the case that you should do something that’s super novel. Like win a backwards unicycling competition or be a fire juggler. That’s cool, yeah. I mean, if that’s what you want to get better at, go for it. Probably get scraped up a bit along the way. But remember novelty alone– it’s not going to do much for your case.
[Hannah] All right, tip number four, I think this is our last tip here. Don’t make any decisions about what you do in high school based on how it’s going to look on your college application. I think this sort of sums up everything we’ve already been saying. But we get most excited when we see genuine interest and excitement and commitment. Not when we see a particular formula or collection of activities.
[Mark] Yeah, and this relates to something that we actually got a listener email about, which is– it’s a good question, is about, do you need to have a spike in your application? And this is– what’s interesting is this is not a term that I had heard before. But it sounds like it’s pretty common out there among students who are talking to each other. So, Hannah, can you like– what’s the concept of a spike?
[Hannah] Yeah, so the idea is that you could either be well-rounded, or you could be pointy in your activities. So if you’re well-rounded, you do a lot of different varied things. And if you’re pointy or you have a spike, then you have one thing that you’re really, really, really good at.
[Mark] Yeah, and I, over the years, have gotten tons of questions from students, saying, do you prefer well-rounded students, or pointy students?
[Hannah] Right. Yeah.
[Mark] And my answer is, yes. All kinds.
[Hannah] Yes.
[Mark] And it’s interesting, because I know that this actually is a line that admissions officers have used over the years, where they explain that what they’re looking for is a well-rounded student body, not necessarily well-rounded students and I can understand where that’s coming from, but I think it’s much too dismissive of the well-rounded student, who maybe isn’t particularly spiky in one area. So I think people hear that and say, oh I’ve got to be spiky so that my spike is going to join all the other spikes and then together–
[Reed] Right.
[Mark] We’ll be this big spiky wheel or something, I don’t know.
[Hannah] Yeah, like whatever you do, that’s what you should do. I mean, if you happen to be the kind of person who wants to pursue a lot of varied things, if you’re a little bit of a jack of all trades, that’s great. Do that. And if you have this one clear passion, or spike, that you’re exceptionally good at, then do that. But one is not better than the other.
[Mark] And we see students go in the wrong direction both ways, right? We see students who are passionate with a capital P about something, but they think that they need to have a bunch of other stuff in their applications.
[Hannah] Right, yeah.
[Mark] So they’re just participants and involved, but it doesn’t mean much for us. And we also see students who really would love to be pursuing really disparate interests and contributing a lot different ways. They say, oh, I’ve got to have a spike. And so I need to abandon these things that I care about to double or triple down on this one thing. And no, you don’t need to do that at all.
[Hannah] Don’t– just don’t make these decisions based on how it’s going to look on your resume or on your college application. Make them based on how you actually want to be spending your time.
[Reed] Yes, there is a whole spectrum of activity, from the student who does it, all the student who does one thing. And when you get to college, we are not going to expect the student who does one thing to suddenly become a jack of all trades. And we’re not going to expect the student who loves doing it all to suddenly focus in on their extracurricular activities in college. You’re eventually going to have to select a major or majors. You’re not going to have to focus down your activities to one.
[Hannah] Yeah.
[Mark] Yeah. All right. Well, we have covered a lot here. We hope that it’s calmed some nerves a bit. Again, we wanted to talk about this, because we know that people can get really, really worked up about this. We know the pandemic has thrown a monkey wrench into a lot of plans, and so people might be especially nervous about how we’re going to review these things. Always remember, your application is going to be reviewed by a real person who’s trying to understand another real person, not a collection of accomplishments.
[Hannah] Some applicants really stand out in their extracurricular activities, if they have national and global level accomplishments, but many, many more stand out for the little things that they just do every day and the energy and commitment they brought to those activities. And plenty of students stand out in their process for something that has nothing to do with their extracurricular activities.
[Reed] We like to say that students who are admitted to Yale are always missed in their communities when they leave, because they’ve made some sort of an impact. That’s what you should aspire to in your activities.
[Mark] I’ll say one more time, sorry, Michael Pollan. Be active at the level that’s right for you doing what you like.
[Hannah] Yep.
[Reed] Enjoy.
[Mark] Yeah, enjoy. Have fun. We enjoyed having you on the podcast today. Thanks for coming back.
[Reed] It’s great to be here.
[Mark] Thanks to our friend and colleague, Jill, who’s both our sound engineer and a great admissions officer. Reed, we’re going to use your office again, sometime, so thanks in advance.
[Reed] Count on it.
[Mark] Thanks to former admissions officer, Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our music. You should check him out at AndrewBrickJohnson.com.
[Hannah] If you have comments or an idea for an episode, drop us a line at yaleadmissionspodcast@gmail.com. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are ours, and don’t necessarily represent those of Yale University. Thanks for listening.
[MUSIC PLAYING] 

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MARK: Welcome back to another episode of Inside the Yale Admissions Office. My name is Mark, and I’m a Yale admissions officer.

HANNAH: And I’m Hannah. I’m also a Yale admissions officer. If you are a regular listener, you’ve probably heard us plug our email address YaleAdmissionsPodcast@gmail.com, where we welcome your suggestions for future episodes.

Well, we get a lot of emails, and yes, we actually do read them all even if we don’t necessarily respond to them all. And today, we wanted to actually tackle a few interesting emails that have come in. Some are follow up questions related to previous episodes, and some are episode suggestions that we do want to talk about, but they aren’t quite enough to build a full episode.

MARK: Right. So today is going to be our first ever mailbag episode. A few of these, we actually think are great suggestions for full episodes, so stay tuned. We will be doing a few of those in the next few months or so.

HANNAH: Yeah, and some of the episodes we’ve recorded already have come from suggestions from the inbox. So yeah, keep them coming. Guess what, Mark. Today, we have a very special guest on Reed.

REED: Thank you so much for having me back. It has been great walking 3 feet from my desk right to the studio.

MARK: It’s finally happened, folks. The stars have aligned. It took us almost two years, but we are finally recording in Reed’s office with the man himself. So Reed, thanks for joining us.

REED: Happy to be here.

MARK: So before we dive in, a quick disclaimer. We’re going to encourage you to write to that Gmail address. But if you have an urgent question that’s about the application process, about your application, specifically, emailing YaleAdmissionsPodcast@gmail.com is the absolute slowest way to get an answer.

HANNAH: So slow.

MARK: We have lots of other ways. So just quickly, Admissions.Yale.edu/questions is our online form. You can also call our office during business hours. It’s probably the best way, if you’ve got a specific question. But if you’ve got a question about the podcast, or a suggestion, or some feedback, the Gmail address is the way to get to Hannah and Mark, specifically.

HANNAH: I know when you submit a question to a web form, it feels like it’s going off into some black hole of web form questions, but we do really go through those every day.

MARK: All right. So we’ve got a mailbag full of questions that are really good conversation topics.

HANNAH: Let’s start. This is a really good one. So the exploration of my Christian faith has been essential to my personal development and has even influenced my academic goals for college. I’ve heard, though, that it’s risky to write about religion or that it could quickly become a turnoff in essays, and I was wondering if you could dedicate some time to talking about how to approach taboo topics, such as religion.

REED: I think the first thing that I would say is that topics such as religion aren’t necessarily taboo. As long as you’re thinking critically about what you’re saying and writing, reflectively, about a personal experience, those topics are open seasons, so to speak.

MARK: Yeah, I really wouldn’t characterize any particular topics, with a few exceptions, as being risky or taboo. We talked in one of our essay episodes about something like “bathroom humor.” That I would call taboo. I would just call that a bad decision and a bad use of the space.

But generally speaking, if you are giving mature reflection and insight to something, you can really go in just about any direction. The important thing is that it’s important to you. And from the person asking this question, it seems like this is important to them, and so it sounds like it could be a really good productive topic for one of their essays.

HANNAH: Yeah. I think a trap that some people fall into is if they choose a topic that feels a little bit riskier, they might write about it with a little– they might try to distance themselves a little bit from the topic, and that just makes it a little bit worse because then you’re losing the personal reflection side of it. So if you are going to write about something like that, make sure, like Reed said, you’re really being reflective about it.

MARK: And I think it’s a good place to start to recognize that our admissions office staff is really diverse. You shouldn’t make any presumptions about the people who are reading your applications or who are going to be in the admissions committee. We really pride ourselves on reflecting a wide variety of backgrounds and identities. We also like our work because we get to meet really interesting students with all kinds of different backgrounds, and identities, and beliefs, and values in the application process.

So if it’s important to you, it sounds like it could be something that could be great to share. Yale is a place that really actively celebrates all kinds of different belief systems, identities, backgrounds, et cetera. So if that’s important to you, it could be a really valuable asset for your application.

HANNAH: Nice. And I’ll just make a quick plug. Check out our previous episodes on our what works and what doesn’t work in college essays.

MARK: Yes.

HANNAH: All right. Next question is from someone who listened to our earlier episode on the activities section of the application and says that because of the pandemic, they’ve realized that their activities list looks like it has two parts, the activities that they did before quarantine and then a chunk of activities that they picked up during quarantine. It doesn’t necessarily show commitment because these are opportunities that became available once all this time– this person had all this time on their hands. So what are our thoughts on that?

REED: I think you need to remember that everyone, everyone in high school and everyone in the world, was going through something a bit similar during this time. Your list of activities may not look exactly like you want it to look. It may not look anything like you imagined it looking when you began high school. But it’s important that it’s a reflection of who you are now and what you have ended up doing during this year and a half and during the years before.

HANNAH: Yeah. I read files internationally, and it’s been a good reminder for me to see that the pandemic has disrupted everyone. Whether I’m reading in Bulgaria, or Kenya, or New Zealand, everyone has run up against this issue.

MARK: Yeah, and it is interesting that there are some activities that were disrupted more than others. We’re in our second reading cycle now since the pandemic, and so we’ve seen a whole variety of pandemic-impacted activities list. Some of them look very strikingly similar to things that we were seeing before the pandemic. Well, many of them look quite different.

It has a lot to do with the specific activities. It also has a lot to do with a specific area. It might just be that your high school, or your county, or your state said that certain things were OK, and they weren’t OK down the road or across the border, somewhere else. So we aren’t going in with any sort of presumptions. Just use that space to tell us what you’ve been doing. It might have been more of a linear path. It may have been a sharp U-turn. Any of them could be absolutely fine.

REED: As Mark alluded to, part of the benefit of our geographic reading model is that we can apply this context, not just to what’s available within your high school, but what has been available to you in your school, in your area, in your county during COVID-19.

HANNAH: Yeah, and just remember, we’re not just trying to understand how you spend your hours and what you do, we learn other things that are a little more subtle from your activity list. We learn about what’s important to you. We learn about your resilience, your priorities, and how you’ve responded to the opportunities available to you or opportunities that suddenly weren’t available to you.

MARK: Yeah, and I think that there’s baked into this question a presumption that the strongest activities lists are those that show dedicated commitment to a passion, which assumes that even pandemic aside, that you arrived in high school fully formed and ready to dedicate yourself wholeheartedly to whatever handful of activities were available to you, and that’s just not the case. High school and college are times for exploration. They are times for trying out new identities, and new experiences, and new commitments.

And so if that’s been the case in the pandemic, maybe it was fruitful and exciting. Maybe there were things that you tried, you didn’t really like. As Hannah was saying, all of those pieces tell us a story. You don’t need to try to wrap it up in a bow and say, well, these are the things that I’ve been passionate with a capital P about for the entire time. We understand, in any circumstances, it’s going to be a mixture of things, maybe that are new, that are old, that you were trying out, that you found or a new passion. All of the above, we see in activities lists.

HANNAH: Yeah, as it should be. All right. We have another activities question. I love this question. I think it’s really interesting. The student received advice from their counselor that they should not put their time spent reading on their activity list, and this person goes on to explain how reading is important to them, the hours in the day they spend reading, across genres, how his friends and family have nicknamed him the librarian, and he’s sought out for his book recommendations. So is this worthy of inclusion on the extracurricular list? Because it’s not a, quote, “official activity.”

REED: So this is something that you get to decide entirely for yourself. Perhaps this is something that you would like to spend an essay discussing. Perhaps you don’t feel that it’s quite that important. Or that you want to use that space for something else. And you’d like to include that on your list of extracurriculars. That is wholly your decision.

And if it’s something that is important to you and meaningful to you, then that’s something that is completely worthy of being on that list. You have to remember that the extracurriculars aren’t solely the traditional items– work, clubs, sports, et cetera. They’re also things that you do in your free time. Simply sitting down and reading a selection of books that have meant a lot to you is something that you do. That’s how you spend your time.

MARK: And I know that this can be maddeningly open-ended, just like the essays. We talked about the essays and how they can be super frustrating because they are different than the more directed writing that you’re doing, typically, in your classes. The activities list doesn’t have a lot of guidance and directions in terms of what should be on it and what shouldn’t be.

That’s an opportunity. That’s an opportunity for you to try to tell your story and try to share what’s been important to you. So I know it seems crazy and, potentially, anxiety-inducing, that we’re saying like, there’s no rules here. Just use the space.

But you got to think about it from our perspective. We’re looking at tens of thousands of applications from all around the world, all kinds of different experiences. We think that the less that we can overlay at the very beginning in terms of what should and shouldn’t be in there, it’s going to allow different students with different activities and commitments to really let those things shine through.

HANNAH: And maybe on your activity list, you don’t just list reading one hour per day and leave it at that. Give us a little bit of the context that you gave us in the email, a list of the range of authors that interest you, or your unofficial title as librarian to your friends and family. That kind of detail on the activity list can sort of help give context to why you’ve chosen to include this activity.

And I feel like this question is just like a great reminder that, well, it’s totally good to seek out advice on the application process. Nobody knows you better than yourself. You know what’s important to you, and you should go with your gut and include things that you feel are important to include.

MARK: And one of the things I liked about this question was that it specifically mentioned that the person asking it– is swapping book recommendations with other people and is talking with this about others– that would be a great thing to include in the activities list sort of section about this. Remember the activities list, it’s not a matter of getting points awarded for certain things or adding up commitments, and leadership titles, and all of that. We’re trying to form a picture of who you are, and we’re especially trying to form a picture of who you are as a member of various communities.

So if there is an element of an activity that involves other people, definitely include that in the list. If it’s something you do completely on your own, great, too. That’s certainly be on the list. But if it’s got that other element, make sure that that’s part of the write up that you put in the application.

HANNAH: One thing that I really liked about this question is that they listed some authors that they loved reading, and Stephen King was on the list, and I’m a big Stephen King fan, so I appreciated that.

MARK: Main VIP.

HANNAH: Exactly. We have some questions from people who listen to our teacher recommendations episode. And one student is wondering whether we make allowance for the fact that teachers in some schools have an easier time getting to know their students than teachers in others. So for example, if there’s a class with fewer students in it, do those teachers have time to write longer and more detailed letters of recommendation, and how do we take that into account?

REED: So as we say time and time again, context is going to be key here. I actually try to address this question in every information session I give because I think it’s an important one in general to really reinforce that context point. We are looking at every single letter of recommendation, whether that’s from a teacher, a counselor, an outside source, with that contextual lens, even within a school. How long the teacher is taught for? How many classes the teacher has taught you in? All of those things are going to be important. This past year and a half, whether the teacher taught you in a virtual context or in an in-person classroom, we’re applying all of those layers to each letter of recommendation. And so we aren’t looking necessarily for the same things in each letter.

HANNAH: I would say that length and detail do not necessarily make a stronger letter of recommendation. Also, I’ve read some very strong recommendations that happen to be short. I get the sense that the teacher doesn’t have a lot of time to wax poetic about the student on and on, but they still know if they want to push for the student that they’re writing for.

MARK: Yeah, so rest assured that your context is going to be an important part of our evaluation. As you are thinking about the teachers to write on your behalf, though, do think about it as an opportunity. Think about it as a chance to expand our understanding of who you are and the contributions you make to a classroom. And so think carefully about the teachers who are going to write on your behalf.

I think sometimes people tie themselves in knots, trying to be overly strategic with the specific subject area or something, maybe tied to their perspective major. And at the end of the day, it really comes down to those teachers who know you best. And in my experience, those are the teachers who are most likely to provide the kinds of insights in their applications and take the time to provide something specific even if they’ve taught you in a really large setting like that.

HANNAH: We have another question about teacher recommendations. I’ve asked a teacher for a letter of recommendation, and they’ve agreed enthusiastically but asked for a brag sheet with activities and accomplishments. Is this a red flag? I know letters are meant to be personal and about the student’s engagement in class, rather than a regurgitation of accomplishments, and now I’m a bit anxious about using a letter from this teacher.

REED: So this is not necessarily a red flag. It’s not helpful if a teacher is simply regurgitating items that you have given to them. However, there is no way to know whether a teacher will do this or won’t do this before they have written the letter of recommendation and if you check that waiver box after they’ve written that letter of recommendation. If you are asked to submit a list of activities or accomplishments, it might also be nice to slip in some things you’re proud of from the class you took with them so that they can get their memory jogged a little bit and can talk a little bit more specifically about what you’ve accomplished in their specific class.

HANNAH: You can’t write their letter for them, but you can provide some sort of reminders. And if you have a project or paper in their class that you’re really proud of or a time you improved your performance, that little reminder could certainly help.

MARK: Speaking as a fellow control freak along with, at least, Hannah. I don’t know about you, Reed. But I certainly consider myself that. This is one of those things you aren’t going to be able to control. And you can control who your who’s writing for you. You can do all the reflective pieces I was talking about earlier. But you don’t get to write the letter, and that’s as it should be.

HANNAH: And what a relief, that you don’t have to write that letter.

MARK: That’s right. Yeah. Please don’t try to write the letter. That’s a bad idea.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

HANNAH: Yes. All right. We have one more final question for now. I was wondering if you could do a podcast on when, if ever, it is OK to contact your regional admissions officer? If it is inappropriate, then who do we contact to get more information about programs? Should you write to your admissions officer, if you’re visiting campus? So how do we feel about that?

REED: So I think it’s important to first say that at Yale, there is absolutely no benefit to befriending your regional admissions officer. They might make a lovely pen pal, but that is not going to help you in the committee process, in the application reading process, even if they are giving you some helpful advice in terms of how to navigate Yale’s resources for the application process for you personally.

HANNAH: I’ll take that a step further and say that I am not a lovely pen pal. I have too many applications to read.

REED: Neither am I.

MARK: There is an important bit of variation among college admissions offices here. I think if you go on different admissions office websites, you’re going to see that some, like ours, don’t list any public directory or listing of which admissions officer is assigned to which territory. You won’t even see who’s on staff on our website. And that’s because, as you heard, we aren’t tracking these things, and we’re not going to encourage you to reach out.

There are other schools that do the opposite, where they put the regional admissions officer front and center, and they want to encourage students to connect with that person in advance for their questions. So take the lead from what you see presented on the website. That will give you an idea of what we’re looking for.

None of us are going to be grumpy or scribble off some note in your file if you send us an email, to one of us that should have gone somewhere else. But we may very well forward it to the team of people who are answering questions that day, if it’s not really something that needs one of us to answer it specifically.

HANNAH: Yeah, and remember, we also switch up our territories pretty regularly. So keep in mind that if, in your junior year, you want to reach out to your admissions officer, a different person might be reading your high school when it comes time for you to apply.

REED: I also have to say that if you do want to know about specific programs or departments, while you can submit questions to Admissions.Yale.edu/questions, the best possible thing to do here is to do your own research. Admissions officers are not encyclopedias of knowledge about each university. The Google search that you’re doing to figure out about the psychology department is the same Google search that I’m going to be doing to find out about the psychology department.

HANNAH: So true. And by the way, things change when students are admitted and the volume of these questions is greatly decreased. We just can’t be that encyclopedia for every single prospective student. But once students are admitted, then your admissions officer will be very eager to talk to you about your questions.

MARK: Yes, absolutely.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: All right. Well, these were fantastic questions. Thanks to everyone who submitted these. We really appreciate the thoughtfulness that you’ve put into them, and you guys came up with some great topics. If this has piqued your interest about something else that you’re curious about, and you think would make for a good conversation, shoot us an email at YaleAdmissionsPodcast@gmail.com.

Remember that those specific questions about your application or something that you’re just wondering about the admissions process should go to Admissions.Yale.edu/questions, or you can call our office. No, we don’t have a 24/7 customer support staff standing at the ready.

HANNAH: If only.

MARK: But we will try our best to address your questions in a timely manner.

HANNAH: Yup, we love to hear from you. We hope this has been helpful. Reed, thanks so much for joining and helping us answer these questions.

REED: Thanks so much. It was a pleasure to be here.

MARK: Fantastic. Thank you, Reed. And of course, thank you also to our friend and colleague Jill, who is both our sound engineer and a great admissions officer. Reed, you get double thanks for lending us your office. It’s a great place to record a podcast. Thanks, of course, to former admissions officer Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our music. You should check him out at AndrewBrickJohnson.com.

HANNAH: If you have comments or an idea for an episode, drop us a line at YaleAdmissionsPodcast@gmail.com. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are ours and don’t necessarily represent those of Yale University. Thanks for listening.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MARK: Welcome to Inside the Yale Admissions Office. My name is Mark and I’m a Yale admissions officer.

HANNAH: And I’m Hannah. I’m also a Yale admissions officer.

MARK: We are recording this in wintertime, which means that we know that a lot of high school juniors out there are just starting to really think about the upcoming college application process.

HANNAH: Our calendar is very cyclical in the admissions office and the shift from fall to winter is always associated with a change in the type of questions we start to receive.

MARK: Yeah. All fall we answer questions from high school seniors and they tend to be pretty deep into the weeds of the application process. The questions tend to be pretty specific. We did a whole episode for them a little while back. Check that one out if you are at that stage right now.

HANNAH: And we decided since we did those senior year questions, we wanted to do an episode for juniors and the kinds of questions that they might be asking. So we’ve thought about the kinds of questions and concerns that we often hear from juniors as they start this whole process.

MARK: If you’re starting off and you are already feeling a little intimidated by the process or unsure of where to start, let us tell you that is totally normal. You are only going to go through this process one time. Everything is going to be really new to you. We’ve been there before.

HANNAH: Yes, many, many times.

MARK: Going back over and over and over again. So we want to reassure you that whatever might seem concerning or unclear, it’s probably something that we have dealt with before and someone in your shoes has gone through as well.

HANNAH: So we’re going to talk about a series of frequently asked questions that you might be surprised to hear are actually frequently asked. If you’re ever feeling like your circumstances are conspiring against you, you’re all alone and dealing with some challenge or not understanding something, we just want you to take comfort in hearing that a lot of people and maybe even most people feel the same way.

MARK: So we’re going to try to provide some proactive answers to some frequently asked questions. But before we get to that, let’s make a quick note for those listeners for whom this might be the very first episode of the podcast. Smash that subscribe button and like us. Give us a five star review.

HANNAH: No, no, no.

MARK: No. None of that matters. We don’t have sponsors or anything like that, but I just always wanted to say that on the podcast, so now I’ve done it.

HANNAH: This whole podcast is about giving out free information from a reliable source. Real admissions officers, that’s me and Mark, working inside a real admissions office.

MARK: One of the reasons we decided to do this podcast is that we know that it can be really daunting just staring out at the sheer volume of information that’s out there about admissions. It can just be really difficult to through it all and figure out what’s good information and what isn’t.

HANNAH: Yeah, so our advice, always try to get answers directly from the source like an admissions officer. Hopefully we will answer some of your questions here. But if we don’t, you can always give us a call or shoot us an email.

MARK: Also if you have someone in your school who serves as a dedicated college counselor, they’re going to be a great, great resource for you. You should take advantage of their experience that they have working with members of your community. So reach out to admissions officers. Also reach out to a college counselor who works in your school.

HANNAH: If you call our office, you can speak with an admissions officer on duty. We have someone on duty every day. I happen to be on duty today as of this recording. We all field calls and we all enjoy helping people out.

MARK: All right. So let’s start answering some questions. To help us out with some of these frequently asked junior questions, we’ve invited back the one and only Jill who did an amazing job. Played to rave reviews on our senior year questions episode. So welcome back, Jill.

JILL: Oh man. You flatter me, Mark. Thanks for having me again, guys.

HANNAH: We are lucky to have you. Jill is going to maybe take some creative license with these questions to make them a little more entertaining. Our goal here is not to make it seem like these are silly or unreasonable questions at all.

MARK: It’s just the opposite. We completely understand why students ask all the sorts of questions you’re going to hear today. Our goal here is to just proactively provide some reassurances for a few things that might otherwise keep you up at night.

JILL: Yeah and keep it fun too. So should we get started? OK, so question number one. How should I choose what classes to take in my senior year? I mean, I really want to take this music class, but there’s also this art history course that I like. Oh, and British literature. That sounds so cool. But what do I do? How do I choose? What if art history is at the same time as music? I don’t know what to do.

MARK: Oh, yes. The schedule conflict question. We have answered this one a lot. And it’s always a little bit different, but at the core, it’s really the same issue, which is that there is a limited amount of space and time available in any student’s schedule. You are going to read on our website and other websites that we want to see that a student is taking the most rigorous curriculum available in their high school. But guess what? Even within one high school, there’s not just simply one way to have the most rigorous curriculum.

HANNAH: And don’t forget, when you get to college, you are going to have lots more opportunity to take cool classes in X,Y,Z subject. So if you really want to take that art history and you can’t take that British literature, maybe you’ll have the opportunity to do that in college.

MARK: Well, say that for Yale specifically, we take a very flexible approach to this. Other schools, particularly public schools in your home state might have less flexibility. So you want to make sure that you do keep your options open. For us, the most rigorous curriculum doesn’t necessarily mean X,Y or Z.

Final note here. If there is a conflict that just really ultimately doesn’t land the way that you want with your schedule and you feel like you want to give some context for that, you’ll have a chance in your application to provide that information. So no need to stay awake all summer worrying that whatever you got stuck within your senior year schedule is going to doom your chances. Take what you can and give us the information we need if you feel like it didn’t work out the way you expect it.

HANNAH: Yeah, absolutely.

JILL: That’s good. Great to know. All righty, question number two, what’s the best time of year to visit schools? Also is it important for me to meet my admissions officer when I come to campus? I can only be around for a day. I mean, what should I even do or should I see anything specific?

HANNAH: All right. Let’s take these one at a time. I would say the best time to visit campus is when you have the opportunity to do so. The same tours are offered year round at least at Yale. The scenery might change a little bit but generally, you’re going to get the same experience. Don’t worry too much about that. Just work with your own schedule.

I will say it’s always nice to visit schools when school is in session. You see a little more action on campus. You see students walking around. You might get kind of a better feel. But we get a lot of visitors over the summer and that’s fine too.

MARK: I’m also going to encourage you to think about what you want to get out of the visit. Don’t just visit to visit because it’s there. We do provide a lot of fabulous resources online. You can learn a lot about our school by going through our virtual tours and attending virtual information sessions and even listening to this fabulous podcast.

But there is something very special about visiting a college campus, but to avoid just hopping in the car or going on a plane and just showing up for a quick few hours, ask yourself, what is it that I want to learn from this visit that I’m not going to be able to get from other sources? That might also help you decide which colleges you want to visit and which you want to just explore online.

HANNAH: When it comes to what should you actually do or see when you’re on campus, check out the official tours offered at the school, but also if you’re interested in art history, for example, check out the art gallery on campus. I’m making a plug for that because Yale has an amazing art gallery.

MARK: And one final note, Yale does not track demonstrated interest. We don’t track who visits campus or who connects with us. Other schools might do things a little bit differently.

HANNAH: Right. You certainly don’t need to try to connect with the Yale Admissions Officer while you’re on campus. If you have questions, again, we always have someone on duty to answer questions, but it won’t necessarily be your specific admissions officer.

JILL: Question number three. I’m a junior this year and I was wondering how I should spend my free time this summer. I’ve so many options. I could stay home, get a job, but there’s also this really cool program at this school that I was thinking of. It’s not Yale though, is that a problem? Whatever. Anyway. I’m just like, what should I do?

MARK: You should do what you want to do, Jill. Truly. It’s great that you’ve got a lot of options. You want to pick the one that you think is going to be most enriching and interesting for you. Don’t tie yourself in knots thinking about what it’s going to look best on a college application.

There are a lot of really cool academic opportunities available in all different parts of the world for juniors. If they appeal to you for whatever reason, go for it. But it doesn’t make a lot of sense to pursue a bunch of activities that aren’t really of interest to you or that don’t align with how you’re thinking about where you want to pursue your academic life after college just because you think it will add some Laurel to your college application eventually.

HANNAH: Doing a summer program on a college campus can be a kind of a cool way to get a sense of what it’s like to live on that college campus, but it’s not going to necessarily help you out with your application to that school. So only do it if you want to spend five or six weeks doing whatever that program is offering.

MARK: Yeah, and there are a lot of non academic programs that we find are just as enriching and illuminating for students at this time where they come into their senior year. And they say, wow, that experience working in that job or that experience doing that volunteer program really changed the way that I’m thinking about my approach to college, and was a really just meaningful part of shaping my identity and who I am right now.

So we don’t go with any hierarchy for these things whatsoever. It is a great opportunity to do something meaningful for you if you can. We also recognize, of course, that a lot of people don’t have a ton of options. So again, we’re not going in with any expectation that a student do X,Y or Z.

JILL: Cool. Question number four. This might be a little weird, but ant farming for two years, but recently my ants have really been giving me a hard time. One of them keeps sneaking out of the farm and trying to start his own colony. I don’t get why he’s so opinionated and needs to stir the pot like this, but all I know is I’m getting sick of it. I don’t enjoy it anymore. I don’t want to do it anymore. But will it look weird on my college application if I’ve been doing this for super, super long, and then all of a sudden I just stopped doing it? I don’t want that to hurt my chances. What should I do?

HANNAH: I would never recommend that you stick to ant farming for two more years if it’s just going to torture you.

MARK: It doesn’t bring you joy.

HANNAH: It is OK to change your mind about what your interests are. Find new things to do, stop doing old things that you’ve lost interest in.

MARK: Absolutely. There is some old advice out there that your activities list needs to show four years of commitment to the same activities and increasing levels of leadership and all that. That’s all fine and good if you’ve really been able to find the things that you are potentially passionate about or just really, really enjoy and those don’t change.

But we know people change. We know that ants and their farms change over the course of four years. So if something’s just not working for you anymore, make the change more than anything for your own sake. It does not make sense to be doing a bunch of stuff that you don’t like doing just because you think it’s going to make you a better college applicant.

In fact, it’s going to make you probably a weaker college applicant because by senior year, you are not going to be really fulfilled by what you’re doing and it’s going to just seem like you’re going through the motions of whatever activities on your list and that’s probably going to show in how your application is put together.

HANNAH: Yeah I wish your ants all the best but you can give that up.

JILL: I can’t wait to get rid of them. In a similar vein, question number five. Is it too late for me to start a new activity? I there’s this whole thing where people think you’re padding your resume for college apps if you start a new activity like this year and then you do something new next year. But listen, there is this new Science Mimes club at my school.

OK, I know that probably sounds confusing, but basically, you take like scientific concepts and you mime them, and it just helps. It’s a cool thing. And so I was wondering if is that going to look weird because it’s new and I haven’t done it before, or what should I do here?

HANNAH: It sounds amazing. Check it out.

MARK: Yeah, new things sound fantastic. This goes for extracurricular activities. It also goes for academic interests. You may find that there is a new class that’s available to you, your junior or your senior year that doesn’t neatly fit into one of the categories you were doing before. We see this with new foreign languages. We see this with interesting elective classes maybe in a social studies class or something like that.

If it piques your interest, if it sounds like ooh, that could be fun. Go for it. Our expectation is not that you’ve again, arrived fully formed in high school and just continue along the predetermined path. Try something new. See what you like about it and maybe it’ll teach you something new about yourself in the process.

JILL: Question number six. Dude, my school doesn’t offer AP exams. It’s like maybe there’s like a handful of AP exams. I don’t know, but should I self-study for more AP exams? I mean, those books are big, man, but if I got to do it, I guess I’ll do it. I can stop taking my dogs for walks or something and study instead. So what should I do?

HANNAH: Definitely, definitely not. Keep in mind that we are always reviewing your academic background. In context, we’re thinking about what your school offers, we’re thinking about what’s available to you. And if your school doesn’t offer AP classes, we are not going to expect that you are taking these AP exams. We’re not going to be comparing your transcript to the transcript of the student at the school down the road who has 16 AP exams available to them.

MARK: Right. I think it’s helpful to keep in mind that there’s no rubric that we’re using that suddenly awards 10 bonus points for a certain AP score or 20 if you self studied for the AP exam. Certainly we see students who have a real interest in an area of study that’s not offered in their school. And they take the initiative to go find a way to pursue that somewhat independently either completely on their own or more frequently through something like dual enrollment or connecting with someone else. And they might sort of take advantage of the opportunity to take an AP exam at the end of that just to kind of see how their learning stacks up.

But that should be about the experience of learning the material and engaging with it because it interests you not just to potentially score more points because you have one more AP exam score than other students from your school might.

JILL: All right. Question number seven. I am ready. I am so ready. I have been doing my research since I was 10. I am there. I’m ready to get started on my college applications ASAP. Can I start working on my essays now? And I’m going to be honest, I may already have several draft topics and draft ideas in my college applications for success and acceptance folder, but will those essay prompts change?

HANNAH: We reevaluate our essay prompts every summer. And it’s likely that there will be some change. It probably won’t be drastic but you never know. So I would not recommend putting in too much work on final essay drafts before those new prompts come out, but there’s certainly no harm in doing some brainstorming, doing some writing and getting used to the form of writing college essays before you have those exact prompts.

MARK: Yes, and I think most importantly, go through the process of doing some reflecting. Ask yourself, regardless of how the prompt is phrased, what is it about myself that I think I would like to share in my college application, and what might be the most helpful and illuminating choices I could make to share that with people?

That kind of homework does pay off when you start doing it early, when you start writing things down and just playing with it so that you can adapt it to whatever space you’re going to need later.

And I’ll tell you, at the end of this process about a year later when you’re putting together potentially a handful of college applications, you’re probably going to find that there are distinct but similar prompts across various applications that don’t require you to write completely different essays but they will require you to adapt and revise some things.

So if you start with, all right, what are the core principles? What are the important things that I want to be able to share? Do that now and then figure out the specifics later in the process.

JILL: Cool, cool, cool. Question number eight. I had a rough transition to high school and my GPA reflects that. It’s a long story that I won’t get into it. Involves like rabid toucans and whatnot, but I’ve been working super hard since then and I started earning better grades more recently. Will I be at a disadvantage thanks to my ninth grade grades?

MARK: Great question. So you can rest assured that your most recent grades are the best predictors of your success in college. We’ve got data to back that up, and we go through our process thinking about that. It is useful to keep in mind that your entire secondary school transcript is going to be part of the application review. But we understand that challenges occur and for all kinds of reasons things may have gotten off to a rough start.

That’s not going to be something that’s ultimately going to destroy your chances of being admitted. But if there’s a story to tell there, you want to use some space in the application to tell the story. So as you’re going through your junior year, keep working hard at your classes. Keep increasing your rigor hopefully into senior year, so that by the time you’re applying you have both a really strong junior year and a very challenging senior program with strong performance in those classes.

But also start thinking about how am I going to give the important context about what went wrong whether it was the rabbit two cans or something else early in your high school career so that the people who are looking at that four year transcript really understand the background of what was going on then and now.

JILL: Cool. Question number nine. I started receiving all sorts of mail from colleges. You won’t believe it pamphlets, letters, swag. One school even sent me a drone. What does that mean? I don’t know. Am I being actively recruited? I must be a hot commodity right now.

HANNAH: This is a great question. And fortunately for you all, the person in charge of sending all of this information to juniors from our office happens to be in this room right now.

MARK: Yes, I’m the king of spam in the admissions office. And we get this question and it’s an understandable question. If you particularly are someone who took something like the PSAT or potentially the ACT or one of its analogs in your sophomore or your junior year, you’ve probably found that you’re starting to get very, very popular in terms of what’s showing up in your physical mailbox and also in your email inbox.

Let’s talk about what that means and what that doesn’t mean. What it means is that you are likely going to be academically competitive at any of the schools that are reaching out to you. That might be a really good sign at some schools that you are a perfect fit for them and they are very, very eager to see you apply and be admitted.

We try to be pretty clear in our communications that the reason why you’re receiving something from us is because you scored well on an exam. Our admissions process, though, is much more complicated than just what a score tells us. And so although we wish that we had a more nuanced way to think about who’s receiving our messages, test scores is really the best piece of information that we have.

So you should receive this information and feel good that oh, I could be a realistic candidate at any of these schools. But you’ve got to remember yes, there are many, many more students who receive these kinds of messages. We don’t send drones. I’m not sure who’s sending drones out there. But certainly emails and things in the mailbox, we send them to more students than we’re going to be able to admit because we don’t know a whole lot about you at the stage in the process other than that it looks like you are likely going to be academically in the right range for schools like Yale.

HANNAH: And we want to make sure we’re giving you the opportunity to learn about us. Wow. Jill, thank you for those questions.

JILL: Of course.

MARK: Spectacular.

JILL: Happy to do this.

MARK: Fantastic performance once again.

HANNAH: Yes. As you all go through this process, asking questions is going to be one of the best things that you can do. Obviously the college admissions process is probably unlike anything you’ve ever done before really

MARK: Yeah, the possibilities for you, we hope feel really exciting. You Should try to approach this whole thing as an opportunity rather than as a burden. This is an opportunity to learn about a much more diverse set of institutions, diverse places, communities, academic fields, and even approaches to learning than you’ve probably ever seen before.

It’s also an opportunity to learn a lot more about yourself. Think about expanding your identity and trying new things. And finally, it’s going to be an opportunity to wrap your head around a process that we know can cause a lot of anxiety, but which we promise if you step back and look at it with clear eyes, you’re going to find that it really isn’t that scary at all. That’s the whole point of this podcast, folks.

HANNAH: Yes, so when you do have questions, get your answers from the most reliable source. We’re going to say that’s us. And we hope we’ve answered a few of your questions today maybe even before you ask them.

MARK: If this is your first podcast episode, there are 20 some others that are already out there. We hope that they’re helpful for you throughout the months ahead and stay tuned. We’re going to keep recording some new episodes. We’ll take a break from reading in committee over the next few months and give you all that content that you love.

HANNAH: Yes.

MARK: Jill, thank you so much for joining us today.

JILL: Of course.

MARK: Thank you also for being our sound engineer for this podcast and for being a great colleague and admissions officer. Thank you, [? Reed, ?] for lending us your office once again. And thanks to former admissions officer Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our music. You should check him out at andrewbrickjohnson.com

HANNAH: If you have comments or an idea for an episode, you can drop us a line at yaleadmissionspodcast@gmail.com. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are ours and don’t necessarily represent those of Yale University. Thanks for listening.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MARK: Welcome back to Inside the Yale Admissions Office. My name is Mark, and I’m a Yale admissions officer.

HANNAH: And I’m Hannah. I’m also a Yale admissions officer.

MARK: And today, we are talking about the very final stages of our selection process, something that we call Final Review.

HANNAH: Yes. We mentioned this at the end of our second episode way back in– what was that, March 2020?

MARK: Mm-hmm.

HANNAH: And we left everyone with a real cliffhanger.

MARK: This is what that sounded like.

HANNAH: But–

MARK: But.

HANNAH: –it’s not quite over yet. There’s more. And those decisions that come out of area committee are not necessarily going to be the final decision.

MARK: There is still one more act to follow, and we’re going to talk about that in the next episode. I think everyone knows why this episode has been a little bit delayed.

HANNAH: Yes.

MARK: In case you missed it, there was a global pandemic. We wound up working mostly remotely for about two years.

HANNAH: Mm-hmm.

MARK: Tiger King happened.

HANNAH: Oh yeah.

MARK: TikTok blew up. The Braves won the World Series. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that on this podcast yet.

HANNAH: [LAUGHS]

MARK: A lot has happened in the last two years.

HANNAH: That nobody expected.

MARK: Nobody.

HANNAH: Yeah. Yeah, and we have gotten, I will say, a lot of email traffic about this episode. People keep asking on our email, hey, when’s that episode on Final Review coming out? They feel like we’ve really left them behind, so we do want to finally record, as promised, that episode.

MARK: That’s right, so here it is two years later, episode 25, originally slated to be episode 3.

HANNAH: [CHUCKLES]

MARK: All about the final review process.

HANNAH: Better late than never. And back in the studio to join us two years later is our good friend Alfie.

ALFIE: Hi. So excited to be asked back. I was a little worried that after episode 2, perhaps I had said something that was–

[LAUGHTER]

–amiss when I hadn’t been asked back to join you guys, so I’m very excited to be here today.

HANNAH: We’ve just been working our way through the staff, but we’re glad to have you back finally.

MARK: Yeah, we were saving this very special throwback cameo just–

HANNAH: Yes.

MARK: –for this episode. We also thought you would be great because Alfie, you, of course, are a member, a fellow member with Hannah and me of the Final Review committee.

HANNAH: So before we get started, a quick reminder. Our goal with this podcast is to take you behind the scenes and show you how we do our work. This is not a “how to get into Yale” podcast. This podcast is not going to give you tips and tricks for devising some complicated strategy for how to get into Yale.

MARK: Mm-hmm.

HANNAH: And listening to this episode in particular really shouldn’t change anything about how you put together your application.

MARK: This Final Review process is both really difficult, and I also think it’s really interesting, in large part because it involves some cold hard truth. We can’t admit everyone that we’d like to.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: You’re going to hear us talking about the final steps of our process. Just keep in mind that there’s just no way that you, as an applicant, will be able to predict how your fate might be affected by any of this. We can’t even predict it as admissions officers that are inside the process.

ALFIE: I also really want our listeners to try and find some comfort in the fact that a lot of this process is entirely out of your control. If the number of students we could admit were just a little bit higher or if the other students who applied were a little different, some applicants would get probably a different decision.

MARK: That’s just how the cookie crumbles, and it crumbles a little bit different every single year.

HANNAH: So in our second episode, we explained that every day for about five weeks, we have daylong committee meetings to review admissions files one at a time. That process starts in February and goes through the middle of March. Those weeks are a lot of fun. They are also exhausting.

MARK: Mm-hmm.

HANNAH: But they’re fascinating. We all get to learn about all these amazing students from around the country and from around the world, and we’re in the room with different people from across the University as well. So if you haven’t already, go back and listen to one of our earlier episodes about that committee process.

MARK: And since we do that committee process pretty much the same way every day for five weeks in a row, there are a few things that are just kind of unavoidable. Unavoidable thing number one, the complete picture of an individual application might not be totally set the day that it’s up in committee.

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: Some applications, they just don’t yet have everything that we would need or that we would want.

ALFIE: Right. So for example, we might be waiting for an interview report, or sometimes, you want to see your midyear report. Sometimes, we have sent out those art evaluations or music evaluations, so we’re waiting to hear back from the faculty. Sometimes, an officer will opt not to hear a case at all that day and say, let’s just leave this open and hear it later. And then there are other times where a committee might hear a case and say, actually, for the applicant’s sake, let’s wait until we have something else until we make that decision.

HANNAH: Sometimes, there’s also breaking news that hits after the committee has met– if you win some sort of major award that wasn’t in the application at the time we met in committee. These are pretty rare, and I will say most of those hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of application updates that we get throughout January, February, March don’t really move the needle. But occasionally, it happens. Sometimes, we’ll get some late-breaking information that might affect the committee conversation.

MARK: So kind of think about unavoidable thing number one as the fact that there’s just going to be some unfinished business after we’ve marched through all these areas.

HANNAH: Yep.

MARK: Unavoidable thing number two is that we’re aware of the fact that some committees may be a little bit tougher than others, or they might just have a dynamic that gave a slight advantage to certain students over others. And as we’re talking about this, it’s important to recognize that we don’t go in with any sort of quota for the number of students that we can admit either on a particular day or on a particular area.

And we’re also very, very intentional to not keep any kind of running count of how many students we voted to admit as we’re going through those weeks. You wouldn’t want it to be easier to get in if your area happened to fall earlier in the schedule. So I have a metaphor for this. We’ll see what, Alfie and Hannah, you think about this.

HANNAH: OK.

MARK: As I was trying to put this together like, how would I explain this? Because I feel like we get a lot of questions about, well, how do you know where to set the bar? And I explain that it’s not a set of criteria. It’s not a rubric. This just lives in the hearts and minds of our committee members.

HANNAH: Mm-hmm.

MARK: And I sort of liken it to driving a car without a speedometer. We have to hit a certain speed limit. We sort of know, OK, this many students applied this year, and we can only admit about this number. We’re going to have to be pretty tough, and we’re all sort of trying to feel out on any given day, OK, how fast should we be going?

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: All of our committees go through sort of driving at the speed that is just in our mind [INAUDIBLE] we think we’re going at the right speed– yeah, I think this is about right– and it’s not until the end of the process that we actually look and see, OK, how fast do these different committees go?

HANNAH: Right. Right.

MARK: And did we sort of, on average, drive at the right speed–

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: –to hit [INAUDIBLE] the numbers that we need to hit at the end of the day?

HANNAH: And there’s definitely going to be variability in that because we’re– the committee is made up of humans making very human decisions. So that’s good. I like that metaphor I’m going–

MARK: Thanks.

HANNAH: –to use that. So for those two reasons, it’s important to have a process at the end where you kind of go back and just take stock of the whole process again from a wider vantage point.

MARK: Mm-hmm.

HANNAH: That brings us to Final Review.

MARK: Yeah, and there are really two parts of the Final Review process. The first is just cleaning up some of that unfinished business.

HANNAH: Mm-hmm.

ALFIE: So the first part is called Cleanup, and it’s just like a regular area committee. We get five people together who are on the admissions staff, and we hear a handful of cases from each area that have loose ends that need tying up. And we are able to just do a quick zoom across the country during these last cases.

HANNAH: This is a good place to point out that officers all have geographic areas. Remember, we’ve talked about this before. And we fold those areas into larger units called teams. We started this model a few years ago originally with larger regional blocks, and then we switched to more purposefully random teams that have areas from all across the country. So we do Cleanup Review by those teams, and that’s really helpful because there’s probably someone in the review committee room who is also in the room the first time around the–

MARK: Mm-hmm.

HANNAH: –student was heard and has that kind of extra context.

ALFIE: And the case does not show up in a cleanup committee. They basically fall into two categories. So the first category is a case that doesn’t yet have a decision either because it wasn’t ready for committee, as we were just talking about, or because the committee left it open for whatever reasons. And then the other cases where something new and important has hit the file. Unfortunately, sometimes, it might be a negative, so there could be–

HANNAH: Mm-hmm.

MARK: Uh-huh.

ALFIE: –a big slip in grades. So [INAUDIBLE] that, midyear report did come in, and you didn’t do so well, unfortunately, [INAUDIBLE] a disciplinary violation that you or the school has made us aware of– anything that really is going to make us think twice about the committee’s initial decision to get to admit. And those are really the worst things–

MARK: Yeah.

HANNAH: [LAUGHS] Yeah, uh-huh.

ALFIE: –that can happen. Generally, when cases are coming back to committee, I can say that it’s usually something positive that has hit the file.

MARK: Yeah, we do dread those when we see on these sheets– because officers prepare sheets that say, these are the cases we want to–

HANNAH: Right, right.

MARK: –talk about and review, and we see, is there an action already on the file? And when we see, yes, the action is already admit, and we say, oh, no.

[LAUGHTER]

HANNAH: Oh no.

MARK: Why are we talking about this student?

HANNAH: What happened? [CHUCKLES]

MARK: They’ve already been admitted. And sometimes, we groan, and we say, yeah, if the committee had had that, we would not have voted to admit, and sometimes, we look at it, we say, OK, that’s not great, but we can sustain the decision–

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: –here. But it is our duty to go back and review that information when it comes in.

HANNAH: Yeah.

ALFIE: Right. And then, certainly, officers never love to– they always sort of grimace–

MARK: Mm-hmm.

HANNAH: Right. [CHUCKLES]

ALFIE: [LAUGHS] –when they have to bring back some not-so-great news.

HANNAH: Officers present these files just like they do in regular committee. The area officer reads the area and outside reader work cards, and everyone in the room looks at a paper or digital copy of the slate, which is the list of applicants in that region. If you need a refresher on any of these terms, head on back to episode 2.

MARK: Yeah.

ALFIE: Was it in Lingo Bingo?

MARK: [CHUCKLES]

HANNAH: Oh, no, I don’t think that was in Lingo Bingo.

MARK: No, it wasn’t. Well, next episode, next game, we’ll do that.

ALFIE: [LAUGHS]

HANNAH: Lingo Bingo part 2.

[LAUGHTER]

ALFIE: Yay.

MARK: So this whole process happens right after those five weeks of area committee, and even then, we still, very intentionally, don’t start counting up how many students we’ve admitted.

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: We are going into that process completely unaware of what the bigger picture look like. So after all that’s done, we finally have a provisional decision on every single student who has applied.

ALFIE: And before you go on, I just want to be clear to the audience because I feel like this conversation could be creating some stress, perhaps.

MARK: Mm-hmm.

HANNAH: Mm-hmm, yeah.

ALFIE: I’d want everyone to know that decisions, on most cases, do not change at this final stage.

MARK: Yeah.

ALFIE: And this decision that your application got in the area committee is probably the decision that you’re going to receive on the day that we release decisions.

HANNAH: Totally. The only challenge is once we get to the end of this whole process, we could say, hey, we’re done, everyone’s been through committee, let’s release those decisions and get start getting excited about yield season. However, there is a high chance that we’ve probably over-admitted in our work. We are so excited about all our applicants we voted to admit more students than we think we should if we want to hit our target size number for the first-year class. We only have room for so many new Yale students every year.

MARK: Mm-hmm. It’s virtually guaranteed that we will have too many students admitted. And now, the process of predicting how many students and even what types of students a college should admit, it’s a project that’s turned into this really big and complex cottage industry for some consultants out there.

HANNAH: Yes.

MARK: Some other colleges out there, they use some really advanced econometric models that predict whether a student will accept their offer of admission and even how much financial aid money that student should receive. And we want to be clear, at Yale, we don’t do any of that.

HANNAH: Right, right. Yeah, we keep it a little simpler.

MARK: Mm-hmm.

HANNAH: We have an Excel spreadsheet–

MARK: That’s it. [CHUCKLES]

HANNAH: –that tracks our yield rates. So that’s–

ALFIE: [INAUDIBLE].

HANNAH: Oh yeah.

ALFIE: [LAUGHS]

HANNAH: –the percentage of admitted students who enroll in a given cycle. And that Excel sheet has data for every year going back a few decades.

MARK: So a few of us will gather together and try to figure out, OK, how many students should we sort of responsibly offer admission to? And we’ll just get together. We’ll look at that spreadsheet. We’ll kind of squint a little bit.

HANNAH: [CHUCKLES]

MARK: And we’ll say, OK, we think it’ll be about this number. This year, Hannah and I were looking at this sheet with a few other people last week, and we said, OK, we think that the yield rate this year is probably going to be around 68%.

HANNAH: Yeah, and that’s– I mean, that’s really just a guess. It’s based on previous year data.

MARK: Yeah, unfortunately for us, these things do tend to be fairly consistent, which means that we can say, all right, we think it’s going to be in the neighborhood of 68%, which means just a little bit of basic algebra gets us to say, OK, our goal is to enroll about 1,550 first-year students this fall, we should admit about 2,280 of our applicants. That’s the number that we came up with last week.

HANNAH: Yeah.

ALFIE: Right, but none of those numbers is precise–

MARK: Yeah.

ALFIE: –or exact.

HANNAH: Right.

ALFIE: There’s a little wiggle room around both of those. This is a little bit of a guessing game at the end of the day for us. If our yield is lower than we expect it, we’ll get to go to the wait list, which I–

HANNAH: Yay! [LAUGHS]

MARK: Yeah, that’s the best.

ALFIE: –love, actually. Yeah.

MARK: We’re big fans of the wait list.

HANNAH: We love the wait list.

ALFIE: So much fun because we get to admit more students into the class and hopefully make some more applicants happy. And so that’s something that we– I actually think that we kind of hope that we don’t hit our target right on the nose so that we can go to the wait list.

HANNAH: Right.

ALFIE: And then if the number is higher than we expect, well, that’s actually not our problem.

[LAUGHTER]

Oops, we did our jobs too well.

MARK: Yeah.

ALFIE: But we can certainly make that work if it’s 10 more students who accepted our offers than we had predicted. If it becomes 100 more students, well, then we have some–

HANNAH: Right.

ALFIE: –more thinking to do and be– typically–

MARK: It’s a situation that’s worth trying to avoid.

HANNAH: Yes.

ALFIE: Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

HANNAH: So last week, actually, we whipped out those spreadsheets, and we did a little squinting at them. And we came up with a target number of 2,280 admitted students. And then we looked at how many students we had voted to admit after all the area committees and cleanup committees wrapped up, and there were 2,312.

MARK: Which is pretty good. It’s pretty good.

HANNAH: It is quite close. Yeah, yeah.

MARK: Yeah, so we drove without a speedometer.

ALFIE: [LAUGHS]

MARK: Back to my metaphor. And we were pretty close to the right speed that we needed to be at, at least on average, right?

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: However, we can pat ourselves on the back for that, but we also need to get down to 2,280.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: It’s not optional at this point.

HANNAH: Yeah, and I don’t know. We’re not going to sugarcoat it. This is, I would say, one of the hardest parts of our job.

ALFIE: This is especially tough because we have to run a sort of bizarro committee now where instead of voting to admit a student to the class, we’re actually voting to take a student out, which is actually the part of the year that I look forward to the least.

MARK: Absolutely.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: Yeah.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: It’s a tough job. Somebody’s got to do it.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: And I’ll say, thankfully, we try to go about it in a pretty thoughtful and deliberate way, and I think the first thing that helps us is that there’s going to be some degree of variance between committees. A lot of this is just the fact that there’s going to be change from year to year in a particular area. One year, there might be lots of really awesome students in one area, and the next year, fewer in another. We generally don’t think that it’s worth trying to iron all those things out year after year because over time, these things revert to the mean.

ALFIE: And it can also be the case, however, that some students were heard in a committee that was just a little more likely to hit the Admit button.

HANNAH: And I would say, even if we aren’t over admitted, it’s still a useful exercise to look at those students who fell just over the line and the students who fell just under it because we know there’s going to be that variance in committees. So basically, the goal of this final Final Review process is to look at the strongest students who have not been admitted to the class and the students who were admitted, who were maybe fall closer to that line.

MARK: Mm-hmm.

ALFIE: Thankfully, the Final Review process isn’t just about taking students out. We also get to put some other wonderful, fabulous students into the class for the first time.

MARK: And we crunch a few more numbers before this committee happens to help the process along. However, each decision still comes down to the specifics of the individual application and the committee members who are considering it. But we do start off by calculating some different rates of admission both by individual area officer and then by those larger teams that we talked about.

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: This helps the dean come up with a target number for each one of those teams. So he might say, OK, I need your team to bring back the 15 sort of weakest admitted students in your team but also bring back five really strong students who are currently on the wait list. Another team might be asked to bring back 10 of their weakest admitted students and five of their strongest students on the wait list.

ALFIE: Individual officers will then go back over their slates and will look for students in both groups and send the names to the team leader to compare. Going back through the list of admitted students to find ones to take out is really, really not fun. And actually, as a team leader, I spent many, many hours on a Thursday going over the nominees from my team, and it was really tough. But finding the students who fell just short of an admit vote can also be really exciting. The job of the team leader is really to compare all those files and to come up with a list to bring back to that Final Review committee to be heard.

MARK: Mm-hmm. And Alfie is my team leader. So last week, I had to go through my cases and look through and say, OK, oh, I don’t want to, but yeah, Alfie, you should take a look at these handful of students who are currently in the class. But then I also got to go back and find a handful of students where I said, oh, I thought maybe the student would just get one more vote in committee, I was sort of bummed at the time, Alfie, take a look. I think the student is great and maybe is actually even sort of more appealing than some of these students who are currently in the class and should come out.

ALFIE: Absolutely.

HANNAH: Yeah, and then the Final Review committee spends a day just hearing all of these cases. And I’ll just say before you think, oh man, they must find the most heartless admissions officers to make up this Final Review committee, this sounds really scary, the three of us are actually constant members of that committee.

MARK: Mm-hmm.

HANNAH: So–

MARK: We’re nice people.

HANNAH: –it’s just [INAUDIBLE]–

ALFIE: We’re nice people.

MARK: I think.

HANNAH: –your friends. Yeah, Hannah, Mark, and Alfie will be there. So sometimes, we hear a case that’s suggested that we take out of the class, and we say, no, we cannot bear to lose that student. Like, give us someone else, we’ve got to keep this one in. And then, sometimes, we hear a case that’s suggested for bringing back into the class, and we say, you know what, I think we’re going to sustain the original committee’s vote, this is still not quite there.

MARK: Mm-hmm. But in most cases, we look at it an admitted student that’s being considered again, and we say, oh, yep, the student is awesome, I can totally see why they were admitted, but we’ve got to get that number down, and this is one that can go.

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: With a heavy sigh, we say OK.

ALFIE: Yeah.

HANNAH: Yeah.

ALFIE: It is definitely a heavy sigh, and it stings a little bit every time.

MARK: Mm-hmm.

ALFIE: Especially because there’s no version of the decision letter that says, you know what, you were so close.

MARK: I know.

HANNAH: Right.

ALFIE: You were in the class for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, we don’t have that letter. And perhaps it wouldn’t be a fun one to receive anyways. However, it is also really wonderful for us to take a student that was just short of an initial area review and then looked really strong when we stood them side by side with a different group of applicants in this Final Review process.

HANNAH: Yeah, so that’s kind of the last chapter. Finally, you’ve gotten your final Final Review episode. We are actually recording this on a Wednesday, and it’s actually the Wednesday before we are releasing our regular decision– decisions.

MARK: That’s tomorrow, yep. Woohoo!

HANNAH: That’s tomorrow, yep. We spent the whole day last Friday going through this entire Final Review process, and after that, the class was officially finished.

ALFIE: And on Monday, we had the very fun tasks that we always look forward to– getting paired up with one of our admission colleagues to double-check every single admissions decision. Yes, folks, all 50,000 admissions decisions were double-checked by all of us in the office. And as you can imagine, this took several, several hours and a good part of the day on Monday.

MARK: Yeah.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: Once that’s done, we can start doing fun things like stuffing envelopes with packages for admitted students.

HANNAH: So understanding this Final Review process can feel like some really inside baseball. This is really what we mean when we say inside the Yale Admissions Office.

MARK: Mm-hmm.

HANNAH: But we think it’s a good illustration of the principles that really underline our work, the first one being that we are bounded by the limitations of reality.

MARK: [CHUCKLES] yeah.

HANNAH: Which is not always fun for us to remember. We would love to admit many more students than we can, but we can’t admit all of the students who get a unanimous vote from an admissions committee.

MARK: Yeah.

HANNAH: Some of those are going to have to get taken out at the end of the process.

ALFIE: And second, we try to be as fair and consistent as possible in these committees. This process is very subjective, and there’s really no way that we can really balance all of the scales or even perfectly predict who will be the best members for our Yale community. But we’re doing the best that we can to give every applicant the same opportunity to really stand out in front of a group of real people, us, admission officers, and to take each case one at a time.

MARK: Next, we’ll say it again. As an applicant, keep in mind there is so much of this that’s just out of your control.

HANNAH: Mm-hmm.

MARK: Try to come to terms with that. Accept it. There are students who are taken out in Final Review one year who would have stayed in the class in another year. It just, it’s the way the cookie crumbles yet again.

HANNAH: Yeah.

ALFIE: You may have heard some of us say this before if you’ve attended an information session, or I’m sure it may have come up in another podcast. I’m sorry, Mark and Hannah.

HANNAH: [LAUGHS]

ALFIE: I don’t remember every single one.

HANNAH: What?

MARK: OK.

[LAUGHTER]

ALFIE: Shocking, shocking. I know. But just remember that if you’re doing a thorough job identifying great college fits for you as you’re going through your college search, you’re looking at a range of selectivity, you’re going to find yourself having a really awesome experience in college because you’re going to have put in a lot of thought before you’ve actually submitted that application.

MARK: Mm-hmm.

ALFIE: But no amount of hard work or collection of accolades or time spent poring over online forums or money spent on expensive consultants is going to guarantee you a spot at any particular school. Trust us as much as you can. The sooner you accept that, the better your whole experience through this college application process is going to be.

MARK: Mm-hmm.

HANNAH: Yeah, well said. And finally, if you’re denied or put on the wait list, you’ll never know how close you came.

MARK: Mm-hmm.

HANNAH: So just tell yourself that you were one of those 40-some cases that had to be taken out at the very end.

MARK: Yeah, you were that close.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: You’ll never know. Just assume that you were that close.

HANNAH: Exactly, yeah.

MARK: Well, Alfie, thank you so much for joining us back in the podcast. It’s been great to have you on episode 25 after episode 2.

ALFIE: I know. This has been great, a lot of fun. I hope I can be asked back for perhaps a little Lingo Bingo or something [INAUDIBLE].

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: Oh, all right.

HANNAH: Yeah, yeah.

MARK: You heard it here, next contestant. [CHUCKLES]

HANNAH: We’ll definitely have you back sooner this time.

ALFIE: I think I can take you down this time, Hannah.

HANNAH: Oh.

[LAUGHTER]

I don’t know. I’m undefeated champ of Lingo Bingo. [LAUGHS]

MARK: All right, guys, let’s go get ready to release tens of thousands of admissions decisions.

HANNAH: Let’s do it.

MARK: That’s next up on our to-do list. Thanks to our friend and colleague Jill, who’s both our sound engineer and a great admissions officer. Thanks to Reed for lending us his office. Thanks to former admissions officer Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our music. Be sure to check him out at AndrewBrickJohnson.com.

HANNAH: If you have comments or an idea for an episode, drop us a line at YaleAdmissionsPodcast@gmail.com. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are ours and don’t necessarily represent those of Yale University. Thanks for listening.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MARK: Welcome back to Inside the Yale Admissions Office. My name is Mark, and I’m a Yale admissions officer.

HANNAH: And I’m Hannah. I am also a Yale admissions officer. And we are here to talk about updates to our application questions.

MARK: I think we should call this our first annual application update episode.

HANNAH: Yeah. This would be a good one to do every year. It’s July. Every summer, we make some tweaks to our first year application, and we thought the podcast would be a perfect place to give a roadmap to this year’s application and talk through some of the reasonings behind the changes we made.

MARK: So if you are going to be applying for first year admission in the 2022-2023 application cycle, this podcast is for you. If you’re listening to this in the future, and it’s not 2022-2023, you might still get some helpful insights, like keep listening, don’t worry. But the questions will probably have changed a little bit again.

HANNAH: Right. And if you are in the future, and there is not an episode about your coming application cycle, you can always write us an email and say, hey, remember to record an episode about the changes to the application this year.

MARK: Right. And we don’t know how long these podcasts are going to be around in the air. So if it’s really far in the future, maybe there will be something cooler than email or podcasts. I don’t know. So like if there’s some neuro link update that you can do or have your personal robot download the question to us, whatever makes sense, very cool people in the future, to connect with us.

HANNAH: Anyway, this episode is designed as an update to our sixth episode titled Essays– The Little Stuff.

MARK: As a reminder from that episode, we receive applications from three different application platforms. You can apply with a Common Application, the Coalition Application, or the QuestBridge application. And on each of those application platforms, you will complete one or sometimes two longer essays that go to really every college you’re applying to through that platform.

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: Yale doesn’t write the specific prompts for those, but after you write those, you have the chance to answer some Yale-specific questions. Sometimes those are called supplemental essays.

HANNAH: Yes, and this is the part of the application that we control, and we spend a lot of time thinking about what we ask and the kinds of answers that we’re looking for.

MARK: To help us talk about the process of writing those application questions, we have another friend and admissions officer who’s making his podcast debut. Welcome to the podcast, Chandler.

CHANDLER: Thank you both for having me. Excited to talk today about this year’s essays. We’re recently posted, and we’re excited to begin reading in just a matter of months.

HANNAH: Welcome, Chandler. So we invited Chandler to join us today because he was a member of the team in our office that was tasked with writing this year’s questions. We get the question a lot, what do you do during the months when you aren’t reading applications? And the answer is everything else that we’re too busy to do when we have 50,000 applications to read.

MARK: One of those things is that we always have a couple of day-long office retreats. Retreats, maybe not the right word.

HANNAH: It sounds like so much fun, but–

MARK: Everyone’s picturing us on Adirondack chairs somewhere just thinking deeply about things.

HANNAH: If only.

MARK: It’s a day long meeting, basically. I might say a long day meeting.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: These are long.

HANNAH: We do go to somewhere other than our office to have these day long meetings, usually somewhere else on campus.

MARK: Yeah, not far. But the point of these is to take some time when you’re fresh off that most recent admission cycle and debrief a bit. Share some thoughts and ideas about what we thought went well and what needs to be improved.

HANNAH: And we always block off some time for a big staff wide discussion of these Yale specific questions. We go through them one by one, ask for people’s thoughts. What did you think when you were reading the answers to this question this year? How might we improve it?

MARK: Yeah, one of our very earliest ideas for a podcast episode was to actually take our little portable recorder and just capture kind of documentary style this discussion.

HANNAH: I still think we should. I think people would be surprised how carefully we think about the specific wording of these questions.

MARK: Yes. And because everybody in that room has just finished reading thousands of responses to the same questions. And so everyone right in that moment has their strongest and freshest thoughts about what worked and what didn’t work with the questions we asked that cycle. And sometimes there’s consensus and other times, there’s big disagreement about what worked and what didn’t work.

HANNAH: You’re probably wondering what’s the measure of success for a question, how do we decide something worked well or didn’t work well.

MARK: The simple answer is did the question help applicants reveal something important about themselves. We often think about committee discussion and try to remember instances where really good answers to questions helped shape a conversation about a student. So what we are not doing is going around the room, giving our best evil laugh,

[LAUGHS]

Good. We’re not some sort of mean, evil cabal of admissions officers who are cooking up the trickiest and most inscrutable routines and would say, oh, this is really going to make them sweat. Or like they are going to give us some really bad answers to this. Perfect.

HANNAH: Yeah, actually it’s kind of the opposite. One of the most common reasons we get rid of a question and go in a different direction is we think that a lot of applicants didn’t really get what we were looking for and we want to make it a little more clear exactly what we are hoping to get from these responses.

MARK: And I don’t think that is necessarily the fault of the applicants. That’s sometimes the fault of the questions we’re asking.

HANNAH: Yeah, exactly.

MARK: Yes. It’s very common for us to say, oh, we thought that this was going to work this way. But this is not how the question was perceived. Anyone in that room can suggest that a particular question be dropped or altered. Anyone can suggest that we add a new question. And occasionally, we even consider a big shift in the structure of the questions themselves.

HANNAH: Oh, yes. Like we did this year.

MARK: Spoiler alert. Coming soon.

HANNAH: We’ll talk a little bit about it in a couple of minutes.

MARK: So in that process, we gather a lot of notes from everyone in the room. And then we take a few volunteers to form a little subcommittee that’s going to work on finalizing the changes that were suggested and then honing the exact language for each one of those questions. And Chandler, even though you just finished your first year in the admissions office. You bravely joined that subcommittee.

HANNAH: Yeah, nice. Can you tell us a little bit about what that process was?

CHANDLER: One of the things that was really important for us to do during the retreat was to make sure that we took really good notes about what everyone in the office had said regarding the questions that we use this past year or ideas that they have for this coming year. And then we talked about those as a group of five admissions officers in the subcommittee.

MARK: So for this year, Chandler, what were some of the priorities for that group? Were there particular things that we had gathered from retreat that we really wanted to make sure that this year’s questions reflected?

CHANDLER: I think that we have some big themes. So the first is we want to make sure that we are asking a question related to a student’s academic interests. And we want to get to know them as a student and who they might be in the classroom at Yale. We also want to ask about a student’s membership in community. We want to know what communities have they been involved in already? And how might that manifest when they get to Yale’s campus?

And then I think finally, we are thinking about our short take questions. These are the fun ones that students are really creative with. We always want these to be fresh so that we are receiving new ideas and students have their own kind of creativity with these questions as well.

HANNAH: Nice. After our larger all staff retreat discussion how many times did you all meet as a committee before you had final questions?

CHANDLER: Yeah. We met twice. But for some longer sessions, we started off just kind of talking about the large themes, what we want to keep, what we don’t want to keep and we came up with general ideas of what each question might sound like, what the topic might be. And then when we met again, we kind of tried to wordsmith each of these questions so that we could make sure that they made sense to applicants, to us as officers, and to make sure that we were maintaining the overall ideas that we came up with in the first meeting.

MARK: So I was also a member of the subcommittee and I’ll say Chandler was especially dedicated to this effort because he actually joined the second of these meetings while he was on the road. I don’t know if you were driving or passenger?

CHANDLER: Yes. I was driving. And so I really had to listen to what everyone was saying just as our listeners are listening to us.

MARK: You had your Zoom audio up and running. And it was funny because this was the meeting in which we had essentially up on the screen like someone’s with a Word document and the blinking cursor. And we’re just like literally swapping words around, trying out different nouns and adjectives in different places. And we would all look at it and we would say, Chandler, how does that sound to you? And so he would say like, read it back to me.

And it was kind of cool actually to get someone’s take and actually hearing it. You get sort of tunnel vision when you’re looking at it. So Chandler, I’m curious your first year doing this, were you surprised in terms of the level of specificity that we take in honing each one of these questions?

CHANDLER: Absolutely. I think that because there are so many people who first gave us ideas and then there still were a lot of people in the subcommittee sentences and questions are going to sound different to different people. But we were able to work together as a team to produce questions that will make the most sense, we think, to applicants, at least for this coming year. And then we have the opportunity next year to make any tweaks that we think these questions are going to need.

MARK: I’ve been on this committee a few times and I have had experiences of putting the other questions that I thought would be fantastic. I was so excited about and the whole committee was like, oh, this is going be great. And then it just kind of flops–

HANNAH: Yeah, isn’t that disappointing.

MARK: –end up that way. And you’ve got to just put ego behind and say like, well, that didn’t work. Let’s try something else.

HANNAH: Right. All right, so should we talk about the changes for the coming year.

MARK: Yeah. So there’s one big change and this is that we’ve switched from asking to shorter essays that were around 200 to 250 words to one longer essay that’s going to be about 400 words. And I’ve been doing this long enough to know that this is switching back.

Back in the day, we used to just have a longer second essay. We would always talk about two essays, usually at that point, we only kept the Common Application. So it was the Common Application essay and then the Yale essay. And that prompt for years and years and years was the most open-ended application to essay prompt. It was simply tell us something more about yourself.

HANNAH: And then over the past several years, we’ve broken it down. We’ve added these short answer questions. We’ve asked very specific questions about your academic interests. And we’ve split that second essay up into two shorter half length essays to give students an opportunity to write about two separate topics.

MARK: And it’s been a long simmering debate at these retreat meetings. And I have seen myself go from being in a pretty slim minority to being in the camp of wanting to return to a longer essay to suddenly getting the votes.

HANNAH: Oh man, I’m so excited about this. Mark is so excited about this. We’ve both been lobbying for this for a couple of years at retreat now. I just miss reading the longer essay. I feel like students have more room to maneuver in that essay, more room to give us a deep reflection that we’re really looking for. Some students wrote fantastic shorter essays, but for a while now, I’ve been just like itching to let students have a little bit more room.

CHANDLER: I think a benefit to allowing students the opportunity to respond in a longer essay is to give us more of what they’re maybe passionate about, a longer topic that is still going to be Yale specific, but is also going to be detailed.

MARK: So depending on your preferences, you might be cheering or groaning right now. And we can tell you that even among admissions officers, there are folks who fall into both camps.

HANNAH: Totally, but oh, man. I was so excited when we took that straw poll in our retreat and everyone agreed that we should make this change at least for a year and we’ll see how it goes.

MARK: So one of the challenges associated with this is that by switching to one essay, we lost the chance to ask what had been a required short essay question that was specifically about a student’s engagement with a topic or idea that excites you. Students were all required to answer this question. And we said, well, we don’t want to lose that. So our clever solution here was to actually incorporate some of the text of that essay into what you’ve heard us talk about on the podcast before is what we call the AA.

The AA is our shorthand for academic appeal, which is essentially a little short snippet that students give us reflecting on why they selected the three Yale specific majors that they selected. So Chandler, we’re hoping that we can actually use you as our official reader of the new questions.

CHANDLER: Sure.

MARK: Read out for us what the new hybrid AA question is. This is going to combine an old question that was really specifically about academic majors with our previous essay prompt that had been about a topic that excites you.

CHANDLER: Sure. Can we get a little drum roll, please?

MARK: Sure. All right. Here it is. New question for 2022 to 2023.

CHANDLER: Tell us about a topic or idea that excites you and is related to one or more academic areas you selected above. Why are you drawn to it?

MARK: See what we did there?

HANNAH: Yeah. And you have 200 words or fewer to respond to this. So this is a little bit longer than it’s been in the past. This is a chance for you to think about really connecting the dots. So this shouldn’t just be about those majors. I think one of the things that we didn’t like about the previous wording of the AA was that students would often give us a laundry list. They would say I put chemistry because chemistry is really neat and I like it. And I also put history because history is how we learn about the past, isn’t that great? And I also put English because I like reading.

And we would say, OK, we didn’t learn a whole lot about you or your connection to those majors there. So this is designed to be a little bit more directed. And remember when you are listing those three academic interests, this is not you declaring a major, this is not applying to a specific program. It’s just getting an idea of what you are excited to learn about.

MARK: So students who are submitting any of our three applications, Common Application, Coalition Application, QuestBridge application, they’re going to answer this question. They’re also going to answer the question that we call the why Yale or the why Y? Our clever way of putting it, which is unchanged, just simply what is it about Yale that has led you to apply.

HANNAH: Yes and that one is 125 words or fewer. We’ve talked about it extensively in our previous episode.

MARK: Students using the Coalition Application or the Common Application are also going to answer our short takes and they’re also going to answer this longer essay. So three of those four short takes are the same as they were last year. And really haven’t changed much in a few years. We’ve really liked these short takes.

HANNAH: Yeah, Chandler.

CHANDLER: Sure. So the three repeat questions. First, what inspires you? Second, Yale’s residential colleges regularly host conversations with guests representing a wide range of experiences and accomplishments. What person, past or present, would you invite to speak? What would you ask them to discuss?

Three, you are teaching a new Yale course. What is it called? And this year we came up with a new fourth question. So if we could have a drum roll, please, what is something about you that is not included anywhere else in your application?

HANNAH: Oh, boy. I am just excited to see what people come up with. It’s so open ended. And I feel like the first three are also open ended, but they’re more directed and we like the answers to them so much, we decided to keep them. Number four is a little bit, we just want to give you a little bit of extra space. And remember, this isn’t the Additional Information section of the Common App. So that is a section where you might talk about extenuating circumstances or more maybe important things that you want us to know about. This is a chance for you to just take 35 words and tell something fun about yourself.

MARK: Yeah, it’s interesting how we backed ourselves into this question. So in our subcommittee Chandler. The short takes are hard to write because we know that the responses are going to be so short and that it can be challenging for students to give us something that we think is really distinctive in that space.

And so we were playing around with a couple of different prompts saying, well, is this really going to tell us something new? Is it going to tell us something that isn’t included anywhere else in the application? And I think someone on the committee finally just said, what if we just asked them what’s something about you that’s not included elsewhere in your application?

HANNAH: I’m excited.

MARK: I’m excited too. Yeah.

HANNAH: We haven’t read answers to this before, so there’s not much advice that we can give you. And honestly, what I kind of like about this question is there’s no way to game it or figure out what the strategy is to this question. It’s so open, clearly there is no strategy. Just use it to tell us something new.

CHANDLER: And I’ll say having been on the subcommittee, we don’t have a secret agenda underneath this question. There’s not anything specific that we’re looking for. We just want to see what you come up with, whether that is creative or it’s simply just something about you that is new like Mark said.

HANNAH: All right. Let’s talk about that final single longer essay that will be a part of the supplement.

MARK: They’re going to respond to one of these two prompts in 400 words or fewer. So take it away, Chandler.

CHANDLER: The first is Yale carries out its mission through the free exchange of ideas in an ethical, interdependent, and diverse community. Reflect on a time when you exchanged ideas about an important issue with someone holding an opposing view. How did the experience lead you either to change your opinion or to sharpen your reasons for holding onto it?

And the second question is reflect on a time when you have worked to enhance a community to which you feel connected. Why have these efforts been meaningful to you? You may define community however you like.

HANNAH: So you will choose either one of these as an applicant and write about one of them and we can maybe talk a little bit about what our goals are, what we’re trying to get out of these essay prompts.

MARK: So the first one, it’s worth mentioning, we actually are including a link to Yale’s mission statement and say Yale carries out its mission. And that line that you heard right after that is actually a quote from the mission statement, quote is, “Through the free exchange of ideas in an ethical, interdependent, and diverse community.” So that’s directly from our mission statement. We think it’s really important that students embrace a diverse range of opinions and that you encounter people who disagree with you about things even if that encounter doesn’t change your mind about something. You might have that encounter and still hold fast to your previous beliefs.

HANNAH: Right. You aren’t going to come to college to have all of your existing beliefs and opinions confirmed and reinforced. That would not be a good liberal arts education in our mind.

MARK: We think this topic is somewhat timely. Our sense is that there’s greater access to information than ever before. But it also seems to be easier than ever to live in an echo chamber where algorithms are feeding you things that you’ll definitely like and resonate with. If you remember back when we talked in the essays what works episode, one of the things we talked about is the process of changing your mind about something. I will admit, I just really like these kinds of essays personally. I think that this topic tees up that kind of reflection really, really nicely.

HANNAH: Right. I think what we’re not looking for here is like the closing argument of a debate where you say, here’s an opinion that I hold and a time someone disagreed with me. And here’s how I won that argument.

MARK: Absolutely.

HANNAH: Yeah, we don’t necessarily need to hear that. We are looking to hear you reflect on this experience. And it’s not the outcome that we care about, whether you change your mind or not, it’s more the reflection that you have on it.

MARK: When I talked about changing your mind about something, I said, it’s important to be pretty generous towards yourself and your previously held belief about something. Like you shouldn’t say like, oh, I was so foolish and naive. How could I ever believe that? Similarly, when you’re talking about someone holding an opposing view, you should not say like, well, I encountered this rube you know who believed this absurd thing and encountering them made me more certain that I was right about this important thing. That’s not going to be a productive approach to that question.

HANNAH: For the second topic, this is similar to a previous topic we had on a shorter essay. That one was about reflecting on your membership in a community and why it’s important to you. This time we’ve made it a little bit more active. We’re interested in what makes a community important to you. But you also want to hear what you do and specifically how you think those efforts make that community better.

MARK: And hopefully, you’ve heard us talk about how important diversity of all kinds is to us. It’s not a buzzword. This is the core of our educational mission. We think that bringing together a group of students with different experiences, backgrounds, interest, opinions, beliefs, talents, ambitions, et cetera, makes our community better. And so we are keenly interested in how you have engaged with communities.

That might be a community of folks who share something really important in common with you. It might be in itself or really diverse community, but we’re interested in how you’ve acted in that community and engaged with it and made it even stronger and better. I wouldn’t use this as a chance to brag about how you enhance the debate team community by earning lots of points in the final rounds, that’s not really what we’re going for here. Community can mean just about anything, and that includes your debate team, but we would encourage you to think creatively about the people you spend time with, who are meaningful to you, and the role you play in making that community stronger.

And I hope that because we’re giving you a little bit more space, you have some time to give us a sense of why a community is important to you, what your membership looks like, and detail those efforts. So remember we’re talking about this being active. You’re going to have some space for reflection, but also we are interested in the specifics, like what have you done? So that’s what you will see if you are applying for first year admission in 2022, 2023 admissions cycle.

A lot of thought and work has gone into it. We hope you like it. I mean, maybe that’s asking too much. We hope at least that you find it accessible and not scary and a collection of opportunities to speak about yourself to a group of people who are really pretty interested in learning all about you.

HANNAH: Yeah, absolutely. I’m really excited to see what we get out of these essays. It’s always fun for us to switch things up a little bit and then see how people respond. Remember to think about what you like about Yale that’s made you want to apply and use these questions to help us connect those dots.

MARK: These Yale specific questions can be a space for you to be clever or funny or showcase different facets of yourself that just didn’t get much space in the other parts of the application. But again, remember, the most important thing is that they need to be revealing about, you, the person putting together that application.

HANNAH: Think about them more as opportunities than assignments. This is your opportunity to really take control of your application, to have your voice come through, and to let us know what it is about Yale that makes it a good fit for you and why you’re a good fit for Yale.

CHANDLER: I think going off of that, Hannah, I hope that applicants will have fun with these questions. I in the past as admissions officers, we’ve answered the questions ourselves and we showcase them to one another. And so maybe we’ll do that again because I do think these are fun questions or can be opportunities to get creative.

MARK: And remember, there’s no answer sheet. Each one of them is something that we go into with an open mind and part of what makes our job interesting is that we do get to see thousands of students respond to the same questions in different ways.

HANNAH: And remember, if you aren’t planning to enroll in college in fall 2023, your questions may be different. Next spring, we might want to be sitting around talking about how these topics didn’t work out how we expected. We may tweak them again.

MARK: All right. Well, good luck putting together your applications all you rising seniors. We are looking forward to reading them soon.

HANNAH: Yes. Thank you, Chandler, for joining us for your podcast debut.

CHANDLER: Definitely. Thanks for having me.

HANNAH: Of course, we’ll have you soon.

MARK: Thanks to our friend and colleague, Jill. She is our sound engineer and a great admissions officer. We also want to say bye to Jill because she’s actually leaving to go to another office here at Yale. So we will miss having her on the podcast as an all-star and also having her behind the scenes. So Jill, Thanks for all that you’ve done.

HANNAH: Thank you so much.

MARK: You will be missed. Thanks also to Reed who continues to lend us his office. We really appreciate that Reed. Thanks to former admissions officer Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our music. You should check him out at andrewbrickjohnson.com.

HANNAH: If you have comments or an idea for an episode, drop us a line at yaleadmissionspodcast@gmail.com. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are ours and don’t necessarily represent those of Yale University. Thanks for listening.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MARK: Hello. And welcome back to Inside the Yale Admissions Office. My name is Mark, and I’m a Yale admissions officer.

HANNAH: I’m Hannah. I am also a Yale admissions officer. And today, we are doing another mailbag episode, where we’re going to answer some questions that we’ve gotten to our email address. If you’re a regular listener, you’ve probably heard us plug our email address YaleAdmissionsPodcast@gmail.com, where we welcome your suggestions for future episodes.

We get a lot of emails. We do read them even if we don’t respond to them all. Today, we want to tackle a few interesting emails that have come in. Most of these are episodes suggestions that we really do want to talk about, but we’re not sure we have enough material for a full episode for each one.

MARK: Yeah. And it’s really fantastic that people are emailing us. Thank you to everyone who has sent us questions. The questions are a great way for us to hear from you all about what you’ve liked and also what you’d like to cover. So thanks.

HANNAH: Yeah. A disclaimer though if you have an urgent question about the application process or your specific application, emailing YaleAdmissionsPodcast@gmail.com is the absolute slowest way to get an answer. So we encourage you to submit questions to Admissions.Yale.edu/questions, or call our office, and questions submitted on that website are looked at daily. But if you have a general question or episode idea, keep them coming to us.

MARK: I am also really excited because we have another admissions officer making her podcast debut today.

HANNAH: Wohoo.

DEB: Wohoo.

MARK: Welcome to the podcast, Deb.

DEB: Well, thank you, guys. I’m really excited to be here.

HANNAH: Thanks for joining us.

MARK: All right. Well, let’s dive into some of these excellent questions that our listeners submitted. And like we did last time when Reed joined us on our mailbag round one episode, Hannah, you can read us the questions, and then Deb and I will try our best to give the answers.

HANNAH: All righty. OK, question number one. I wanted to know if you could please release a new episode covering where seniors should be in the college application process. More specifically, I, myself, have been struggling with figuring out the right balance and order of priorities between college-related tasks and schoolwork. I’m currently taking a rigorous course load which requires a lot of my time, but I also want to ensure that my college app accurately reflects me as a student. Any advice?

DEB: Well, yes. Hopefully, by the time that you’ve started your senior year, there are a lot of things that are really in place and that you are working on, in terms of maybe a rough draft or better than rough draft of your essay, that you’ve thought about your extracurricular activities and maybe made a list out so that it’s super easy to add that or migrate that to an application platform, that you’ve thought about your list. You’re hopefully not adding many schools as a senior. That you’ve done the research, you’ve done the self-reflection. You feel like this extracurricular activity that’s called applying to college is something that you can handle on top of everything else.

MARK: Your senior year should mostly be about being a senior.

DEB: Yes.

MARK: Not about applying to colleges. We don’t want to minimize the tasks that’s associated with putting together the application. But it shouldn’t be the all encompassing thing. Either in terms of just the physical time that you’re spending with it or just the mental energy that you’re putting towards it. I like to tell folks, by the time you’ve reached your senior year, even if you haven’t opened up your college application yet, most of the work is already done.

DEB: Right.

MARK: Your classes are already been chosen. And you’ve completed them. Their grades are your grades. You have no control over what your teachers are going to write. You’ve probably hopefully already thought about who is going to write those. Your activities are them. Task of putting together your application is really just the end piece of what’s been a three plus year process of going through high school.

So senior year, budget some time for this. But please, please, please don’t miss out on the special time that you’ll have as a senior in high school, and try to do some things that just have nothing to do with college whatsoever.

HANNAH: Yeah, for sure.

DEB: Yeah. And I think it’s really good advice, to just spend a little bit of time consistently until you hit that submit button on focusing on your application. You don’t have to spend several hours. But if you manage that time, then the time itself doesn’t get overwhelming to you.

MARK: And just budgeting time to, hey, maybe listen to a podcast, like this one. Might just help give you some headspace that’s in the more comfortable non-task oriented environment where you can just start to think creatively about what you’d want to put in your application.

HANNAH: Yeah. And we know it’s stressful, but consider this practice for college. Because if you’re coming to college at a place like Yale, it’s going to be a four-year test of your time management skills.

MARK: You can do it.

HANNAH: You can do it. All right, could you maybe talk about how twins are looked at in the application process at Yale? I’m a rising senior and a twin, and I’ve heard mixed ideas from other schools. Either we admit both or neither, because we don’t want to separate them. Or we consider twins separately. I’m curious about what Yale does.

DEB: Each twin is a unique individual. And so that’s how we’re going to review them in the application process. And so, admissions committees at Yale look at each student individually and what they bring. So we will not think of them as a package deal.

MARK: I think it’s helpful to remember we see a lot of applications every single year. So we’ve seen it all. We’ve seen multiples beyond twins. We’ve seen triplets, we’ve seen quadruplets. And we have also seen among multiples, different attitudes towards college, right? Some students sort of have the attitude of, well, I would definitely want to go with my twin or my triplet. Others say, actually, that’s the last thing on my mind. We wouldn’t go in with any assumption one way or the other.

HANNAH: Don’t let the fact that you are a twin change the way you fill out your college application.

MARK: Well said. Or where you apply.

HANNAH: Right.

DEB: Yes.

MARK: You still have full flexibility as anybody else.

DEB: And just be confident that we’re going to look at you uniquely.

HANNAH: All right. Next question. In case you are looking for podcast topics, my friends and I thought you might consider doing one on the honors section of the application. It seems to cause some grief among students and counselors as to what should or should not be listed.

MARK: I would encourage you to probably not think too hard about this. I think this is a good example of the kind of thing where it’s just useful to remember there’s a real person on the other end of this, not some sort of computer that’s going to assign a particular weight to whatever you write in there. I think the most valuable things that show up there are things that are not reiterating other pieces of information.

So a good example of this might be you can certainly include something like being an AP scholar, right? But I probably already have a sense that you would have qualified for that because I’ve already seen the AP exam scores that you shared on your application. So that designation, which is simply just automatically associated with taking a certain number of exams and getting a certain number score on it, is not really new information.

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: You’ve certainly not hurt yourself, you’ve not offended me by including that. But did you need to include that? No. Do you need to use all five of the spaces that are on the Common Application to convey that you are an accomplished and honorable person? No, certainly not. But if you have something particularly that’s not represented in some other part of the application, this can be a good place to convey it.

HANNAH: Yeah. The vast majority of applicants that we read are not going to have something in this section that actually truly stands out or catches the eye of their admissions officer. We learn a lot more about your achievements from your essays, from what your teachers say about you in their recommendations. So I would not spend too much headspace thinking about what goes in this section.

DEB: I would agree. I think that this is something that is part of the application, provides some context, but it is not the thing that will either admit someone or not admit someone.

MARK: One final note here. It’s absolutely appropriate to use this space to share a school level award. That’s one of the designations that something is at the school. It might be that your school offered an award for something that’s pretty specific to that community. Go ahead and include it there. We are not only looking for Olympic gold medals or Academy Awards.

[LAUGHS]

If you earned an award that was something meaningful in your school, go ahead and include it here.

HANNAH: All right. Do you have any advice for homeschooled students applying to Yale? What do you consider when reviewing homeschooled applicants?

DEB: I don’t think that we consider anything specifically different. I think that’s the thing that people have to remember, is a homeschooler will have a transcript, will have recommendations, will fill out an application. Will have a school counselor that might be the parent that will fill out that particular recommendation. But the requirements for homeschoolers are the exact same things that we require of students who’ve attended a brick and mortar school.

So I think those are the things to keep in mind. And all of those things in a whole person review process matter to us.

MARK: And I think, as you’ve heard us say a lot about lots of different things, we don’t assume that all homeschool students look alike. We know that there’s a wide variety of approaches to secondary education that falls under the larger umbrella of homeschool. This could be you working primarily one on one with just an individual or several individuals locally. It could mean that you’re doing a lot of online courses that are involving folks all around the world.

It might involve actually a lot of dual enrollment courses at a community college. We’ve seen it all. And I think my advice is just to ensure that if you are a homeschool student, meaning that you are not applying from a traditional brick and mortar school, use the space in the application to give us as much insight about what your educational journey has looked like. And some of the thinking behind it as well.

I think the other piece of advice is that it is important to include insights from folks who are not family members. And so you do want to ensure that you have letters of recommendation from folks who ideally worked with you in an academic setting. But if you’ve not had teachers in an academic setting who aren’t family members, even someone from extracurricular organizations, those insights can be particularly valuable.

HANNAH: Another question we have is, how strict are the guidelines when choosing teachers for letters of recommendation? While it’s recommended to have two teachers in core subjects, would it be allowed to ask teachers who have taught you in an elective class or two teachers from the same subject if you feel like those teachers could speak the most about your personal growth and character?

DEB: I think the key piece to choosing teachers to write on your behalf is that first they should be academic in nature. So that could be an elective course, or it could be a required course. It will be up to you. But in think of the traditional English, math, science, history, and language. Those should be in the areas that you would have people write on your behalf. If you feel that two people from the same area can write on your behalf, sure, great. That’s fine.

I find personally it’s a little helpful to have different perspectives, because you are maybe possibly a different student in a math course versus a history course. But there’s not a specific recipe that we’re looking for.

MARK: I think people typically overthink this. They overthink the process of selecting their teachers around areas like the subject that they’re teaching. And that’s really much less important to us than the kinds of insights that they’re able to provide about you. But it’s important that those be academic insights. We can also get some great character insights and group dynamic insights, but these have to give us some sense of how you’ve grappled with a particular topic and shown your interest and enthusiasm for that work.

If you’ve had a valuable relationship with another person for another type of class that’s not an academic class. Someone can submit an supplemental letter of recommendation. Just speaking from experience, those rarely move the needle much for us. So we’re going to encourage you to focus on finding those two academic teachers who really know you well. But if you feel like, hey, I’ve also got this other dimension and this other person wants to write for me and their insights would be quite different, go ahead and ask them to include it as a supplemental letter.

HANNAH: All right. Are there any cases where sending supplemental materials hurts your application? For example, if you have a piece that you’re really proud of but it isn’t something that’s won a ton of awards, should you send it?

MARK: So this is a great question. We did a whole episode about supplementary materials with John a little while back. So I’d recommend that you take a listen to that to get a sense of the sort of level that our most accomplished musicians and artists are typically at. I think it can be tempting to just imagine, well, I can just add more to my application. And hey, even if it doesn’t get a good review, I’ll go ahead and send it.

There is some truth to that. It’s pretty unlikely that a weak review would truly hurt an application. But I can imagine a situation where it might pull the rug out from under a student’s application. And I can think about it this way. If you are presenting yourself in the application, let’s say, as someone who’s really excited about music and your application is filled with musical activities and you’re also presenting yourself as someone who really wants to focus on music in college, if you were to submit a music supplement and that review were to come back pretty mediocre, we would have a hard time building a case around that student because they’re making so clear music is my thing and music’s what I want to do.

I think that same student, if they were saying, hey, I like your school and I could major in just about any particular area and I’m excited about that and I want to do music, I think their enthusiasm and their accomplishments would come through loud and clear. We wouldn’t need or expect any sort of supplement. And essentially, because we aren’t admitting students to a particular major, they might be better off applying without a supplement. If that makes sense.

HANNAH: Yeah. But I also think that if a student applies who’s interested in studying art and it is all throughout the application, that it is helpful if they do submit art. Because our art faculty are really good at identifying intellectual talent in that particular area. Whereas I might think a picture’s really pretty and I might really think, wow, yeah, I’d love that person to paint for me or to sketch for me, that isn’t the intent of our faculty when they’re reviewing.

MARK: I think that’s a great point. It’s not just evaluating your accomplishment. Our faculty are also really actively thinking about, who do they want to work with? And who do they sort of see has the potential for growth with them? If that’s something that you feel like you are ready for, including a supplement could be a great addition to your application.

HANNAH: Yeah. And on the other hand, if you are not interested in continuing to pursue this in college, at the college level with our Yale professors, then there’s no need to submit a supplement.

MARK: Right, absolutely. Yeah, don’t assume that just because your activities list includes music, dance, art, et cetera, that you are expected to submit a supplement.

DEB: And as former podcasts have alluded to, more is not always better.

MARK: Right.

HANNAH: Yes. All right, we have one last question for our mailbag today. Could you talk about tips and information for second or third time applicants?

DEB: I think if you do choose to apply again, we’re going to be looking for different and new information that wasn’t there the first time. And so if it’s exactly the same thing as you presented the first time through, that’s not going to give us the kind of information that we seek.

HANNAH: Yeah. I think we should probably just say, it is very rare that a second or third time applicant will get admitted.

MARK: Right. Don’t think about it as if I had a 5% chance first time, I’m going to increase my odds by taking another 5% chance. It’s not a lottery ticket. Same sort of dynamics will be in play.

HANNAH: Yeah. The most common re application scenario that might lead to an acceptance is if you applied as a first year student, you were denied, and then later you apply as a transfer applicant. And that’s because that student has had some college experience. Their application is going to look quite different than it did when they applied as a high school senior. What we don’t recommend is applying as a high school senior, not getting in, and then taking a gap year to reapply again as a first year student.

MARK: Yeah. And on that note, I know that we often get questions from folks who’ve been denied who say a week later, OK, I’m planning to reapply again, should I do this, that, or the other? And my answer is always really shouldn’t make any big life decision that’s predicated on changing your odds of admission to Yale. It’s simply so highly selective, it just doesn’t make sense to be uprooting yourself, or potentially as you were saying, losing a year of your life where you can do something else just because you think it might shift the odds one way or another.

Our advice is really going to be you are going to have great options for all kinds of things. Do what you want to do. And when the time comes and the deadline comes round again, if you really feel that you want to give it another shot, go for it. But don’t turn your life upside down in the meantime.

HANNAH: Well, that’s it for now. Keep those questions coming. Remember, always head to admissions.yale.edu/questions if you have a specific or urgent question about your application.

MARK: Deb, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

DEB: Well, thank you. It was really fun excellent podcast debut.

MARK: Maybe we’ll have you back soon.

HANNAH: Yes.

DEB: Great.

MARK: Thanks as always to Reid for lending us his office. Thanks also to former admissions officer Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our music. You should check him out at andrewbrickjohnson.com.

HANNAH: If you have comments or an idea for an episode, drop us a line at yaleadmissionspodcast@gmail.com. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are ours and don’t necessarily represent those of Yale University. Thanks for listening.

Episode 31: Yield Season

Yale admissions officers always look forward to April, when their focus shifts from selecting students to working closely with admitted students deciding where to matriculate. Throughout the whirlwind month, admissions officers, current students, faculty, and campus partners make countless connections with newly admitted students and their families. These efforts culminate in Bulldog Days, a three-day open house event produced by the same admissions officers who review applications. Hannah and Mark share some of the strategy behind Yale’s yield efforts and reveal an exciting plan for their next episode.

MARK: Welcome back to Inside the Yale admissions office. My name is Mark, and I’m a Yale admissions officer.

HANNAH: And I’m Hannah. I’m also a Yale admissions officer.

MARK: It’s April, and so this podcast is all about what we like to call yield season.

HANNAH: Yeah, yield is another bit of, like, insider admissions lingo that we use. It’s something we think about a lot, but it’s something that usually doesn’t cross applicants’ minds at all.

MARK: Right. A college’s yield rate refers to the percentage of your admitted students who decide to enroll. So, yield season is the time of year when we work to get all of the fantastic students that we’ve admitted to choose Yale over all the other good options that they have.

HANNAH: Yeah, and another bit of insider trivia– yield season was originally scheduled to be our fourth episode, not our 31st episode.

MARK: We had all kinds of plans–

HANNAH: Yes.

MARK: –as most people did in spring of 2020.

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: COVID, of course, threw a monkey wrench in those plans. And so after two years of doing a complete pivot to all virtual yield season, we mostly got ourselves back to normal last year in 2022. And this year, 2023, we’re really back at it with all of our favorite yield programming and some new stuff that we picked up during the pandemic.

HANNAH: Yeah, and part of what makes yield season so exciting is it’s all compressed into the month of April. So there’s really this ticking clock. Admitted students have to make up their mind about where they want to enroll by May 1.

MARK: This year, we released admissions decisions for our regular decision applicants on March 30. That means we have exactly one month to show these students some love, and they’ve got one month to decide where they’re going. The whole thing is a little bit like a really bad reality TV dating show.

Like, imagine “The Bachelor.” You know, whatever– the bad reality show of your choice. Like, we are now in the position where we are all waiting to see which suitor gets the rose from each one of our admitted students.

HANNAH: Yes, stay tuned. And it’s fun because the shift from reading and committee season to yield season is probably the most dramatic transition in the admissions office calendar, right? We’ve just spent five months in our reading caves spending just about all day every day reading applications one by one or making decisions while, you know, stuffing our faces with snacks in the committee room. And now, we get to actually interact with real human beings.

MARK: Yes. Our job has just completely changed. Like, we are doing a different job this month than we were last month. Those reading months, it’s a kind of, like, monastic lifestyle. Like, many of us have to put in some effort to interact with other human beings.

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: That is not the case yield season, and we love that. We get to switch from, like, paper people to real, live, flesh and blood people that we meet.

HANNAH: Yeah, and the tables turn in another way to where we get to go from being the ones making the decisions picking students to really hoping that the students pick us back.

MARK: Yes, so if you’ve listened to other episodes, you’ve been like, wow, who gave these people all the power?

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: Like, why do they get to make these decisions? Don’t you worry?

HANNAH: Our power is gone.

MARK: We not get the final say.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: The last chapter of the story is us waiting to hear, just as applicants did in the last stage, will they pick us?

HANNAH: Right, and it’s kind of fun because it becomes all about those admitted students.

MARK: That’s right, and we’ll talk about all the fun stuff that we do in the month of April. But it’s worth sharing a little bit about why we care about our yield rate. At first glance, it can seem like, is this just a big popularity contest? Like, are we spending a lot of energy because we just want to be the most desirable college out there?

The thinking here is that the colleges that have the highest yield rate will then have an even lower admit rate since you won’t need to admit as many students in order to fill your class. And that’s going to make it even harder to get in. And honestly, there is some kernel of truth to this– not the part about wanting to admit fewer students. Like, trust me. Admissions officers want to admit more students all the time. That’s our MO.

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: But certainly, it is true that a high yield rate would generally mean that your school was perceived as looking pretty good, at least relative to its immediate peers. But just as an admit rate on its own, it doesn’t tell you anything about the quality of a school and certainly not its fit for you. A school with a high yield rate doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a better school, that it’s a better school for you.

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: You shouldn’t just think about this number as saying like, well, the best schools have the highest yield rate.

HANNAH: And just as some colleges do some maybe ethically suspicious things to drum up applications from students who aren’t necessarily competitive in order to seem more selective, colleges can also do a lot to manipulate their yield rate. And usually, this takes the form of factoring in how likely a student is to yield when making admissions decision.

MARK: This is why some colleges consider what’s called demonstrated interest in the admissions process. They want to get a sense before they make their admissions decisions, will this student actually enroll in our school, and if that student, say, did a campus visit, met with a recruiter on the road, et cetera, it’s going to increase their likelihood of enrolling and probably that college’s likelihood of admitting them. It’s also why some other schools use some pretty complicated prediction models to screen out students who might be very strong, but based on their past experience with students of a similar profile, they predict that they’re unlikely to matriculate.

HANNAH: Yeah, and at Yale, we’re really lucky or spoiled, however you want to say it. We don’t have to worry about this, and we do not factor this type of thing into our admissions decisions.

MARK: Right, and let’s recognize part of the reason that we’re very spoiled is that we are in a really good financial position. We have an endowment at Yale that’s valued in the billions. No one is looking to our admissions office to sort of keep the doors open with tuition dollars next year. That means that we don’t need to think about enrolling a particular sort of subset of students who can pay the full price or increase the size of the class. A lot of colleges are in a very different position.

HANNAH: Yeah, so we get to just admit the students we think are the strongest and the best fit for Yale, and then we put a lot of pride into our yield season because we’ve already gotten to know every one of our admitted students, and we’ve already gotten really excited about the idea of them being at Yale.

MARK: So we are kind of back in a sales position at this point, right? Like, we are pitching Yale to these students, and we really want them to choose Yale. But let’s be clear. Like, we aren’t paid on commission.

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: There’s no bonus given out to the admissions officer who winds up with the highest yield rate on their admitted students. But every admissions officer at Yale, we put a lot of effort into yield because it’s the final leg of this journey that we’ve been on for months and months and months.

HANNAH: Yeah, and Mark and I have talked a lot about how we organize our work around territories in our office, right? So, officers are typically traveling to an area in the fall, reading applications from that area in the winter, and then working to yield those students in the spring. And we get a lot of pride of ownership in doing things that way. So a lot of our yield work is really very personal.

MARK: We invest a lot in this because we know these people. Like, in order to arrive at this place in April where you are an admitted student, a lot of effort has gone into learning about who you are and actually getting excited about what you would add to Yale and what you take away. One of the very first things we do every yield season– Hannah and I were just doing this earlier this week– is we write handwritten letters to every admitted student.

HANNAH: Yeah, we call them mash notes. Every single admissions officer writes them. It’s very time-consuming, but it’s also really fun.

You just write this little personalized letter. You go back through the application and think, what do I want to say specifically to this student? What do I want them to know about what I was really excited about in their application? And if they can decipher my handwriting, then they will find out.

MARK: Yes. Like a lot of people, writing with a pen is not something we do all that often now. So, apologies at least to my admitted students.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: –probably not be able to decipher what I wrote for you, but I guarantee you it was something nice.

HANNAH: It was very nice.

MARK: –something personal.

HANNAH: Yes, and we’re really trying to make a case for Yale specifically– like, highlighting particular programs and resources, student groups, campus culture, all that good stuff. We also run a big online forum called the Admitted Student Network. Admissions officers are active there. We can send messages, join group conversations. And then we also have some social platforms like Discord and Instagram so students can connect with us online and connect with each other, more importantly.

MARK: Yeah, so we’ve gotten lots of ways to connect virtually, and it’s cool to actually see kind of in one space admitted students who are from all kinds of different geographic areas. Getting them in one space for the first time is pretty cool.

HANNAH: And this is all very nice, but our favorite thing is meeting admitted students in person.

MARK: And this happens in a few different ways. We, of course, have some students who will just visit campus throughout the month of April. They’ll take a tour.

We might be able to set them up with something like a meal in the dining hall. It’s always nice when I get to kind of take a break from my day and actually just meet with an admitted student one on one here on campus. We also have alumni volunteers who host receptions in their local area.

So these are people who’ve usually been involved in the interviewing process, and they get really excited when there are admitted students from their area. And they’ll put on a little reception. And in some of the bigger areas, admissions officers will actually travel from New Haven to go hang out in one of those things. They’re super fun.

HANNAH: Those are so fun. And like, yeah, it’s great to see admitted students connect with people in their area who are also planning to go to Yale. And then there’s the main event, which is Bulldog Days, which we will talk about in a minute.

MARK: So, as admissions officers, we’re all nice people. We’re pretty knowledgeable about Yale. We have a vested interest in getting admitted students to come to Yale.

But you know, on average, we tend to be a slightly older crew. Just talking with us probably isn’t the best way to learn about Yale. So a lot of what we try to do is actually kind of step out of the way and help make connections between admitted students and others in the community, especially current Yale students and also faculty, other admitted students, other folks around the university as well. So it’s not just going to be talking with the sales people.

HANNAH: Yeah, and Mark and I are both Yale graduates, but we’re also more than 10 years out. Can that be true? So, admitted students probably don’t want to hear all our stories from things back in the day. But thankfully, hundreds of current students get really, really excited to talk to admitted students.

MARK: So many current students. We love this, and we just can’t say thank you enough to the hundreds of student volunteers who sign up for different programs.

One of them is called [? pre-Frasch ?] advisors. These folks cold call and cold text admitted students, and then they host small group virtual sessions. We also have a few dozen admissions office student employees who do things like run our social media accounts. They host virtual student forums. They emcee our fabulous admitted student virtual talent show.

HANNAH: Yeah. And then, of course, you know, the biggest event, where, really, the whole campus comes together to help us put on a great show is Bulldog Days. At the end of the month of April, we host a three day event with two overnights for our admitted students. We have more than 600 students volunteer to host [? pre-Frasch ?] in their on-campus rooms. Over 200 student groups will show up for a big extracurricular bazaar, and about 100 of those groups will also host special events designed to introduce admitted students to what they do.

MARK: So, you can kind of think about the way that Bulldog Days sits in the yield season calendar a little bit like Christmas. Like, if you think about Thanksgiving is the start of the Christmas shopping season and then, like, decision release day for yield season is equivalent of Thanksgiving, and Bulldog Days is Christmas. Like, that’s the main event. That’s what we’re all working towards, and that’s really when the magic happens. Planning Bulldog Days takes a huge amount of time and coordination across campus.

HANNAH: Yes.

MARK: I mean, we’re hosting more than 1,200 teenagers on a college campus for three days. And it’s while classes are in session.

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: It’s a big deal.

HANNAH: Yeah, and it’s the same group of admissions officers who read applications and make decisions who run this whole thing. This is part of what makes our job so interesting. It really changes every few months. All of a sudden in the month of April, we become event planners.

MARK: Yes, and both Hannah and I have both held the title of Bulldog Days Director–

HANNAH: Yes.

MARK: –at various points in our career. I would describe it as some combination of, like, wedding planner, cruise ship director, like, and school principal kind of thrown in–

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: –as well.

HANNAH: Right, right. We think it’s really important that admitted students have the chance to visit campus after they’ve gotten the good news. You know, even if they go on a college tour before they applied, seeing a campus as an insider with the application process behind you is such a different experience.

MARK: We strongly recommend this wherever you apply in our admitted. Especially if you’re choosing between several options, take the time to visit again if you can. It can really open your eyes.

And I’ll say we kind of put our money where our mouth is here. We will pick up the cost of traveling to campus for about 500 students who are from lower income households every year. We book them flights. We get them shuttles to campus, everything. It’s a whole other level of complexity.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: Like, we also turn into travel agents as well.

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: But it’s really worth it because we want students who are making this big decision to do it with the benefit of actually seeing this place and seeing it as an admitted student.

HANNAH: And we do hear from admitted students that their visit to campus for Bulldog Days was the thing that really clinched their decision for them to come to Yale.

MARK: Yes, so we’re going to tell you more about Bulldog Days in a few weeks at Bulldog Days.

HANNAH: Yes, very exciting. Yeah, our next episode we’re actually going to record live in front of an audience of admitted students.

MARK: So, if you are listening, and you are a newly admitted member of the Yale class of 2027, come to Bulldog Days, and you can see the first, maybe only–

HANNAH: Yeah, we’ll see how it goes.

MARK: –episode of Inside the Yale Admissions Office recorded in front of a live audience.

HANNAH: So exciting. Yeah, we’re going to do this on Wednesday, April 26, at 9:00 AM at Lindsey Chittenden Hall on Old Campus, and maybe we’ll see you there.

MARK: Yeah. In the meantime, we have a lot of work to do, including figuring out how to record a live podcast.

HANNAH: Yeah, yeah.

MARK: –have no idea. But we’re going to– we’ll make it work.

HANNAH: We’ll get it worked out between now and then.

MARK: So, we’re going to go back to work for now. Thanks to Reed for lending us his office, and thanks to former admissions officer Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our music. You should check him out at andrewbrickjohnson.com.

HANNAH: If you have comments or an idea for an episode, drop us a line at yaleadmissionspodcast@gmail.com. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are ours and don’t necessarily represent those of Yale University. Thanks for listening.

Episode 33: 2023-2024 Application Update

[MUSIC PLAYING] MARK: Welcome back to Inside the Yale Admissions Office. My name is Mark, and I’m a Yale admissions officer.

HANNAH: And I’m Hannah. I’m also a Yale admissions officer.

MARK: It is time for our second annual application update episode.

HANNAH: Yes, we started this tradition last year and we promised we’d keep it going, so we’re back. This episode is going to be all about the first year application for the 2023/2024 admissions cycle.

MARK: Yeah. If you’re a podcast superfan, you can go back and listen to last year’s episode. It was episode 27. You could start really kind of overanalyzing what’s changed and what’s stayed the same, but maybe don’t recommend that. It probably be more productive to go back and listen to episode six, which was titled Essays, The Little Stuff, which we put together to be all about the Yale specific questions that we ask on the application.

HANNAH: Yeah, these are sometimes referred to as the supplemental essays. These are the questions that the Yale Admissions Office writes and we give them a little bit of an update every year.

MARK: To help us talk about the process of writing those application questions, we have another admissions officer who’s making her podcast debut. Welcome, Jackie.

JACKIE: Hi, mark. Hi, Hannah.

HANNAH: Hi, Jackie. Welcome to the podcast. So before we discuss this year’s questions, let’s just give a quick overview of how we come up with them.

MARK: It’s easy to imagine that we as admissions officers might meet every summer in some superhero villain lair somewhere like underground and we would write these questions and we’d all practice our evil laugh. How could we trick them and how could we trip them up?

HANNAH: Right. But that is not our goal. Like the application isn’t some sort of American Ninja Warrior style obstacle course that we’re designing to trip you up and weed out the weak or anything like that. That is not how we approach this.

MARK: It’s summertime, so American Ninja Warrior is on. And I just have to say, I’m a huge fan.

HANNAH: We’re an admissions office though, not a rejection office, right? We’re looking for ways and reasons to admit you.

MARK: So you should think about every single part of the application as being designed to actually help you. I know that that seems like a stretch, but truly we have put every question in there because we’ve thought this is something that could help an applicant reveal something important about themselves and give us more insights to work with when we’re considering them in the admissions committee.

HANNAH: Yeah. So when we get together to start thinking about updating these questions, we are often thinking about committee discussions and trying to remember instances where really good answers to questions helped to shape a conversation about that student.

MARK: And one of the most common reasons why we edit or we drop a question is because we found that a lot of applicants didn’t quite pick up on what we were looking for or if we found that the questions sort of tend to lead to some unhelpful responses. We all kind of sit around and remember instances in the committee where we kind of groaned or said, oh, no. Like the student didn’t quite get what the application question was for. And we tend to say, that was on us.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: We could have asked this question better.

HANNAH: We led these students astray in the way that we framed this question. So this all starts in a big, all-staff meeting at one of our annual retreats. We go through the questions one by one and just get feedback from everyone in the office who has an opinion.

MARK: Then we gather up all those notes and we take volunteers for a subcommittee that works on fine tuning and finalizing all those changes and honing in on the exact language that we’re going to use in each of these questions this year.

HANNAH: And as Jackie knows, sometimes you are voluntold for that subcommittee as opposed to volunteering based on your insightful commentary and that all-staff discussion. So Jackie was on our subcommittee this year, helping write the new application questions.

MARK: Jackie, I’ll put you on the spot. You are one of our younger admissions officers, and this means that you actually aren’t that far removed from filling out questions like this yourself. For our listeners, do you remember kind of how you approached these kind of questions as an applicant and what you tried to do with them back in the day?

JACKIE: Yeah, absolutely. I remember being really stressed about the essays once upon a time. I always felt really pulled in two different directions by the essays. Some people told me that the essays should be serious and intellectual while others told me that the essays should be more quirky and creative. And it was really difficult when I had these trusted adults with me who were sort of pulling me in two different directions. In the end, I think I decided to follow what felt most true to me, which was something in the middle. Although, I’m sure I’d be my own worst critic if I were to go back and read my own file.

But as an admissions officer, I think I’ve come to realize that the two options aren’t as mutually exclusive as I once thought they were. You can be one or the other or you can be both, but as long as you stay true to what resonates with you, I think that you’ll end up writing an essay that feels true to you. I think something that’s come up often in this job is just realizing that I work in this job because I like to read the stories of the applicants, like what makes them tick, how they perceive the world, how they reflect on the experiences that they’ve had. I think the most compelling essays are often the ones where students voice is most. Whether they choose to be serious or funny in those ways is entirely their prerogative.

MARK: And we’ve talked about this. That’s tricky. That’s absolutely the advice that we give. And I always just sort of like to acknowledge when we say that like that doesn’t instantly kind of give you insights where you say, oh, fantastic. OK. Now I know what to write.

HANNAH: Yeah, easier said than done. Yeah.

MARK: Absolutely.

HANNAH: Jackie, as a member of this subcommittee, was there anything that you particularly wanted to see included in the questions or that you were excited to elicit from applications this year?

JACKIE: Yeah. Well, selfishly, I wanted to keep the last short take, which we’ll get to.

HANNAH: OK.

JACKIE: When I applied, it was a longer version of that short take and I just really remember reveling in the fact that I had complete autonomy over what I could put in my application. But in all seriousness, the goal of working with this committee was to try and make the questions as accessible as possible. So one of the primary questions that we ask ourselves in this committee is, are we evoking the type of reflection that we expected when we asked these questions?

We don’t expect some sort of template answer as part of these– as part of asking these questions, but we do want our questions to be well thought out and to reflect the prompt that we ask. At the same time, we also can’t be so open-ended that students have no clue what direction to take the essays. And so it’s a thin line to walk.

MARK: We always try every year to get a little bit closer to that.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: Did anything surprise you about being behind the curtain for the first time this year and seeing how these questions are crafted?

JACKIE: Yeah, totally. I remember remarking in the subcommittee that I felt like I was back in a seminar room or an AP Lang classroom. We were discussing things like misplaced modifiers, parallelism. I think Mark had a thesaurus up at one point and we spent hours in quite a few email chains working through the questions.

And sometimes it felt like we struck gold and then we’d go back to a question and then we’d realize 10 minutes later that the question wasn’t asking the type of thing that we actually wanted to evoke. It felt a lot like an essay drafting process, only there was additional pressure because we might have 50,000 plus applicants reading the prompts at the end of the day. I just think most people would be surprised by the amount of time that we spend working on these prompts.

MARK: Yeah, I think that’s a good parallel. Like our experience of writing the questions is in many ways like an applicant’s experience of writing the essays themselves. And you have this experience exactly as you said, where you imagine, oh yes, I want it to get this and say this and be this way. And then you put it into words and you’re like, that’s not it. There’s that mismatch between how it works in your head and how it reads on the page. And trying to get those two things closer to each other is all part of that editing process.

HANNAH: Yeah. Should we dive in and get to the actual questions?

MARK: Let’s do it. It’s game time.

HANNAH: All right.

MARK: All right. Announcing the new short Yale specific questions for 2023/2024. And Jackie, would you do the honors today of reading these question prompts?

JACKIE: Yeah, absolutely.

MARK: All right. So if you are an applicant and you’re going to submit any of the three applications we accept for first year admissions, Coalition Application, Common Application, or QuestBridge Application, you will be asked to respond to the following three short answer questions.

JACKIE: Students at Yale have time to explore their academic interests before committing to one or more major fields of study. Many students either modify their original academic direction or change their minds entirely. As of this moment, what academic areas seem to fit your interests or goals most comfortably? Please indicate up to three from the list provided. Tell us about a topic or idea that excites you and is related to one or more academic areas you selected above. Why are you drawn to it? And finally, what is it about Yale that has led you to apply?

HANNAH: And those ones are 200 words or fewer, 125 words or fewer. These are kind of short paragraphs basically.

MARK: And there’s no change this year. Surprise. These are exactly the same as they were last year. There are three different questions that Jackie just gave us. Excellent oration, Jackie. Thank you. But you can really think of them as two pieces. We’re going to ask first for your thoughts about your academic interests and then for your thoughts about Yale.

HANNAH: For both parts of this, our advice is to use the space to tell us about you, not telling us about us, right? We don’t want you to be talking too much about things we already know about Yale or about some cool topic or idea that is interesting but not necessarily connected back to you.

MARK: Right. The space here is limited and I think probably the most common pitfall we see is that people use up an awful lot of space to give us encyclopedia entries on the topic at hand or about Yale. And sometimes you learn some interesting things when reading applications. Like Jackie, I don’t know in your first year if you learned new things about Yale from the things that people had dug really deep into Google research to write their why Yale prompts.

JACKIE: Yeah, apparently Yale has a really strong Baroque program.

HANNAH: Who knew?

MARK: Oh yes. Baroque operas. Operas are standing at Yale. I knew that, but I’m a geek.

HANNAH: Yeah, but we want to hear more about you and why you specifically are excited or feel like you are a good fit for Yale.

MARK: I will say the other common issue that I find in these responses is that students tend to use the future tense gratuitously in these. And they tend to answer them as if they’re going to use the space to give us a wild fantasy about what their perfect life would be like as a Yale student, and what their perfect life would be like as an academic or a professional after I majored in x, y, and z.

And the whole thing is sort of framed in terms of like, at Yale, I will do this and this and this, and then after Yale I will do this. And I’m interested in this topic because it will mean that I can become a path-breaking surgeon who’s going to create a new way to do this amazing medical thing. And I’m sort of imagining that seems like an interesting future person, but it’s not actually telling me all that much and all that directly who the person applying right now is.

HANNAH: And remember, we’re very deliberate with our wording here. We’re asking you to reflect on why you’re drawn to a particular topic or idea in that first question or what has led you to apply to Yale. That’s present tense and past tense.

MARK: Right.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: You will see as we do these questions, we often have a two-part structure to them. There’s like a sentence that leads up to it. Or in the case of the very first one, just asking to select majors several sentences. And then the last sentence is the thing that’s actually giving you the direction for the essay. So like hone in on that why are you drawn to a particular topic idea. You want the focus of your 200-word response to be that why and what has led you to apply to Yale. Focus on that piece, which is past tense.

HANNAH: Right. So if you’re applying to Yale with QuestBridge, you’ll only need to answer those questions we’ve just discussed since you have a lot of other questions to answer in the QuestBridge application. But if you apply with a Common App or the Coalition Application, we have some more questions. We have four very short answer questions that we call short takes. Two of these are new this year and two are returning from last year. Jackie, would you like to do the honors?

JACKIE: Short takes are my favorite. I think I love reading them when I’m reading an application because there’s such a quick take. The first is, what inspires you? If you could teach any college course, write a book, or create an original piece of art of any kind, what would it be? Other than a family member, who is someone who has had a significant influence on you? What has been the impact of their influence? What is something about you that is not included anywhere else in your application?

HANNAH: Yeah, so that last one is the one you were referring to earlier Jackie that you really wanted to keep in, right? So that one is unchanged from last year. Those were often very insightful and revealing.

MARK: Yes, that was new last year and we liked it a lot.

HANNAH: –stick with it. Yeah.

MARK: And similarly, the first one, what inspires you, has been around for a while and we like that one as well. We like that it’s very open-ended. It’s a nice, concise question, and we get some great things out of there.

HANNAH: We get a broad range of approaches to this question and it works out really well. Our advice for all of these, especially the one that’s like something about you that’s not included anywhere else in your application, truly don’t overthink it. The best answer is really do tell us something new, but that can be big or small. It can be serious. It can be silly. It can be whatever you want it to be.

MARK: Right. We kind of got the sense from the responses we received last year that applicants kind of liked having a space to add in something meaningful or interesting that otherwise wouldn’t fit. I think that’s how you should approach this. You could tell us about something that you’ve done certainly that might be interesting that didn’t fit, but don’t think about this as just like, oh, they gave me an extra entry on my activities list. Like there’s an extra resume bullet that I can add here and they should know that I’ve accomplished something very impressive and like here’s where we would learn about it in this space.

HANNAH: There’s other places in the application designed for that, so use this for something different.

MARK: So then we have two new short take questions. The first is this one, if you could teach any college course, write a book, or create an original piece of art of any kind, what would it be?

HANNAH: So this is replacing a question that we’ve had for a long time, which is, you are teaching a new Yale course. What is it called? And I have always loved that question, so I’m a little nervous this year. I’m curious what we’re going to get with this new one.

MARK: Right. This was a staff favorite. It wasn’t just you, Hannah. A lot of people liked this question. We had it for a long time. It was fun to read a lot of hypothetical courses. And oftentimes we said like, we really want to take that class. That’s great.

HANNAH: Yeah. Right. Right. But we sometimes got the sense that putting 17-year-old applicants in the position of thinking about teaching specifically was tricky. And we got a lot of also gimmicky responses that were very clever and maybe made us laugh but weren’t necessarily that revealing.

JACKIE: So with this new question, our goal was just to be as expansive as possible. And so we’re just trying to encourage you to think big. So we didn’t want to limit you just to a college course. We wanted you to think about what you might teach, what you might write, or what you might create right now. Also, this isn’t designed just to tee you up to say, after I major in x at Yale, I’ll do this super impressive thing.

Remember, this is a present tense sort of question. Think about the kind of thing that you’d love to create if you had unlimited resources plus the knowledge and the talents to match your grandest ambitions. What sort of thing would you most like to attach your name to?

HANNAH: The other new question is, other than a family member, who is someone who has had a significant influence on you, and what has been the impact of their influence?

MARK: This is replacing another question that has been on our application for a while that was about someone you’d like to invite to speak at something specific to Yale that’s called a College Tea. That’s a special Yale event where we have an intimate conversation with important guests.

It was interesting, but the issue we found that we kind of just got a lot of name-dropping and not a lot of revealing reflection. And the question seemed to tell us more about what celebrities or personalities were just kind of trending with high school students this year. It was like this very slow, analog version of Twitter and who was trending on Twitter just to see, OK, who’s trending in short take three this year?

HANNAH: Yeah. And like sometimes when those answers were great, it was because there was something insightful about the actual question that they would ask the person they’re inviting, but that didn’t really happen often enough, I think.

JACKIE: Yeah, often felt like that question was entirely about someone else and not about the applicant themselves.

MARK: Exactly. And I will say that’s, in this case, the trap that you want to avoid. And I want to make clear like we didn’t set you up to trap you. We’re not trying to set you up for failure, but any time that there’s a question about a relationship, it can be a little bit dangerous because we find that students can be tempted to use the space to write about the other person.

HANNAH: Right. Right. But like pay attention to the second part of the question there, which is, what has been the impact of their influence? The way you answer that is more important than who you choose.

MARK: We explicitly said other than a family member because we sort of assumed that if we didn’t have that disclaimer at the front, overwhelmingly we would be getting family members. Nothing wrong with that, but we just said, hey, we want to encourage people to actually look outside of just their immediate family. We think that’d be more revealing.

HANNAH: Yeah. And if you end up going to college at a place like Yale, you were going to be surrounded by people who have the potential to have a huge impact on you and who you may be inspired by. So this is setting us up to see, OK, who in your current world have you kind of recognized that in.

MARK: And it’s probably worth clarifying, this could be someone that you’ve known personally: a teacher, a mentor, a friend, or a neighbor. It could also be someone you’ve never met but who’s just influence how you see the world. It could be an author or an artist or an academic out there and you say, wow, I read this book or I saw this show, I saw this performance and it really changed me. And as I think about who I am right now, some insight into me can be revealed by understanding that I’ve been affected by this thing.

HANNAH: So next up is the longer and the last Yale specific question. This one is about 400 words. So it’s sort of a slightly shorter version of the Common App essay. And you’ll choose from three possible prompts.

JACKIE: Reflect on a time you discussed an issue important to you with someone holding an opposing view. Why did you find the experience meaningful? Reflect on your membership in a community to which you feel connected. Why is this community meaningful to you? You may define community however you like. Reflect on an element of your personal experience that you feel will enrich your college. How has it shaped you?

HANNAH: I noticed a trend, which is that every single one of those start with the word reflect.

MARK: Yes, that was intentional. We are giving you three different avenues for reflection. You get to choose your own adventure. You can talk about an experience that’s personal to you. That was that third option. You can talk about your meaningful membership in a community. That was the second one. Or you can talk about a meaningful interaction with another person that involves opposing views. In some ways, this is sort of like first person, second person, third person. You can choose which mode is going to be most revealing for you to dive into.

HANNAH: Right. So like an individual experience, an experience with one other person, or an experience with a larger community. But whichever one of those paths you choose to go down, it should still be about you.

MARK: Essential. It must be about you.

HANNAH: Yes. And the first two prompts about discussing an issue with someone and community membership are similar to questions that we asked last year, but we have adjusted them a bit to try to emphasize reflection over description and storytelling.

MARK: We found that a common issue with last year’s question about a discussion with opposing viewpoints was that people spend a lot of time in space, either kind of just detailing the interaction itself or explaining why they felt they were right and the other person was wrong.

HANNAH: Right. Yes, that happened a lot last year. And again, like that’s on us. That’s due to the way that we ask the question. But this year we really wanted to focus that question on why these sorts of discussions matter. And when you’ve had one of these experiences, what did you take away from it?

MARK: And remember, first word in all of the essay prompts, reflection. We care about the reflection, not the specifics of your views or your reasons for holding them. We want you to reflect on the experience that you had with somebody else.

JACKIE: Yeah. And kind of similarly, our community prompt also looks a lot like last year’s. The big change here is removing a phrase about working to enhance a community. We kind of found that a lot of applicants thought they needed to describe the specifics of a service project or do a little bit of bragging about how their leadership role helped improve a club at a school or something like that, which is fine.

There were a lot of great essays that were based around those things, but we wanted to point you in a slightly different direction this year. We wanted to keep it a little more simple. We’re all members of lots of communities. Think about one that connects you with others and why it’s meaningful.

MARK: Right. And finally, we added a new prompt this year. Our goal here is just to give the most direct possible route to personal reflection and to tie that reflection specifically to something that you will bring to college.

JACKIE: Yeah, note that we say enrich your college, not enrich your college experience. So we’re not asking you to tell us why you are going to be a super strong student who’s an awesome leader and does a million cool activities once you’re in college, right?

MARK: Right. But we do want you to think about how something you’ve experienced, something that has shaped you would be an asset in a college environment where students come from a wide range of backgrounds with lots of lived experiences, and the whole environment is set up to encourage students to learn from each other.

HANNAH: Yeah. So a good way to start thinking about this is to ask yourself, what is something that I’ve experienced that not everyone my age has experienced? And how has that kind of played a role in shaping me into the unique person I am now?

MARK: Right. And all you really need to do in this essay is tell us about it. What is it and how has it shaped you? You don’t need to use the space convincing us that it will enrich the college you attend, but you need to do the work of identifying that thing that you think they would like to hear about this and I think that this would be an asset for me in college.

HANNAH: Yeah. I’m excited to read these, so good luck and send us something good.

MARK: All right. Yeah. Well, let’s give you some just sort of parting final advice for this year’s essays. I’m going to say, start with this. Think about what you like about Yale that’s made you want to apply and then use those questions to help us connect the dots. By the time that we reach this part of your application, we already have a sense of your accomplishments. We’ve already seen some general reflection from you and your personal statement.

By this point in the application, we are intrigued, we are excited, and we really want to start sort of connecting the dots between this interesting and ambitious person and our school specifically. So think about making those connections in this part of the application.

HANNAH: These can be places to be clever or funny or serious or to showcase different facets of yourself that didn’t get much space in other parts of the application. There are many, many different ways to successfully approach these types of questions, but the most important thing is they always need to be revealing.

MARK: Right. You want to think about each one of them as an opportunity, not an assignment, not an exam question, not an apparatus on the American Ninja Warrior obstacle course.

HANNAH: Right. Right. And if you aren’t planning to enroll in college in fall 2024, your questions may very well be different depending on how this goes this year. Next spring, we might be sitting around talking about how these topics didn’t work out as expected and we’ll tweak them once again. Jackie will be back to think up some new questions for you.

MARK: Any other final pieces of advice, Jackie, to share with our listening audience?

JACKIE: Yeah. I just want to echo what we’ve been talking about, which is this idea of reflection throughout the essay and the application process. As you approach the application, always approach it from a standpoint of trying to communicate who you are and how you think about things. And again, don’t focus on what you think we want us to hear. Focus instead on what you want to convey to us.

HANNAH: Great advice. Well, happy writing, and we’re excited to see what you come up with here and how you interpret and approach these questions.

MARK: We’re looking forward to reading answers to these 50,000 plus times over the next few months.

HANNAH: Yes.

MARK: Well, Jackie, thank you for joining us on the podcast today. We’re delighted to have you and hope we have back soon.

JACKIE: Yeah, thank you for having me, guys.

MARK: All right. Thanks, of course, to Reed for lending us his office. Thanks to former admissions officer Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our music. You should check him out at andrewbrickjohnson.com.

HANNAH: If you have comments or an idea for an episode, drop us a line at yaleadmissionspodcast@gmail.com. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are ours and don’t necessarily represent those of Yale University. Thanks for listening.

Episode 35: Mythbusters Live!

[MUSIC PLAYING] MARK: Hello, and welcome to Inside the Yale Admissions Office. My name is Mark, and I’m a Yale admissions officer.

HANNAH: And I’m Hannah. I’m also a Yale admissions officer.

MARK: And we are very excited that today we are doing something that we’ve never, ever done before. We are doing a live virtual recording of an episode that is all driven by questions submitted by real high school students.

HANNAH: Yeah, some of my favorite episodes that we do are the mailbag ones or the MythBusters ones, where rather than having a full episode dedicated to a single topic, we tackle a handful of questions, or topics, or things that have come in. And we get to cover a wide range of things. So we’re going to be doing that today.

MARK: Yeah, we’ve done this with real questions. We’ve also done them with fake questions with our MythBusters episode– things that sound like the real questions that we answer all the time. We also had a lot of fun doing our first recording in front of a live audience at Bulldog Days last spring. So this event is sort of trying to tie all these things together. This was an idea that was generated by our office’s virtual events team. And we’re really excited about it.

HANNAH: Yeah. And today, our program is going to be driven by questions submitted by current high school seniors working on their applications, many of whom are tuned in live tonight on Zoom. We have a couple hundred folks joining us over Zoom, so thank you all for spending your evening with us.

MARK: Yeah. And since this is going to be a podcast, those of you who are tuning in live, we think you’re here probably to see what we look like. And I have to wonder, is it what you imagined if you’ve listened to our voices? And will you ever be able to listen to the podcast the same way ever again?

HANNAH: Hopefully, this is not a never meet your heroes situation.

MARK: Seriously, though, I think the real benefit for our live audience is that they will have the chance to ask some questions live. We have behind the scenes today our friend and colleague Corinne, who is working in Zoom land tonight to look at the Q&A feature that’s on our Zoom. And she’s going to surface some questions for us to answer in the second half of our session today.

HANNAH: Sounds good. But let’s start first by answering some questions that registrants submitted beforehand. We got over 100 questions for this. We are, of course, not going to get to all of them, but we pulled out the ones that we thought might provide the most insights or would be relevant to the largest number of people.

MARK: And we found that for just about every theme, there were multiple questions. And so what we did is we grouped some of them together. And rather than just asking one question and doing one answer, we’re going to ask several questions that several folks submitted, and try to give you a comprehensive answer that ties them all together. You ready for this, Hannah?

HANNAH: I’m ready. Let’s do it.

MARK: OK, so the first set of questions was all about the activities list. This is that section in the application where you’re going to tell us about extracurricular activities, or work responsibilities, or just things that you do outside of classes. So we got a question from Audra from Wisconsin. And she said, should I pick and choose certain activities to include on my application, or just include anything that I dedicate time to?

Joseph from New York said, hey, does Yale hold extracurriculars, started in my junior year, in lower regard than others? And then Sarah from New Jersey asked, hey, if I have extracurriculars that are important to me, but they don’t fit on my activities list, would it hurt me to include them in maybe the additional information section?

HANNAH: OK, so when it comes to figuring out what you’re going to include and if you should include extra information, I feel like my advice here would be to list out your activities in the order of importance to you. So start with what you spend the most time on or what you’re most excited about, what you feel is most important for us to learn about, and then kind of go down from there.

If you get to the end of the space on the Common app, or the QuestBridge app, or the Coalition app, and you run out of space and you still have more activities, you can certainly put them in the additional information. But also think to yourself, OK, are these activities really relevant and important in addition to the ones I’ve already listed?

MARK: Right. This question about whether something should be included in the application really comes down to, is it important to you? And particularly, is it important to just how you wind up spending your time? So it’s important to remember that this is not graded on some rubric where you get 100 points for being a varsity athlete and 97 points if you were a supporting actor in the latest musical or something like that. We’re trying to get to know your story and understand who you are, where you’re from, what you do.

Oftentimes, this is what you like to do. But I also want to make clear it can also be what you have to do, or what you are asked to do, or what you’re expected to do in your family especially. So things like work, things like family responsibilities. Those are very relevant here. You do not, however, need to feel that you need to fill it up just to fill it up. And so if something is not meaningful to you or important to you and those around you, it doesn’t need to be there just to fill up the space.

HANNAH: Yeah. And then there was another question in there about, how do we feel about extracurriculars that were started just in the junior year, and do we hold those in lower regard? Certainly, not necessarily. I think it can be tempting to load up on extra extracurriculars to beef up your resume before you apply to college. But it’s also perfectly reasonable to discover something new and start doing it at age 16, and we fully understand that. So we’re not necessarily going to look down on an activity just because you haven’t been doing it all four years.

MARK: Right. I know that it’s tempting to imagine that we go into this process with a whole lot of assumptions about students. But truly, that would not be a fun way to read an application, right? If we picked it up and we said, oh, we know what’s going on here. That wouldn’t be illuminating. It wouldn’t be interesting. Our job is interesting because different folks do different things. They have different stories. And when a student later on in high school discovers something that’s meaningful to them, that can be an interesting dimension of their application.

HANNAH: All right, Mark, we have some questions about the additional information section.

MARK: All right.

HANNAH: Starting with Jay from Minnesota who said, I’d like to know how admissions offices feel about using the additional information section to elaborate on extracurriculars. And also, Will from Florida is wondering, how have you seen students use the additional information section that is annoying or bothersome? What aren’t you looking for here other than an extra essay?

MARK: Yeah, good question. So we really like having the additional information section. I’m going to put it that way. We like that it exists. It’s very useful just because it, I think, reinforces the fact that this is a contextual read and you are complicated people who don’t fit neatly in boxes.

The additional information section, however, can be quite dangerous, in my experience, just because it is just entirely open-ended. And sometimes, students just feel the need to add more and more and more and more and more in that space. And I don’t think it will surprise anyone listening that we oftentimes don’t read every single word in an additional information section if a student is clearly just going on and on and on in that space.

And so use it strategically. Use it to give truly additional important information. Don’t use it to just sort of dump everything that you might ever want to say or record about your high school experience into that one place.

HANNAH: Right. Yeah, be really deliberate about what you’re including there. And just really think about whether it’s adding some new, truly additional, and important information to your application. And please don’t write an extra essay there. Just [INAUDIBLE].

MARK: Good, I’m glad. Will had already figured that out. That’s right. Do not just write an additional essay there. And I would say also, don’t skip this step of using the activity section for what it’s designed for. The activity section allows you to tell us the activity and give some insights on it. And when someone just says see additional information and then has written three paragraphs about everything there, I would frame that as bothersome in Will’s excellent words there.

HANNAH: Yeah. And 99% of the time, completely unnecessary, right? This is not our first rodeo. We have a pretty firm grasp of what it means to be in various extracurriculars that you’re listing. So you do not need to give us all this extra information on those things. Use the space that is provided.

MARK: And use it for context. I would say that is where it is most helpful– context, circumstances, things swirling around, the surround sound that have affected the bigger picture of what we’ve seen, not just additional laundry list of accomplishments, for example. That’s the kind of thing where you just sort of say, OK, yes. Excellent. Good for you. Let’s move on and get ourselves to the interesting stuff here.

All right. So, Hannah, next set of questions. I call these the kind of pointy versus well-rounded questions. And we’ve gotten questions like this in lots of different forms. So Mikayla who’s from Louisiana, she asked, I’ve been told that I need to have a passion project in order to get into Yale. Is that true?

And then Alexa, who’s from Guam– very cool that we’ve got a Guamanian tuning in today. Alexa asks, it feels like if we’re not national award winners in a science competition or completed published research, there’s no use applying as a STEM applicant. Is there truth to this? So two slightly different things, but I grouped these together.

HANNAH: Yeah, so I’ll do the second one first. Just a reminder, most people are not national award winners in science competitions or in math competitions, right. And if you don’t have that experience, that doesn’t mean that you are unworthy of being in our applicant pool or anything like that. Also, lots of serious STEM applicants have done research, but just as many have not had that opportunity, or maybe they discovered their passion for science recently and haven’t had a chance to pursue it outside of school.

So my general advice is don’t compare yourself to the imaginary other applicants out there when you’re putting together your application and thinking about whether you should even bother applying to a school, right? If you are a STEM applicant and you’re super passionate about it, you can demonstrate that in ways beyond just competitions and research.

MARK: And I would say this more general question from Mikayla, no, you certainly do not need a passion project to get into Yale. But beyond just that simple no, what I want to say here is that what you really don’t want to do is try to present yourself as a sort of pointy, passionate student when that’s not your jam, when that’s not your personality and your style.

Similarly, if you are really passionate about something, you don’t want to try to come off as a really well-rounded student by just kind of adding things on in the application because you fear oh, I need to have all these other dimensions. So we see students do very well in the process who are very well-rounded. We see students who do very well in the process who are more pointy.

I know it’s part of admissions officer lore that admissions officers are looking for well-rounded student bodies, right? This is one of the old counseling tropes out there. People say, well, they’re not looking for well-rounded students. They’re looking for a well-rounded student body. And a well-rounded student body is full of really pointy students. And I would just dismiss that characterization of how we approach the process.

We’re looking for students who are a great fit, who are going to add a lot, who are going to take a lot away. Some of those students are pointy and passionate. Some of them are well-rounded. We want a mix of all of these things. And most importantly, you got to do you. Trying to present yourself as something else that’s not going to work out.

HANNAH: All right, we also have a few questions about majors. Elanor from Wisconsin is wondering, does applying undecided hurt a student’s chance of admission? And Emily from Georgia– Mark, that’s your home state.

MARK: All right, Emily.

HANNAH: Does the major in which you apply have an impact on your chances of getting in? For example, if one major is less popular than another, are you more likely to get into Yale if you apply with less common major?

MARK: Yeah, I really like these questions. And I always have to approach them from a very Yale-specific angle because different schools do this different ways. Different schools have different processes and administrative structures for different schools and different majors. At Yale, it’s very important to us that we are admitting students to just one single undergraduate college. And so, truly, everybody is arriving technically undeclared.

Students at Yale don’t declare their major until the end of their sophomore year. They don’t they don’t have to until the end of their sophomore year. And so we aren’t admitting students to a particular major. And that’s why on our application, we give students the option for selecting up to three different areas. Here’s where the strategy piece does play into it.

Again, it’s related to what we were saying in the last set of questions as well. You got to do you what does not make sense is for you to try to present yourself as an aspiring blank major just because you think that that’s going to set you apart in the process. If you’re doing that, even though we are admitting students just to Yale College and we want them to be generalists, you are priming us to look at you through that lens.

And I’ve definitely had the experience of seeing an applicant who uses that section of the application to try to pitch themselves as a prospective blank major. And I say, oh, that student’s strengths kind of aren’t there. I could see them being a great y major, but they didn’t show any interest in that whatsoever. And it’s kind of hard for me to then make the case that they would do well there.

So think about how you are presenting yourself. And if you are truly undecided and you’re applying to a place like Yale where it’s a great place to be an undecided student, own it. Live it up. I will say a last note on this. And sorry, I’m giving a long monologue answer here. Hannah, I’m going to let you chime in.

HANNAH: This is what you get when we don’t have the editing process for the podcast.

MARK: That’s right.

HANNAH: People are really getting behind the scenes.

MARK: They’re seeing how I just go on and on and on. I’m in college fair mode, too, because I was just answering this question at a college fair on Friday. So, yeah, the last note here is if you are undecided, don’t miss the opportunity when we said up to three majors in this space to select up to three majors. Even if they are just, oh, hey, that sounds cool, you don’t need to be wedded to those things. Again, just talking about our process here. Over to you, Hannah.

HANNAH: I don’t know what I could possibly add to that thorough answer. I think you covered it all. Yeah, I think you covered it all. I guess what I usually say when people ask me this is, the list of majors that you put on your application is only important to us as much as it’s important to you, right? So if you are really truly interested in these majors and you’re reflecting on that in another part of the application, then we are going to pay attention to that. If not, then we’re going to consider you more kind of generally curious and undecided, which is a great way to be at a liberal arts college.

MARK: And people are now seeing the other editing trick, which is that I go on and on and on about something for way too long, and then Hannah summarizes it way better and way shorter immediately afterwards. I say, we’ll use that. We’ll use what Hannah said, and we’ll just cut out all of what Mark said. All right, over to you for these questions, Hannah. This is the first set of questions about essays.

Understandably, we got a lot of questions about essays. So Joseph from New York, he asked, should you focus on one idea or set of characteristics in an essay, or should you try to talk about multitudes of sides that you have in your essays? Focus on one thing, focus on multiple things?

And then Clotilda from Texas asked, should your short takes be related to other parts of your application, or should each one reveal something different about you? So thinking about consistency versus variation either in one essay or across multiple statements in an application.

HANNAH: OK. Yeah, so when people ask me, which of these is better when it comes to writing an essay, I almost always hesitate to choose one over the other because I really believe a great college essay can be written under almost any circumstance and with almost any choice that you make here. I would say that if you try to pack too much into one essay, you run the risk of running out of the room you need to do some actual deep and personal reflection.

And think about the different pieces of the application and how they go together. And remember that a single essay is never being read in a vacuum, right? We’re also seeing your extracurriculars. We’re hearing from your teachers. We might be interviewing you. So we have all these sources of information about you. So you don’t need to pack everything into one essay.

And then in terms of the short takes being related to the other essays, this is really up to you. But I would always advise you to consider the limited real estate you have on the application, and make sure you’re using it well and not repeating yourself. Think of it as a dinner plate at a buffet where you only have so much room to pile the food on. I love an application that reads like a well-organized bento box. Different compartments for different things, but they all taste good when you put them together, right? So that’s my advice.

MARK: Hannah, I haven’t heard that bento box analogy before. I like that.

HANNAH: That’s a new one I’m testing out. Yeah.

MARK: That’s good. Well, I was going to trot out the one that I talked about way back in our interviews, which is the analogy that makes my high school physics teacher cringe, which is my analogy of constructive interference when wave physics.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: Which I’m going to summarize without going into my really bad explanation of high school physics. These things should resonate and build upon each other. You actually want them to have, in the simplest terms, good vibes and similar vibes so that they are building upon each other. And the same person that I’m meeting in this part of the application is the same part that I meet in others. And, like the bento box– I like this– we carve out different sections of the application specifically to give you those different chances to give us something that is different, but also the same. You got to find that thread between them.

HANNAH: All right, we have more questions about essays. Jesse from Maryland is wondering, what is something that applicants often overlook when writing college essays? Sadhana from Florida says, when I see successful college essay examples– uh-oh– they almost always are artistically crafted, and I think to myself, I would never have thought of that. While I believe I have great ideas, I’m concerned about being able to communicate them in a creative way. Would this be an issue for the essays in my application?

And then Faraz us from Washington State says, when you guys say reflect on essays, what does this really mean? Is it personal insights? Is it a lesson we’ve learned from an experience? If so, how do we tell that without sounding cheesy, fake, and superficially deep? Three great questions about the content of the essays.

MARK: Yeah, really good questions. And I think in this case, we might actually want to take them kind of one at a time. So I really liked this question from Jesse. And I was thinking about it because I was just watching the US Open. And so I saw Coco Gauff win yesterday. And it was so incredible. And I don’t like tennis. I never watch tennis, but I was so excited about this.

And I was thinking about how whenever someone is interviewing an athlete after they’ve done something, the first question that I always ask them is, how did it feel? What does it feel like? And that’s where my brain goes when Jesse’s asking, what’s something that applicants often overlook in writing essays? Feeling. That’s the thing that I feel like I feel– I feel like is most frequently missing. I get some nice analysis.

And I usually get a kind of the moral of the story is at the end where you tie it up and you sort of say, I had this experience, and here’s what I learned from it. And it’s a kind of purely intellectual, or just even sort of mental exercise. And I find myself wanting to know, what did it feel like in that moment? How did you respond and react? How do you feel about all of this now?

That is something that I think can really add an extra dimension to an application when we see not just how you think, and how you analyze and reflect, but actually how you felt in the moment and the kind of feeling that you got in response to it. So I’m going to say, I think applicants often overlook the power of emotion and describing their emotions authentically when they’re putting their application essays together.

HANNAH: So then going to the third question, what would you say about sounding cheesy, or fake, or superficial when you’re pouring out your feelings and your college admissions essay?

MARK: Folks, go for it. This is your time. I’m going to throw something else out here. Who’s a very successful teenager who can sound very cheesy, but you know exactly how she feels? One Miss Olivia Rodrigo, right? She is very effective as a songwriter and as a performer because she is all out there.

And I have mixed feelings about Miss Rodrigo, but I will give it to her that her emotion is in her performance. Same with Taylor. Same with Adele. That’s what makes them great performers. And so I would say, I much more frequently roll my eyes and I say, oh, you just made something much simpler and cleaner than it actually was than I do, oh, wow, you’re a mess of emotions, you teenager. Right?

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: You are.

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: And I say that as someone who was not a very angsty and emotional teenager myself, but we know what kind of territory we’re in. And I’m going to encourage you to own those emotions as much as you can in that space. I don’t know if you disagree with that, Hannah, characterization of Olivia Rodrigo.

HANNAH: I would agree. I would say go for it. We see it all in the admissions office. And we know that what we’re asking you to do with the college essay is not an easy task. And we’re asking you to be vulnerable and very reflective, and that is not something that comes naturally to everyone. Doesn’t come naturally to me or my co-host, I imagine. And we appreciate that it doesn’t always come naturally to the folks writing the essays.

I also really like the question about seeing examples of successful college essays and thinking, oh, I could never write that. First of all, don’t read too many examples of successful college essays. They are very cherry picked. And they are not going to be helpful to you in writing your college essay because your college essay needs to be about you. And these examples of other essays that seem really impressive are not about you.

The other thing I would say about this is we are not looking for pieces of publishable work that would be at home in The New Yorker when we’re reading college essays. The content and the reflection really is what matters to us. And often, if that’s more raw, it’s much more telling to us as an essay, but that is never going to make it into one of those anthologies of successful college essays. So just keep that in mind.

I’ll also say, I’ll save essays that I really like that I feel are really creative and extremely well done, and just amazing examples of essays. I read thousands of essays every year. I probably save two or three. So I’m hoping this doesn’t sound intimidating. I’m hoping it sort of humanizes the process and you kind of realize most of the stuff that we’re reading sounds like the voice of a normal 17-year-old, and that’s what we’re looking for. And those exceptional ones that you might see examples of are few and far between. And most of the students who are admitted don’t necessarily make it onto my saved desktop folder.

MARK: Yes. And because these are short pieces of writing, clarity, simplicity, straightforwardness, they can all be great assets in you speaking clearly to that admissions committee. And so if you say, listen, adding in some sort of creative either gimmick or just kind of wrap-around theme is not my style. Don’t feel like you got to put that packaging on. Say it like it is.

All right, so, Hannah, let’s move on to the next set of questions. And these are specifically about the supplemental essays or the Yale-specific questions. So Hannah from New York said, how do you make your supplement stand out, especially the why Yale one? Evelyn, also from New York– New Yorkers are really digging into our Yale-specific questions right now. Evelyn asked, how would you advise a student to create a unique voice in their supplements?

HANNAH: OK, general reminder. Standing out is not the goal. Again, we are reading thousands of these things every year. There’s nothing you can write that is going to shock us. There’s nothing new under the sun, right? So standing out isn’t the goal here. The goal is, again, reflection and sounding like yourself. And having these written pieces of the application be in conversation with all the other pieces of the application in a way that helps us understand who you are, why you’re applying to our school, what would make us excited about bringing you to our school, and all those things.

So with supplements, just as with the Common App essay, reflection is really important. So for that why Yale essay, we’re not looking for a list of things at Yale that excite you. We’re looking for reflection on why certain things about Yale excite you and why you’re drawn to applying to Yale. Those feelings. Again, we want all the feelings.

MARK: All the feels. All the feels. When we say why Yale, think about that specifically in terms of connecting the dots. And I would say, especially thinking about voice, you’ve heard us talk about the short takes where we feel like we sometimes get the clearest sense of a student’s voice in part because the space is just so limited. And so I’m going to encourage you to take a look at those really short four questions that we ask. Take stock of essentially, where does your brain first go? And then sit on it for a little while.

I recommend kind of just saying, yeah, I think I’d like to write about that. Don’t immediately write it down. Just kind of sit on it, think about it. And I think if you actually let your brain just sort of stew on it for a little bit, you’ll actually start to think about how you can say something in your own voice that’s going to feel distinctive for those short pieces especially. We like those because we often find that we get the most distinctive, most authentic voice from students in those short pieces.

HANNAH: All right, we have some big picture questions. And then we’re going to get to the questions that you all are asking in the Q&A feature on the Zoom. But first, Dan from Iowa says, what does holistic review mean? Are some areas of the application considered more important than others?

MARK: So good question. I always like to say the word holistic is probably not one that you use in your everyday conversation. You probably weren’t in the cafeteria at your school last week, and you were like, well, I took a holistic approach to last night’s homework, right? It’s this word that sort of only exists in the college admissions process it seems. I prefer the term whole person review to holistic review because I think that captures better what we’re looking for.

Whole person means the whole thing. And specifically when we’re talking about the whole thing in this case, we’re talking about the whole application. And we have these different parts of the application because it is not the case that one thing is considered more than others. There are some instances where one part of an application is ultimately the most important thing that a committee gets excited about. And we say, oh, yes, this strength here in conjunction with these other things, but this strength is the thing that stands out and kind of pushes the student over.

Next applicant down the list, it can be an entirely different part of the application. So it’s not that we go in with a weighting schema where we say, OK, 40% of the decision will be based on the essays and 20% will be based on the activities list. They are all there to shine some light on the individual person. And for individual applicants, it’s always a little bit different in terms of how much of the thing ultimately pushes the student into the class.

And so we think about it in terms of different students with different strengths. And we like the fact that we can respond to those different strengths in context and with some flexibility because you all are a wonderfully interesting and diverse group of students. You contain multitudes. And our process is designed to accommodate that, not just kind of fit you into boxes.

HANNAH: Totally.

MARK: So, Hannah, I’ll give this one to you. This is from Juana in California. And she’s asked, how subjective do you think the admissions process is? If you had two groups of Yale admissions officers look at the same students, would both groups end up making the same admit, deny, and waitlist decisions? I like that question.

HANNAH: Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I don’t know that I have a neat and tidy answer for that because I think it probably depends on a lot of things. What I will say is that we are often in the position where a student has gone through admissions committee, and then they come back for a review committee where we’re seeing a little bit of new information or something. And the conversation is never, what was that other committee thinking putting this decision on this student? It’s always more like, OK, we see how you arrived at this decision and this all makes logical sense to us.

And the same thing with reading. Many applications get two reads. And it’s pretty rare that they are completely disparate in their understanding of the application and their general feeling about whether that would be a strong application for Yale. There are essay topics that I personally enjoy reading about more than others maybe, but that’s not necessarily going to affect my decision about does this student belong in the Yale class.

MARK: I always try to make very clear this process is subjective. But I think, as Hannah just said, it is kind of collectively subjective. And through the collective subjectiveness, we reach consensus. And that consensus is pretty steady across the board. So I encourage you to embrace the subjectivity of this process by starting with the fact that there’s real people on the other end. There’s real subjects. We have points of views, and you want to convey yourself as a real person in that process to those people.

But you shouldn’t worry that, oh, if Hannah’s just having a bad day, that’s going to torpedo my chances. We have these checks and balances. And by having a collective of people with different points of view, we feel like we reach good consensus and in some ways balance each other out. That’s why it’s really important to us that our committees have people from different perspectives in the room together. That definitely makes for better work. I think it also makes for more consistent work, as you were saying.

HANNAH: Speaking of the committee process, Alex from Massachusetts is wondering, during the committee process, does a similar topic or section of the application come up more often for a wide range of applicants, or is the committee process unique for each potential student?

MARK: Yeah, that’s a good question. And I think it’s a little bit of both. And I don’t want to just keep saying, well, it depends, it depends, it depends. That is the true answer. But I think, in my experience, one of the things that often we go to first is an interview report. And I think the reason for that is that the application work cards that we write gives this nice kind of summary for the committee of the different moving pieces of the file.

So when Hannah or I are presenting a committee, we will just walk through, essentially, our notes on a file. And we’ll say, here’s the activities, here’s what the essays are about, my thoughts on the essays, here are the things that the teacher said. We’ll give some notes on the interview, and then we will give a summary. One of the reasons I think we often go to the interview report is that we’re interested in the fact that it’s from a disinterested third party.

An interviewer is someone who didn’t see the rest of the application. The interviewer didn’t see your essays. They didn’t see your letters of recommendation. And they’re just writing based off of that experience with you. And so I find that for a lot of us, we often say, can we see the interview because we think we might actually get a nice summary in that space. And already having all these details in my mind about what’s in the application, hearing the impressions from someone who didn’t have that can help to really reinforce all of those things.

I don’t know if you had a different thought, Hannah, in terms of where we often go in that committee room. It can be everywhere. And sometimes, the whole thing.

HANNAH: It can be everywhere. It’s going to depend a little bit on, yeah, what the reader’s point us to in the committee room. But that interview is often the most recent piece of information we have. So it’s something that does get seen quite a lot.

MARK: All right, last question before we switch to live Q&A. So Varsha from North Carolina said, what do you guys do while taking a break from reading applications?

HANNAH: Well, other than recording podcasts, New Haven is a very walkable city. Plug for New Haven. So I like to get away from my computer and take a walk and clear my clear my head. I also live in, I think, one of the most scenic neighborhood of New Haven. Very walkable little area. I don’t know if I’ve revealed this on the podcast before, but I am a huge crossword puzzle nerd and really like the whole lineup of puzzles kind of on the New York Times puzzle app. Whenever I need to turn my brain to something else, I just say, OK, which puzzles have I not done yet today? Crossword, spelling bee, all those things.

MARK: Nice. Well, I’ll make a quick other New Haven plug, which is that I often read newspapers. I read a lot of newspapers. And one of my favorites is an online newspaper that’s called the New Haven Independent that’s run here in town. So I often take a break from reading applications just by reading up on what’s happening in New Haven. So you should check out New NewHavenIndependent.org.

All right, what do you think, Hannah? Are we ready to switch some gears now and answer some questions that folks have submitted live? I know Corinne has surfaced a few here. Do you have one to pick out already?

HANNAH: I’ve seen some really good questions pop up. So, yeah, let’s do it. This is an interesting one. Do you have any essay icks where whenever a phrase or technique is used, it automatically makes you dislike the essay? This is from Laura.

MARK: That’s a good question, Laura. Truthfully, no. Truthfully, no. What’s funny is that I remember my first year in the office, I had two sticky notes on my board. And I was tracking every time that someone said plethora or myriad. And both sticky notes got filled up pretty quickly. Truly, no, though. We did our we did our episode a few years ago, Hannah, about what doesn’t work in essays.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: And I wouldn’t describe those things as icks. I would describe them as, oh, rats. There it goes and we missed the chance. So, yeah, I know it’s not going to be super satisfying answer, but I would say there’s not much– OK, well, I came up with one. All right, I’ve got one. An unpowerful descriptor. And the case study of this is so. The word so in the English language does not do a whole lot for you.

And so when I see a piece of writing and it describes something in an essay as that was so blank, I just want to say, oh, there was a better adjective that you could have used there. That makes me go, you missed it. You missed a chance right there. It doesn’t make me go ick. It doesn’t make me roll my eyes. But I’m just like, oh, there was a better word than so in that space.

HANNAH: Right. I will say, I would recommend that if you haven’t, go back to that “Essays, What Doesn’t Work” episode that we did a while ago. And I will say an interesting thing about that episode is we made separate lists, Mark, of what we feel doesn’t work, and then we compared them. And I feel like there were things on my list that I felt didn’t work for me, where you were like, oh, actually, I think this can be kind of interesting. So, again, there’s a little bit of that subjectivity. And ultimately, we just want you to use the space as best you can to convey your message.

MARK: Yeah, great one. Let’s see. OK, here’s one for you, Hannah. We’ve both covered different parts of the country, different parts of the world. Someone asked– this is a good MythBusters kind of question. Is it true that students from the East Coast typically get in more often than West Coast students from states like California?

HANNAH: Am I wrong that California is maybe one of the most represented states on Yale’s campus? So I think we can go ahead and bust that myth. That is not true. I would say we get generally more applications from our backyard– the state of Connecticut. We probably get more applications than a school that is not located in the state of Connecticut. But we’re looking for students from all over the country. I do international admissions, so I’m looking for students from all over the world. And we don’t have a preference for East Coast versus West Coast.

MARK: And there’s no sense like, oh, we can only take four students from Nevada in a given year. We just don’t have room for a fifth or a sixth. That would be silly of us to limit ourselves. If we take it to the extremes here, we see really strong applicants from everywhere. So it’s not like we have to lower our standards to admit great students from North Dakota.

We can go through the process exactly the same as we would with applicants from other parts of the country with the caveat that, of course, we’re doing contextual evaluation and we understand that going to school in South Dakota is probably different than going to school in the South Bronx, right? That’s part of our review process, but it’s not saying, well, we have a certain number of students, or we have to line these students up and we can only take a certain number of them. So it’s tempting to think that, but we can tell you it’s not one of these dimensions that we add into our process at all.

HANNAH: All right, I see a question that I really want us to address, which is that with the overturning of affirmative action, does this mean I can’t mention my race in my application?

MARK: Great question. This is something that has been in the news obviously. And the simple answer is no, it does not mean that you can’t mention race in your application. This ruling changes nothing in terms of how you should or can approach the college application process. I’m going to say not only does it not prohibit you from talking about these things, I also want to say it just shouldn’t change your strategy.

So whatever you were thinking about the college application process on June 28 of 2023 is how you should be thinking about the college application process after June 29 of 2023. That’s when the ruling came out. So this ruling affects how admissions officers, and admissions offices, and colleges more generally do their work. It does not affect how you should approach the application. So I hope that’s reassuring to you.

All right, so I’m going to find the next one here. This is similar because one of our essay prompts this year– a new one gets at this– Margaret asked a question. For the essay question reflect on an element of your personal experience that you feel will enrich your college and how has it shaped you, you suggested discussing something that has shaped me and will be an asset in college. What does an asset in college mean? That’s a really good question. What kinds of things would fit into that, and how should a student think about that dimension as they’re putting together their application essay?

HANNAH: Yeah. so think about what we’re trying to do here in the admissions office where we are crafting a class of students. We’re not only thinking about who’s going to thrive academically at Yale, but who’s going to engage in interesting ways with their classmates, bring unique perspectives? Because one of the coolest experiences you have when you come to a place like Yale is the people that you meet, regardless of what you’re doing in the classroom. And you will learn a lot from those people outside of the classroom, as well as inside of the classroom.

So think about that. And think about what it is about you that someone would learn something about or gain something from simply by knowing you in the college setting, and reflect on that thing. And that can be a little hard because we’re asking you to think about yourself in a positive way. We’re asking you to put your best foot forward, or what do you think about is valuable? And that can be a hard question to answer for a lot of people. But that’s sort of what we’re getting at there.

MARK: Yeah, I think to keep it simple, just imagine a time when you shared something about yourself. Either you were just talking about it or someone saw you doing something, and they said, oh, that’s cool, or I didn’t know that, or thanks, that’s interesting, or I hadn’t been exposed to that thing before and you shared it with me, and that was exciting. Think about those kinds of experiences.

Those things that you have and that you’ve shared with people, those are the assets that you want to consider that you would add to a community. Focus on the community element of it. It’s not just me, me, me and how I’m so great, and I’m an asset because I’m awesome. It’s this thing, I’ve actually seen it benefiting people around me. And so I want to share it with you all, admissions committee, because I think that that’s the kind of thing that would be valuable in my college community. And I’d like to share it with those people as well.

HANNAH: We have a question from Savannah that I think is probably relevant to a lot of people in this particular time of year that we’re recording this, which is, is it worth it applying single choice early action to Yale if it’s your top choice? Specifically, does it have a significant impact on your admissions chances?

MARK: Yeah, great question, Savannah. A simple answer– no. This is, at Yale, all about you and how you want to put together your application timeline, and also how you want to put together your decision release timeline. I’m very impressed that you used the full acronym acronym– SCEA– Single Choice Early Action. We did an episode last fall all about this. And Hannah and I just came out and apologized because Yale’s early action program is just needlessly complicated. We’ll say it’s needlessly complicated.

So there is this restriction at Yale that if you’re going to apply early, you’re not applying early to other private universities. It’s complicated with the legalese around it. What’s not complicated is that it’s not going to give you an advantage. If you want to hear from Yale and you feel that your application is ready to go November 1, get it in just so that you can get that info back.

If both of those things aren’t true, wait until regular. It’s not going to change anything in terms of your outcome. So actually, a low stakes decision here is what I want you to leave with.

HANNAH: Yeah, and if you are looking at a college where it’s a high stakes decision, your chances are higher or there’s some scholarship money on the line or something like that, go ahead and apply to them early and apply to Yale regular because applying to Yale early is not going to give you a better chance of admission. It’s not going to get you a better financial aid package. That’s all going to be the same whether you apply early action or regular decision.

MARK: All right, Hannah, we got an early question from Trestle who asked about performance portfolios. We would call these supplementary material submissions. How do those factor into the admissions process?

HANNAH: Yeah, great question. So we allow you to submit supplementary materials. If you are particularly talented and passionate in the visual arts, music, or dance, or film, you can submit a supplement. The way that works is, first, the admissions officer reviews your entire application. And if they decide that this application is competitive and going to move through the process and we think that your talents or potential in the area that you’ve submitted your supplementary materials are going to be important to your admissions decision, then we’ll send it on to a faculty member in that discipline.

Faculty member will listen to your musical supplement or watch your dance supplement, and they will put together a little write-up for us, give it a little rating, send it back to the admissions office. So then we take that, and we add it into all the other pieces of the application that we already have. And it’s just kind of this extra piece of information of what this Yale faculty member thought about your supplemental portfolio, and should we take that into account as we are making your decision.

MARK: I saw another good question here. Lillian just wrote a question about, does the type of application you use change the way that you are reviewed as an applicant? And it sounds like Lillian is specifically asking about the QuestBridge application versus the Common application.

HANNAH: No, it does not. So we do accept three different application platforms at Yale– the QuestBridge application, the Common application, and the Coalition application. The review process is the same regardless of how you choose to apply. You can only pick one of those application platforms. And you’ll still have an area admissions reader. You’ll still have admissions committee. It’s all the same process.

And a lot of the same questions are also being asked on those applications. Specifically, the Common app and the Coalition app ask exactly the same questions. So it’s really about which feels most comfortable for you, which platform you want to use.

MARK: And I know that for students who are considering applying through QuestBridge, it can seem like the stakes are higher here. I’ll recommend listening to a very early episode that we did all about QuestBridge. It was important that we actually used the podcast to cover that because it can get a little bit complicated. But one of the reasons that we like the QuestBridge application is that for students who are from lower income backgrounds, we feel like the application itself gives students more space to tell their story.

And so we do like that, and it’s one of the reasons why we don’t ask students who are named QuestBridge finalists to complete another whole application. We say, hey, your QuestBridge application is great. We’re going to give you the chance to answer a few of our Yale specific questions just because we want you to have the chance to tell us a little bit more and connect the dots with Yale specifically. But I would recommend that if you are a high achieving student from a lower income background and you like the QuestBridge organization as a way to organize your college search, apply to schools that offer really awesome financial aid. There’s 50 partners now through QuestBridge.

Use that application. You are not going to be missing out on anything. I think this is what the question usually gets at is, I got this QuestBridge application and I’m going to submit it in September. Am I missing some opportunity that other students have by submitting the Common application? And the answer is absolutely not. If you’re a QuestBridge finalist, that QuestBridge application is going to be a great asset for you in the process.

HANNAH: This is a good question, which is, how can students from public schools who might have fewer resources or access to opportunities compare their activities or experiences to students from private schools or other areas?

MARK: Simple answer– don’t.

HANNAH: Yeah.

MARK: Don’t compare yourself to anybody. Don’t compare yourself to students at your school, students at other schools, whether it’s public, private, charter, magnet, parochial, boarding, international. We see it all. And what we want to tell you is that we don’t compare and contrast. We try to get to know you in your context. Our evaluation process is contextual. That’s what makes it interesting is that we get to know these places.

We get to know what’s offered there. And we don’t try to balance scales. We don’t try to say, well, this is worth this much in this space and this is worth that much in the other. We just try to understand where you are. And I will say that that’s just a baseline understanding that overwhelmingly, students don’t get to choose where they go to high school. You don’t get to choose where you grow up, what kind of household you’re in. You don’t get to choose where you go to high school.

And so we aren’t looking for things that aren’t offered in your context if they’re not offered in your context. And so you do not need to feel wherever you’re applying from that you’re coming at this from a deficit. You need to trust that we are going to understand what have you done with what you’ve been given in your space. And I’m going to encourage you to wear that proudly, even if there are elements of your context that just on a daily basis you feel like are deficient. I want you to go into this process saying, I’ve done what I’ve done in this space and I want to share that with you in the college application process. You shouldn’t feel that you’re coming at this needing to make up for anything.

HANNAH: Well said. I have another one for you, Mark, from Daniel. Since FAFSA opens in December this year, will early action students receive their financial aid award if they are admitted in December, or will they have to wait for it?

MARK: Oh, good question. So pretty technical answer here. And the simple answer is no. Yale does financial aid with something that’s called institutional methodology. And what that means is that we are going to assess your need with our own Yale-specific rules. They are overwhelmingly more generous than whatever the federal rules are. And the FAFSA– by the way, this is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid if folks don’t know that, or if you didn’t listen to Lingo Bingo where that was one of our bingo answers.

It is a very important form for applying for aid because the federal government has a lot of money available, and that can be great for you. It can also be great for colleges because it can wind up actually reducing what they need to pay for a student. So with early action applicants, we can still do our needs analysis this year with the other financial aid information that you will submit. And that’s going to include something called the CSS profile, which is run by the college board, and both of your biological parents, if they’re both living, their most recent tax returns.

We will do a needs analysis of that. We will package you. If you are admitted and you get one of those early packages, you will be asked to submit the FAFSA later. That’s not going to change your award, though. It’s just going to change essentially behind the scenes who’s paying for what, what dollars are coming from Uncle Sam, and what dollars are coming from Yale. So no difference there at all. I think we’re at time, Hannah. These have been some fantastic questions. Let’s call it a success for our very first live virtual MythBusters event. Many thanks to all the students who participated. You all are what made it successful tonight.

HANNAH: Yeah. And we didn’t get to all of your questions, but you can always submit them at admissions.yale.edu/questions. We will also do this again.

MARK: Thanks to former admissions officer Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our music. Check him out at AndrewBrickJohnson.com. I’ll also say thank you to the Courtyard by Marriott Nashville for hosting me tonight and for Hannah, who’s just hanging out in her office in the admissions office.

HANNAH: And thanks to Corinne, who’s answering questions behind the scenes for us tonight and keeping the show going here. If you have comments or an idea for an episode, drop us a line at yaleadmissionspodcast@gmail.com. And, finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are ours and don’t necessarily represent those of Yale University. Thanks for listening.