More than 50 years ago, Yale President Kingman Brewster wrote to Director of Admissions John Muyskens to outline a vision for selecting applicants to Yale College. His letter has since been reviewed and reaffirmed by the Yale Board of Trustees, faculty advisory committees, and other councils on admissions many times. It still serves as the official policy document for undergraduate admissions.
Yale’s first and most important consideration is academic potential. What Brewster called “a sharp and inquiring mind coupled with a capacity and desire to use it constructively and effectively” may also be understood as a strong scholastic foundation; a capacity for critical thinking; intellectual initiative; and an ability to benefit from Yale’s expansive academic resources.
The Admissions Committee also looks for applicants who invest in supporting others. What Brewster called “moral concern and consideration for others” includes collegiality; empathy; respect for differences; gratitude; and concern for the common good.
A third dimension is an applicant’s willingness to explore new horizons. What Brewster called “the motivation to stretch one’s capacities” also includes open-mindedness; curiosity; creativity; and an enterprising mindset.
Beyond considering applicants as individuals along these dimensions, the Admissions Committee seeks to enroll a student body whose members will contribute to the residential learning environment by bringing to campus a wide range of backgrounds, interests, talents, aspirations, and beliefs.
Some successful applicants demonstrate exceptional ability in a particular endeavor. All successful applicants demonstrate the capacity to thrive in Yale’s demanding undergraduate academic curriculum; to contribute positively to its interdependent learning community; and to grow as leaders, thinkers, and engaged citizens.
Yale is, above all, an academic institution. This means academic strength is our first consideration in evaluating any candidate. The single most important document in your application is your high school transcript, which tells us a great deal about your academic drive and performance over time. We look for students who have consistently taken a broad range of challenging courses in high school and have done well.
Standardized test scores play an important role in establishing your readiness to succeed in a wide range of Yale College courses. Yale’s applicant pool includes many more students with strong test scores than the committee can admit, and applicants’ scores, on their own, do not represent the full measure of their academic potential or whether they will thrive in Yale’s rigorous liberal arts curriculum.
Your high school teachers can provide extremely helpful information in their evaluations. Not only do they discuss your performance in their particular class or classes, but often they write about such things as your intellectual curiosity, energy, relationships with classmates, and impact on the classroom environment. Obviously, it is important to ask for recommendations from teachers who know you well.
Some components of the application are quantitative, which is simply to say that they can be expressed as numbers. Standardized tests scores, grades, and some accolades and extracurricular achievements are important metrics. These numbers, however, are always interpreted by a real person and are never fed into a formula or an algorithm. Admissions officers do not, for example, unweight or reweight grade point averages.
Although quantitative components provide the Admissions Committee with useful information, it is the qualitative elements of an application that make a prospective student stand out. The application is designed to help students showcase their unique strengths and interests, giving admissions officers insights into the contributions a student is likely to make the Yale community and what they are likely to gain in the process.
The Yale application tries to get at the personal side of the applicant through the use of several short essays whose scope is broad enough to accommodate most writers. We encourage you to take the writing of the essays seriously and to write openly and honestly about activities, interests, or experiences that have been meaningful to you.
Your goal should be to write responses that are thoughtful, reflective, and convey your personal voice. If an essay doesn’t sound like the person who writes it, it cannot serve very well as a personal statement. As with every document in the application, we read essays very carefully and try to get a full sense of the real person behind them.
Review our advice on essays and the essay topics for the coming admissions cycle.
All Yale applicants are considered within their own context, so that no student is disadvantaged for not taking advantage of a resource that was not available to them. Yale seeks to admit students who have made the most of their individual circumstances.
Transcripts, test scores, essays, and recommendations help paint a picture not only of a student’s accomplishments to date but also of the ways in which an applicant has taken advantage of available opportunities. For example, does your school offer AP courses, an International Baccalaureate program, neither, or both? We only expect you to take advantage of such courses if your high school provides them. Knowing how you’ve engaged in the resources and opportunities at your high school gives us an expectation of how you might engage the resources at Yale if admitted.
Yale admissions officers Hannah and Mark created the hit podcast Inside the Yale Admissions Office to increase transparency and reduce anxiety around selective admissions. Each episode has application advice, firsthand insights from admissions officers, and an inside look at the admissions process.
First-generation students
Top 10% class rank
Rate of admission
From rural and small towns
US States and territories represented
Countries represented
Pell Grant recipients
Receiving need-based financial aid
Challenge yourself with a balanced academic program that includes demanding courses in a wide range of subjects.
Request letters of recommendation from two teachers who know you well.
Write about something that matters to you. Share your unique perspective. Use your own voice.
A limited number of applicants are invited for an evaluative interview.
