How to Get Into Yale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F2yx9LWl3w

Princeton wants researchers; Stanford wants entrepreneurs… but what exactly is Yale looking for? 

This article is an in-depth guide for students who are serious about applying and getting into Yale College. Today, I’ll be breaking down 1) what Yale admissions officers are actually looking for; 2) : what current students and alumni have said about their successful Yale apps; and 3) how to leverage FREE additional resources to craft an application so good, the Yale Admissions Office has no choice but to admit you.

“Part 1: What Yale Looks For”

The following information is taken directly from Yale Admissions website; it says.

Many years ago, former Yale President Kingman Brewster wrote that selecting future Yale students was a combination of looking for those who would make the most of the extraordinary resources assembled here, those with a zest to stretch the limits of their talents, and those with an outstanding public motivation – in other words, applicants with a concern for something larger than themselves. He said, “We have to make the judgment as to whether or not with Yale’s help the candidate is likely to be a leader in whatever he* ends up doing.” 

Let’s break this down. What separates Yale from all the other top colleges in the world are the following 3 characteristics: 1) outstanding public motivation, 2) a concern for something larger than themselves, and 3) likelihood to lead. Which, when you really think about it, boils down to two words: service and leadership. So basically, if you haven't started a nonprofit by the time you're 16, you're already behind. Just kidding! (But seriously, maybe start brainstorming.)"

Here’s a few ways to do that: 

1. Option 1: in high school, you can design and launch your own service project, like a new initiative within an existing club, or creating an entirely new volunteering club at your school. It’s not enough to just show that you’re really good at an academic subject like debate or chemistry these days you know – while you’re at it, why don’t you create a summer camp for underprivileged middle school students to share your academic passions? This makes for great college essay material by the way. 

1. Another option is to join an existing service organization and serve as an intrapreneur. Typically, the more legit the organization, the better. Then make it your mission to rise through the ranks. Let’s say you decide to volunteer for Feeding America to help fight hunger. Maybe your first few months, you start off doing some gruntwork, sorting through canned goods, designing a few recruiting posters, that sort of thing. But then, you start pitching ideas on more efficient ways to sort these cans right? or better ways to market this nonprofit, maybe by leveraging new technologies like Dall-E or ChatGPT. After that, you exponentially grow the number of cans donated by launching higher quality marketing and awareness campaigns in your local school district. Before you know it, you’re rewarded with more and more responsibility, you’re in charge of a dozen, no dozen two volunteers. This route has the added benefit of being able to get a letter of recommendation from someone in the organization, which, trust me, will help you bigtime down the road! 

“Part 2: What Students and Alumni Say”

To start, let’s take a look at this clip from undergrad Hannah Maria summing up the comments she saw written in her admissions file: 

Here, she hammers home the fact that Yale loves character development. What do I mean by that? Well this might sound a little controversial, but literally picture yourself as the protagonist of your story - not a person, but a character. 

Throughout the course of a story, the protagonist must grow, overcome a flaw, and ultimately leave their journey a different person than the one they started as. So in your common app essay, it could be a good idea to focus on vulnerability and initiative, which, by the way, are two of the criteria on our secret rubric we created to help kids get into every Ivy League school. Feel free to check that out here. 

Hannah, for instance, talked about overcoming shyness and forming genuine relationships with her teachers and mentors. In other words, know that your challenge doesn’t have to be something mind blowing like beating cancer or anything like that. 

In fact, after spending the past few weeks interviewing current Yale undergrads, a trait I can tell you Yale actively searches for is humility. So when you write about your accomplishments, it's a fine line between 'I'm awesome' and 'I'm so awesome, I don't need to mention how awesome I am.'"

Basically, Yale wants to see that despite your success and all the cool things you’ve achieved, you’re a genuinely down to earth person. 

The way to do that is by emphasizing how you appreciate things like the beauty of mundanity in some of the short answer flavor supplementals. A really awesome detail to mention would be sharing family traditions (ideally ones you helped institute, launch or create), like building gingerbread houses every Christmas, or volunteering at a homeless shelter during Thanksgiving.

“Part 3: Mention These Yale Resources If You Want To Get In”

A big part of applying to Yale is actually wanting to go to Yale. And to do a convincing job, you need to properly research - no need to spend dozens of hours on this, but I’d dedicate at least a solid 3-5. Now, level 1 research is referencing specific buildings you can name drop, finding professors in the field of study you want to go to, reading about current research that Yalies are working on, etcetera. 

For instance, if you want to study evolutionary biology, Yale is currently renovating the Peabody Museum of Natural History (a great name drop!) You could talk about how Dr. Martha Munoz and her lab have recently been published in the Atlantic for their research on a reptile that lives in the world’s hottest climates and share how excited you are about the prospect of working in her lab!

Or, let’s say you’re interested in majoring in music. In that case, you could write about how you want to join the Yale Symphony Orchestra and play in Woolsey Hall during the annual Halloween Show (which is a big Yale tradition by the way). Maybe you could even mention how you’re particularly drawn to this class about Bob Dylan’s music and his impact on American culture. 

Now this is already pretty good; perhaps even good enough to get you in, but if you want to go one step further, then a more advanced level of research involves reading the Yale Daily News for articles about student events or issues that might interest you. Or conducting an in depth dive into the Yale course catalog to figure out what classes genuinely appeal to you, then looking into the syllabus. 

Or best of all, talking to current students. If you have someone you know, a warm lead, a friend of a friend – definitely try to do a coffee chat or interview with that person. And if you don’t have that – no worries: like I said, I just spent the past few weeks talking to a bunch of Yale students, so feel free to check out that playlist here. 

Those are all sensational, convincing details, but the true cream of the crop is, wait for it, traditions. This includes things like the annual Harvard-Yale Game, or Spring Fling, or even the First Year Holiday Dinner! Now when it comes to these traditions, don’t just talk about how much fun you’ll have, but really what you bring to the table. Maybe you hope to DJ at Spring Fling, or if you’re a cheerleader, you want to help promote school spirit at the Game. 

But wait there’s more! Don’t just look at what Yale College has to say about these traditions since obviously everything will be positive, but also what Yalies themselves think. In fact, Yalies are famous for criticizing Yale; take a look here: I just found an article critiquing the extravagance of the event on the Yale Daily News. In your Why Yale answer, you could mention how you appreciate this free speech and openness to feedback across Yale’s campus. 

Finally, when it comes to additional resources, I have three last ones that I just absolutely have to mention. One is a YouTube channel created by Yale Admissions where they give advice on literally how to approach every single aspect of your application. I didn’t even know this existed when I applied to Yale! The channel has information about specific majors, clubs on campus, programs like the Light Fellowship where you get to live and study in Asia for free, information about residential programs, as well as videos and reflections about major events like Bulldog Days when admitted students visit campus in April. Literally everything Yale-related under the sun! 

Another resource is right here on this channel. I graduated from Yale, and so did my co-founder and over the last three years, we’ve compiled a playlist that covers everything from secret societies to parties to Yale specific lingo. 

But honestly the best resource of all is YaleCourses: a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers where you can watch Yale lectures for free! There are literally no more excuses guys. Watch the topics that interest you, then be sure to reference these in your application. Now that I’m looking at it, there’s recently been a lot of lectures about public health, which Yale is, believe it or not, quite famous for. So if that’s up your alley, here you go! 

A lot of kids ask us how to get college-specific intel.

This is how. 2-3 hours of research to improve your odds by 200 or 300%. 

Hope you enjoyed this article, and until next time my virtual little sibling!

Best,

Kevin

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