What Yale Looks For, Part 1: Academic Strength

Mark (0:02)

Welcome back to Inside the Yale Admissions Office. My name is Mark, and I'm a Yale Admissions Officer.

Hannah (0:06)

And I'm Hannah. I'm also a Yale Admissions Officer. And today's episode is the first in a new little mini-series we're going to try out, designed to highlight the specific things that admissions officers like us look for when reviewing applications.

Mark (0:20)

Another way to think about these episodes is a sort of collection of what matters or what counts in the admissions process.

Hannah (0:28)

Yes, you may remember a Mythbusters episode that we did last year, centered around what Yale looks for. And now we want to go more deliberately through the things that are important in our process to give you a really clear idea of what admissions officers like to see when we open up an application.

Mark (0:42)

And we're starting with the single most important factor in our review process, your academic strength. In some ways, this episode, it's kind of a little surprising that we haven't devoted a whole episode to this topic before.

It is a little like our recent episode that we did on selecting high school courses where we were looking through things and said, well, gosh, how have we been doing this podcast, Hannah, for so many years and we haven't done this episode yet?

Hannah (1:07)

Yeah. I mean, I will say we do talk a lot about this, sort of the importance of academic preparation in many, many, many other episodes that we've done when we talk about how we evaluate things like transcripts and testing. So we've definitely talked about it, but now it's time to devote a whole episode.

Mark (1:23)

Yeah, it is true. We typically assume that people who are tuning into our podcast generally kind of already understand that academic strength is really, really important.

Hannah (1:31)

Right. Right.

Mark (1:32)

Of course, in our process, it's not based simply on academic metrics. I find that when people hear that, they tend to be most curious about those other non-academic factors. So we spend a lot of our time answering questions about those other parts of the process that are less straightforward than what we're going to talk about today. Things like essays and leadership and supplementary music submissions and all those other things.

Hannah (1:55)

Yeah. But today, let's just lay it all out in one episode, give a clear picture of what we mean when we say that academic strength is our most important consideration.

Mark (2:04)

As part of this mini-series, we'll do some other episodes about those other considerations, including things like concern for others and the desire to grow and stretch yourself, and how you'll contribute to a rich residential learning environment. Stay tuned for more on that in the next few months.

Hannah (2:20)

Yeah. Okay. So for today, we're going to break it down into three parts. So part one will be how we quickly gauge an applicant's baseline academic preparedness.

Mark (2:30)

Part two will be how we go beyond that to gauge if a student is a good academic fit for the Yale liberal arts education.

Hannah (2:38)

Right. And then part three, how each individual piece of the application gives us the kinds of evidence and insights we need to understand both your academic strengths and how those make you a compelling applicant for Yale specifically. All right.

Mark (2:50)

That's the plan.

Hannah (2:51)

Let's see if we can stick to it.

Mark (2:53)

We'll try our best. And let's start with the basics. Okay. So establishing that you as an applicant are well prepared to succeed in Yale courses is the single most important component of our application review.

Hannah (3:08)

Yes. So it's the most important component, even though it's probably actually the quickest part of the reading process for us to digest and read when we're looking at your application. And it's also not the thing on its own that is ever going to get you admitted.

Mark (3:23)

Right. Instead, it is the most important component that we'd consider necessary, but not sufficient. We talked about this idea before. In other words, if you aren't academically well prepared, it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what your other talents are, you will not be admitted to Yale.

Hannah (3:42)

Yeah. And that's the first thing that we do when we open up an application. We ask ourselves, do I see evidence here that this student is prepared to complete a bachelor's degree in Yale College?

Mark (3:53)

If the answer to that question is no, we are not going to go any further. Sorry. Right.

Hannah (3:58)

Right. That's sort of part of our initial review process that we've had in place for a few years now. We outlined what that process looks like in our reading reloaded episode a couple of years ago.