Likely Letters

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Inside the Yale Admissions Office. I'm Hannah and I'm a Yale Admissions Officer. And I'm Mark. I'm also a Yale Admissions Officer. And we are delighted to be joined today by our friend and colleague, Ashley. Hello. Hey, Ashley. Thanks for joining us today. Ashley is our office's Director of Recruitment, which means that she is in charge of overseeing all communications and programming for admitted students. Fun fact, I used to have this job and before it was me, it was Mark. Yep. We have a lot of expertise on the podcast here today. And we are going to do our episode all about something called "Likely Wedders." You may have heard about this before. This might be totally foreign. So let's give you a quick definition. Every year, the admissions office sends a very small sliver of our applicant pools, something called a "Likely Wedder." It's a very, very small part of our work. But we have seen a lot of questions about these things, a lot of misperceptions about them out in the internet world. So we thought we should tell you a little bit about what they're all about and set the record straight for you. Yes, this is for you applying to college subreddit. We want to let you know what's going on here. So there seems to be a lot of misinformation and confusion. So we're just going to give you the straight story on what a "Likely Wedder" is. Who might receive one, why we send them, when we send them, all of that stuff. Yeah, and is there anything that the general public, even active college applicants need to know about "Likely Wedders"? No, there's nothing you need to do. There's nothing you need to do, no action items here. But just in the name of transparency, we're going to set the record straight. Exactly. So Ashley, since you are working directly in this space, can you tell our listeners what is a "Likely Wedder" and what kind of "Likely Wedder" are we going to be talking about today? Absolutely. So I'm actually going to start talking about Athletic Likely Letters, but you all should know that this episode is actually not going to focus on Athletic Likely Letters. So what a recruited student athlete submits their application to Yale. An admissions committee reviews it and may issue a "Likely Letter". And this letter says that we have confidence in your potential chicken tribute, athletically and otherwise. And as long as you maintain your academic performance, personal integrity, you can expect that official acceptance. That official acceptance letter. Most recruited athletes apply early action, so most Athletic Likely Letters are issued in the fall. Right. And if you can sort of imagine how athletic recruiting works at most universities, you imagine like the big signing ceremony. Sometimes someone as young as junior year or even earlier is assigning themselves away. Yale and the Ivy League, we don't do that. And to be clear, the admissions process is exactly the same for our recruited student athletes as it is for everybody else. The league, and the Ivy League is an Athletic conference, has agreed that one way that we can recruit students is by issuing a "Likely Letter", which is not an official offer of admission, but it is a tool essentially to help our athletic teams recruit those students. Right. But those are not the kinds of Likely Letters we want to talk about with you today. We also send additional Likely Letters in our regular decision round. And sort of along the same lines of those Athletic Letters, these Likely Letters that we're talking about say we reviewed your application. We're excited to be able to admit you, as long as you keep up your strong performance, we'll be sending you an official acceptance letter at the end of March. At Yale, we include some other stuff about why your applications stood out, such as your general academic abilities, your leadership in your school or in your community, your exceptional strength in STEM, or your fit for the directed studies program. Right, which we should say is a special program for first years at Yale. Yeah, and it is a letter, so this is something that students receive in the mail, but actually students don't find out about this just by going to their mailbox. We as admissions officers get to have the very special pleasure of calling these students up and giving them the news over the phone. This always happens in the dead of winter when we are just in the slog of reading thousands of regular decision applications. And it is such a wonderful and joyous thing as an admissions officer to take a break from that, call up a 17 year old student and say, "You're coming to Hollywood!" I like the letter, it's so fun. Yeah, it's awesome. And as you can imagine, we don't get to call every single one of the students that we admit, the volume is just too insane. But for this group of students, we actually get to break the news over the phone, and those calls are just always so fun. So you're probably wondering, why do we send these letters to a small group of regular decision applicants? You may be thinking that this is some super elite group of students that it's like being admitted to Yale with laurels, like with extra points on top of it. That's not how you should think about this at all. Right, right. One reason we send likely letters is that we write your application and we're really excited to admit you, but that's not the real reason that these letters exist. We decide to send likely letters to students based on the strength of their application, but also based on our understanding of how low the chances are of this student eventually committing to Yale. So we only issue likely letters to regular decision applicants. So if a student's applying early action, we feel pretty good about the fact that Yale is probably their first choice. If an applicant is applying regular decision, they may have applied somewhere else early, or there's a good chance that they're just going to have so many compelling college options to choose from in April. And in the name of transparency, we'll say there's no set number of these that we give out in any given year, but it tends to be around 200 or so of the 2,300 or so total offers of admission that we will send out in a given year. They are almost all going to go to applicants with backgrounds or profiles that we think that our peer institutions, and by the way, that sort of higher ed speak for competitors, you know, think the other schools that are that tend to admits, you know, great students like like we do. We think that these students are likely to be admitted by those other schools and that they're going to be keen on responding to their applications as well. Right. And what that means to us is that they might therefore yield at Yale at a lower rate. We are not saying that these students are stronger than any others. This is a bit of strategy on our part. This is the admissions office kind of trying to think two steps ahead. And if we send a student a likely letter, we're basically predicting three things. We are predicting Yale is going to admit this student. And by the way, you know, we run through the exact same committee process that you've heard us talking about before to issue likely letters. So it's, although we are waiting for the decision date to release an official admissions decision, the exact same process has been followed to get us to a likely letter. So that's thing one, we're going to admit the student thing too. We're also predicting lots of other top colleges are also going to admit this student. And we're using our spidey sense, you know, to sort of, you know, gauge that. We're also predicting number three that since we want the student to come to Yale, they might benefit from some extra time doing some comparison shopping. We think let's give them the news a little bit early. So there's not a mad rush for the student's attention in April. And by the way, there is this concept in some admissions offices of yield protecting where schools would avoid admitting students that they think are unlikely to yield. And at Yale, we do not believe in that. We do not practice that. If we think a student is strong and would thrive at Yale and we're excited to bring them to Yale, we vote to admit them. But the likely letter is a way to give us a better shot at convincing them that they are a great fit for Yale and that they are going to thrive at Yale too. We've told a few special committees to review these students in late January, typically, and likely letters usually go out throughout the month of February. You know, they're very often there are students who we strongly consider sending likely letters to, but just decide we need more time to consider their application in our regular committee process. That's just because we want to wait for more information such as in interview, updated grades, et cetera. And sometimes we just need more time to evaluate their application. Okay, so we put a likely letter in the mail and then what happens next? What the likely letter really allows us to do is again, spend more time introducing the student to what Yale has to offer and why the admissions committee thought they were such a great fit. So instead of waiting until April for the admitted student programming that we host, we just get more time usually the centers around conversations with current students. We have a great group of current yellows with similar interests that are eager to reach out to you and help you get excited about Yale. Yeah, and also, by the way, for the subset of students who receive a stem likely letter, we have a special on campus event this year, of course, it's virtual that serves as an introduction to studying science engineering or math at Yale. Alright, so actually help us combat some common misconceptions about likely letters. Okay, so this is one that we see sometimes. If say my friend and I both got into Yale or ex-school, but she got a likely letter and I didn't, does that mean that her application was stronger that she's a better person or that her admissions officer likes her more than me? Nope, if you got admitted to Yale, regardless of your application round or when you found out your application is extremely strong, what determines if you get a likely letter is more about us than it is about you. If we feel like we're going to need more time to convince you just how awesome Yale is, that's when we'll send a like letter. Yeah, and by the way, trust us, your admissions officer is super excited to welcome you to Yale likely letter or not. Yes, and I'll say, you know, sometimes we sort of get those predictions wrong. I mean, sometimes we imagine, oh, maybe the student is not that keen on the other going to need extra time. That's actually the best thing when it happens and we call up the student and we say, well, we want to give you extra time and they say, I want to commit right now. Yes, Yale's my number one choice. Right. We say, well, awesome. Wonderful. Thanks for that. I guess we guess wrong on that part, but delighted that you got the news a little early. Yeah, exactly. It's a win win. Another misconception that we sometimes see is, oh, if I didn't get a likely letter, that means I'm not getting accepted, right? Also not true. So of the 2000 plus students admitted to Yale each year, less than 10% received likely letters. Remember, there is no action item associated with this. I had no idea what a likely letter was until I started working as a Yale admissions officer. Same here. I had never heard of it. It had not affected my understanding of the undergraduate student life or the admissions process, right? Yale student. So it certainly shouldn't be entering into your mind as an applicant, but now you know a little bit more about it. Yeah, absolutely. Like letters can be an exciting surprise for applicants in February, but most applicants don't get them. If you do get one, by the way, all of the current director of recruitment at Yale and former directors of recruitment at Yale want you to take advantage of the opportunity to spend more time getting to know the school. Find out why it could be a good fit for you and make use of the resources that we provide you. And finally, remember that students who get a likely letter don't have any special advantages over students who are accepted just at the end of March. Once you've been accepted, you are yearly, no matter when you heard about your acceptance. Ashley, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate having you on the podcast. No, thank you so much for having me. It's really exciting to talk about some of the work that I do. We'll have you back sometime soon. Thanks to our friend and colleague Jill, who's both our sound engineer and great admissions officer. Thanks to read for lending us his office. Thanks to former admissions officer Andrew Brick Johnson who composes our music. You should check him out at Andrew Brick Johnson dot com. If you have comments or an idea for an episode, drop us a line at Yale admissions podcast at 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.