Yale Daily News

Thirty years ago drinking coffee in Patricia's restaurant with football coach Carm Cozza and a group of timekeepers for the track team, Cozza told us it was difficult to entice football recruits to Yale when "every member of this year's freshman class was validictorian of his [her] high school class." What possible anxiety is an 1.3 drop in admissions causing an institution with such banquet on its table?

I don't understand why Yale is so stuck on what Harvard is doing. It is like you, Yale, are always looking out the window seeing what Harvard is doing. I would be more interested in making Yale greater than them folk rather than watching what Harvard is doing with itself.

Looking at kids who were accepted and rejected, it appears that Yale has continued to sponsor welfare education by accepting unqualified minorities, at least relative to non-minority "rejected" applicants. Blacks will never be regarded as equals as long as their access to opportunity is based solely on skin color and not on ability. It makes one wonder if the regional admissions reps are minorities themselves with a bias against white, highly accomplished applicants.

Record low admissions at downtown schools: http://www.designnewhaven.com/2008/04/record-low-2008-admission-rates-for.html

Once again, Yale has proven itself to be pre-Copernican. Does getting into Yale give one a leg up at St. Peter's Gate? It's what one does with the opportunities one has that matters in the long run.

If we build the new dorms we'll never catch up to Harvard. What say we skip a year and admit no one? Take that Crimson! 0.0 percent admittance, we win!

#3: Your comment has absolutely nothing to do with Yale specifically and everything to do with American higher education generally.

What's the distribution for those that were deferred EA... # admitted, waitlisted, & declined?

The admissions office should hope that it didn't underestimate yield, lest we see an incoming class of 1500.

#2: it's just a means for comparison. what good is an article if it doesn't place it in the context of relevant events and facts.

Why does the YDN seem to have such a hard time prying a demographic breakdown out of the admissions office? What percentage of admits are African-American, Asian, Latino, from the West, South, etc. Other schools report this type of information, and it's interesting to know.

#3, how dare you generalize about the alleged effect of Yale's admittance of minority students. I didn't read anywhere what the breakdown race-wise was of the newly admitted students. You must really be one of those bottom-of-the-barrel students to have launched so vicious an attack on the many deserving minority students who either have been admitted to Yale or who are presently attending. I can assure you my Yale student is inferior to no one and you can be well assured that she most certainly isn't inferior to you.

It's unfortunate that you didn't make the cut; oh, and it gets worse when you try to get into grad school and/or professional school. The competition is even fiercer.

re: #3

Can I ask how you know the quality of candidates who were accepted and rejected? I haven't heard anything to support your claims other than similar personal opinions, since I don't think those stats are even published. Just wondering.

From Princeton web site: 44.8% of all admitted applicants are students of color. What's the definition of "students of color"?

African American?

#14- "students of color" is generally non-white, ie yellow, brown, black, red (Asian-Am, Latino/a or Spanish-speaking Amer, African-Amer, Native Amer). Internationally born are a separate category.

#3 has a point, but is going too far. Minorities still have to be qualified, the difference is that they just have to be qualified (although probably almost all applicants are "qualified" meaning they would do fine here), that they are a minority then somehow makes them among the best and gets them admission. "Best" is a fungible term, and society, not just Yale (your claim is also pertinent to grad school admissions and even employment) decides that being a minority is relevant in determining who is "best" for something. (look at Obama, if he was a white first-year senator with only 2 years experience and little participation...) It is just unfortunate that everything is a zero-sum game, and that someone has to pay for this, and as a member of the white middle-class ( and male), you are responsible for bearing all the costs for society's past wrongs. Get used to it and quit whining.

I'm a white guy and I gained admission to Harvard and Williams, among others. I was wait-listed at Dartmouth and rejected at Yale and Stanford. #3 has a most definitely valid point. Some minorities at my school who got into Dartmouth, especially, were not qualified to do so; they were certainly not nearly as qualified as I, or as other white kids in my class who were rejected. Racial discrimination in the admissions process does exist. While many students of color would get in to elite institutions of their own merit, many get in with a helping hand from the color of their skin. I do not object whatsoever to affirmative action, but sometimes it's taken too far at the expense of deserving white candidates.