hello hello its Vic and if you clicked in this video you're probably someone who wants to get into Yale and it's likely an international student this is a little bit outside of tower videos that I do but I love Jail and I want more people to come here so I'm just gonna share with you the things that I picked up especially as an international student during my application process about two years ago I'm a rising junior so I'm ancient anyway my tips will be relevant for all students I've tried my best to sprinkle in some advice and tips for all my international and Singaporean friends also I won't be going through the actual forms and documents or the process you need to go through in order to apply all those things you can research online but I'll be talking about are more general tips that you can take and use during the application process itself I left my most important tip to the end which I have not really seen in any other videos related to tips on getting into the Ivy League so please stick around till then let's get to the video academics do matter yes but you don't need to be your school valedictorian or to get perfect grades through our high school or junior college if you're from Singapore in order to get into Yale your grades are really just a benchmark and not a hard rule you'll just want to know whether you are smart enough to do with the academic rigor of their classes after you hit the certain point the admissions officers put more attention onto other parts of your application meaning your essays and your activities and sorry if the lighting is going a bit haywire I'm using an iPhone 6 and also the clouds are not really my best friends today is so so on Yale's website they say that a 25th to 75th percentiles for the various standardized tests are SAT evidence based reading and writing 722 770 SAT math 742 790 and a CT 33 to 35 I think GSR out of 800 and a CTS out of 35 as long as you fall within this range it shouldn't be so worried about your scores for me personally I got two to three zero out of 2400 on the old SAT even though a lot of people were saying that you should get at least 2300 and above to get into Yale also I did IB and I got mostly sevens and success throughout jce or the last two years of high school for those of you who aren't in Singapore but I had also gotten at least one 5 in those two years so it's not as though my track record was perfect as I said as long as you fall within the acceptable range you shouldn't worry so much about how well you do in relation to other people because there are so many people who have perfect scores and apply and don't get in international tip if you're grading system is an IB or GPA you can email either your university counselor in your school to check out what the benchmark is or if they aren't familiar then you should email the Yale admissions officers directly to ask them if you're sure about which school you want to apply to applying early it's a good option because it makes the process less competitive you're put in a smaller pool with fewer applicants compared to regular decision so for some context there were about six thousand people applying early last year and yo admitted about 13.2% of these people for the Regular Decision round there were thirty six thousand eight hundred applicants and they only accepted 2178 which is basically 5.9 hi guys post adding that coming in here so actually the second set of numbers that I should use inclusive of the early action statistics meaning that after doing some calculations the actual Regular Decision acceptance rate is not five point nine percent but four point five percent and so if you can and you are very sure that you want to apply to Yale you should apply another tip for Singaporeans or international students who follow the January to December academic calendar is that the deadlines for early action and four more schools is in November meaning the view from Singapore you'll be submitting your pilum scores and obviously your scores from the previous years of high school or previous ljc instead of your final grades so you have to do well in your problems I know a lot of people take that attitude whereby they just do really badly and problems because they can save themselves in the final exam but if you're applying early through an Ivy League then you need to do well in your problems but you should definitely be careful because there are different types of early applications first of all that's the early decision which is binding meaning that if you get into the school you need to commit to it that's early action which means that you don't have to commit to it it's non-binding and you can apply to multiple schools that are early action and the third one is restrictive or the action meaning that you can apply early and it's not binding you don't have to go to that school even if they accept you but you can only apply to that one school early so Yale is a restrictive of the action or Rea definitely do more research on this before applying to your school so the reason why I bring this up is because you should not apply early decision if you not sure that you want to go to that school if the school is early action or Rea like Yale is then it's not so bad you can still apply also another thing to remember is that even though the process is less competitive it does not mean that you put any less than 100% into your application [Music] start early the last thing you want to do is to rush your application your future literally depends on how well you do this application so do it well put in your hundred percent this is especially important because essays takes such a long time to really perfect I stopped my comment at SCA like seven months in advance and you definitely don't have to do that you can start maybe like a month or two in advance but also bear in mind that when you're applying to the US there are so many different essays that you need to write you need to write your common MSA and in every single school has supplementary essays plus nothing only is good because it gives you time to study and prepare for all the standardized tests that you need to do so SATs if you come from a country that doesn't have English as its first language and at hopefull be organized make sure that you style essays early or at least start brainstorming ideas early start looking at the prompts early and making sure that you know what tests you need to sit for what documents need to provide etc etc tip number four is to know your why I know so many people just want to apply to the Ivy League just cause the name but don't let that be you sit down research each school and understand what it is about that school in particular that makes you want to apply to it this is definitely going to help your application as well if you can highlight specific qualities that you love about your dream school then it makes your case and applications so much more compelling for example for Yale is it a residential college system is it a professor that you would really like to meet and take a class with is it a class or academic program or an extracurricular there's only offered at Yale and not any other school and for international students if you can use your international advantage then use it for example I knew that I wanted to do environmental studies but in Singapore there are really only three universities that offer environmental studies and none of them had programs that I really liked especially in comparison to Yale so I really highlighted that in my application and it helped my case the more detail you can be the better is because it indicates to the admissions team that you want to be a Yale for a reason that is bigger than the brand name and this also will go on to help you in your interview in the future okay we're moving into essay and activities territory now so tip number five is to identify your unique selling point or your USP and use your extra curriculars to highlight it colleges do not want well-rounded students they want a well-rounded class that means they want each student to be really passionate about one or two things so we're starting out really early in your beginning years of high school or the first year of junior college in Singapore I would highly recommend that you really think about what your USP is and try to do things and activities that reflect that USP but don't worry for those of you who are a bit late to the game or have very diverse interests and applying to Yale in your second year of JC on your senior year of high school don't worry about it because I was in the same boat there still hope I actually only really decided to apply to Yale in my second year of JC which is my final year of high school in my first year of JCC or my third year of high school I was very unfocused and I didn't know what my niche was yet so I was doing a lot of science eating's I actually had done research and I published a research paper alongside someone else and was part of this global online science program those are really the only two things I was doing related to science but in my last year jce or my senior year of high school I had decided that I wanted to do environmental studies and by the time it was very late to do a lot so all I could do was become the president of the green Club but the green card was very new and so we were doing very boring things like recycling campaigns so it didn't really reflect that well my application and I also was volunteering with a non-profit outside that was doing a lot of work around promoting a plant-based lifestyle and beyond that I just attended a lot of environmental conferences and events so when it came time to fill in my application I put in both my scientific accomplishments and what I was doing with the environment even though there were two separate interests the reason why I did that was because I knew that if I just put my environmental interests that wouldn't be enough for my application to really shine but I made it really clear to the admissions officers that I was interested in concentrating in environmentally related work at Yale because I had spent first of all my entire senior year or my entire last year in JC in environmental issues secondly I made it clear that I was very into the environment do other parts of my application to in my essays and also in the additional information section I wrote down all the conferences and events that I had attended so in that way I was still able to identify and highlight my USP application so what's the more of the story here if you have one or two USPS and can really build a very strong extracurricular based around those USPS that would be the ideal case scenario but if you aren't able to do that then you just work with what you have and really try to identify the part of you that you feel can contribute the most campus and highlight that in all parts of your application be it extracurriculars or essays and additional information also do not be afraid to put more information about extracurriculars in the additional information section which I really did a lot of during my application a lot of people just only use the additional information section which i think is a big mistake especially your things to highlight that you can't summarize in just the extracurricular section so tip number six especially for international students and Singaporeans which is to position your USP in relation to the other students who are applying from your country or from your state for international students you won't be compared to your American counterparts in your application process you will be compared to the other students who are applying from your region or from your country this means that it's important for you to know roughly the general profile of students applying from where you're coming from so that you can kind of position yourself in a unique place in relation to those other kids for example I'm from Singapore and most Singaporeans who get into Yale come from one of the really good schools like rifles and a CSI I on the other hand was from SGR international of which there's like one person emitted every couple of years also I knew for a fact that environmental studies is not a very common major for any Singaporean applying anywhere in the world and so that really put me in a good position to apply to you that's also another reason why I selected my USP as environmental studies and really highlighted that in all my essays after getting in I spoke to the admissions counselor who was in charge of reading the essays coming from Singapore and he told me that the reason why I got in was because of the fact that I was so unique the fact that I was interested in environmental studies even though there was not a normal thing coming from a Singaporean applicant Yale really likes diversity and so if you have something that you can offer and bring to the table that's a little bit different from everyone else in your region it really helps you to stand out and I'm not saying that you can't get energy a very conventional interest I'm just saying that you need to be even better if you want to get in in those very highly competitive niches some of you might be thinking that you don't have anything you need to bring to the table but I honestly believe that all of us have something special that we can offer it just takes a lot of soul-searching and introspection to figure out what it is that's why you have to start early on the application process to give yourself that time to think and really reflect on what your USP is you want the admissions officers to be able to form a mental picture in the head of you as a human being so in order to do that you really must capitalize upon your essays to show them a different part of yourself in every essay good essay is always show and not tell and every single sentence in the essay has a value and it's not just filler because they're very very few words and you want to make sure that every single work takes a punch I know what this is very hard to visualize my point is that I've tried to bring something different to every single essay I'm also very happy to do a video reading the essays that I wrote out loud if there interest anyone moving on to number eight which is that if you get an interview that's a good sign but you still have to be prepared it's from what I've heard and in my personal experiences interviews are usually conducted by alumni who are usually really chill and are not out to get you to fail they usually just want to get to know you and see how you would fit into the school however different alumni are different and they can ask really challenging questions depending on who they ask people for example my interviewer was relatively chill until we asked me a curveball question about trans boundary Hayes from Indonesia and Singapore which is a relatively common environmental problem here and if I hadn't volunteered with organisations that have worked with palm oil and trans boundary Hayes before I feel like I might not have been able to answer its question so even though you should go into the interview feeling really relaxed and just giving it all and treating like a conversation between friends you still want to make sure that you're prepared and also always prepare questions because usually the interviewers would ask if you have any questions and is important to impress them also I mean they went to Yale so you want to learn about what years like right [Music] and finally my most important tip number nine is to understand that the application process is arbitrary and that your self work is not tight at all to whether you get in or not you need to understand an application process especially in the u.s. is quite unpredictable and after a certain point it really does come down to luck even though most people get in through the normal conventional way there's always going to be a couple of those spots reserved for athletes for people who are legacies meaning that their parents went to Yale or people whose parents have donated generously to Yale and also there is a really low 5.9 1% acceptance rate I'm not saying any of this to discourage anyone at all I just want you to go in with clear and realistic expectations and to understand that there's a fair amount of luck that goes into this process you can do really well academically up to a certain point and you can write brilliant essays but the reality is you never really know who else is applying and how they might be favored over you and what is so vital to recognize here is that whether you can get in or not it's not an indication at all of your self-worth you are absolutely a hundred percent capable and deserving of getting anything you set your mind to but there's just some things in life that we can't control so always have a plan B don't just hinge all your efforts on getting into this one dream school and most importantly don't put so much pressure on yourself to get in for me I knew the chances of getting into your soul slim so I just really tried my best to detach myself from outcome and just focused on putting my best into my application I remember this sense of peace coming over me before I opened my results because I told myself so many times that even if I didn't get in it was okay I still worked really hard don't get me wrong but I know for a fact if I didn't get in I would have been upset yes I would have been disappointed yes but I never would have beat myself up over it I'm so sorry for the long run but I really wanted to talk about it because I feel that I haven't seen this point being brought up in other application tip videos and I think it's so so important for you guys to remember that there's so many people who have been so successful even if they've not gotten into an Ivy League and if you're currently a high school student or in JC and you need some tips on becoming more productive and getting more done with less time check out my video on productivity tips that I linked up here in the cards but beyond that if you have any other questions about how to get in today or my process whatever leave it in the comments I'll try my best to reply all of you guys and I really do hope I see you on campus sometime soon bye [Music]