caitlynatyale
caitlynatyale,
Yale
B.A., Political Science and Government
I was accepted to Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Brown, Berkeley Regents/Chancellors, UCLA Honors. Ask me how.
Features Included
14
Essays
12
Schools
8
Scores
18
Advice
9
ECs
2
Sports

Background

Hometown Central Valley, CA, California
GenderFemale
EthnicityWhite Non-Hispanic
Class of2020
First Gen College StudentYes
English First Language Yes

Results, Essays, and Advice

Accepted
Waitlisted or Withdrew
Denied
  • Yale University (New Haven, CT)
  • Harvard University (Cambridge, MA)
  • Stanford University (Stanford, CA)
  • Brown University (Providence, RI)
  • University of California - Berkeley (Berkeley, CA)
  • Pomona College (Claremont, CA)
  • University of California - Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA)
  • Claremont McKenna College (Claremont, CA)
  • Pepperdine University (Malibu, CA)
  • Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA)
  • University of California - Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA)
  • University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA)
Tap/click a school logo above to view essays and advice specific to that school.

Yale University (New Haven, CT)

Applied for a B.A. in Political Science and Government

Accepted and Enrolled Legacy: No

School Specific Essays

I was hushed and thrust into the upstairs spare bedroom. It was always my favorite room, the room my mother moved into when my father came home in drunken fits. I didn't understand what was happening. To my seven-year-old mind, it was the room where my mom would console me with tales about fairies when his addiction wreaked havoc in our home. But, at that moment, the room, once bespeckled with dancing fairies, was devoid of color and laden with...
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Supplemental Essay: “Why us” school essay
92 Words
Boundless educational opportunity, unlimited creative outlets, infinite research possibilities; Yale loves learning. As a kindred spirit, another enamored of learning, this was what first drew me to Yale. ̈Yale is November, crisp and energetic, ̈ my favorite author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, wrote in his first novel. Rather than the list of attributes and programs I appreciate at Yale, what brought me to apply is this vitality Yale possesses that Fitzgerald first wrote of nearly one hundred years ago. What I love...
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Supplemental Essay: Unique question posed by school
251 Words
Stanford students possess an intellectual vitality. Reflect on an idea or experience that has been important to your intellectual development. {I also submitted this to Harvard and Yale under similar question prompts}
I repressed the grimace sneaking its way onto my face as I stared at the guinea pig's frail thigh on the plate in front of me. It was cuy, guinea pig meat, a staple in the indigenous Andean community I was living in. A long-time vegetarian, I was somewhat disturbed. However, as a student, I recognized the price tag on this opportunity for education. I closed my eyes and took a bite. The people of Union Chauay were kind, accepting,...
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Supplemental Essay: Unique question posed by school
150 Words
As a 9-year-old, I never would have imagined the ineffable influence 4-H would have in my development of leadership skills and diverse interests. What began as a weekend hobby quickly transformed into a consuming search for my identity as a leader. As I grew older, my responsibilities increased: my passion for leadership and cooking translated into teaching the cooking project and winning awards at the State Fair Cook-off, my role as club president led me to hold county and state...
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Supplemental Essay: Unique question posed by school
180 Words
The leaves on the tree droop and drip before dissolving into a green and yellow puddle amid a sea of ambiguous chestnut. Fitzgerald and Tennyson and Orwell climb to 451 degrees. Animated screens blink to black as lines of code unravel. Nothingness. Written in ink, tumbling off the tip of a tongue, inscribed in the code of the universe; words dictate life. Without them, it is impossible to feel or think or write- three things imperative to the human experience. In...
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Supplemental Essay: Issue of personal significance
387 Words
I was first introduced to service-learning projects when I began my Emerald Star Project in 2012. I spent a few months planning, a few months overseeing the project, a week evaluating it, and, then, it was done nearly a year later. After all the work I had put into this project, Camp Sylvester, the camp that I grew up attending and currently volunteer as a counselor for, was no longer facing what had seemed inevitable merely a year earlier: bankruptcy and...
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Supplemental Essay: Issue of personal significance
192 Words
A change in my school's master schedule during my sophomore year brought me the news that it would be impossible to take Spanish III, Algebra II, and Honors Chemistry in one year. The schedule allowed for me to take only two of these three subjects, which I saw as equally important in achieving a well-rounded education. Not wanting to give up my opportunity to study any of these courses, I set out to find an alternate means of education. I...
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Supplemental Essay: Unique question posed by school
60 Words
Name your favorite books, authors, films, and/or artists: Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell, Record Collecting for Girls by Courteney E. Smith, A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Astrophil and Stella by Sir Philip Sidney, Henry David Thoreau, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Rachel Getting Married, Stuck in Love, music by Robert or Jason Schwartzman
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Supplemental Essay: Unique question posed by school
36 Words
What newspapers, magazines, and/or websites do you enjoy: Stanislaus Connections, Tumblr, National Geographic, Bon Appetit, The Kind Life, The Coalition on Homelessness' Street Sheet, Duolingo, Code Academy, Chefchloe.com, The Political Student, Lexicon of Sustainability
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Supplemental Essay: Unique question posed by school
56 Words
What is the most significant challenge that society faces today: Apathy. Passion drives progress and, as a society, we face the issue of desensitization to problems that do not affect us. Whether this comes from an inert selfishness or a Darwinian will for personal advancement, it is harmful to the humanity and legacy of our people.
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Supplemental Essay: Unique question posed by school
58 Words
How did you spend your last two summers: Studying food security and nutrition in Peru through the American Youth Leadership Program, showing dairy goats at the county fair, preparing for the California State Fair Cooking Competition, working as a camp counselor, attending 4-H leadership conferences, participating in an interstate exchange with Tennessee, and self-studying French and basic HTML.
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Supplemental Essay: Unique question posed by school
65 Words
What were your favorite events (e.g., performances, exhibits, competitions, conferences, etc.) in recent years: 4-H California Focus Citizenship Conference (elected Superintendent of Public Instruction), BVCHS's Our Town (I played Emily Webb and went through a terrible, month-long existential crisis while getting into character!), Latin American Artists Exhibit at SF MoMA, Young the Giant concert, Modesto Open Mic and Poetry Night, the French Cassettes concert
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Supplemental Essay: Unique question posed by school
60 Words
What historical moment or event do you wish you could have witnessed: The famed coup d'état of Catherine the Great's husband. I find it interminably interesting that Catherine took the throne by caring for the 'outcasts' of her husband's kingdom: the religious and the peasants. And I would love to experience her room meant for nondiscriminatory, intelligent idea exchange.
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Supplemental Essay: Unique question posed by school
173 Words
The Stanford "Roommate Essay"
Dear Diary, I am so perplexed by this letter I am supposed to write to my new roommate. There is, of course, a list of things I would like her to know about me: my love of coffee rivals the Gilmore girls’, my need to make vegan cupcakes often dominates my need to sleep, I believe vinyls belong in art museums, my goats are named after constellations, I burst into Disney ballads while doing just about everything, my typewriter sometimes ...
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School Specific Advice

How to increase chances at my school
198 Words
I ultimately chose not to attend Stanford because I fell in love with Yale's student body after I visited its admitted student weekend, however, I do have a few tips for an application to Stanford. The first: Pay attention to their prompts. They ask for a few things: a brief reflection on an extracurricular activity or community that shaped...
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Additional material sent in after waitlisted or deferred
286 Words
I applied EA to Harvard because I knew I was less excited about Harvard than other schools. I figured I would use this early application to see how I faired in a more competitive applicant pool. This was not a good idea, I believe the readers could absolutely could tell that I was not committed to Harvard. I was deferred. Once deferred, the best thing to do is have your guidance counselor or admissions counselor call the school. It seemed crazy to me at first,...
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List of schools I interviewed with and my interview experience
334 Words
I interviewed for only a handful of schools: Harvard, Yale and Brown. My interview for Harvard was very traditional. I met in a lawyer's office. He was jovial and kind and made a few jokes, but stuck to asking questions off of the sheet he was given. It eventually devolved into more casual conversation when he asked about some of the service work I was doing and some mutual contacts. It felt no different from a job interview. My interview for Brown was quite the opposite. I met an acclaimed filmmaker, poet and doctor in an upscale neighborhood in San...
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What I now know about my school that I never would have known prior to enrolling
97 Words
The "campus bubble" is significantly more real than anyone will prepare you for. Most of life at Yale takes place within a few block radius that very few students...
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5 adjectives that describe a typical student at my school (Feel free to elaborate!)
11 Words
Philosophical Idealistic...
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How important school spirit is around athletics at my school
8 Words
Very unimportant,...
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My plans for a typical weekend
108 Words
After classes wrap on Friday, I spend Friday nights working my campus job at the Yale Farm, making the BEST pizza. Saturday mornings I spend studying at Sterling or Koffee (with a...
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Why I declined other schools
196 Words
It all came down to admitted students' weekends. At Stanford's, I found myself very surprised by how intense the Techy-Fuzzy divide was. I met for coffee with someone I knew through Appblr who was an anthropology major, and they told me that they felt a lot of pressure to be more tech/STEM-oriented in their approach to their...
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How I would rate the career center or my advisor
16 Words
Not particularly involved with her...
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The stress level and competitiveness of a typical student at my school
3 Words
Very...
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What I now know about my school that I never would have known prior to enrolling
65 Words
What it's like to live in the snow. As a California-native, the grey, rainy and snowy weather was a HUGE...
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What I now know about my school that I never would have known prior to enrolling
51 Words
Living at Yale is very much living in a small bubble—a few block radius....
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More Essays

These essays haven't been tagged by school. Click school logos above to see tagged essays.

General Admissions Advice

Recommended summer activities during high school and college
123 Words
The most important thing about summer activities, and activities in general, is making sure they line up with your passion, whatever that may be. Your passion is what you sell to the admissions committee, because it turns...
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What set me apart from other applicants
216 Words
I believe developing a narrative for my application is what set me apart. I attempted to use my common app essay to convey that most clearly, connecting my childhood story with what I'm passionate about and what I hope to accomplish in my life. As I continued to work on the remainder of the essays and extracurricular answers, I focused on grouping together key ideas...
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Did you take a gap year? Tell us about your experience.
124 Words
I took a gap year after my freshman year of university. The quite unusual choice wasn't easy, but it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I spent the majority of the time traveling. Without...
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What I’d change about my application process
69 Words
I actually really enjoyed my application process, so here's some advice: find a community of people applying to the same schools...
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Whether I took out loans or applied for scholarships, and my advice
128 Words
As soon as I finished college applications, I modified my common app essay to fit scholarships. I applied to everything I could using this version of the essay and used modified supplements for other requirements. I received a...
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My advice about getting recommenders
88 Words
My strategy for getting recommenders was different from those of my friends. While many of them chose teachers from subjects they excelled at, I preferred to...
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High School Performance

Weighted GPA
4.30
(equivalent to 4.00 unweighted)
Rank
Top 1%
 
High School TypeReligious
Academic Performance in High School Steady

Test Scores

Highest ACT
33
 
ACT Score Details
 
Other ACT Scores
ACT Prep
Highest SAT
1520
on 1600 scale
Highest SAT
2220
 
SAT Score Details
 
Original SAT Score2220
Other SAT Scores
SAT Prep
PSAT Scores

AP / IB Classes and Scores

Details5 classes and scores

Sports

SportsBasketball, Volleyball

Extracurriculars

Activities4-H, Choir, Community Cleanup / Service, Hospital Volunteer, National Honor Society, Nonprofit, NGO or Charitable Organization, School Theater/Plays, Spanish Club, Tutoring/Mentoring

Experience & Awards

Volunteer Experiences
Awards Received

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