什么是likely letter?

What is a likely letter? 

 

Three years ago, a local kid was virtually accepted by every college she applied. The applicant also received a likely letter from Yale several weeks prior to the typical dates when the elite colleges released their decisions. The likely letter eventually helped her make a choice between Penn, Yale and Harvard. I made this order since she ruled out Harvard in the previous round of her cross-admit decision process. And now she shows her leadership ability again on the Yale campus, particularly in her extracurricular activities, by serving as the Publisher of the Yale Daily News (YDN), the highest position on the business side of this oldest college news in the United States. The editor-in-chief of YDN, such as William F. Buckley, was usually a target to be tapped during junior year by the Skull and Bones or other secret societies. In some small liberal arts schools like Amherst or Williams, “early write” notification serves the same purpose of likely letter. So what is a likely letter?

 

We are all aware that the agreements of Ivy League schools have prohibited Ivies to offer athletic scholarships to the top student athletes with potentials to become a professional. This is an obvious reason why their sports teams are basically not in the same level as state universities’ as well as Stanford or Duke’s basketball or football. Similar to the sports scholarships, Ivy League also have a rule for them to disclose their admission decision letters in a very narrow window of time in late March or early April for the regular decision process. Yale undergraduate admissions dean Brenzel described the likely letter as “…we want this student to have ample opportunity to see everything they can see about Yale…” But the likely letter is one of the few strategies by the admissions office to gain competitive advantage over their rivals by providing the first positive impression to their top applicants on the condition that no rules were violated. The letter basically would say that if you are not going to have a major setback on your academic performance, you will be expecting an official admitted letter from us on April 1. The surprise and excitement coming along with the arrival of likely letter would have enhanced the chance of top applicant to matriculate.

 

Each year Yale issued approximately 100 likely letters from over 25,000 applicants. After the regular two reviewers’ reading of the files, the decision on likely letter has to be made by Yale dean himself. The likely letter is really a lucky letter that an applicant would not expect but dream to have it in the regular round of competition. The following materials, including a real likely letter that student disclosed, will be enriching your knowledge on how likely letter works.

 

 

‘Likely letters’ part of Yale’s admit strategy

By Kimberly Chow, Staff Reporter

Published Thursday, April 26, 2007, Yale Daily News

 

For most high school seniors waiting to hear back from Ivy League colleges this year, March 29 was the day circled in red on the calendar. But relief arrived unexpectedly early for some students like Rui Bao, who received the coveted, yet somewhat mythical, wink from Yale: the likely letter.

 

In late February, Bao first received a call from her Yale alumni interviewer telling her that she was “likely” to be accepted in March. Later that night, she got a similar call from her Yale admission. The next day, a Yale sweatshirt arrived courtesy of her local alumni club in St. Louis, Mo., and then a few days later, she found a letter in her mailbox from Dean of Admissions Jeff Brenzel congratulating her on her stellar application and declaring that acceptance was imminent.

 

While not all likely letter recipients find themselves showered with the same level of attention as Bao — who immigrated from Chinaat age 6, is ranked second in her class and received numerous awards, including being named a Coca-Cola Scholar — the letter alone is a momentous overture from a college.

 

Likely letters, which are sent to a small proportion of regular decision applicants between January and early March, are intended to alert certain students that they will likely be accepted once late March or early April comes around. College admissions officers listed various strategic reasons for this practice, including increasing the chance that an accepted student will matriculate. Some counselors said the letters appear to target particularly desirable — and courted — categories of applicants, such as ethnic minorities.

 

Although all Ivy League schools are bound to abide by a common spring notification date for regular decision applicants, they are allowed to communicate their intentions to students earlier. While sending likely letters to athletes a common practice for schools around the nation, academic likely letters are a lesser-known phenomenon. One recent recipient of a likely letter from Yale even thought the letter was a joke when it first came in the mail.

 

But admissions officers at some Ivy League and small private schools acknowledged sending such letters to at least a few students every year. In fact, following the recent decision of Harvard and Princeton universities to eliminate their early admissions programs, some counselors speculated that these schools may increase the number of likely letters they send in order to ensure that the top students have ample time to consider their options.

 

The administrative perspective

 

Brenzel said the fundamental reason that the Yale admissions office sends likely letters is that students admitted under regular decision have just a month to make their decisions, during which time they may be considering many other offers. Students admitted under early action, on the other hand, have months to learn more about Yale and imagine themselves on campus before they hear back from any other schools.

 

Admissions officers hope to identify those regular-decision applicants who are virtually certain of acceptance and to put Yale on their radars as soon as possible, especially as they may also have received early offers from other colleges.

 

“As the admissions officers are reading this enormous stack of applications, they from time to time come across a student — and it could be a student from any background or with any kind of interest or talent — but who, relative to other students from that background or interest or talent, stands out even within a very strong pool as being quite extraordinary,” Brenzel said.

 

A prospective likely-letter recipient could be attractive to admissions offers for any number of reasons, Brenzel said, from extraordinary accomplishments in the sciences to having overcome unusual situations of disadvantage. But all likely-letter recipients must meet three criteria: They must be such strong candidates that they are virtually certain to have applied to other competitive schools, it must be virtually certain that the most competitive schools will accept them, and last, Yale officers must be virtually certain that they will admit the applicant, even without seeing the entire applicant pool.

 

“We have to answer those three questions and ask, ‘Are we certain we’re going to admit this student?’” Brenzel said. “If we are, we want this student to have ample opportunity to see everything they can see about Yale because we know they will be offered this opportunity elsewhere as well.”

 

Such exemplary files are read, as are all applications, by two admissions officers. But if these readers agree to nominate the applicant to receive a likely letter, the application proceeds not to the admissions committee but to the judgment of Brenzel himself. Sometimes, he said, he will ask a member of the Yale community who shares the student’s academic or extracurricular specialty to evaluate the application, but he always has the final word on whether the student will receive a likely letter.

 

Brenzel declined to say how many such letters Yale sends out each year. But a student familiar with the likely letters program said Yale sent out about 120 early letters this year.

 

Harvard, which also uses likely letters to target top academic recruits, sends out roughly 100 of them each year, Harvard Director of Admissions Marlyn McGrath-Lewis said.

 

McGrath-Lewis said Harvard sees likely letters in part as a reward for extraordinary students, who may excel in areas from mathematics to music. She said admissions officers must be able to predict how the candidate will compare to the rest of their fellow Cantab hopefuls.

 

“We do it when we feel that it would make sense to indicate with a degree of certainty that someone will be admitted,” she said. “It’s not part of some complicated thing, it’s a helpful tool for us to be able to have and it’s certainly helpful for the applicant, and that’s why we do it.”

 

For now, Princeton Universityuses likely letters primarily for athletic recruits, spokeswoman Cass Cliatt said. But in light of recent policy changes that eliminated early admissions at Princeton, she said, the number of academic likely letters could increase.

 

“With the end of Early Decision, it’s possible that the university might consider expanding this practice beyond scholar-athletes in cases that we want to ensure that a student thinks seriously about Princeton,” Cliatt said in an e-mail. “However, we recognize that sending out a significant number of these would defeat the purpose of ending early decision, and that is not our goal.”

 

Likely-letter programs may be more important for smaller schools hoping to compete with the Ivy heavyweights for top applicants.

 

Dick Nesbitt, director of admissions at Williams College, a top-ranked liberal arts school in western Massachusetts, said his office has expanded and formalized the “early write” program of early notification. Williams sends about 200 of these letters each year to outstanding academic students, he said.

 

“The philosophy really is that it’s an honor [to receive an early write letter] because they don’t have to wait until later,” Nesbitt said. “It gives us a little more chance to recruit those students through letters from faculty chairs or alumni contacting them, and it also gives them the dates of our program for admitted students so they have a little more time to set up travel arrangements.”

 

This year, Williams accepted 1,120 students from an applicant pool of 6,437 for an acceptance rate of 17.4 percent.

 

A winning strategy?

 

In an increasingly competitive admissions landscape — for institutions as well as individual students — likely letters appear to be an strategic tool for colleges to recruit from highly desirable groups, high school counselors said.

 

“It’s the students that fit institutional need, whatever that is,” said Ellen Fisher, college adviser at the public Bronx High School of Sciences in New York. “At Princeton it may be athletes, to someone else it could be a variety of reasons — it could be that they’re looking for engineering students, or whatever need they have at that particular moment for a specific reason.”

 

Some of those students may come from a particular demographic that the college would like to single out and lure away from competitors, counselors suggested, citing examples of outstanding minority or low-income students who received likely letters.

 

Elyse Artin, college counselor at the public John F.Kennedy High School in Los Angeles, said a couple of her students during her 10 years at the predominantly Hispanic school have received likely letters from Yale and Harvard. The boy who received the letter from Harvard was Hispanic, from a single-parent home and of an income level sufficiently low to make him eligible for the National School Lunch Program, she said. He was also ranked first in his class and entertained offers from all the schools to which he applied, including Princeton, Artin said. Although the early notification from Harvard ultimately was not the deciding factor in his decision to spend four years in Cambridge, Mass., she said the letter represented an attempt to reach out to him and distinguish Harvard from the other offers.

 

Xinyuan Wu ’09, who was ranked second in her class and received likely letters from both Dartmouth and Columbia colleges, said she had heard that Dartmouth sends out many likely letters — between 400 and 500 each year, according to the student newspaper The Dartmouth — in part to entice minority applicants, whom the school often loses to competing institutions. Women may also be a target for Dartmouth, she said. Two of the three women who applied from her school received likely letters, and all three were ultimately accepted.

 

But Brenzel said the admissions office would not strategically send likely letters just to woo applicants away from its competitors.

 

“A single extraordinary dimension by itself is not enough for consideration to receive a likely nomination,” he said. “We are looking for the Yale student, for someone who connects intensely with other people and is accomplished in more ways than one, so our likely letters may not coincide exactly with Harvard’s or Stanford’s. They may see a different kind of student as being a quintessential Harvard or a quintessential Stanford student.”

 

It is difficult to define the type of student who receives a likely letter, Brenzel said, and it is only possible to characterize the recipient group as “extraordinary” because what matters is their individual context.

 

Private admissions counselor Jane Shropshire, the former president of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, emphasized that no matter what particular demographic a candidate may fall into, a college would not send a letter if the applicant were not exceptional in some way.

 

“I could imagine that there might be demographics coming into play, or extraordinary out-of-school accomplishments, but even if it’s a student who isn’t truly academically at the very top of the applicant pool, it would have to be someone who is strong enough in the context of the applicant pool so that it wouldn’t be a complete surprise,” she said.

 

‘Students feel wanted’

 

Regardless of why students are selected to receive likely letters, the aim is to lure top students to matriculate. The letters are flattering, counselors and students said, and give applicants more time to investigate their options.

Gabriel Monteros ’09, a half-Hispanic student who received a likely letter from Yale in February of his senior year, said he had not expected to be singled out by admissions officers.

 

“I had never thought of myself as a particularly well-qualified candidate for Yale so I was really excited,” he said. “It was totally a surprise.”

 

Monteros, who was ranked second in his graduating class at a public school in Pasadena, Calif., said the likely letter may have been the “number one” reason he chose to attend Yale because it made him feel particularly wanted.

 

Beth Slattery, a counselor at the private Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, said students perceive a likely letter to be a sign that they were truly outstanding among their peers.

 

“I think it makes them feel wanted and believe they were probably at the high end of the applicant pool,” she said. “It can have two effects: students feel wanted or maybe think ‘[This school] isn’t as selective as I thought,’ but the overwhelming feeling is that they are flattered by it and want to look into it. At that point they rarely know what their other options are going to be, so they have more time to invest in that school.”

 

Vivek Raman, a senior at the public Libertyville High School in Illinois, said he first received a phone call from his Yale admissions officer in February, and then received a likely letter.

 

“He said ‘Don’t commit a murder and don’t flunk out of school, and you’ll be in by April first,’” Raman said.

 

His first reactions, he said, were shock and disbelief, since he had previously been unaware of the existence of likely letters. In fact, Raman said, he first thought it was a prank, but once he realized the letter’s import, he felt both excited and flattered. Most importantly, at least from the Yale admissions perspective, he said the early notice allowed him to spend time investigating the Yale experience. By the time Bulldog Days arrived, he said, he was already almost certain that he would choose Yale over Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 

“The likely program is extremely effective because I wouldn’t have done nearly as much research I hadn’t gotten a likely letter,” he said. “I was able to talk to a lot of students there, and I was in constant contact with my admissions officer, who set me up with a professor at Yale who is head of the new nanoscience center. It showed me how many opportunities Yale has to offer.”

 

Raman, whose parents moved to the Chicago suburbs from India before he was born, is ranked first in his high school class, took 15 Advanced Placement exams throughout his four years and has an intensive background in science, including research.

 

Confusion and strife

 

But likely letters sometimes create confusion or even strife rather than putting students’ fears to rest, and in other cases they may not have the intended effect of luring the applicant to matriculate after all.

 

Because likely letters are unofficial and therefore somewhat vaguely worded, counselors said, students can be confused about what receiving a letter actually means, Slattery said.

 

“They’re relieved once someone actually lets them know that that’s what it is, but sometimes they’re confused because they don’t know for sure that it’s saying what they think it’s saying and they don’t want to get overconfident,” she said. “As a counselor, I feel I have to be careful because even though I believe I know what it means, I’m never going to be fully comfortable until they have an admissions packet in their hands.”

 

Likely letters may also increase anxiety for the recipient’s classmates, particularly those who have applied to the same school.

 

Dean Jacoby, director of college counseling at the private Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Conn., said applicants who do not receive a letter in early spring may wonder what this means about the status of their application, he said. Specifically, they may see it as a sign that they are unlikely to be accepted or that they are not at the top of the applicant pool, he said. It also reactivates the anxiety of students who are trying to relax between sending in their applications and hearing back from schools, he said.

 

“You would have time to focus on other things, but that time disappears because college news starts trickling in and people’s attention gets distracted,” Jacoby said. “It’s not devastating to [Choate] as a community, but it does have a downside.”

 

Wu said she became worried about her Dartmouth application after a classmate received a likely letter, so it was a relief to receive her own in February. Out of the five students from her high school who applied to Dartmouth, she said, three received likely letters, which created anxiety for the remaining two, only one of whom was ultimately admitted.

 

But Nesbitt said Williams tries to avoid this by taking into account the high school background of a possible early write recipient. If several students applied to Williams from the same high school and are all promising, he said, admissions officers will not single out one of these applicants for fear of worrying the other candidates. The usual scenario is that the early write recipient is the single applicant from his or her high school or is significantly stronger than the other applicants, Nesbitt said.

 

Likely letters are also no guarantee that a student will choose to matriculate.

 

Jennifer Graham, director of college counseling at the private Winsor School in Boston, said a few of her outstanding counselees typically receive such letters from Ivy League schools, but the likely letter is not always an important factor in where they decide to attend.

 

“I do think it can influence them positively because they have more time to think about the school, but I couldn’t say whether in the end that that’s the deciding factor,” she said. “In the end, [the two or three students who received them this year] did not go to the schools that issued them likely letters. I think they looked carefully at the schools, but in the end it didn’t totally convince them.”

 

But while likely letters may not in and of themselves dictate an applicant’s choice, they often compel high schoolers to take a closer look at the college.

 

Although Bao is still deciding between Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, she said the time she has had to consider Yale’s offer and to visit the campus for Bulldog Days were enough to help her narrow her choices and take Harvard out of the running.

“I wouldn’t say the actual receiving of the letter factored into my decision, but the fact that I got it this early and could consider Yale has affected my decision and has made me lean towards Yale a lot more than I would have,” Bao said.

 

Bao, and other admitted students, have until May 1 to choose where to matriculate.

 

Quick Facts about "Likely Letters" (adopted from collegeconfidential.com, 2009)

 

From my experience w/Yale admissions as an alumni volunteer, here are some facts for potential Yale applicants (much of which applies to Likely letters in general)

1) What's a Likely Letter? Yale and some other selective private schools will send out handfuls of letters out to their most coveted recruits for the incoming freshman class. These act as unofficial offers of acceptance and are clearly worded as such. They are "unofficial" because by Ivy agreement, "official" offers can not be made before April 1 (except by those colleges that offer EA/ED). These letters are, in a way, to keep the students from pre-maturely committing to other offers (e.g full athletic scholarship offer from a State school) and to confirm to the applicant that a spot is awaiting them. NCAA rules allow many colleges to seek "letters of commitment" from athletes. This is a way to counter that impulse.

2) How does this differ from other communiques from athletic coaches? The language that coaches use is defined and often limited in scope ("I'll talk to admissions on your behalf", "I'd like you to apply", "We're interested. Please send us a tape"). Likely letters are issued by the Admissions office and are unequivocal with words to the effect of "Unless you screw up major, you will receive an offer of admission from us in April"

3) Do only Athletic recruits get Likely Letters? No. Yale sends out about 100 Likely Letters to non-athletic applicants. These are clearly the cream of the crop amongst that year's applicants. Knowing full well that these kids will be the most sought after by peer institutions and will be the ones most showered with merit financial aid, Yale sends out Likely Letter as a clear statement that "We want you. Please come to New Haven"

4) What if I don't receive a Likely Letter? Am I sunk? Yale accepts about 1950 applicants each year. Only 200-300 Likely letters are issued. My calculator tells me that the vast majority of accepted students never get one.

5) When do Likely Letters get sent? The Joint Ivy agreement says that highly coveted athletic recruits may even receive them in the fall starting on Oct 1-- along with strong suggestions that the kids apply SCEA. It strikes me that the super slam-dunk YES, non-athlete applicants in the SCEA round won't get Likely Letters because they're informed of their acceptance in mid December. All SCEA admitees are highly courted from December until May, the formal reply date. The bulk of Likely Letters seem to go out in the early part of the year (late January to February). The last dates these could possibly go out is March 15.

6) How Reliable are Likely Letters? According to anecdote, the LL is the college's commitment to the student. Only tremendous student foul ups (grades drop off a cliff, criminal activity, fraudulent application materials, etc.) would cause a reversal. But then again, these would cause a college to rescind a regular admissions offer, too.

I hope this helps. If I'm off, hopefully someone tweak my info. Good luck all. Enjoy your senior year!

PS: I never got one. Never heard of them until a few years ago when I interviewed a girl who had one from us and Harvard. She chose them and I'm glad she did! She was quite unlikeable.

 

 

A real likely letter from Yale

January 7, 2004

Ms. Connie Leung

Palos Verdes Estates, CA 90274-1939

Dear Ms. Leung:

 

            Congratulations! Every once in a while in the midst of reading hundreds of files, an admissions officer will be so excited about a student's application that he or she will come to me to ask if we might reserve a place in next year's class for that student. I am very pleased to tell you that this has happened in your case, and that we are provisionally reserving a place in the Class of 2008 for you. Such an offer before the normal notification date is highly unusual: from the record number of over 17,700 applications we received this year, not even 100 applications inspire us to send this sort of early notice. As long as you maintain (or exceed!) your current level of performance in school and there is no negative change in your record, I anticipate that the Committee on Admissions will mail you a formal letter of admission on April 2, 2004.

 

            From what we have learned about you from your application, we believe not only that you are right for Yale, but that Yale is right for you. Even when compared to other premier universities in this country, Yale is a very special place. We have the commitment to undergraduate education that small liberal arts colleges are noted for, but that commitment is further enhanced by the full range of academic resources that only a major research university can provide. Your fellow students will be among the brightest in the world and equally remarkable for their achievements in a broad range of extracurricular activities. Our residential colleges bring together a remarkably diverse group of students to learn from one another and from the faculty who live among them. Yale famously nurtures the formation of lifelong friendships - strong ties that are based on shared experience differently experienced. And for three hundred years, Yale's graduates have gone on to make important contributions to the nation and to the world.

 

            Your Yale education will offer the combination of diverse and stimulating course offerings with the opportunity to be an active participant in original scientific research. With the help of advice from your faculty mentors and your residential college dean, you will be given the opportunity to shape your own program of study, with the expectation that you will explore many different subjects and methods, while studying at least one of them in depth.

 

            I would like to tell you about one special program that I think might be of particular interest to a person of your abilities and promise. Perspectives on Science (informally known as “PS”) offer a select group of freshmen who have unusually strong backgrounds in science and mathematics a unique window on scientific research at Yale. Some of Yale's most distinguished researchers and teachers present a series of lectures every other week and in the alternate week small groups of students and faculty meet as colleagues to discuss the lecture topics in more depth, exploring the cutting edge of contemporary scientific research. At the end of the freshman year, PS provides these students with funding for summer research opportunities. Students generally apply for consideration for this program during the summer before their freshman year, but the impressiveness of your credentials leads us to wish to guarantee you admission directly to this program on final admission to Yale.

 

            Within the next few weeks, you will be contacted by a Yale faculty member, who will be happy to talk with you about the many opportunities here, but many students find that a visit to Yale plays a very important part in their appreciation of just how much Yale has to offer.

 

            We hope you will plan now to accept our invitation to attend Bulldog Days at Yale, Monday and Tuesday, April 19th and 20th, when admitted students will converge at Yale from all over the country to spend time with students and faculty and to get a real taste of the Yale experience.

 

            If you are unable to attend Bulldog Days, let me invite you to campus whenever it is convenient. If you plan to visit sometime other than Bulldog Days, please contact James Nondorf, our Director of Student Outreach, at 203-432-0772, or simply fax in the attached campus visit form. In the meantime if you have questions about your application or about any programs at Yale, or wish advice or help of any kind, please feel free to write or call me personally.

 

            Congratulations once again from all of us. We look forward to seeing you at Yale!

Sincerely yours

 

Richard H. Shaw
Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid

RHS/sef

Posted 星期日, 06/06/2010 - 09:34 at www.tongjiyiren.com