Yale SOM 2013 - Calling All Applicants

I am applying. Maybe @aerien can share his "secret" with us, and we all can join him at SOM.

@aerien: Any idea what the yield is looking like for SOM this year? Just trying to predict the open spots for R3/WL applicants. Can you do one of your insanely complex calculations and give us a number?

As always this forum has been great in delinating essays. Friends, any advices for the following essay... should i chose 2-4 traits and back them with examples or something else. what you guys did ?

The Yale School of Management provides a leadership education characterized by broad-minded and intellectually curious students with diverse backgrounds, a distinctive integrated curriculum, connections to one of the great research universities in the world, and the broad reach of an innovative and expanding global network of top business schools. What will you contribute to the Yale SOM community, and how will being part of it help you extend your professional vision?

This is the 'what activities do you want to be involved in' section of your 'Why MBA/Why School X' essay. You have to show them that you can clearly articulate your goals and what activities you would be involved in while at SOM to enhance your career but would also improve SOM.

Hope this helps.

Hailmary, you have such faith in me! I have no clue what the yield is looking like for SOM nor how it differs from previous years, but I can attempt some horrible guesstimation if you want to see it

Hailmary, you have such faith in me! I have no clue what the yield is looking like for SOM nor how it differs from previous years, but I can attempt some horrible guesstimation if you want to see it

Ok horrible guesstimation time! I'm a little hesitant to do this since it inevitably backfires, but here goes. If you choose to read this post, realize this is all in good fun. Numbers are taken out of thin air and are in no way tied to adcom data or any actual data for that matter. Read and/or believe everything posted here at your own risk. YMMV.

Last year we know SOM had 2,823 applications resulting in a 19% acceptance rate (536 admits) and a yield of 46% (249 people in the class of 2014).

Knowing that SOM wants to increase their class size, I'll guess 2015 will have
275 people max and might be more like 260-265 when all is said and done.

Now we've also heard that R1 saw an increase in apps from last year but we don't know by how much. I'll assume 10% since that seems reasonable to me with the increase in class size, so we'll guess SOM sees 3000-ish apps this year. We also know that last year's yield of 46% was a pretty good jump from years past (an increase of 4 percentage points I think) so we might not expect the yield to raise that much more..maybe to 47 or 48%...if it breaks 50% I think someone in adcom would through a party and then set up tents outside as classrooms (if you've been to campus, you know classrooms are pretty packed right now pre-dating new building opening in January 2014). I'd wait for class of 2016 for the yield to really jump again.

Now to more guesstimated numbers. I'm thinking R1, 2, 3 is split 40%, 50%, 10% for apps. Why is R3 so small? The timeline this year has a one month turn around between app deadline and results. That's not much time for review and interviews! So with that, based on my pick of 3k apps this year, I'm looking at about 1200/1500/300 applications per round. Based on numbers of people in the fb group (minus adcom, current students, cgsm admits that I'll put with R2 admits, and some people who are going elsewhere) I'd guess there's 100-110 people all in, deposit sent, matriculating. Going by that same proportion, I'd guess adcom is looking to fill 130-140 spots in R2 and about 30 in R3/WL (caveat: I feel like adcom would maintain they don't have caps per round, they just accept people and the class size works itself out). Based on a yield between 45 and 50% then you're looking at 285ish admits (including cgsm) in R2 and 55-60ish in R3 and off the WL.

Hope this sort of helps. Again this is completely speculation. I'm not connected with adcom in any way nor do I know any exact numbers from this year. This is solely based on trends from past years regarding class size, yield, and number of apps as well as the completely non scientific assessment of fb group joiners. Please do not make decisions off this guesstimation and don't complain if I'm completely wrong. Please don't PM me about these back of the envelope calculations or lack thereof. You are free to do your own calculations to occupy yourself for the next week if you're waiting on R2 results or until May/summer if you're waiting on R3 or the WL.

Hah! We'll see though I'm sure an actual consultant could do this in a much more detailed way. I'm quite satisfied with my adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing No fancy models here...

Great job @aerien. I think this is probably the most meaningful calculation/post on GmatClub this year. I am very proud of you!

30 in R3/WL sounds like a pretty decent number to me. My guess was somewhere around 10-15 apps. Now let's hope that adcom doesn't admit anyone in round 2 who has a similar profile as me. I know none of the round 1 admits do. By the way, I just saw the video of the new building on the SOM website. Have to say, but I am regretting my decision of not applying to Yale in R2.

back to round 2 stuff.. I digged through some old yale som newsletters and they stated that the 3 top reasons candidates are waitlisted are: 1. lack of quantitative preparation, 2. unclear post MBA goals, and 3. low test scores / GPA. I guess what I'm wondering is they interview 30-40% of people but only about half of those interviewed will ultimately get in. Hypothetically speaking if someone with little quant prep received an interview and got waitlisted do you think it's because of that deficiency? It would seem strange the adcom would interview that person if there were concerns going in, but I guess since it is a holistic review they're willing to put the lack of quant prep aside to see what else the candidate has to offer? any opinions?