Like most U.S. colleges and universities, Yale accepts the Common App (“Common App”) for undergraduate admission. The Common App provides a single web portal that allows high school students to apply to multiple colleges without needing to reenter their information each time. Importantly, the Common App also includes an essay component, which almost every college using the application portal requires applicants to submit. The Common App essay currently has seven prompts that are typically repeated each year and are reviewed and updated every few years. Applicants choose one of the seven prompts and write a 650-word personal statement responsive to the prompt. Unlike most other college application essays, the Common App essay is not intended to show the applicant’s interest in a particular institution. Instead, it provides a broad overview of who the applicant is and showcases the applicant’s writing style. This book includes many Common App essays to give you a broader sense of who Yale students are and how they view and describe their identity outside a Yale-specific context.
In addition to the Common App essays, Yale also requires applicants to submit additional essays specific to Yale—these are often referred to as supplements. Since these essays are sent only to Yale, the responses should show the applicant’s interest in Yale in particular. Yale’s supplement essay prompts have changed slightly over the past few years, but generally fluctuate around the same general themes and tackle the same topics. This book exhibits applicants spanning across four years and their responses to a variety of essay prompts, thus exposing you to a greater variety of ideas and writing.
Throughout the book, we refer to the students by the class year they were in when we first began compiling this book. Accordingly, the first-years are in the class of 2021 and applied in the 2016–2017 application cycle, the sophomores are in the class of 2020 and applied in the 2015–2016 application cycle, and so on. We have organized this book into sections based on the students’ class years, and listed the prompts for that specific application cycle at the beginning of each section. Though the essays do vary between years, reading the supplements presented in this book would still undoubtedly be a great resource for planning your own essays.
Some institutions, including Yale, require applicants to write an additional essay if they indicate interest in a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) major. Only some applicants need to write this additional essay, but we have included some here for aspiring STEM students to understand what Yale considers to be compelling in this unique essay.
Finally, please keep in mind that we have made as few edits as possible to the essays featured in this book because we want to provide examples of actual college application essays that helped students get into Yale. Although there may be some grammatical errors, we prioritized upholding the integrity of the original essays, as they reflect the constraints and restrictions that limit all applicants, such as word count, paragraph form, and text-stylization options. The essays you will see in this book most accurately represent how the essays arrived on the desks of the admissions officers. All in all, our purpose for compiling this book is to demystify the college application process and make it more transparent for prospective students.