If you are considering submitting a transfer application to Yale for the fall of 2025, the odds are not in your favor. For the fall of 2023, Yale received 1,479 applications for transfer. They accepted 18. That’s a 1.2% acceptance rate. That is, objectively, absurd. Getting into Yale as a first-year is hard enough, only 3.7%. Very few people get into Yale at first years, very few people choose to leave before graduating, opening up spots for transfer, and so there are nearly no spots available. So, how do you decide if you should apply to Yale as a transfer? And how do you know if you really might have a chance?
Well, first off, you don’t have a chance if you don’t apply. So, there’s that. But let’s get real. If you are thinking of applying to Yale and were previously rejected, it is very unlikely that you have change enough as an applicant in the past 1-2 years to change their mind. You had top scores and grades before, and you do now, too. You had a compelling profile before, same is true. Unless something exceptional has changed between when you first applied and now, the response from Yale will not be the different.
The strongest Yale transfer applicants are students who have never applied to an Ivy League school, or Ivy caliber school, before. Yale isn’t historically drawn to transfer applicants who want to jump from one top institution to another. Instead, they look for exceptional students who may have not even known that a school like Yale would be an option when they first applied to college.
Especially strong transfer applicants come from two-year colleges, the military, and strong state schools. They are exceptional people with interesting experiences and massive potential for growth if offered the opportunity. They also have great scores, but it doesn’t need to be the SAT or ACT — although it can be. Yale requires scores, but they offer a few options, including SAT, ACT, AP, and IB. They also only accept transfer for Fall start.
In this post we’re going to break down what you need to do to write a compelling Yale transfer application. This is especially important and useful if you are doing this application without support, or are applying from a two-year or much less competitive school. Yale has high expectations, but you can meet them.
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The Yale transfer application has a bunch of essays, and they are looking for something different than you may expect. They know from your scores and grades what you are capable of academically, and there certainly isn’t any space in the essays for making excuses. Rather, Yale is looking for stories. They want to read stories that illuminate who you are as a person, beyond your transcript or academic successes.
They want to admit transfers who will seriously augment the community at Yale by bringing a perspective that otherwise may be missing. So being who you are is more much important than showing them what you think they want to see.
THE SHORT ESSAYS
You’ve applied to college before, so you know the bones of this. But Yale is different, especially if you are applying from a less-competitive school that didn’t have a writing-intensive application. The most important thing is to give yourself time, approach the essays with an open heart, and be willing to take calculated risks. You need to push yourself further than you may have ever done before, but the cool part is that you learn something about yourself in the process.
Why do these academic areas appeal to you? (200 words of fewer)
This one is simple. Yale lets you select up to three academic areas of interest, and then gives you a space to explain, briefly, why. You don’t need to list three, though, and we often suggest only including two. Nothing should be ‘out of left field,’ either. What you list should make sense when they compare it against your transcript. Then, the story they tell should only strengthen the clarity of this connection. For example, if you are interested in American History and Architecture, that should be clear on your transcript even if you haven’t had access to architecture-related courses.
For this prompt, you take those connected areas and weave them into a mini-story that sets them in relationship with each other and your prospective journey at Yale. Using the same examples, maybe you are fascinated by the built environment, and how communities are defined, to some extent, by the physicality of the form the community takes. For this supplement you should write about this interest, and how deepening your knowledge of both American History and Architecture would allow you explore this concept more fully.
Don’t force this, though. As we said, it’s better to focus on just one thing than to do 2 or 3 where the connection feels forced.
If you experienced a significant challenge associated with preparing for or completing the standardized test(s) you selected, you may provide details here. (100 word limit).
If you are going to answer this prompt, you need to have a really good reason. What is a really good reason? Think a natural disaster or a tragic loss the day of the test. Anything less than that will not resonate strongly with the readers, especially when compared against responses from students who did face a truly enormous hurdle. If you do have something eligible to put here, be clear, concise, and to-the-point. Don’t try to write a novel with a full story arc in 100 words. Lay out the facts, then move on.
What are your reasons for applying to the Yale Transfer Program? (100 words or fewer)
This is a big question for a short prompt, but you likely have a big answer to go with it. The trick is to fit it into 100 words. If you are choosing to apply to Yale as a transfer, chances are this isn’t something you are doing for fun. You’ve thought long and hard about it, and you have clear reasons for why Yale is where you want to be. These tend to cluster around a few things: opportunity, community, and academic rigor. Yale is Yale, they know that, so they don’t need you to flatter them. However, they do want to hear what it is about Yale that makes you say, “yes, that.” You can study whatever it is you want to study, at least in a broad sense, at hundreds, if not thousands, of colleges that are easier to get into. So, why Yale?
Tell us about a time when you made a positive impact on others. (100 words or fewer)
This is a great opportunity to write very specifically about a moment that is representative of a larger commitment or experience. For example, if you volunteer with a food bank, the best way to answer this prompt is to focus on a moment sorting through donations, putting together bags for families. Then zoom out to situate this experience within the context of the food bank and your commitment to increasing access to healthy food for families in need.
Describe a disappointment you have experienced. What was your response? (100 words or fewer)
Another great prompt! It can be a bit uncomfortable to get into, though, as writing about disappointment or failure in a college application feels counterintuitive, at best.
The most important step is picking what to write about. If you select something too ‘soft’, it will feel like your side-stepping (graduating 2nd in your class rather than 1st is more like a brag posed as a let-down). And if you select something too dramatic it might sound, well, dramatic. Instead, we recommend focusing on something focused, meaningful, and for which you were able to take action. For example, if you didn’t make an athletic or academic team the first time you tried out, perhaps you focused on practicing, studying, or training, and subsequently made the team when you tried out again. This shows commitment, growth, and progress in the face of disappointment — which is exactly what Yale wants to see.
Outside of your family, who has been your strongest advocate? Why has this relationship and connection been important to you? (100 words or fewer)
Whoa! This question is a doozy and a very interesting choice from Yale. We recommend students avoid writing too much about anyone other than themselves because it’s a distraction (sorry grandparents), but this question is an obvious exception. We recommend picking a teacher, academic coach, or mentor, and focusing on how you’ve felt rather than focusing on what they’ve done. Simply feeling supported is transformative, and communicating that should be your goal when responding to this prompt.
THE PERSONAL STATEMENTS
Up next are the longer Yale essays, which offer you the opportunity to go into your why and what when it comes to pursuing a transfer.
Please reflect on how your past experiences have transformed or strengthened your personal values, opinions, or goals. (Maximum 400 words or 2800 characters)
This prompt is extremely broad, and offers an opportunity to talk about your background. We love this. But the broadness can entice students to write supplemental essays that try to do ‘too much.’ That’s a bad impulse. Like with all the essays for Yale, you want to pick a direction and then stay focused.
So, pick one experience and then use that as the frame for the whole essay. This could be a hard experience or a beautiful one, or one that is both hard and beautiful. Don’t worry about it being connected to your major, but do focus on what it says about you. You want to illustrate characteristics like grit, resilience, tenacity, focus, clarity of purpose, and a mindset that prioritizes elevating others and strengthening community. Sometimes the best way to pick a story or experience, then, is to start with what you want to emphasize about yourself.
Pick a value, characteristic, or trait, and then identify a story that points to the origin of that thing in your life. Maybe watching a parent or sibling illustrated something for you, or pushing yourself past a perceived boundary unlocked something. Tell that story, emphasize what you learned or gained, and then look towards the future. How did this shape your goals and vision? Be specific.
In this second essay, please discuss your intellectual interests. Are there topics that you would like to deeply explore during your undergraduate years? Please reflect upon what you hope to gain from a liberal arts and sciences education. (Maximum 400 words or 2800 characters)
This essay prompt sounds a lot like the very first short answer prompt, which asked you about why you are into in the academic interests you selected. This one is a bit different, though, in that they want you to be super specific about a few (or even just one) topics, and how you could explore it at Yale. Now, ‘topic’ is not the same as ‘major.’ By using the term ‘topic’, they are signaling that they want you to go deeper. If you’ve done or participated in research, this is a fabulous place to bring it into your application. How could you go deeper into the topic you’ve researched at Yale — specifically. This might be mentioning a lab, namedropping a professor, or naming specific courses.
If you haven’t done research, you almost certainly still have something strong to emphasize here. Give yourself time to brainstorm around what you care about academically, and what you most want to learn more about at Yale. Then zoom in as far as you can, whether it’s studying a specific thinker, writer, moment in history, mathematical concept, or anything else that fits into a Yale major.
Finally, remember the last part of the prompt where they ask you to frame your response within the context of a liberal arts education — one that brings together the humanities and the sciences. So, when you are mentioning the ways that you’ll explore the topic that fascinates you, remember to pull from more than just the obvious places. Look ‘across the aisle’, if you will, to mention opportunities for exploration in fields other than your field of focus.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Please use this space to provide the admissions office with any additional information that may be relevant to your application but was not captured elsewhere in your application. (Maximum 400 words or 2800 characters)
This isn’t a ‘must use’ space, but we highly recommend strategically selecting something to put here. For example, you could put an abstract from a research paper you authored or heavily contributed to. Or you can describe an experience you had that has influenced your desire to transfer to Yale, but whatever you put here it needs to be new information. It should not be repeating anything that has already appeared in your application. This is also not a place for making excuses. We see students fight the urge to try to ‘bridge a gap’ here in their application, excusing a low score or poor grade. That’s a bad impulse, and only brings more attention to your weakest spot. Instead, build a strength.
After submitting the application there is more to do if you are applying to Yale as a transfer. Transfer applicants are given the option to record a video for admissions officials to consider alongside their application. While this is optional, we insist that applicants do it if at all possible. If you want to be seriously considered, you need to take every opportunity they offer you — and this is a big one. A small number of transfer applicants will also be offered the opportunity to do a live interview. If you are offered this and don’t take it, your chances of getting in are basically zero.
Defying the odds takes hard work, planning, and expertise. Contact us for your best transfer strategy.