Post
by tomwatts » Sun Dec 19, 2010 2:32 am
I don't know if anyone's done this yet or even cares, but I was mildly curious, so here's some random data and analysis. Giant post, so skip to the bottom if you just want to read the interesting points.
If you take the days on which Yale tweeted that it was admitting people last year, and cross-reference that with LSN from last year, you get the following (complete date or submit date if asterisked, LSAT, GPA):
12/11 (Fri): 10/22, 179, 3.9
12/14 (Mon): 10/16, 173, 3.78
12/15 (Tues): No tweet, but a reported admit on LSN, a 10/24, 176, 3.95
12/18 (Fri): 11/4*, 175, 4
12/21 (Mon): No tweet, but a reported admit, a 10/31*, 178, 4.03
12/22 (Tues): Suddenly, five people. We had 11/4, 175, 3.95; 11/2*, 176, 3.86; 10/29*, 173, 4.03; 11/4, 173, 3.9, and 10/21, 172, 3.82. Tweet suggested that these were the final admits for the calendar year.
1/6 (Wed): No tweet, but a reported admit, a 10/9, 179, 3.83
1/12 (Tues): Tweet, but no LSN
1/22 ((Fri): First reported rejection, a 10/17, 174, 3.65
1/23 (Sat): 11/23, 172, 3.95
1/27 (Wed): A whole swath of rejections. Complete dates range from 10/27 to 12/18. Almost all of these people had either LSATs in the 160's or GPAs at 3.82 or lower (or both), though there were two exceptions.
1/30 (Sat): Rejections and acceptances on the same date, but almost all rejections. The one acceptance was a 12/2, 175, 3.98. The rejections ran complete dates from 10/22 to 12/17, and the numbers were more or less all across the board. Rejections continue in the same fashion throughout the rest of the cycle.
2/1 (Mon): Acceptances are 10/22, 175, 3.86, and a 1/19, 178, 3.96.
2/11 (Thurs): Tweet, but no LSN
2/12 (Fri): First LSN waitlist, eventually accepted! Was a 11/3, 173, 3.88.
Notably, only one other person on LSN reports hearing anything until 3/6.
2/23 (Tues): Tweet, but no LSN
2/24 (Wed): Tweet, but no LSN
2/28 (Sun): Tweet, but no LSN
3/6 (Sat): 2/1, 178, 4, and 1/11, 175, 4.04.
3/7 (Sun): 1/20, 173, 3.94, and 2/23, 177, 4.05, and 1/21, 176, 3.79.
3/10 (Wed): No tweet, but a reported admit, a 1/15, 176, 3.9
3/13 (Sat): 1/1*, 178, 3.93
3/15 (Mon): 2/11, 178, 3.92, and 1/17*, 177, 4.12; tweet makes first reference to rejection, but describes it as "again"
3/18-19 (Thurs-Fri) involved about a million more rejections.
3/20 (Sat): 1/19, 171, 3.8, and 1/8, 168, 4
3/22 (Mon): 11/16, 180, 3.79
3/23 (Tues): 11/18, 171, 3.97, and 11/16, 171, 3.91
3/25 (Thurs): No tweet, but a reported admit, a 1/8*, 171, 3.9
3/26 (Fri): 1/8, 178, 3.9, and 10/23, 179, 3.94
3/30 (Tues): Tweet, but no LSN
3/31 (Wed): 2/26, 176, 3.92, and 2/8*, 171, 3.94
4/12 (Mon): 3/12, 167, 3.73, and 3/11, 175, 3.91
4/13 (Tues): 3/9, 175, 3.8
A million waitlists and rejects on 4/15 (Thurs).
4/19 (Mon): tweet indicates that all initial admit, waitlist, reject decisions are done (waitlist is still to be figured out).
I could probably get more information from TLS's topic last year, but it's 140 pages, and I'm not THAT curious.
Analysis: First of all, not shockingly, earlier applicants tended to hear back sooner, and later applicants tended to hear back later. However, bizarrely (though admittedly we know why), this trend was not at all universal. Those two mid-November complete dates that were admitted in late March are distinctive. There are 37 outright admits on LSN, which accounts for probably about a quarter of the outright admits (not sure what percentage come in off waitlist vs. are admitted from the get-go, but I'm assuming the waitlist admits are dramatically fewer). So my feeling is that those two are actually out of a fair number. Heck, there was a 3/26 admit who was complete on 10/23 (person was waiting for more than 5 months but got admitted outright, not even waitlisted). So, as we say around here but now I've shown to my own satisfaction, if you applied early but don't hear back for a million years, you could very well still be admitted. But some people do hear back very quickly, and there doesn't seem to be a pattern in numbers, particularly.
Second, while there are admits on tweet days generally, there appear to be more on some days than on others. There were 5 LSN admits before the week of Christmas last year (that is, before 12/21), and then there were 6 total on 12/21 and 12/22. The tweet described it as wrapping up the year, which certainly does fit with the idea of more admits. For reference, this year, the Monday and Tuesday before Christmas are 12/20 and 12/21 (2-3 days from now). They do seem to be a little bit earlier this year (started on 12/6, did more on 12/7, 12/8, 12/10, and 12/13), so there may not be as many pushed to right before the break this year as there were last year, but we haven't heard anything for a week, so maybe there will be after all. Still, those of you who submitted in October or early November stand some chance of hearing back on Monday or Tuesday (though see the first point for caveats).
Third, if you're just waiting for the honor of being rejected by Yale, you'll have to wait at least until the end of January. We knew this already, too, but this is further reinforcement. If you're waiting for a waitlist, you may be waiting until mid-February.
Fourth, the general correspondence between tweets and LSN acceptances is interesting, and the exceptions are, too. The non-tweet acceptances are intriguing. Are those just errors are the parts of the LSN posters? Are those omissions on the part of YLS? If the latter, it's possible that you might get in without warning.
Fifth, YLS calls on Saturdays and Sundays starting in late January and continuing more or less through March. So you're never safe; YLS could sneak up on you when you least expect it. Evidently, Asha takes perverse pleasure in putting calls on other schools ASWs, so you get the call that you're in at Yale when you're on Harvard's campus, or the like. If I were an admissions dean, I would definitely do this, too.
