Yale SOM Sets Sept. 16 R1 Deadline

The new home of Yale University’s School of Management: Evans Hall. Photo by Chris Choi

Yale University’s School of Management today (May 28) joined the parade of business schools in setting an earlier round one deadline for the 2015-2016 MBA admissions season. The school said it would close down its first round on Sept. 16, two days earlier than last year, with admit decisions being made by Dec. 7.

Yale chose to retain last year’s only required essay question, with a 500-word limit: The Yale School of Management educates individuals who will have deep and lasting impact on the organizations they lead. Describe how you have positively influenced an organization as an employee, a member, or an outside constituent.

In a blog post, Director of Admissions Bruce DelMonico explained why the school would keep its essay in place for another year. “If this essay question looks a lot like last year’s question, there’s a simple reason: it is,” he said. “After evaluating last year’s application and discussing what changes to make for the upcoming year, the admissions committee came to the conclusion that this question really gets to the core of what Yale SOM is about and embodies our founding mission of educating leaders for business and society.”

Yale is now among the early-bird schools to release its essay questions along with Harvard, Stanford, MIT Sloan, Columbia, and Michigan. In addition to the single essay question, Yale also requires MBA applicants to submit two professional recommendations and complete video questions asked of candidates at random. In-person interviews are only by invitation of the admissions committee.

YALE ALSO WILL RETAIN ITS SLIDING-SCALE APPLICATION FEE

Last year, some 2,756 applicants applied to the School of Management. Ranked 12th best in the U.S. by Poets&Quants, the school admitted 652 last fall for an acceptance rate of 23.7%, and ultimately enrolled 323 first-year students, up from 291 a year earlier. With an average GMAT score of 719 and an average undergraduate GPA of 3.53, Yale’s entering class is among the most highly selective in the world. Unusual among the top business schools, roughly one in five applicants submitted a GRE score instead of a GMAT. The average GRE score for incoming students on the new test was a 163 verbal and a 161 quant, with a 4.6 on the analytical writing portion of the exam.

Yale is the latest school to push up its round one deadline. Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business already had moved up its first-round cutoff for the 2015-2016 admissions season by 10 days to Sept. 22nd, the earliest ever. Stanford, which last year had an Oct. 1 first-round cutoff, said it would notify its early bird candidates of admission decisions on Dec. 9. MIT Sloan pushed its first round up by six days to Sept. 17th this year, with notification by Dec. 16th, from Sept. 23 for the 2014-2015 cycle. The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School also moved up its round one deadline–but not so dramatically. Instead of Oct. 1, it would be two days earlier on Sept. 29th.

Yale’s DelMonico also said the school would retain its different application fees for candidates based on income level. “We also decided to keep our sliding-scale application fee intact for the upcoming year,” added the director of admissions. “We launched this fee scale last year to recognize that many of our applicants come from countries that do not pay on the same wage scale as the U.S. and from industries that are not as remunerative as some others. We also have many applicants who apply to our Silver Scholar Program as college seniors. In an effort to be sensitive to these differences, we offer a reduced application fee for applicants whose total annual compensation is less than US $20,000, and a further reduced fee for applicants whose compensation is below US $10,000.”

YALE’S ONLINE APPLICATION WILL GO LIVE ON JULY 1

The standard application fee for SOM is $225. For applicants earning less than $20,000 a year, the application fee is $175. For applicants earning less than $10,000 a year, it is $125. The application fee is based on the self-reported compensation information you provide in the application.

DelMonico said the online application will go live on July 1, 2015, “In the meantime,” wrote DelMonico, “we invite you to join us for one of our summer events starting next week, and you can tell us more about yourself to receive personalized invitations. Deadlines for all of Yale’s application rounds are:

Round 1

Application Deadline: September 16, 2015

Decision Release: December 7, 2015

Enrollment Deadline: February 12, 2016

Round 2

Application Deadline: January 7, 2016

Decision Release: March 25, 2016

Enrollment Deadline: May 6, 2016

Round 3

Application Deadline: April 21, 2016

Decision Release: May 20, 2016

Enrollment Deadline: May 31, 2016

In addition, for those candidates applying through the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, the round 1 application deadline will be October 15, 2015, and the round 2 deadline will be January 5, 2016.

EARLIEST APPLICATION DEADLINES FOR 2015-2016 AT TOP SCHOOLS

School	First Application Deadline	Admission Decision
Harvard Business School	Sept. 9, 2015	Dec. 10, 2015
Yale School of Management	Sept. 16, 2015	Dec. 7, 2015
INSEAD	Sept. 16, 2015*	Nov. 27, 2015
MIT (Sloan)	Sept. 17, 2015	Dec. 16, 2015
Stanford Graduate School of Business	Sept. 22, 2015	Dec. 9, 2015
Pennsylvania (Wharton)	Sept. 29, 2015	Dec. 17, 2015
Columbia Business School	Oct. 7, 2015 (Early Decision)	Rolling decisions
Texas-Austin (McCombs)	Oct. 13, 2015	Dec. 17
Indiana (Kelley)	Oct. 15, 2015	Late December