I hope for no financial aid–we all get the same education, we should all pay the same price. Also, with a Yale education your expected future income is enough to take out any loans.

I hate financial aid. It’s more and more to make the lives of upper-middle class families miserable.

Ditto. Have a feeling #2 doesn’t even go to Yale anyway…

In any event, congrats to you four! I’m sure you’ll have some great schools too choose between. Hope Yale makes you an unbeatable financial aid offer — as they did for me.

Well said #2 — I don’t agree that Yale should abolish financial aid, but these days Yale is going too far. If you think “it all comes down to money,” then you don’t appreciate the value of a Yale education and the Yale experience. Given how selection Yale is, doesn’t it make more sense for the university to admit those students who most want to be there (assuming comparable qualifications, of course)?

I hope these kids don’t get any finaid from Harvard either. We don’t need any more hippies who just became b.s. high school teachers or social workers and end up contributing nothing to the school, money-wise or prestige-wise.

My friend was at a H Club meeting in Paris, and this guy from some H class in the 60s was moaning about how his daughter couldn’t get into Harvard despite her “legacy”. That idiot didn’t realize legacies don’t mean anything to H if you became a social worker and can’t even support your own kid’s education.

Alright, my initial point was not clear.

The point isn’t that these kids or people like them aren’t worse for becoming hs teachers or social workers, but they don’t need Harvard or Yale to do it. There’s no reason the school should give a coveted spot to people who aren’t going to take adv. of it. I’m all for poor kids getting finaid to go to H or Y to become leaders in their fields (be it banking, medicine, law, education), but I don’t get the feeling from reading the NYT article about these kids that they are particulary hungry to do exceptionally well.

I have too many objections to raise for a comment box, so I’ll just list a few:

1) Public service, such as teaching or social work, is not a pursuit that should be mocked, but rewarded. Teach For America is the largest employer of Yale grads (and I’d bet Harvard as well) and is funneling talented people into a field that has traditionally not been valued by our elite institutions. A good teacher can change the lives of hundreds of students over the course of a career. The next Barack Obama or Sonia Sotomayor (putting aside your political affiliations) could be inspired to achieve by a Yale or Harvard educated, excellent teacher.

2) You clearly do not understand the point of a liberal arts education. You talk about how it isn’t necessary to go to Yale to become a teacher. Well, you don’t need a Yale education to be a i-banker either (I’m guessing you are a master of the universe type). Perhaps you should have gone to a state school where you could “take adv” of your education and maybe have taken some Microsoft Excel courses.

3) I’m so thankful that you did not attend Yale. While we have our share of a–holes (what institution doesn’t?), we have a community that values the diverse paths alumni choose to take.

4) This is an anecdotal point. As a recent alumnus, and a teacher, I can tell you how useful my stories of Yale are as an investment tool for my students. When I tell my inner-city students about the opportunities I had at Yale, it makes them want to work that much harder to get there. I understand not everyone can get into Yale, but if a kid learns to read and wants to go to college because of stories I’ve told them about my experience, I would have to say that is positive for society.

Enjoy your miserable, elitist existence a–hole.

To the quads–you should come to Yale. While I can’t promise you will entirely escape elitism, you will be sure to find a wealth of thoughtful and interesting people.

FYI – TFA’s a major employer on Ivy campuses because most of the bottom 20% of the class couldn’t get into ibanking in a recession year.

hey, enjoy your 2 years in TFA and whatever urban hell you end up in. My guess is you’ll end up like my former pre-law advisor, who lost all his idealism after getting spat on and kicked by the little monsters in his Bronx classroom, and burnout after a year, ride the admissions bump for TFA types into law school, and end up as a faceless grunt in corporate law.

As I said, I’m all for poor kids getting finaid to go to H or Y to become leaders in their fields (be it banking, medicine, law, education). I’m all for it because I’m living it – finaid + H on my resume helped me get into an awesome career that directly impacts the growth of companies and jobs for society, and the training and socialization I got out of H are helping me to succeed in it. I plan on giving back to H one day so I think H should value me then as someone who’s contributed to society and money to the school, much more so than a classmate who becomes just another social worker. Arne Duncan or Michelle Rhee are people I’d consider to be successes in education, and their Ivy pedigrees helped them get to a position where they’re going to have more impact on society than any individual teacher can. But as I said, I don’t get the feeling that with a #46 class rank (and on down) in some random public hs, these quads have that same drive.

I actually agree with Harvard ’07′s sentiments, but what do I know, I’m just a clueless “i-banker.”

Admittedly he is a little harsh on TFA (though candidates should admit they are doing it for the resume boost). I’m more disappointed in my fellow Yalies that come from wealthy families and graduate to “travel” “work abroad” “teach english” “study in england” or “study literature.” Anything to avoid doing work. The ironic thing is that many of these yalies come from wealthy families that got that way by having one or two parents go to good schools, get high paying jobs in law, business or medicine and earn a lot of money to give their children a wonderful life and the opportunity to go to yale than wander aimlessly for the next 5 years.

Congrats to the Crouch kids, but one wonders if their being quadruplets had anything at all to do with the admissions decisions? I mean, if the one that applied with a rank 46 (which is low by any standards) was not a quadruplet, one wonders if (s)he would have gotten in?

You said you consider Michelle Rhee a success in the field of education. This is true, but after she graduated from an Ivy League, she did TFA.

BOZO.

It is actually hard to get a TFA job–hell, I got banking jobs and in now way could have gotten TFA (not that I would have wanted it).

But, I highly doubt that they all would have gotten in had they not been quads. 46 is a low class rank and it doesn’t seem any of them have done anything super extraordinary by Yale standards. They could be good applicants from the whole app, but I bet that being part of the family helped. Even a class rank of 13 is comparatively low for a non-special applicant.

It’s *too* funny that this thread about four exciting new admits to Yale has been totally hijacked by some weirdo who is almost the perfect caricature of a money-grubbing, ibanking tool… and who admits that he didn’t even go to Yale! (Yet he has nothing better to do than read our student newspaper and post asinine, insulting comments. Please, Harvard ’07, take it to the Crimson and leave us alone.)

Yale is a fantastic place. It’s fantastic because it offers so much _more_ than just a prestigious ticket one could choose to cash in for a soul-destroying, miserable life moving numbers around a spreadsheet while being paid shocking sums of cash.

Most Yalies — and I would say, most of the smartest and most interesting Yalies — do not go this route. Teach For America is only one tiny slice of it. Most of the people I knew at Yale are now (about 10 years out) doing amazingly interesting stuff. Many are researchers and professors in all different fields of the sciences, humanities, and social sciences; some are now working in the Obama administration; some are entrepreneurs of various different kinds; others are civil rights lawyers, union organizers, or political activists; still others are journalists, writers, artists, even Broadway actors and singers… the list is really long. And as time goes on it only gets longer. It’s true that some of my classmates got sucked in to the ibanking monster, but not that many of them, and some of those who did quickly found their way out again.

The reason the four of you (or any subset of you who want to) should choose Yale is precisely that it offers so much more than the narrow vision of so-called “leadership” that some elitist status-mongers on the outside sometimes falsely project onto Yale just because it’s so hard to get in. Once you get here, you’ll see immediately that Yale is much, much more than a high-prestige place to get your ticket stamped. Indeed when I think of what Yale has done for me in my life, that’s the last thing I think of. Yale is a collection of some of the most thoughtful, unusual, intellectually curious people you’ll ever get the chance to get to know. It’s a cliche, but you really will learn a lot from your classmates as well as from your classes. So come to Yale!

But don’t take anyone else’s word for it. Come to pre-frosh days in the spring and have a look for yourself.

GO CROUCHES AND DANBURY HIGH SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also shut up with all these comments guys. Why do people on threads always have to find a reason to duke it out about SOMETHING.

congrats to four of you. hope yale’s financial aid comes through! its crazy to me how arrogantly selfish some people are who are commenting. dumb selfish people like #2 wouldn’t annoy me if they weren’t so insistent that the whole world be selfish like them.

Harvard ’07:

TFA’s a major employer on Ivy campuses because most of the bottom 20% of the class couldn’t get into ibanking in a recession year

Well said, that is if you are a complete MORON who doesn’t know anything about what they are talking about. TFA has a completely different selection process than banking or consulting. And it is hard to get selected for TFA.

People like you are revolting, go away!!

Congratulations to all four of you.

I hope you are able — after financial aid offers come in — to attend any school you choose… and I hope you choose Yale.

I agree with the Harvard alum. I mean I am on financial aid at Yale, and I sure intend to give back to the school when I capitalize on the education that Yale offers. In my humble opinion, those who are on financial aid have the largest responsibility to give back to Yale.

That said, choosing to serve in socially rewarding, low paying professions is still admirable.

Harvard ’07, why are you even here? Go read your own school’s publication, especially if you’re just here to hate.

@37 (“gradstudent12″): What a load of tired, old BS. You have absolutely no idea what was in these students’ applications. Plenty of white applicants with far, far lower class rank percentiles than these are admitted to Yale every year, for many, many different reasons.

When you claim to be able to explain why these particular people were admitted based on nothing but a class rank number and a photo (for race), you are making a fool of yourself, as somebody pointed out already. Indeed I would add that you are revealing much more about yourself than about these students.

Yale looks at the whole applicant – ambitions, accomplishments, everything, not just a class rank number. People like you, on the other hand, see only a couple of numbers, and race. I’m so thankful that people like you are NOT in charge of Yale admissions!

And by the way, no, you didn’t “earn” anything at 18. No one does. Unless you’d like to explain how you “earned” the parents who raised you and the teachers and schools from which you learned from ages 5-18? Sure, if you worked hard, that helped a lot; in fact it was necessary. But it wasn’t sufficient. Not even close. So don’t tell me you “earned” your place any more than the rest of us did, or any more than these four fantastic-sounding, successful Yale College applicants did. For all of us, whether we went to college at Yale or a “lousy state school,” just being able to go to college at all means we’re very fortunate, and frankly, that we have a lot of people to thank besides ourselves.

Wow, Harvard ’07 and other conspicuously pro-Cantab ranters showed their true colors here. I particularly love the obsession over SATs and class rank. Quite sad(but typical) that such poor indicators of overall student quality are the only things Cantabs can invoke when making egregious and petty claims.

Also, #32, you are living proof that Harvard is indeed a ‘degree mill’ for over-competitive and self-centered students that couldn’t get into Yale (or worse, made the massive mistake not to attend).

Last but not least, #37, please keep your racially based dispersions to yourself unless you can actually think carefully through what it is exactly that you’re saying. I believe Yale ’00 put you in your proper place so I have nothing to add on that note.

@41: If 2/3 of your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump too? More seriously: just because 2/3 of people who get into both choose Harvard over Yale doesn’t mean they’re right.

Judging from the small sample of people I knew at Harvard and at Yale, in the end Yale was a much better experience for most people, and the 1/3 or so of us who chose Yale over Harvard were the ones who got the better deal in the end. Yale is just much more focused on undergraduate education. It’s not too hard to see why. Yale College is a much bigger and more important part of Yale University than Harvard College is of Harvard University.

One of the reasons that some subset of the people who choose Harvard do so is that it has a massive, international reputation as the greatest, best, most prestigious university in the world. Some applicants may not be aware that Yale College provides a better experience for undergraduates; other people may just insist that they must always go to the top, the #1 university, no matter what, simply because they’re that kind of person. I’m talking about the person who has always been #1 at everything through high school and is going to keep at it, come hell or high water. I think one of the hidden benefits of choosing Yale is that you avoid most of the people like that.

@43: FWIW, having spent time living in both towns, I DEFINITELY prefer New Haven to Cambridge.

Everybody trashes New Haven. But ultimately, it’s a better place to live (in my view) than Cambridge. The main difference between the two places is an aesthetic one: an old New England city (New Haven) versus what is, fundamentally, a mostly-wealthy suburb of Boston. Cambridge offers more in the way of expensive shopping; the crowds look a little preppier. But honestly, if you’re looking for preppy, go to Princeton.

If you actually live in both places, as I’ve done, you’ll notice a few counterintuitive things after a while. For one thing, as far as safety, Harvard students are the victims of crime significantly more often than Yale students. New Haven has dangerous areas, but they’re far from Yale. OTOH, Harvard students walking around Cambridge get mugged relatively often, as it turns out. Don’t take my word for this – compare the emails you’ve received from James Perrotti over the past year to the emails a Harvard friend of yours has received from Perrotti’s Harvard counterpart in the same period. I was reading both sets of emails for a while, and the difference is very noticeable (and I would be very surprised if Yale students were getting mugged and Yale was illegally not sending out emails about it). On a happier subject, I find that New Haven has better restaurants than Cambridge -lots of my favorite New Haven places have no good Cambridge counterparts. New Haven indisputably has more theater going on than Cambridge. Living off campus in New Haven is more affordable (even today). I could go on, but you get the idea.

New Haven is not New York. Would I prefer to live in New York? Sure. But Cambridge isn’t New York either. It’s hard to know what someone means exactly when they trash New Haven as “janky,” but all I can say is that having lived in both places, to me the choice is obvious, and it’s New Haven. I would suggest that people visit and come to their own conclusions about which place they’d prefer to live, rather than relying on reputation alone.

#42, this was the most pathetic defense of Yale I have ever seen. I hope you are a Harvard troll. If your main reason for choosing Yale over Harvard is that you won’t have to deal with people who have been overachievers, “#1″ throughout their lives, well, you might as well go to Cornell or any of hundreds of other colleges.

I wonder if the “quads” themselves are reading this comment thread. I kind of hope not. If you are, please just realize that the people who write annoying comments on YDN articles are not generally representative of Yale. (In many cases have no actual connection to Yale at all.)

Yale is a great school. Most people here love it. The best part about it is the other students, a very unusual & interesting group of people. I hope you four all take a serious look.

If financial aid ends up looking a lot better elsewhere, you should bring that up w/the financial aid office at Yale before you decide you can’t afford it.

Good luck with your decisions!

These comments are ridiculously amusing, moreso than harvardfml.com itself. Some things I’d like to add to this discussion.

Whoever wrote “some random public hs” — shame on you.

To those complaining about how someone got into Yale with a lower than perfect class rank — no, the hours you spent memorizing the parts of a cell do not make you smart. You need a balance. And some are able to excel without needing the perfect GPA. Why such harsh judgements?

To the one who turned down Harvard for Yale in both undergrad and grad school — I honestly feel a bit sorry for you. I’m sure you’ll do great in the future, but you missed out on a lot. And the statistic cited somewhere above — that 2/3 cross admits chose Harvard over Yale — is not the reason why people have historically chosen one school over another, but the result of students consistently choosing one school over another. That statistic has been relatively constant for over a century. Make what you wish of it. All I can tell you is, it’s not a coincidence.