What Yale's second reader sees in your application

YYale gives each competitive application two independent reads, and the second comes from an officer who knows nothing about the applicant's school or town. Jeffrey Brenzel, Yale's dean of undergraduate admissions from 2005 to 2013, described the detail in terms most families never hear. The first read is by the area officer who knows your region. The second is by a colleague with, in his phrase, no local loyalties: someone who has never visited your school, does not know its counselor and has no stake in your town.

Everything the first reader understood without being told, the second reader has to find on the page, and the two do not always see the same student.