How to choose the academic interests you list for Yale

FFormer Yale admissions officers read the academic interests on Yale's application as claims about the student, and the rest of the file is then read to see whether it backs them up. The application currently lets you choose up to three areas that fit your interests or goals, and most students fill it in about as quickly as a mailing address.

That speed is costly. A former senior assistant director at Yale treated the field as a set of statements an area officer may have to defend in committee, and a single interest that appears nowhere else can hand the skeptics in the room their first question. Which interests to list, and how many, turns out to be a real decision, and one file he described shows what happens when it is made carelessly.