FT student admission to Yale-NUS up from 38% to 40%

Yale-NUS College issued a statement on Tuesday (17 Jun) [Link] revealing that it had offered 177 outstanding students from around the world to form the Class of 2018. This is the second batch of students it is admitting. These students come from 35 different countries.

In all, Yale-NUS attracted over 12,000 applications compared to 11,400 applications last year. It did not reveal how many of the applications were from Singapore.

“The talented applicant pool confirms the interest in Yale-NUS’ innovative liberal arts and science curriculum,” it said.

Following are some statistics pertaining to the second batch of students:

Number of students 177
Number of nationalities 35
Percentage of female students 54%
Percentage of male students 46%
SAT – Critical Reading (at 75th percentile) 760
SAT – Math (at 75th percentile) 780
SAT – Writing (at 75th percentile) 760
Yale-NUS said that by nationality, Singaporeans comprise the largest group in this intake at 60%. For international students, the next biggest groups are 10% from the United States, 3% from India, and 3% from South Korea.

Yale-NUS’ Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, Kristin Greene, said, “We can’t wait to see how our new students will push their intellectual curiosities and talents even further at Yale-NUS College.”

While academic achievements are an important part of the Yale-NUS admissions process, it also greatly values interviews, personal essays, recommendations and extracurricular interests and accomplishments, it said.

South African Iwani Zoë Mawocha (Class of 2018) co-founded a non-government organization, Mustard Seed Africa, that looks into socio-economic empowerment for women at the grassroots level in rural Swaziland and Zimbabwe. She said, “The students here are wonderfully genuine and humble, something I didn’t find at other top-tier schools.”

Last year, Yale-NUS admitted its inaugural class of 157 students:

Size of inaugural class 157
Number of nationalities 26
Number of female students 87
Number of male students 70
SAT – Critical Reading (at 75th percentile) 760
SAT – Math (at 75th percentile) 780
Median SAT score (on the 1600 scale) 1440
Of the 157 students last year, only 97 are Singaporeans at 62%. The rest of the 60 students are foreigners at 38%. The percentage of foreign students at 38% is unusually high for a public funded university.

The breakdown of foreign students last year:

Asia, Australia, NZ – 32
US – 13
EU, Africa, South America – 11
Canada – 4
Yale-NUS said it plans to grow its class size to 250 students over the next few years. The total expected student population at full capacity will be 1,000 students.

The College will move to its permanent campus, located north of the NUS main campus at Kent Ridge, next to NUS University Town in January 2015.