From the Assistant Dean for Admissions: Announcing an Additional ‘Round 3 Extended’ Deadline

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are being felt across the globe, causing profound disruptions to both our personal and professional lives. Above all else, I hope you and yours are well, and taking measures to protect yourselves and your community.

Here at the Yale School of Management, we are doing our part to slow the spread of the virus. As Dean Kerwin Charles wrote in a message to our students yesterday, our actions are in unison with new protocols around the world that represent “arguably the largest societal mobilization in service of the common good of my lifetime.”

During this unprecedented time, our admissions team is attuned to the concerns of aspiring business school students. The virus has created very specific challenges to your MBA journey—GMAC and ETS have closed test centers, for example; and just last week, the U.S. government suspended routine visa services globally. We hope that the public health crisis improves in the coming months and the visa suspension is lifted, but for the moment the situation raises doubts about non-U.S. students’ plans to study in the United States this fall.

In the face of these challenges, we in Yale SOM Admissions are working to do what we can to ease the burden on future members of our community and hopefully give some sense of comfort and reassurance. I would start by saying that we are fully committed to bringing in a Class of 2022 to Yale that is just as talented, diverse, and accomplished as every previous Yale SOM class. We are not altering our evaluation process or standards (except to make our interviews exclusively virtual), nor are we adjusting the composition of the class in response to current circumstances. Despite the current state of the pandemic and the suspension of visa processing, we are planning for a full class to join us this fall and are taking every effort to make that happen.

One important change that we are making to support applications is adding another round to our application season. We have created a “Round 3 Extended” deadline of May 27 for those candidates who are unable to submit their application by the standard Round 3 deadline, or whose applications are not complete by that deadline. We will notify Round 3 Extended applicants of their admission decision in the second half of June.

We’ve added the Round 3 Extended deadline in an effort to be flexible and sensitive to candidates who are undergoing significant disruptions and dislocations as a result of the growing global pandemic. We want to do whatever we can to give candidates who wish to apply to Yale SOM this application season every possible opportunity to do so.

At the same time, we are keeping our Round 3 application deadline of April 14 so that those candidates who are able to submit all their materials on time will receive an admissions decision on the promised date, May 19. For applicants who will need extra time to plan their transition to Yale, this earlier decision date will provide as much time as possible for them to do so. Please note that we are offering Round 3 candidates an additional 10 days to submit a GMAT or GRE test score (until April 24).

Together, having both deadlines provides as much flexibility for as many candidates as possible.

As I think about what is distinctive about Yale SOM and our mission of educating leaders for business and society, I am drawn to words that our Dean, Kerwin Charles, recently wrote to our students: “We are facing a most profound challenge, and this moment should powerfully remind you of what is special about SOM. The problems spawned by this crisis will cut across many sectors and regions, in both business and society, and will be best tackled by persons with the cross-cutting perspective that characterizes SOM training. I have every confidence that we will all rise to the challenge before us and will look back with pride about how we all acquit ourselves during this challenging time.”

Please stay safe and healthy.