Elite College Students Are Doing It to Themselves

Updated at 3:40pm ET on September 5, 2023

Arrow Zhang came to Yale last fall eager to try new things. In high school, she had spent most of her free time writing and practicing piano, but at Yale, she envisioned dividing her time between activities as disparate as finance and international relations. Zhang did not anticipate how competitive Yale’s clubs would be.

She quickly learned that, not unlike the admissions process to the university itself, entrance to student clubs often requires written applications and interviews. She filled her Google Calendar with hours of info sessions and application tasks. After more than a month of nonstop auditions, applications, interviews, and even tests, Zhang found herself rejected from multiple clubs, including ones that had no obvious reason to be selective. Most of the clubs she was able to join—The Yale Herald, a dance group, the clock-tower bell-ringers —involved skills she’d already honed in high school.

“Everyone would say, You don’t need any experience to apply,” she said. “But then everyone who gets in are already pros.”

Yale’s competitive-admission clubs include many that are notoriously exclusive but also more surprising entries, such as the community-service club. One of Zhang’s rejections came from the Existential Threats Initiative, which meets to discuss (tagline: “In-depth conversations about the world’s most pressing problems”) or otherwise gain expertise in the field.