I found this out just the other day. I called because I still had not heard a decision or received any letter and thought it only fair that 8 months and a graduation later, I should receive some kind of answer.
And from the Jabba-the-hut sounding unhelpful woman with whom I've spoken in the past, I got, "Uh... your letter was already mailed out... on January 31st." "Uhm... okay. So what was the response?" "Uh, no." "Uhm, okay, thanks."
And then I called back because it hit me that the woman might not think to send the letter back out to me. I got a different, far more helpful woman this time, who agreed to mail the letter to me again, but also told me Yale's "policy":
They will not check to see about an applicant's file's status until after May 1st. All the times I'd called (definitely more than once after Jan 31st) when I was told that a decision had not been made, the person who gave me that information was lying because that person, pursuant to Yale's policy, did not actually look up my information. Because, as the kind and helpful woman put it, Yale has so many applicants (point of fact, because of Yale's extremely low acceptance rate and small class, they actually get only about 4000-5000 applications, far fewer than many other law schools, like Georgetown, for instance, which gets 12000 applications) that they just don't have time to constantly check. So, rather than check, they have a policy of not actually looking up anyone's file until May 1st and just consistently saying that "no decision has been reached" because obviously if a decision had been reached then the applicant would probably know by then or shortly (if it were a rejection coming in the mail) and there would be no problem.
I, of course, pointed out the great flaw in this system is what's happening to me now. My letter, apparently, was lost in the mail. And every time I called, I was told, and the person telling me of course knew no better because she wasn't actually ever checking, that a decision had not been reached. Had I been waiting for a decision from Yale to make my ultimate decision, I would have been fully and royally screwed. Her response: "In that case, you could have just emailed us."
Uhm, yeah, because everyone else I know who has tried that has gotten a response from Yale many weeks later and has, ultimately, been rejected? Oh, and yeah, because even though Yale needs months and months to decide on applicants and is as selective as Stanford and Harvard, somehow they would, unlike Stanford and Harvard (Harvard and Stanford: "We understand you have decisions to make, but we cannot speed up the process for any one applicant and we realize this is inconvenient but sometimes that's just the way it has to be.") who don't give a damn about any individual applicant, actually be able to expedite things and get a non-rejection decision out to a potentially acceptable applicant who needs a decision sooner?
I went to an Ivy League undergrad.
I go to a top NYC law school.
I date men (well...).
I live in Bed-Stuy.
I don't need more to say,
just more room to say it.
Etc.