Visit Report by southeasttitan (Member since March 21 2007 with 866 posts) Visit Date - April 2008
Visit to Yale University in April 2008 by southeasttitan (Student, HS Class of 2009)
Visit Activities:
Information Session:
Yes - The only college I visited that had a student conducting the information sessions and no admin officer. But was the best session I had! The kid was really bright and told everything I wanted to know. Campus Tour:
Yes - Our guide was a really bright young foreign language major. She was very friendly and gave just the right amount of information, but lots of details about things that distinguished student life.
Yale University Campus:
Friendliness/Courtesy of Students: 5 - Excellent -
Though we didn't stop and speak to many students, everybody we did meet went out of their way to answer questions about why they liked the school (nobody disliked it) and help us get around campu
Appearance of Campus: 5 - Excellent -
Of course Yale's campus is beautiful. All the grounds were really well-kept, and it was a gorgeous day to boot. I felt completely at home there, even though it was in the middle of a bustling cit
Building/Facilities Maintenance/Cleanliness: 5 - Excellent -
The highlight was the main library, which was built as a "Cathedral to Learning" and was about the most beautiful place to study I've ever seen. We also loved the Harry Potter-esque din
Security/Safety: 4 - Very Good -
Many parents expressed concern about safety as New Haven is a big city, but they all seemed pretty assured. Students have to scan in to dorms and there are emergency call buttons everywhere on campus.
Overall Campus Impression: 5 - Excellent -
My favorite campus of all I visited (Harvard, Brown, Amherst, Williams, and Wesleyan). I loved the fact that, while it was part of a city, the campus still remained the center of student activity.
Off-Campus:
City/Town/Community: 4 - Very Good -
New Haven is great for some and not an ideal environment for others. Personally I am a city girl and loved it, but it's definitely not a charming little college town like, say, Middletown (Wesley
Campus Visit Notes for Yale University:
Visit Description:
Yale was the first school I visited on my spring break trip and it was definitely the best. We stayed overnight in New Haven and went to a morning information session and then tour, then ate at a local pizza joint before going on to Wesleyan.
The day started out gorgeous and sunny. We ate at the hotel we were staying at (the Courtyard Mariott, just a block away from the campus book store) and then took a walk around campus. I loved it; there are busy streets running right through, which gives it a really open, urban feeling, but there's plenty of places to step into grassy quads and get away. There was some light construction going on, as the school is renovating the twelve residential "colleges," one every year.
We went to the admissions office for the information session; it's a really nice building with a blue-and-white decoration scheme (of course) and lots of information pamphlets to pick from. We were at first packed into a small room to watch the pre-information session video, but eventually moved to an engineering classroom a few buildings down because of the large size of our group.
Our session leader was a young man who was double majoring in mathematics and literature. There was no admissions officer there, which I at first found strange, but it actually proved to be a really good idea. The student was really honest and relaxed and just as knowledgeable about the admissions process as an adcom would have been, but he also had a very unique perspective on student life. The actual session was great, they spent a lot of time talking about what distinguished Yale from other top schools. Every question I had was answered. The only thing that was slightly off-putting about the school, for me, was the many questions that parents asked of the session leader (like, "Would the school like this or this?" and "Do you look favorably on..." or "My student is the best at so and so, I was wondering if..." I wished they would have left it up to their supposedly bright, passionate students to ask questions, as they came off as inappropriately overbearing. But that was just a personal feeling coming from a student whose parents encourage lots of independence in the college process.
The tour, which started right after the info session, lasted the longest of all that I visited--about an hour and half--but it was worth every minute. Our guide was really interesting, a Caucasian Chinese major who had lived in Mexico City all her life and was fluent in 5 languages. She was very friendly and answered all questions, took us to some campus hot spots and some more quirky places (the Rare Books library was my favorite). She seemed really passionate about Yale and I completely believed her when she said she loved every minute of it. She also introduced us to several other students who were equally as friendly and smart as she was--it was clear the great students we had gotten as guides and session leaders were not anomalies but the norm.
It was definitely the best campus visit I have ever had and I am definitely applying Early Action to Yale!
Dining/Restaurant Recommendations or Comments:
Ate at a great Indian place. Can't remember the name, but it was a half a block away from the Courtyard by Marriott and was cheap but high quality.
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Though we didn't stop and speak to many students, everybody we did meet went out of their way to answer questions about why they liked the school (nobody disliked it) and help us get around campu
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Many parents expressed concern about safety as New Haven is a big city, but they all seemed pretty assured. Students have to scan in to dorms and there are emergency call buttons everywhere on campus.