<p>Keilexandra: I think that Swarthmore, Williams, Amherst et al. (and Grinnell!) have financial aid on a par with Yale’s, although I may be wrong about that. I certainly have met students at Swarthmore who came from VERY challenging financial circumstances. Where the LACs may fall down a bit is with higher-income families ($70,000 - $100,000).</p>
<p>Anyway, I am the wrong person to ask about turning Yale into a LAC, since I think Yale is pretty perfect already. The Residential Colleges provide a LAC-like social experience if you want it. A program like Directed Studies gives you a freshman year of all seminars. </p>
<p>English-speaking grad students: I’ve also told before the story of my cousin, a grad student at another Ivy, who said, “I really hate teaching. There’s only one thing I like about it – Watching how my students’ initial excitement that they have a native English-speaking TA slowly and inexorably turns into the realization that they would have been much better off with a TA who only spoke Chinese but who gave a crap about them.”</p>