<p>An alternative system is overdue. None of my friends’ kids have these postal problems. Imagine what the delays will be like a few years from now once the new RCs are built and the Yale student body has increased by 15%.</p>
<p>There is no reason a school of Yale’s stature and resources can’t find a better way than this.</p>
<p>We got to enter the infamous post office so D could check her mail. 
She did not report any hour long waits, and she got a lot of packages delivered. Maybe by now, the extra staff from the beginning of the semester is no longer there?</p>
<p>CIEE83 - Don’t be ashamed - I think going this weekend is a great plan. We had no restaurant competition as D had early call times both nights. Went to Yorkside Pizza Friday at 4:30 PM. And Chipoltle before 5 PM on Saturday. No waits and no crowds.
I am sure your D will enjoy a finer restaurant.</p>
<p>I understand that it is run by the USPS. I also understand that other schools do not have this problem. Does the USPS just dump the mail off at those schools and then campus staff sort through it? Perhaps Yale should figure out how all the other schools are doing it and work with the USPS to find a solution to this issue. Bookmobile makes an excellent point – if they are going to increase the number of students, it’s going to get even worse. One thing they could consider is finding an alternative spot for packages that are delivered by UPS so that the Mail station is less overwhelmed. Yes, it would mean students go to two places, but in the old days (which was just a few years ago in our family) UPS packages did not go to the mail station. That seems to have worsened the situation. (Of course, UPS packages were their own nightmare then which is probably why they switched it).</p>
<p>Do other colleges the size of Yale also have a single post office? I have to think that’s a big part of the problem.</p>
<p>I think a better question to ask is - Is the school administration aware of the gravity of the issue and TRYING to address it. Where there is a will, there is a way. With Yale’s resources and its current relationship with the city of New Haven, I’m sure they can find a solution. The effective campus security system for example is the product of a successful cooperation of Yale and the city.</p>
<p>My own experience with dealing with USPS, which is Federal not City of New Haven, in my urban environment is one of extreme intransigence. There is no doubt that Yale’s administration is aware of the situation but I wouldn’t be surprised if crafting a solution with USPS is maddeningly difficult. </p>
<p>At my older son’s school (about 5,000 students on campus) USPS was by-passed altogether - the mail was delivered to one central location (although addressed to individual dorms) and then redistributed 5 days a week by the university’s own letter carriers to each dorms’, staffed, reception desk.</p>
<p>I suspect that the overall volume of mail at Yale Station is significantly less than when I was there–college students just don’t get that much snail mail. But the volume of packages, especially at the beginning of each semester, is probably much more, because of books.</p>
<p>@keesh17. Same here. My older daughter is at Harvard and every residential house has their own mailboxes and pick-up room, which are staffed by students as part of their work-study job. Mail is addressed to a specific house (Mather House, for example) and the general Cambridge Post Office delivers to Harvard’s houses and the kids who staff the mail room sort letters and put pick-up notices in mailboxes. Maybe there is the same sort of delay with packages, but because students never go to the post office to pick up their mail or packages, no one ever encounters a line. The system works much better than Yale’s – and students don’t have to pay the USPS every year for a mailbox, so it’s cheaper.</p>
<p>Thank you for all your good advice on transportation. We rented a car at the Hartford Airport and used that to travel between the Milford Hilton Garden Inn (great hotel) and campus. Traffic was fine; nothing to worry about. A great weekend!</p>
<p>2011orbust, glad it worked out for you and that you had a great weekend!</p>
<p>I have a question about work study. How easy/hard/plausible is it for a varsity athlete to hold down a student job at Yale and do well academically? (My son is very interested in applying for the directed study program as well.) We’re strong believers in our kids contributing to their own educational expenses–he’ll work in the summer–but I just can’t wrap my brain around where the extra hours will come from. He’s been away at school for four years on FA and lived happily on a budget–the amount allocated for personal expenses seems high to both of us, and I really doubt he’d need to earn all of the amount that Yale suggests he’d need. But he’ll need some of that money for sure.</p>
<p>Anyone with insight into this? Jobs that have worked for your kids? Are some jobs more workable than others? Is it better to work overtime in the summer and then do occasional student jobs in the off-season to make up the difference? To make things more complicated, I know my son would prefer to stay and work at school in the summer rather than come home (as his dad did during his college years). Is it possible to do that and save any money?</p>
<p>(I’m not jumping the gun, really–just got the likely letter notification. One happy guy!)</p>
<p>Congrats classicalmama! How lucky to know now! We suffered through a deferral and waiting till RD decisions.</p>
<p>D is a freshman and I thought she should try to work some, but she is spending so much time on ECs that I am not sure when she would fit it in. She does have some good blocks of uncommitted time that she could probably work. She has not really looked yet. I will be interested to hear from others with more experience. Other than books and travel, her expenses so far have been mostly EC related, so you probably won’t have that with athletics. She does not seem to be spending much money at all on a day to day basis. We also want her to contribute some and she has enough in savings from the summer and before to cover this year. But it would be nice to be adding more in there with the uncertainty of income next summer.</p>
<p>Congratulations, cm!<br>
Is it possible to hold off at least a semester on getting a school-term job? Your son will have a better idea of how much time he has to work by then. DS takes a big time commitment to do well, as will a varsity sport.<br>
My son stayed at Yale this summer, worked an on-campus research job and stayed in a summer sublet of a room in a house. His expenses were higher than he thought (whose aren’t?!), but he saved enough to cover (used) books and his spending money this year ($1800, or thereabouts).
Be aware that if your son’s FA contains a Yale job component, that expires at the end of term, so his summer job won’t be subsidized by his FA.</p>
<p>Thank you both! Scoutsmom, can you explain what you mean by “his summer job won’t be subsidized by his FA”? Do you mean that he can’t get a work study job in the summer? </p>
<p>Can you also let me know if my thinking is correct here? His FA pre-read has both a summer job and a term job requirement. On the other side are allocations of $3400 for books and personal expenses and $ (can’t remember) for travel. Since the summer job and term job amounts, added up, are not far off from the books, personal expenses, and travel $$, on the expenses side of things, I’m assuming that my student could significantly reduce his term job requirement by spending less on books and personal expenses (something he already is pretty good at doing and is sounding possible at Yale) Is that correct? If that’s the case, then it sounds like a summer job along the lines of scoutsmom’s son’s might be all he needs, especially if his parents chip in for the plane tickets home once in a while–and given his athletic schedule and desire to live amongst his own tribe, once in a while may be all we get anyway!</p>
<p>Okay, amending that last post a bit after looking at the FA website. After freshman year, it looks like his summer job income expectation will double! So maybe not so easy to live in New Haven and save enough to cover that AND the personal expenses/books.</p>
<p>So, rewording the reality check request from my last post, is this true? Yale basically intends the term-time job to cover the personal expenses part of the COA. Students can therefore work less if they spend less–or, altermnatively, continue to economize AND work more term-time, anticipating that they might not make as much in their summer time job, and put some of what they earn toward the “student income” part of the Family Contribution. Would that be correct? </p>
<p>Still wondering, too, whether (even, say, after taking a semester to get adjusted), there are term-time jobs that have worked well for kids who are already balancing heavy sports/e.c. commitments with their studies.</p>
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<p>Right, work-study is only for a term-time job. The way I see it, Yale pays itself that money, anyway. The term time job FA money is paid to the department that hires the student at 50% of what the student makes, up to the FA amount.</p>
<p>Sorry, I’m not familiar with the sports requirements, but lots of students do manage jobs at Yale.</p>
<p>Feel free to PM me if you want to know how the numbers are working out for us (my son is a junior).</p>
<p>Here is the link to student jobs. They pay well and higher pay means less hours per week needed to earn that amount. (I see quite a few at 15$ an hour, though $12-13 may be lower-skilled job pay. I see nothing below that amount.)<a href=“Central Authentication Service | Yale University”>Central Authentication Service | Yale University; Your son may also be able to find a job that allows some study time in the downtime.</p>
<p>Just as one more point of reference - it is possible for a student to get by with spending less on personal expenses than Yale assumes. It depends somewhat on major (science textbooks tend to be more expensive, for example), on how adept your child is at borrowing books or finding 2nd hand ones, getting by with a tight clothes budget, not eating out often…etc. </p>
<p>I would have had a lot of trouble forecasting exactly how much any of my kids really needed in spending money during their college careers from the perspective of their senior year in high school. We’re not wealthy, and our kids did work some of the time they were in college, but whether or not working during any particular semester, at any particular job, made sense depended on a lot of things that were not easily predictable – the nature of the job, their academic and EC workloads, their EC commitments. I don’t know - it kind of seems like you’re overthinking it and are looking for certainty to questions about situations that are going to be somewhat fluid. It helps to have a bit of extra cash on hand in order to be able to make these decisions, and I know we’ve been fortunate to have that flexibility. Yale’s FA is pretty awesome - I hope if your son attends your anxiety about this will be allayed. I don’t want to sound like Pollyana, but I think he will have good options, including well-paid term-time work.</p>
<p>I’m sure it sounds like I’m overthinking, and I do appreciate how awesome Yale’s FA is.
I’ve just got a very independent kid who likes to have lots of control over his own life, but who also feels guilty if he thinks he’s not living up to his responsibilities–so I know it’s going to work best all around if we lay down clear parameters around what we are all responsible for paying, so that he can feel free to make his own choices about work, where he lives in the summer, etc. Hard to explain…but careful advance thinking about what is reasonable and not burdensome, setting specific expectations up front, and then letting go of how he meets them is how we roll. </p>
<p>Anyway, thanks to all of you for your posts and pm’s. Lots of helpful advice and insight, and it sounds like $5-6 thousand a year is actually workable. That sounds like so much money to me! But then, back when I was earning my spending money for college, I was well paid at a whopping $4/hour.</p>
<p>Congratulations, classicalmama! (And nice to see you here on the Yale forum!) My son built a pretty significant “fortune” with his graduation gifts and the earnings from the summer job before his freshmen year. He is now continuing to build on it through an on-campus job at Yale, which pays well thanks to a certificate he got. He is responsible for any cost other than tuition, and room and board, and he’s made the commitment for the first two years for now (although mom always breaks the rule and pays for things he’s supposed to pay himself!). It has worked out OK for us, and I am sure it will work out for you too. Congrats again! What sport was your son recruited for?</p>