<p>As the mother of a senior I can say…yes, those years go by very quickly. I can’t believe that in two months we’ll be going to her graduation. It seems like only yesterday that we watched her return from her FOOT trip, do the giant huddle, and move in to her Old Campus dorm. </p>
<p>When she was home for break she told me that she had taken 10 courses that were truly extraordinary, either because they had taught her how to look at a subject in a completely new way, or because the quality of the teaching was so excellent. She’s only had a handful of courses that she felt were below par. Other than the workload crunch times, she has enjoyed just about every minute of Yale. :)</p>
<p>D got a Classics prize last year and we were stunned by how much money it was. I’m torn: on the one hand, the wishes of the donor are very important (and the money was very much appreciated!) but on the other hand, $1,000 seems like plenty to me. Until D got one, I didn’t even realize such prizes came with money at all. In high school, she got books. :)</p>
<p>I think it’s wrong. Why not reward excellence and when possible, give enough of an award that it makes a difference in their lives? Capping awards at $1000 makes them largely a symbolic award and will not enable a student to do anything they otherwise wouldn’t have.</p>
<p>The opportunity to compete for prizes is a big piece of how Yale itself competes to attract the best students, who can go to schools that have bigger programs and cost far less (Michigan, Berkeley). I find myself wondering: will Harvard likewise raid the prize-money funds of its more vulnerable programs? </p>
<p>There’s also the message that this sends about priorities: how is it that Yale has plenty of money for inane activities such as “Sex Week” but not to recognize its academically talented undergrads?</p>
<p>This is news to me - I would think the general financial aid would be the deciding factor. </p>
<p>I certainly sympathize with the student who wrote the article you linked to - D, who is not planning on grad school right away, is in the same boat: “Unless one intends to pursue academia upon graduation, majoring in an uncommon subject greatly limits job prospects.” I just hadn’t ever thought of these prizes in monetary terms before, and the amounts seemed excessive to me. But I’m willing to be persuaded otherwise.</p>
<p>Booklady, you’re right, of course, that “general” financial aid is a deciding factor, but hidden within that are the opportunity costs of majoring in a specific field. This is what your D is looking at. Was your D able to do something over the summer because of that prize money, that she would not have been able to do without it?</p>
<p>Donors KNEW, in the past, that some fields were not inherently lucrative and they wanted to make sure that the best minds would be attracted to them. </p>
<p>It isn’t so much that majoring in an uncommon subject greatly limits job prospects. Rather, it’s that students in such majors – compared with, say, Economicis – have to be a lot more creative about how they’re going to support themselves over the summer. When prizes are suddenly capped at $1000 (against the express intentions of donors), Yale has very suddenly, without warning, and against those stated intentions, raised the opportunity costs.</p>
<p>The amounts of prizes are not excessive when you consider what Yale is competing with in a field such as classics, a field in which the objective identification of talent is far easier (and not at all costly) compared to the costs of administering prizes in, for example, creative writing, where the amount of prize money is similar, not just at Yale, but at its direct competitors.</p>
<p>Not because of that money (she put that away for her future impoverished life ;)), but she was able to go to Greece and Turkey for 10 days because of a travel grant she applied for and received from the Classics Dept. I hope the latter kind of money will still be available in the same amounts.</p>
<p>Kudos to your daughter for winning a prize that let her explore Turkey, one of the most influential countries not just in the Middle East but also in relations between Europe and Asia. </p>
<p>Such travel funds are crucial to influence bright and motivated students to explore internationally significant areas before they appear in the news…</p>
<p>On one side: what the donors of prizes signaled, encouraging students to develop independent and creative projects, recognition for achievement in non-lucrative fields, the idea of merit…</p>
<p>On the other side: further telling donors, alums, students and departments that the above doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>Donor intent is key here. Looking for “loopholes” in the language of the gift vs using the gift as intended. If I am lucky enough to leave a legacy to a “charity”,I would hope my intent in giving it would be honored. The prizes should stand. If I were a member of the family of the donor, I would ask for the money back in violation of the intent of my dead relative. </p>
<p>When the 10 million Swedish kronor (SEK) Nobel Prizes are awarded should they be scaled back to 1 thousand SEK and the remaining 9,999,000 SEK be distributed to others because we are in a world wide recession? Of course not, that is not what the donor Alfred Nobel wanted.</p>
<p>Good analogy, BlueHouseMom, about the Nobel Prizes. When Alfred Nobel’s will established the prizes, you can be sure that there were nasty lawsuits among relatives who thought the money should have been left to them. The Nobel Prizes continue in part because the institutions responsible for administering the Prizes, such as the Swedish Academy, were strengthened.</p>
<p>Would that Yale recognized that Yale is strengthened by following the wishes of donors to reward individual achievement and seed the efforts of individually talented students, rather than consolidating prize money into some “general fund financial aid pool” as if Yale were a large state university.</p>
<p>I didn’t realize that Yale does not have sufficient housing for all of its undergraduates who want to live on campus.</p>
<p>Parents, what has been your D or S’s experience with housing at Yale? Were they able to secure the arrangements they wanted on campus? If they moved off, where do they live? Thank you.</p>
<p>My D was a soph transfer. Transfers are not guaranteed on campus housing, but after some inquiries, what I heard was that only very rarely do new transfers have to live in close by apartments that the college rents out. As a jr, my D was relieved when she pulled a low number was able to stay in Dport and not annexed. Over spring break I was talking to one of her friends who is in JE and was annexed this year. D is also relieved that next year she’s a froco and therefore doesn’t have to deal with the sr draw. So yes, from what I’ve heard, housing can be dicey at times.</p>
<p>However, I can’t vouch that they’re correct, you might want to so a Search or ask on the Yale 2014 subforum as some of the students accepted during SCEA are likely to know.</p>
<p>The issue of overcrowding in some of the Colleges has always been there; as I understand it, kids are assigned to annex housing in on-campus buildings or University-owned apartments. The article is slightly unclear, but it sounds as if the concern is that in the future, there may not even be enough annex housing to go around, something that hasn’t happened so far. I know my son’s College is annexing a handful of juniors next year, and it’s one of the colleges that has traditionally not had to annex anyone. Have some Colleges annexed students and left them to find their own off-campus housing?</p>
<p>I apologize if I am being dense, but what exactly does it mean when students are “annexed?” Is there a building on campus not affiliated with any college that students are assigned to? Or is it off-campus and not owned by Yale? Or something else? Thanks.</p>