One side benefit of your child choosing Yale is that you get to hang out with some of the nicest people on CC, on this thread. :)>-
Hi All.
Due to work, I will be in Connecticut next Monday and my hotel is only 15 minutes to Yale. Since my son dreams of becoming a Yale student in exactly 7 years, I thought I could head there to see the school and maybe get him a Yale shirt or something.
- How late do the stores around Yale close?
- Are there any good restaurants very close to Yale where I can have my dinner at?
- Is it healthy for my rising 6th grader loving Yale this early? We didn’t even talk about Yale at home or anything. He watched a movie then went online, read about Yale and became very much interested in Yale. What are your thoughts?
Thanks
@ArdenNJ , I don’t think there’s any harm in a youngster being interested in Yale, but sometimes these things change. DS thought MIT was his dream school until late in the game.
There are probably foodies who can give you better leads, but I usually go to The Grille (I think that’s the official name, across the street from the Omni). It holds a special place in my heart, because it’s where I shamelessly eavesdropped on a large table of Yale students, and decided that I could see DS being happy and fitting in at Yale. I’m partial to their Shrimp Wrap.
I have no idea how late stores stay open. I expect pretty late, but I’m old and am asleep before they close.
Alas I will have to change my avatar as my kid is transferring to TD. I’m very sad as I think Branford is quite beautiful but I’m of the mindset things happen for a reason…
Anyone else have their kid transfer? And if so, what were the reasons?..
@Memmsmom has been my therapist to my snowflake mama through this and has helped me see the positives 
Chapel and Crown Streets, between Church and York Streets, have any number of good restaurants these days. I suggest you look on Zagat.com and pick a cuisine you like.
For a Yale shirt the B&N bookstore and “Campus Customs” next door have all that stuff. I imagine they are open until 9 at least. And yes, tons of good restaurants around campus, there’s a vegetarian Indian place near the bookstore (Thali Two) which would be convenient. There’s a pizza place nearby too (not the best pizza in NH which is A THING if you read up on it). I forget the name. But then south of Old Campus there are also
lots of other places.
Thanks All. Appreciate it.
@ArdenNJ Take a tour- an official one and get the coupon for the book store and then go to B&N for the shirt. I think it might even be 20% off. That way you get both the tour and the shirt. Our favorite place to eat is right on Broadway and is called Basil. Its Thai/Asian and is really fresh and good. There are several pizza places. To be honest, I have only tried them during Bulldog Days and I am in CT. If you want an “in” go to Sallys. They are selling the place and it might not ever be the same when they do. There is a huge argument over what is better, Sally’s or Pepe’s. Huge as in national acclaim huge.
As for inspiring at a young age- my daughter fell in love with Harvard when in 6th grade she won a pretty big school award and people joked that she would go to Harvard one day. That was until she toured Yale and decided she liked that more. Kids change but that inspiration at a young age was always in the back of her head. As long as you keep the healthy reality that its extremely difficult to get in, I don’t see any harm in planting the seed of a dream.
@tonymom, My freshmen D was/is in Saybrook. She has three friends from three different Residential Colleges, and they’re all on the “pre-med” track. Simply put, they wanted to room together, be close to “science hill”, and be part of something historic from the ground up. I really liked the Saybrook Arms, and I’m trying to warm up to the Benjamin Franklin Arms.
@ArdenNJ, depends if you are going for a nice meal or a “Yale” experience. For the experience, some suggestions are Yorkside Pizza in the middle of campus on York Street, a favorite haunt of students for late night pizza/grinders (owned by the same family since before I went there over 30 years ago, and I see many of the same faces on my occasional visits) and Louis’ Lunch (the alleged birthplace of the hamburger) on Crown Street. Also, you can’t go wrong with Pepe’s or Sally’s.
I don’t see anything wrong with a kid developing a healthy interest/curiosity about colleges early. Was the movie your child watched the last Indiana Jones movie? If not, while the movie itself was not great, the chase sequence at the beginning of the movie was shot mostly on campus and might be something you want to tee up to watch.
On the question of early interest in colleges: I would suggest taking a kid like this to see a couple of different kinds of college, so he doesn’t get too fixated on a single dream school.
^ I agree, it is good to see a variety of schools. Since you live in NJ, a trip to Princeton is always a fun trip in its own right and you can take him to eat at the Hoagie Heaven. Then you can drive up to New Brunswick so he can see that not all colleges are as leafy as Y & P. I think that my kids developed an early love for Dartmouth when they watched “Animal House”!
My younger daughter fell in love with Yale when she tagged along for her older brother’s college tour a few years ago. She was a rising third grader at the time. We toured about ten schools, including that one in Cambrdge. Somehow, Yale became her clear first choice. Since then, she has been back to Yale campus a couple of times to see her brother. Now she is finishing up her fifth grade, and Yale remains her top choice. But then she has no recollection of Princeton campus when we took her there as a toddler. So things may still change. But I always caution her that, as long as she gets into college, any college, she is fine. Still, to manage a younger sibling’s expectation when her brother is at Yale is a bit tricky.
We live 40 minutes away from Princeton but I have never taken my kids there. Maybe we will do that trip in the spring. Thanks for the suggestion.
@tonymom My son opted not to switch colleges, even though most of his close guy friends were all together in a different college. But I like that they have the option to switch. To me it’s the one downside of the college system, that you can’t necessarily room with whomever you want. If your closest friends are not from your college, that’s a bummer. But my son was totally fine rooming with other people and just spending lots of time in another suite with his friends. As long as your son is having a good year and has friends he wants to live with next year, it’s all good!
@tonymom - my kid hasn’t transferred but I think I’ve mentioned that I transferred from Morse to JE my junior year. It turned out that my best friends and boyfriend all lived in JE and I was almost always there to eat and hang out in the library late into the night. It was just easier for me to transfer since Morse was a long walk on frigid nights. While it may not happen often, it does occasionally occur.
My kid was fixated on Yale since she went for her first reunion at one year’s old (1997)! Seriously though, she always wanted to go to Yale and was in New Haven every 5 years for my reunions. That is until she got to high school and then she would not set foot on campus. The application process was becoming too real and she knew her odds weren’t good, even as a legacy. She wanted to take a step back and get some perspective so if she didn’t get in she wouldn’t be too disappointed. She went on to compile a good list of schools including Wesleyan, Brown, Bowdoin and Tufts. Luckily she got into Yale SCEA so we never had to try those out.
If nothing else, striving for a school like Yale will keep him on track for any tippy top school he finally chooses to apply to and attend.
Purtting together mixer for parents of son’s team before a race. Some have suggested the bar at the Omni. Any other suggestions? We may be upwards of 30 parents and just need a casual place to socialize where we can hear each other…
I coulnot find the date by which we should vacate the dorm( Trumbull) for summer break. I am thinking of May 12.
While I was digging around looking at calendars, found this (answers a question I had a few weeks ago about when the students need to be out of their rooms):
May 10 W Examinations end, 5:30 p.m.
Deadline for all term papers and term projects. This deadline can be extended only by a Temporary Incomplete authorized by the student’s residential college dean.
May 11 TH Residences close for underclassmen, 12 noon.