Yale student, ready to answer your questions

Bulldog2017
Fri, 20 Dec 2013 12:50:16 +0000

@thenewdude

I’d really rather stay away from admissions related questions because I am no better informed about the answers than you are. Anything anyone says on College Confidential is purely speculation and really isn’t constructive in the long run. Three general pieces of advice: 1) apply to a range of schools, 2) you have a shot at everywhere you apply, and 3) you will be happy no matter where you end up - you don’t need an Ivy to be happy in life.

@roxy481

Well, hopefully you know about the residential college system! Instead of living in regular dorms, we live in suites in one of twelve colleges - Berkeley, Branford, Calhoun, Davenport, Ezra Stiles, Jonathan Edwards, Morse, Pierson, Saybrook, Silliman, Timothy Dwight, and Trumbull. You are in the same college all four years and each college has a Master and a Dean who oversee college life and student life. You compete in intramural sports with your college and whichever college has the most points at the end of the year wins the “Tyng Cup” - last year Trumbull took the title. Each college has it’s own dining hall, gym, “buttery” (late night snack place), music practice rooms, and other facilities (my college has a darkroom for developing film). You get pretty close with the people in your college and it’s very much home. I eat in my college’s dining hall almost every night and have fantastic conversations with whomever I happen to sit next to.

One of the other unique things is the way in which Yale manages general education requirements or “distributional requirements.” There are skills - writing, quantitative reasoning, and language - and subject areas - science, social science, and humanities. You basically need two of each in order to graduate (the language requirement varies, depending on previous preparation), but they have to be spaced out according to this chart you can find online. It’s nice because it is a vague enough requirement that you can choose what you want to do (not as strict as many other schools), but it’s also definitely there so you have to push yourself outside of your academic comfort zone. I think that this creates some really creative, free-minded thinkers and does a good job of rounding everyone’s education.

Also, shout out to our pretty unique academic calendar: three days off for October Break, full week for Thanksgiving, nearly a month off for Christmas, two weeks of Spring Break, and nearly four months for summer! It really is a pretty sweet schedule to have!

(This was all done on my phone - please excuse any typos)