Yalies arrive - upperclassmen move them in

posterX · September 1, 2006, 9:29am

NHR 9/1 (excerpt)

NEW HAVEN — It’s move-in week at Yale University, with upperclassmen hustling all week to get their belongings into their dwellings before the wave of freshmen arrives today.

College Street and the streets around Old Campus will likely be jammed with the 1,302 members of Yale’s class of 2010. They are the 9 percent who made it out of the 21,101 students who applied to Yale last year.

That translates into traffic woes in the city center, New Haven officials said Thursday.

“People should anticipate delays on Elm and College. Those of us who grew up here have been through this before. We’ll get through it,” said Paul Wessel, city director of parking and traffic.

Wessel advised that drivers give themselves a little extra time to reach their destination if they go through downtown.

“This is not to the level of craziness we get when there are 40,000 people at the concerts on the Green every weekend this summer,” he said.

Aaron Rothstein, 19, of Brooklyn, N.Y., an incoming sophomore, came with his father, Ed Rothstein, Yale class of 1973. The elder Rothstein couldn’t help but reminisce as he pushed a luggage trolley down High Street, but he said, “New Haven looks different.”

The younger Rothstein said he had just transferred to Yale from Tufts University.

Ed Rothstein planned to take his son to some of New Haven’s landmarks he remembered from his days as a collegian, including the Wooster Street pizzerias such as Pepe’s and Sally’s.

“This brings back unexpected memories, but now I’m not nervous at all. I’m just excited,” Ed Rothstein said.

“Now I’m the one who is nervous,” chuckled his son.

Michelle Vu, 18, an incoming freshman from Columbia, Md., walked outside Phelps Gate on College Street to see if she could spot her dorm window as her family trailed behind her.

She will be moving into a fifth-floor room on Old Campus.

“This is all really pretty, but there are no elevators,” she said.

Nonetheless, she was excited to finally be on campus.

“It’s a little bit surreal. I never thought I would actually make it to college.”

Andrew Stegmaier, 20, a junior from Richmond, Va. moved in early to catch up with his singing group, the Spizzwinks(?), the oldest undergraduate a cappella group in the United States. But Thursday afternoon, instead of warbling, Stegmaier lugged a box of books up High Street to help friends move in before the freshmen take over.

Rachel Smith, 20, a junior from Boston, only had to move her things a few blocks from Saybrook College to an off-campus apartment on Park Street. “It’s not far, but I still have to move,” she sighed as she pushed an empty dolly.

“I’m going to miss the college, but at Park Street we have full kitchens and full apartments,” Smith said.

Mike Slater, 21, of Syracuse, N.Y., and Dennen McCloskey, 19, of Atlantic City, N.J., a pair of Yale swim team members, were unloading a sport utility vehicle on High Street before the rush. They had fond memories of moving in as freshmen due to a Yale tradition that upperclassmen help the incoming freshman move in.

“It’s awesome. Twenty people in green shirts took my boxes and the backpacks off my back. What would take an hour takes a minute,” Slater said.

He misses that tradition. “I’m on the fourth floor,” he said in a mournful voice. He plans to help the freshmen swimmers move in. McCloskey laughed and said that he has already done enough moving for the week.

“Move-in day is miserable for everybody,” McCloskey said.

Byerly · September 1, 2006, 9:55pm

What happened to the famous “8.6%” ?

And I wonder what the admit rate would have been if they had taken enough from the waitlist to meet the originally-projected class size.

This must be one of the smallest Yale freshman classes in years, due, no doubt, to the housing crunch. The ongoing renovations are are taking longer than expected.

<hr>

Initially it was announced that there were 1,823 admits; later, it was unofficially reported here that there were 56 taken from the waitlist.

If this is the case, and there were 1,302 matriculants, then the yield rate declined to 69.3%, although the yield projection in May was 73%.

The story talked about a “9% admit rate” from 21,101 applicants. If it was exactly 9%, then there were more than 56 taken from the waitlist, and a total of 1,899 admits. This would translate to a yield rate of 68.5%.

zephyr151 · September 1, 2006, 10:14pm

Which would put it below Princeton and Stanford for 2010, right?

Byerly · September 1, 2006, 10:16pm

The Yale Daily News is reporting different numbers:

“Yale opened its gates today to the Class of 2010, one of the most diverse in the University’s history.
As of yesterday, 1,319 students planned to matriculate at Yale this year out of 1,856 admitted students, said Jeff Brenzel, Yale’s dean of undergraduate admissions. This year’s yield of 71.1 percent is in line with last year’s record-setting 71.3 percent yield. In addition to these new arrivals, 22 students were admitted but chose to defer admission to next year.
Identical to last year’s figures, the median SAT verbal score for the class of 2010 is 750 and the median SAT math score is 740…”

Its not clear exactly how the deferees were treated with respect to the yield rate. Most schools would report admits who deferred as non-matriculants (offset, perhaps, by admits from last year who deferred but are now matriculating. The number of total admits, including the deferees, was, apparently, 1,879, which seems to match up with the waitlist admit number reported earlier. (This story does not acknowledge that resort was made to the waitlist.)

The way most schools would figure it, there were 1,879 admits and 1,319 matriculants (using figures from the YDN story) which would mean a yield rate of 70.2% (which was exactly my “pre-season” projection!)

<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=32985[/url]”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=32985</a>

Byerly · September 1, 2006, 10:40pm

This is the story quoted earlier by “PosterX”

<a href=“http://www.nhregister.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17138019&BRD=1281&PAG=461&dept_id=7576&rfi=6&xb=hugof[/url]”>http://www.nhregister.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17138019&BRD=1281&PAG=461&dept_id=7576&rfi=6&xb=hugof</a>

(requires registration)

Byerly · September 1, 2006, 10:45pm

The class of 2010 is slightly less “diverse”, ethnically, than last year’s class, and the percentage receiving financial aid has declined also.

In each case, developments at Yale this year were out of allignment with reported developments at its peer schools.

Virtually 50-50 male and female

Byerly · September 1, 2006, 11:51pm

"Yale welcomes new students
September 1, 2006, 2:01 PM EDT

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – The Yale University class of 2010 arrived Friday, winning admission to the Ivy League college from a record number of applicants.

The 1,318 students were chosen from among 21,101 applicants, the highest number in Yale’s history. The admission rate of 8.9 percent was the lowest at Yale.

More than 70 percent of those offered admission chose to enroll.

The new class includes 660 men and 658 women from all 50 states and 50 countries. About 31 percent of the American students identified themselves as students of color, down from nearly 33 percent last year…"

<a href=“http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/connecticut/ny-bc-ct--yaleenrollment0901sep01,0,6951597.story?coll=ny-region-apconnecticut[/url]”>Newsday | Long Island's & NYC's News Source - Newsday;

zephyr151 · September 2, 2006, 5:52am

The question is, how many were taken from the waitlist?

And did Yale plan to cut their class size down this year, or was it the preferred option to using the waitlist on a Duke-level scale?

Byerly · September 2, 2006, 8:14am

Both, I think.

Without the 57 reportedly taken from the waitlist, there would have been, at best, 1,262 matriculants from 1,823 admits, for a yield rate of 69%. (Those waitlist admits helped by coming in, presumably, at a 100% yield rate.)

But since the long-postponed renovation of the “colleges” continues apace, and hundreds more are exiled to “swing space” this fall, the class size - even the target class size, is smaller than it had been in recent years to avoid overcrowding.

crimsonbulldog · September 2, 2006, 2:23pm

The renovations of the colleges are not taking longer than expected. Around 15 months per college. This has been going on now for 7 years. The real reason for the housing crunch was a few years of high yielding. From what I understand, Yale’s policy will now be to artificially lower the admit rate somewhat and use the waitlist every year to get their target number.

Where do you get 1879 admits? It clearly states 1856. How do you know that doesn’t include the deferred? The yield is being reported as 71% to alumni.

posterX · September 2, 2006, 5:29pm

I think it’s been going on for eight years, not seven. And almost all of the colleges have been renovated now. There are a few they have to go back and re-renovate, because the last time they were renovated was in the mid 1990s. And, by the way, in terms of amenities and facilities, the renovated colleges at Yale are better than anything at any of the other Ivies.

Byerly · September 2, 2006, 5:40pm

“Work will center on residential college renovations, Suttle said, as their construction time frames depend strictly on the academic schedule. In addition to finishing Trumbull over the summer, workers will remove steam lines from the basement of Jonathan Edwards College and reinstall them under a sidewalk, Suttle said, in order to create space for future work. Silliman’s 15-month renovation will also begin this summer, and is expected to be more costly than past work on its peer colleges, Yale President Richard Levin said. At the same time, a building on Elm Street intended to temporarily house Silliman students is expected to be completed by the end of summer.”

Byerly · September 2, 2006, 5:47pm

From the YDN

Published: Friday, April 14, 2006
Colleges deserve full-fledged renovation

(exerpt)

A week has passed since the News reported that Calhoun, Ezra Stiles and Morse colleges have been added to the list of Yale residencies awaiting comprehensive renovations, and four months have passed since the administration contracted a preliminary design report. Bearing in mind this surprise – and the vague timetables provided by University officials – we argued that the design process must be more transparent than it has been in order to adequately incorporate student input.

This week, the completed preliminary report brought a new surprise to the campus’ attention – the administration had not merely considered, but sought to complete these major renovations during a summer or two. Obviously, such a scenario would be preferable on a couple of levels: Students would be able to immediately enjoy the newly refurbished dormitories rather than being displaced from them, and the University would be able to transform Swing Space into graduate housing – its eventual goal – that much more quickly. But these priorities are irreconcilable not only with the recommendations of the architectural consultants, but with the spirit that informed the renovations move in the first place.

Granted, Calhoun, Morse and Stiles have already received external repairs in recent summers, and thus may well avoid some of the most major undertakings of other college construction projects. But there is plenty of internal renovation to be done. Weak pipes and unpredictable heat need repair throughout the three colleges in question, and the report from perennial Yale renovations designer KieranTimberlake Associates suggested, not surprisingly, that the basements of Morse and Stiles in particular require a great deal of work.

Without long-term construction efforts, the colleges cannot accommodate both the required mechanical equipment and the proposed new student space. But if the purpose of these renovations is truly to minimize iniquities among residential colleges, then limiting those projects based on time constraints and relative difficulties of expansion negates their very purpose, suggesting that only certain colleges deserve perks ranging from movie theaters to squash courts.

Understandably, space constraints inherent in the layout of the colleges in question is greater and more frustrating than in others…

As the Yale Corporation prepares to decide on the scope of these new projects, we ask them to look not to the costs of this year’s work on Trumbull, but rather to the finished products 15-month renovation cycles have created. Otherwise, the end result of the University’s decade-long capital renovations project will be a campus where every residential college will have seen major improvements, but some more major than others…"

Byerly · September 2, 2006, 6:00pm

I get 1,879 admits by adding to the original 1,823 the 56 waitlist admits unofficially reported here not long ago by a couple of alumni.

See, for example, <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=2614738&postcount=2[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=2614738&postcount=2</a>

If there were 1,856 admits, as one story reports, then there were only 33 waitlist admits, and the earlier reports were wrong.

My guess is that there is some kind of shuffle going on with respect to the number of deferees.

The bottom line is that with three newstories reporting different numbers, some clarification is needed.

crimsonbulldog · September 2, 2006, 6:08pm

Something is wrong with the ydn website, but if you can access this article, it cleary states that the Yalecorp has plans for full renovations of Morse, Stiles and Calhoun. They weren’t originally on the list as the first two were built in the 1970’s and Calhoun renovated extensively in the 80’s, but I guess the agitation you posted above led to a change in heart. I don’t know why, however, since they physical plant of those colleges was always top. Suffice it to say, the college renovation project is indeed on schedule so I am not sure exactly why you thought it wasn’t.

Can you please post the link to the article listed above as the archive function on the ydn is not working. thank you

<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=32925[/url]”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=32925</a>

edit: posted here
Administration officials confirmed Thursday that Calhoun, Ezra Stiles and Morse colleges will all undergo yearlong renovations, beginning with Calhoun in the 2008-'09 academic year.

Though some University officials had anticipated full-scale renovations for months, administrators did not plan for yearlong closures until the Yale Corporation discussed the project in late April, Deputy Provost for Undergraduate and Graduate Programs Lloyd Suttle said. The administration also chose to renovate Calhoun first, but no timetable has been set for work on Morse or Stiles, which are expected to be more challenging. The colleges will relocate to Swing Space during the renovations.

Yale President Richard Levin said the Corporation will likely vote to approve the project formally in September.

The University’s announcement caps months of discussion regarding the manner in which the three colleges are to be revamped. Since Calhoun was renovated in 1989, and Morse and Stiles were built decades after their peers, administrators had hoped that the three could be renovated through a series of summer projects. But an architectural report prepared by the firm KieranTimberlake Associates concluded that comprehensive renovation would require 15-month closures, Suttle said. The architects presented the final version of their report at the Corporation meeting on the weekend of April 21.

“Their clear recommendation was that the scope of work is too much to be done in one summer, or even two summers,” Suttle said.

Levin said Calhoun was chosen to be renovated first because it is an easier job for planners. Calhoun’s restoration will be similar to those of its peer colleges, while work on Morse and Stiles is complicated by the nature of the architecture and a lack of free space. A mid-April draft of the KieranTimberlake report suggested that new basement space would have to be devoted to upgraded mechanical equipment in Morse and Stiles, posing a challenge for architects trying to improve areas intended for student activities.

“It’s a simpler project,” Levin said of the Calhoun renovation. “We know what we need to do.”

Workers are already replacing Calhoun’s battered windows and expect to be finished by the end of the summer.

The order in which Morse and Stiles will be revamped remains undecided, Suttle said, partly because architects must determine the details of shared infrastructure – such as the colleges’ joint kitchen.

Morse Master Frank Keil said he would prefer that his college be renovated earlier, though he appreciates the architectural hurdles involved.

“Obviously, we’d all like to have it as soon as possible, but we have to wait our turn,” he said. “It’s going to be a challenge, but I have no doubt they can do it.”

Facilities officials said they expect the renovations to repair Calhoun’s degrading infrastructure and to bring the basements of all the colleges to par with their peers.

Calhoun needs new roofing, plumbing and electrical systems, Calhoun Master Jonathan Holloway said.

“It’s clear that although Calhoun was partially renovated 16 years ago, it needs the attention now,” he said. “We had terrific rainstorms last October, and Calhoun leaked left and right.”

Officials said they are currently seeking an architect for the Calhoun project.
Personalized Content

Byerly · September 2, 2006, 7:02pm

This link should work.

<a href=“http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:BmPfQjnXKZMJ:161.58.180.45/article.asp%3FAID%3D32672+“Colleges+deserve+full-fledged+renovation”&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1[/url]”>http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:BmPfQjnXKZMJ:161.58.180.45/article.asp%3FAID%3D32672+“Colleges+deserve+full-fledged+renovation”&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1</a>

As for the renovations, my sense is that the project seems never ending to some, and that the additional work that was not initially envisioned has upset the schedule for finishing the job. The bottom line is that class size must be restricted for a longer period than originally planned, and people will be forced into “swing space” for several additional years.

Definitely put on ice is the contemplated expansion of 500 or so in undergrad enrollment. Before Yale is in any position to expand, Princeton will already have done so - equalling or exceeding Yale in size.

If you are filling a class of 1,310 rather than 1,350 as previously, it certainly has THIS “upside” … the admit rate can be reduced!

crimsonbulldog · September 2, 2006, 7:20pm

“Definitely put on ice is the contemplated expansion of 500 or so in undergrad enrollment. Before Yale is in any position to expand, Princeton will already have done so - equalling or exceeding Yale in size.”

I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
Many feel Yale is the right size as evidenced by its excellent class size numbers (Yale leads its peers in % of classes below 20 students and % of classes above 50 and faculty:student ratios). The planned expansion would also be heavily geared towards international students. There would have to be a faculty increase concomittantly to offset the increase in students. I think Yale and other colleges really need to look hard at whether their goals for diversity should come at the cost of the identity of the college. A more diverse, yet larger Yale, might not be as coherent or have the same personality that makes Yale so great to begin with. I personally am opposed to an expansion.

There are plans for two colleges btw, not one. The site of one is on college street opposite cross campus, which would make Silliman and TD more continuous with the rest of campus. The other college would be located in Providence and be named Brown.

posterX · September 2, 2006, 7:38pm

I thought the potential sites for new colleges were at the corner of Prospect Street, adjacent to the engineering buildings. I think the College Street site would be reserved for major academic or cultural buildings. But, as you point out, the College Street site would obviously be better if Yale wants to retain the title of having the most compactly-located undergraduate dormitories in the Ivy League (a fact which directly translates into it having the best undergraduate social scene, by far, because everyone can visit or party with each other in a matter of two or three minutes). If Yale built them up on Prospect, it still wouldn’t be as bad as Harvard, but it would still be a negative.

I don’t think it will happen in the immediate future, because Yale is simply expanding too rapidly (spending close to a half billion dollars in new construction every year) to add additional $100+ million projects. From what I hear, the campus this summer looked like one massive construction site, with almost every street blocked off for new buildings.

Byerly · September 2, 2006, 7:43pm

The problem is, you can’t continue the fashionable “Noah’s Ark” approach to admissions (two of these … and two of those), maintain gender balance, take care of the legacies, go after the “economically disadvantaged” etc and still field a football team, without expanding.

Princeton wants more “greenhaired people” in addition to lax players and “eating club” types, and has concluded that expansion is the only way to make it work.

Harvard, apparently, wants to be the school of choice for the world, not just the nation, and thus contemplates a 10% expansion to include more internationals.

Yale is straining to keep up, although it announced the usual “50 states and 50 foreign countries”, 50-50 male/female split etc, though I notice the “diversity” numbers were down a hair, and the fraction receiving financial aid declined.

Bottom line: these schools can’s satisfy existing constituencies and become more “diverse” without expanding.

crimsonbulldog · September 2, 2006, 7:45pm

yale doesn’t actually field a football team

and didn’t the ydn say that this was the most diverse class in history?

Yalies arrive - upperclassmen move them in

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