Five Things to Know About Yale

August 29, 2012 :: Admissionado Team

Do you lay awake at night, dreaming of that acceptance letter to Yale? We get you. Here’s a list of things that will help you better appreciate your “dream school.”

1. Arts: See yourself as the next Meryl Streep or Edward Norton? Well, you could share similar college experiences. Hosting a bustling community of artists, Yale offers undergraduate degrees in Theater Studies as well Architecture, Art, Computing the Arts, Film Studies, Music and Theater Studies, and a variety of elective courses for students pursuing other majors.
2. Shopping Period: For ten days, you can go to as many classes as you would like and mull over what you will end up choosing. Test out a professor’s teaching style, check out the course reading, and see who else is in the class. You don’t have to worry about saying, “I didn’t sign up for this.”
3. Course Load: Yale requires students to complete a total of 36 credits—which means a typical year, you will take four courses one semester, five the other. This is slightly higher than a school like, say, Harvard, which requires a minimum of four each semester. One way to look at it is that you are DEFINITELY getting your money’s worth. Another is that it is an intellectual challenge.
4. Residential Colleges: Each student is assigned a college before their freshman year where—chances are—they’ll spend their next four years. Each college is unique, and comes equipped with amenities like a snack bar, movie room, dance studio—you name it. Each has it’s own dining hall… it’s like a little college within a big college. It becomes your community and part of your identity. Where you end up is random, but the college carefully balances the population of the houses to represent a microcosm of the larger community, so… not totally random.
5. Freshman Seminar Program, Directed Studies, or Perspectives on Science and Engineering: These are three different unique options for Yale freshman. Ready to rub elbows with a tenured professor? You can do it right off the bat with Yale’s Freshman Seminar program, where students get an opportunity to learn from a faculty member in a small seminar environment usually reserved for higher levels of study. Want an overview of Western civilization? Consider applying for Directed Studies, an interdisciplinary program in Western Civilization where students read the central works in Western tradition in one of three yearlong courses in either literature, philosophy, or historical and political thought. Have a strong background in science, math and engineering and want to learn more about the interdisciplinary nature of these subjects in a fun environment? Take a look at Yale’s Perspectives on Science and Engineering course.

Want to know more? Check out our Yale profile.