Academics
Yale is known for having one of the most rigorous academic workloads
of any college. Requiring 36 courses for graduation rather than
the 32 common to most other Ivies, Yale spurs on its overachieving
student body, which already exerts a great amount of self-inflicted
pressure on itself. Such pressure, however, does not lead to
cutthroat competition. In fact, students at Yale are said to
be both very studious and cooperative.
The University, although a major research institution, touts
itself as an undergraduate college first and foremost. Introductory
classes may number hundreds of students, but these large lectures
are generally accompanied by small discussion sessions. Upperclassmen
more frequently enroll in small seminars that are capped at
16 students.
Top faculty can be found teaching several undergraduate courses,
and professors are for the most part very available to students
who seek them out. When it comes to the 36 courses students
must take, they have wide discretion about what those courses
will be. Students can select from 2000 courses, which they have
the opportunity to try out during a two-week “shopping
period” before settling on a final schedule. The shopping
system allows students to get a feel for different classes before
actually registering, allowing them to avoid uninteresting classes
or ones with sub-par instructors. Yale doesn’t have any
specific course requirements, and therefore no core curriculum.
Rather, students need to take three classes in each of four
general areas. The areas are social sciences; natural sciences
and math; language and literature; and humanities and arts (other
than literature). Yale also requires proficiency in a foreign
language, despite the fact that it discourages study abroad
because of the philosophy that every Yalie should spend their
full four years at Yale. Although no department at Yale is truly
weak, it is strongest in the Arts and Humanities, a factor that
contributes to Yale’s liberal atmosphere. Top humanities
students can even enroll in a program called Directed Studies,
which examines the literature, philosophy, history, and politics
of Western tradition. The sciences are also excellent at Yale,
but the rigorous curriculum coupled with early morning classes
atop what is known as “Science Hill” doesn’t
exactly encourage science majors.
However, much of Yale’s depth and breadth may soon change.
The university has adopted a new “Selective Excellence”
policy aimed at focusing resources on the largest and strongest
departments. This means a handful of the top departments will
receive the bulk of the funding, and smaller departments will
be forced to seek “excellence” through specialization.
Campus Environment
Yale is one of the unfortunate Ivys to have a beautiful
campus placed amist a gritty city. New Haven’s crime rate
is a serious concern both for students and university officials
who are trying hard to improve the "cap and town"
situation, and visitors who end up driving through some of the
city’s worst areas find themselves with an unfavorable
first impression of Yale’s home town. But New Haven isn’t
all bad—some students even refer to the city as cosmopolitan.
The areas bordering campus is boasted to have the best pizza
in the country as well as a renowned theatre where plays headed
for Broadway have been tried out and both professionals and
graduate drama students showcase their talent. And if you want
to take a trip to Broadway itself or another large metropolitan
city, New Haven is halfway between New York and Boston.
As for the campus itself, walking from New Haven into Yale feels
as if you’ve entered a completely different world. Most
building are designed in the traditional collegiate Gothic style,
modelled after Oxford and Cambridge. Some building have even
been acid washed to give a more authentic look, and empty statue
pedestals and ledges dot the campus, even though they never
actually held statues that had been looted in the middle ages
like at the school’s English counterparts.
To keep these century-old buildings current, Yale has undertaken
a massive $2.6 billion construction and renovation project,
scheduled to be completed in 2010. Part of this project involves
renovating and modernizing all twelve of the residential colleges,
which each house roughly 400 undergraduates, a master, a dean,
a library, a dining hall, and other facilities for students
within the college. By dividing undergraduates into these distinct
residential colleges, Yale effectively provides the feel of
a small liberal arts school within a major research university.
Ask an undergraduate what he or she likes best about Yale, and
many will tell you “the college system.”
Student Life
Although many conservatives do certainly attend, Yale has one
of the more liberal student bodies in the Ivy League. This makes
Yale popular with women and artistic students, such as drama
majors, and it is no surprise that Yale is known for its theater
and performance groups. Students' liberal leanings also come
out in various forms of activism, most recently a push to unionize
graduate students and improve wages for other university workers
led by Jesse Jackson. Additionally, the Yale Daily News
(the oldest college daily in the country) is a popular extracurricular,
and its recent raunchy sex column has stirred up a bit of controversy
as well as national attention.
Sports are not as popular at Yale as they are at other schools,
but many still get fired up for “the Game,” Yale’s
annual football face-off with rival Harvard. Yale also offers
dozens of other varsity sports in addition to the intramural
teams that compete among the residential colleges. Rounding
out an athletic side to Yale’s recent construction are
a fifty-seven-thousand-square-foot gym and an indoor track that
have been added to the existing facilities.
Some more traditional Yalies find a place in one of Yale’s
mysterious secret societies such as Skull and Bones, which was
the model for the movie The Skulls, although the actually
society is presumably less intense. Many cryptic and gated buildings
belonging to these societies are scattered around Yale.
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