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Essay topics.

All first-year applicants will complete a few Yale-specific short answer questions. These required questions are slightly different based on the application platform an applicant chooses. The 2023-2024 Yale-specific questions for the Coalition Application, Common Application, and QuestBridge Application are detailed below.

Short Answer Questions

Applicants submitting the Coalition Application , Common Application , or QuestBridge Application  will respond to the following short answer questions:

• Students at Yale have time to explore their academic interests before committing to one or more major fields of study. Many students either modify their original academic direction or change their minds entirely. As of this moment, what academic areas seem to fit your interests or goals most comfortably? Please indicate up to three from the  list provided.
• Tell us about a topic or idea that excites you and is related to one or more academic areas you selected above. Why are you drawn to it? (200 words or fewer)
• What is it about Yale that has led you to apply? (125 words or fewer)

Applicants applying with the QuestBridge Application will complete the questions above via the Yale QuestBridge Questionnaire, available on the Yale Admissions Status Portal after an application has been received.

Applicants submitting the Coalition Application or Common Application  will also respond to the following short answer questions, in no more than 200 characters (approximately 35 words):

• What inspires you?
• If you could teach any college course, write a book, or create an original piece of art of any kind, what would it be?
• Other than a family member, who is someone who has had a significant influence on you? What has been the impact of their influence? 
• What is something about you that is not included anywhere else in your application?

Applicants submitting the Coalition Application or Common Application will respond to one of the following prompts in 400 words or fewer. 

1. Reflect on a time you discussed an issue important to you with someone holding an opposing view. Why did you find the experience meaningful?

2. Reflect on your membership in a community to which you feel connected. Why is this community meaningful to you? You may define community however you like.

3. Reflect on an element of your personal experience that you feel will enrich your college. How has it shaped you?

14: How to Write the 2023-24 Yale University Essays (Part 1‪)‬ The College Essay Advisors Podcast

Join Stacey and Becca as they discuss the 2023-24 Yale University supplemental essay prompts. Part 1 of 2! Access our 2023-24 Yale University Supplemental Essay Guide: https://www.collegeessayadvisors.com/supplemental-essay/yale-university-2023-24-supplemental-essay-prompt-guide/ Watch some of our YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MaLsIu1vdE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6VxiKDeqQc Work one-on-one with an Advisor from our team: https://www.collegeessayadvisors.com/one-on-one-advising/ Follow us on social: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CollegeEssayAdvisors Twitter: https://twitter.com/CollegeEssayAdv Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/collegeessayadvisors/ Website: https://www.collegeessayadvisors.com/   *Details have been changed as it relates to any and all essay examples mentioned in the podcast to protect the privacy of our clients. Don't forget to subscribe so you can be notified when we release new episodes!

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How to Write the Yale University Essays 2023-2024

Hoping to become a Yale bulldog? When applying to such a selective school, writing standout supplemental essays can certainly give you a boost. Through your supplemental essays, you can create a complete picture of who you are and humanize yourself to readers.

Read on for our best advice on Yale’s short answer and longer essay prompts.

You can also check out these Yale essay examples to inspire your writing.

Yale University Supplemental Essay Prompts

Students can apply to Yale University using the Common Application, the Coalition Application, or Questbridge. All applicants are required to respond to two short answer questions that involve exploring your areas of interest and outlining your reasons for applying to Yale. 

Additionally, all applicants must write one 400-word essay. Students applying through the Common App or the Coalition App are required to answer four very short answer questions, around 35 words each.

Short Answer Questions (For all applicants, including Questbridge)

Short Answer 1: Students at Yale have plenty of time to explore their academic interests before committing to one or more major fields of study. Many students either modify their original academic direction or change their minds entirely. As of this moment, what academic areas seem to fit your interests or goals most comfortably? Please indicate up to three from the list provided.

Tell us about a topic or idea that excites you and is related to one or more academic areas you selected above. Why are you drawn to it? (200 words or fewer)

Short Answer 2: What is it about Yale that has led you to apply? (125 words or fewer)

Common App and Coalition App Supplemental Questions (200 characters, ~35 words) 

What inspires you?

If you could teach any college course, write a book, or create an original piece of art of any kind, what would it be?

Other than a family member, who is someone who has had a significant influence on you? What has been the impact of their influence?

What is something about you that is not included anywhere else in your application?

Essays (For all applicants)

Please respond to one of the following prompts in 400 words or fewer. Please indicate the number of the prompt you choose.

Option 1: Reflect on a time you discussed an issue important to you with someone holding an opposing view. Why did you find the experience meaningful?

Option 2: Reflect on your membership in a community to which you feel connected. Why is this community meaningful to you? You may define community however you like.

Option 3: Reflect on an element of your personal experience that you feel will enrich your college. How has it shaped you?

Short Answer Questions

Short answer 1, students at yale have plenty of time to explore their academic interests before committing to one or more major fields of study. many students either modify their original academic direction or change their minds entirely. as of this moment, what academic areas seem to fit your interests or goals most comfortably please indicate up to three from the list provided..

For context, as part of answering this prompt, you’ll be asked to pick three of several different academic areas from a long list. This prompt is similar to a traditional “ Why This Major ” prompt, however, 200 words is a tight amount of space, so you need to be comprehensive and clear. Whether or not you plan on majoring in physics, economics, or neuroscience, the same basic strategy can be applied across the board. Of course, this essay prompt, like many, can usually be answered through several different possible angles. 

One strategy involves tying your past and future together through your present interest. As directly as possible, you would describe how your academic interests developed, what exactly is compelling about your intended major (which will likely be directly connected to one or more of your academic interests), and perhaps what your professional goals are. 

For example, maybe you’re interested in Linguistics because you’re a third culture kind, and have always struggled to get rid of your American accent in Portuguese, but your younger brother speaks without an accent. You want to explore the science behind language acquisition, as well as the human impact of language (culture, identity, language preservation). You’re potentially interested in becoming a translator one day, primarily to expand great works of literature across language barriers.

Or, maybe you’re interested in Psychology and Political Science because you’re fascinated by today’s polarized political climate. You want to understand why people hold the beliefs they do, and why voters act the way they do. One day, you hope to work on the campaigns of progressive candidates who support the causes you care about.

Secondly, a respondent to this question could dive more deeply into the topic itself, with less of a focus on career and future and more on how you think. You could begin with a hook that loops readers into the very marrow of your interest, perhaps with a personal anecdote. Then, you could fully nerd out on whatever your interest is, from fine art to molecular biology to Spanish Literature. In order to explain why you are drawn to this interest, you can discuss your chosen topic or idea in a way that truly showcases your particular passion.

For example, a student with an interest in evolutionary biology could note the field’s tendency to challenge common assumptions surrounding anything from the innateness of gender norms to the “why’s” of our biological realities, while an international relations aficionado could say that being raised in a bilingual household triggered a lifelong love of translation, not only of language but also of  social norms, and cultural phenomena, between differing worlds. 

Whatever your interest is, waste no space in diving right into the most specific details. Then, work to connect the details to future goals and interests. While a traditional “Why This Major” essay should include why you want to study that major at that specific school, you may not have any space, given the small word count. Luckily, the next question allows you to discuss how Yale can support your academic goals.

Short Answer 2

What is it about yale that has led you to apply (125 words or fewer).

This is a classic example of the “ Why This College ” essay. For this prompt, you’ll want to cite specific reasons Yale is a good fit to support your academic goals. You may also want to include any compelling extracurricular reasons, as college is not only about what you do in the classroom. 

Let’s go back to the example of the student who’s passionate about Psych and PoliSci. A specific Yale resource they might want to highlight is the PoliSci Department’s funding for students working on election campaigns . This funding allows students to develop and implement a campaign strategy related to their unique skills. For example, they might choose to create a social media campaign, using their knowledge of voter psychology. 

Aim to get just as granular in your essay, and do extensive research on resources at Yale. See our post How to Research a School for the “Why This College” essay if you don’t know where to start.

In an essay of only 125 words, you’ll likely only be able to mention 2-4 aspects of Yale that resonate with you. That’s totally okay! It’s better to show a deeper understanding of what Yale offers than to list a bunch of general characteristics. 

Under no circumstances should you mention anything vague that could apply to other schools, such as the location, prestige, or even a strong academic department. If you could copy and paste your essay for another school and just switch out the school name, that’s a sign that your essay isn’t specific enough. Take it to the next level; what courses, programs, organizations, or grants could support your goals? 

Common App and Coalition App Supplemental Questions

What inspires you (200 characters).

This sounds a lot like “vision statements” that many business professionals write for themselves. The idea here is to give a concise summary of what drives you every day.

While brainstorming an answer to this question, it’s a good idea to think about how you would summarize your application in a few sentences. What are your recommenders saying about you? What do your classwork and extracurriculars demonstrate an interest in? What sentence instantly helps to combine the disparate elements of your application into a cohesive narrative? This should help guide an answer to the question that’s consistent with your overall application.

For example, maybe you’re passionate about competitive weightlifting and computer programming. You love the two very different activities because they allow you to constantly push your limits. You can always lift more, and create a more efficient program. Your response to this prompt might focus on your desire to continually improve yourself and what you’ve built.

Or, maybe the focus of your high school career was leadership and service. You served in Student Government, participated in Model UN, and started an organization to combat the food desert in your local community. In this case, you might write that working with governing bodies to enact meaningful change is what motivates you.

Of course, you could derive your inspiration from something external, like a certain group of people you interact with every day or even your favorite musician. This is fine and can make a meaningful essay, but it’s the sort of thing a person has to be very careful about. For example, writing an essay about how inspired you are by your mother’s diligence as a hand surgeon can be a great read, but these types of essays make it easy to accidentally focus more so on your inspirational subject than about you. Make sure to always tie back the source of your inspiration to yourself, your drive, your actions, and your values. 

If you could teach any college course, write a book, or create an original piece of art of any kind, what would it be? (200 characters )

This is just a proxy to ask “what interests you?” That is, what interests you enough that you’d want to share that passion with others? You can let your creativity run wild here; if you have a niche interest, this is the perfect place to mention it.

For a college course, share the title and give a brief description of the course, such as the works you’ll study and the themes covered.

Remember that an answer like “Designing and Testing Role Playing Games” is a lot better than “Economics 101.” Alternatively, think about two interests you have. For example, if you like cartoon shows and politics, a class called “The Politics of Cartoon Shows” will definitely catch the eye of an admissions officer.

For a book, you’ll want to share the title and a brief synopsis. An example might be: “ Who Made My Clothes? Stories from Garment Workers Around the World. This book will humanize these workers, sharing their backgrounds, their reasons for sewing, and the conditions they work in.”

For the original work of art, also share the title and give a visual description mixed with the inspiration for the piece. An example would be: “ Mushroom Forest , mixed media. This work depicts an ethereal forest of colorful, self-foraged mushrooms and moss. A small, painted frog looks onward, shielded from the rain by the mushroom canopy.”

Keep it engaging, witty, and quick!

Other than a family member, who is someone who has had a significant influence on you? What has been the impact of their influence? (200 characters)

People with great mentors and role models usually become successful in their fields, and Yale wants to admit successful students. This prompt also gives you an opportunity to show self-awareness and gratitude for someone else’s impact on your growth.

If no one comes to mind immediately, it may be easier to think of traits or aspects of your application you want to highlight, and then consider who had the biggest impact on that area of your life. For example, pretend you’re Beth from The Queen’s Gambit, and your obvious talent is playing chess. You might choose to write about Mr. Shaibel, the janitor who introduced you to chess:

Mr. Shaibel, my orphanage’s janitor, not only taught me chess; he helped me grasp opportunities I didn’t have, introducing me to the HS coach and even giving me money to enter my first tournament.

You have an extremely limited character count, so get straight to the point, and feel free to use well-known abbreviations/acronyms to maximize space.

What is something about you that is not included anywhere else in your application? (200 characters)

This one is incredibly open-ended, which can be as terrifying or as exciting as you decide it to be. It gives you a great opportunity to showcase something that wouldn’t traditionally show up in a letter of recommendation or a resume. Here are a few questions to consider for brainstorming:

• What are your hobbies?
• What could you talk about endlessly?
• What are you known for in your friend group? How about your family?
• What’s your guilty (or not so guilty) pleasure? Reality TV? In-n-Out runs? Gummy worms?
• Do you have a random skill, like cutting hair or making friendship bracelets?
• Do you have siblings, and does your role in the sibling hierarchy affect your life?
• What’s a weird story of yours? A spontaneous thing you’ve done or something that happened to you and the way you reacted to it?
• What’s a value you were raised to have?
• What’s something you like doing, regardless of whether you’re good at it or not?
• On that subject, what’s something you’re bad at but do anyway?

Brainstorm as freely as you can and leave no stone unturned; nothing is too stupid or frivolous to make it into your essay! The important thing in any college essay is rarely the subject itself, but what the subject reveals about you. For example, you can write about how, as the most skilled hair-braider on your cross-country team, you’ve gotten to know all of your teammates better through being the unofficial “team braider,” or that as a middle child, you’ve developed dual penchants for observation and conflict resolution. You only have a few words and it’s implied in this prompt that this essay can be an off-the-resume one, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be deep. But it should still be revealing in some way!

Essays for All Applicants

Reflect on a time you discussed an issue important to you with someone holding an opposing view. why did you find the experience meaningful (400 words).

This essay presents a fantastic opportunity to showcase both your intellectual vitality and your social skills. At its core, it’s an essay about your growth as a thinker and person. 

We disagree with people often, often multiple times a day, so there’s plenty of material to brainstorm from. This may be especially pertinent for members of argument-based extracurriculars, like debate, Mock Trial, and Model UN students. Activists and researchers, too. But remember— it doesn’t have to be an argument, just a discussion with a dissenter. 

Write down a list of possible topics, and don’t worry too much about the context of the discussion so much as its content and impact. When this essay is well-written, quarrels with the woman in front of you in line for grocery checkout can be just as fascinating as a national debate closing argument. 

Also, determining whether an issue is “important” or not can be a subjective matter. Your essay doesn’t necessarily need to be about traditional political debate topics, such as abortion or gun control. In fact, we encourage you to write about issues that will be a little less common, if you can think of some relevant experiences (local issues can be especially promising). Topics such as cultural appropriation, the ethics of thrifting and reselling, or whether your school district should get rid of its gifted program are all fair game.

Just remember that Yale is a liberal university, so you don’t want to alienate your audience by sharing that you have a particularly conservative point of view.

After creating your list, scan your potential topic ideas for varied points of interest. Pay special attention to the second half of the prompt and consider which experiences either helped you sharpen your reasoning or change your opinion. Which experience was the most transformative? Intellectually stimulating? Emotional? Unique? Which do you remember the most clearly and why? Once you’ve narrowed down your options into a few viable ones, pick the one that you feel will make it easiest to craft a compelling story.

When starting this essay, include just enough to set the scene. Don’t dwell on exposition, irrelevant details of the conversation, or negative emotions surrounding the event for too long. Who was there? How did you disagree, and why? Introduce each viewpoint as succinctly as possible while still preserving important details, keeping in mind the strict word count. 

Explain the important points within the conversation before fully diving into the essay. Often essays around any sort of challenge are better-written when the writer focuses on the growth aspects of the story rather than whatever challenging circumstances came before. 

Really dive into how your thinking was shifted or augmented by your experience or even what broader lessons you may have learned after better understanding a specific issue. What did you do during or after the discussion? Did you research it more deeply or take action in support of your final opinion?

For example, maybe your environmental club thought that your school should ban plastic straws because of their negative impact on the planet, but then you learned from disabled students how important plastic straws can be for accessibility. As a result, you shifted the campaign to introducing a composting system instead, and learned the importance of inviting more diverse voices to weigh in on the club’s initiatives.

By the end of the argument, your reader should feel that you’ve truly gotten to know your topic well and experienced positive change as a result. Feel free to mention specific logical progressions, newfound evidence, or novel philosophical perspectives you’ve discovered.

This essay is also an exercise in open-mindedness, so make sure to avoid ad hominem attacks against your “opponent.” As a general rule of thumb, frame your viewpoint throughout as a respectful one, regardless of how the discussion actually went. 

Reflect on your membership in a community to which you feel connected. Why is this community meaningful to you? You may define community however you like. (400 words)

With this prompt, admissions officers are trying to learn what is important to you in a community and why you are important in a community. Yale’s essay prompts have historically stressed the importance of community, as it’s an understandable priority for them. When applying to a university, you are applying to join their community—so think about what they want! They want to accept students who form deep bonds, care for their peers, and have strong guiding values and principles. This essay allows you to show that you are already well-versed in forming meaningful connections. 

Most people are a part of various communities, whether they realize it or not or whether these communities are formal (town, soccer team, religious organization, school) or informal (group of friends, coworkers, family) ones. If you are having trouble identifying which yours are, consider which people you feel a sense of community with. Volunteer groups, families, cultures, and clubs may spring to mind. Really, though, anything can make the cut: your Dungeons and Dragons group, those sharing your gender or sexual identity, people with similar life experiences to you. 

You can aim to organize your essay in the following way:

First, define and describe the community you are writing about. Defining the community is especially important for applicants writing about informal communities. For example, if you are writing about your siblings, make sure that this is clear. When describing the community, be sure to describe the culture. How do you interact as a group? For example, your soccer team may be more than teammates – perhaps you have special moments while traveling on the bus for a match. Make sure you discuss the dynamic. As a group, are you sarcastic, silly, or serious? Does your community have a specific kind of humor or tradition? 

To draw readers into your story, feel free to lead with a charming sensory anecdote, like that of your family cooking their favorite traditional dish or the roars of laughter emerging from gameplay. In just a few sentences, show your reader just how important this community is to you and in which ways you feel connected to it. Do they make you laugh harder or understand you better than anyone else? Do you feel particularly passionate about an issue they represent? 

When you are outlining the aspects of a community that are meaningful to you, you are also outlining your values! If you want to position yourself as fun-loving, you may want to focus on the sarcastic or silly aspects of your community. If you want to be seen as deep and thoughtful, you may want to focus on your community values and traditions.

Secondly, discuss your engagement with the community. You can lead by introducing your motivation for your efforts to explain them. For example, did you create a Snapchat group chat for your debate team that allowed you to bond outside the context of serious competitions, opening up a channel for close friendship among teammates? Did you regularly grab lunch with your co-workers at a local bakery? Or, did you meet survivors of gender-based violence through your work with a local organization? In this way, your efforts and their meaning can be covered in one fell swoop. Describing your role in your community will allow admissions officers to get a more full picture of what you value and how you act on your values.

Finally, reflect on why your involvement was important to you , and how it’s shaped you. For example, did the Snapchat group chat teach you to empathize with your competition, improving your sportsmanship? Did conversations with your coworkers over lunch spark your interest in food science? Or, did volunteering at a non-profit increase your interest in being a human rights lawyer? You could also talk about how being the oldest sibling taught you to be a caretaker and sparked your interest in becoming a doctor. Regardless, you want to write about how you have become who you are through your engagement with this community.

Although this essay presents an opportunity to show off what you’ve done, there should be just as much emphasis—if not more so—on your personal connection to your achievements as on your achievements themselves. Remember that admissions officers will already be looking over your activities and awards information, so there’s a good chance they’ll see it soon before or after reading your essays! Take this chance to display your core values, because in a way, this prompt is asking a sub-question: What is meaningful to you?

In this video, we read a successful Yale essay for a similar prompt: “What is a community to which you belong?”

This essay can take on a narrative form if you want to tell a brief story that exemplifies your community involvement or you can write it as a simple description/explanation. If you choose to be more explanatory in your writing, you should make sure to give yourself some sentences for deep reflection. While there is a prompt to answer, make sure that your writing stays engaging and thoughtful!

Where to Get Your Yale Essays Edited

We hope this post was helpful in at least getting the ball rolling on your submission. While your essays do play a substantial role in landing you an acceptance letter in the spring, they aren’t the only thing that matters. Also, assessing the quality of your own hypothetical essays is one of the less objective ways of estimating the chances of your application’s success. 

That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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Yale Supplemental Essays Workshop

Join our “Yale Supplemental Essays Workshop” webinar to gain valuable insights and expert guidance on crafting standout Yale University application essays. Whether you’re a high school student preparing to apply or a parent supporting your child’s college journey, this webinar will provide you with essential tools and knowledge to create compelling essays. Key learnings in this webinar include: – Understanding Yale’s Unique Approach: Learn about Yale’s distinctive essay prompts and what they reveal about the university’s values. – Essay Brainstorming Strategies: Discover effective techniques for generating unique and compelling essay ideas. – Crafting Engaging Narratives: Explore how to weave personal experiences and anecdotes into a compelling narrative that captures the admissions committee’s attention. – The Power of Authenticity: Understand the importance of being genuine in your essays and how to convey your true self effectively. – Editing and Refining: Learn how to edit and refine your essays to ensure they are polished and error-free. – Expert Tips and Best Practices: Benefit from expert advice on what admissions officers are looking for and tips for making your essays stand out. – Q&A Session: Get your questions answered by our experienced college admissions expert and Yale alum, Stacey Tuttle. Don’t miss this opportunity to demystify the Yale supplemental essays and increase your chances of securing a spot at one of the world’s most prestigious universities. Register now and embark on your journey to crafting outstanding Yale application essays.

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What to Do if You’re Waitlisted from Yale

1. Remind Yourself: There is More Than One Pathway to Success

We know this is not the news you were hoping for – but it’s still an accomplishment to be waitlisted. (Think how many other applicants were denied admission to Yale altogether!) Moreover, there is no one school, internship, or job that is going to lead you to success. That’s the great thing about life: we’re in the driver’s seat, and there are more roads available to us with every turn.

2. Call Yale’s Admissions Office to Ask if They Accept Waitlist Letters

The last thing you want to do is perturb the admissions office at Yale by sending them an unsolicited waitlist letter if they do not wish to receive them. So, double check! Some schools will tell you when you receive your waitlist notification if/how they prefer to be contacted, even providing a form to submit with additional information. Otherwise, call the admissions office  (we promise they will be nice) and ask if they:

• accept waitlist letters
• would like yours by any specific date (usually the sooner, the better)
• have any preferences you should take into account (word counts, who to address it to, etc.)

3. Sign Up for a Waitlist Letter Consultation with College Essay Advisors

If the admissions department at Yale answered with a resounding “Yes!” then it’s time to write a waitlist letter that will have admissions officers kicking themselves, wondering why they didn’t admit you in the first place. Your personal CEA Advisor can help you to draft a letter that succinctly updates admissions on your recent accomplishments and reconfirms your interest in the institution (if you accept me, I will attend!). This letter needs to be concise and compelling in order to give you a leg up on your competition. Luckily for you, we have been helping applicants draft powerful waitlist letters for 20+ years. So, what are you waiting for?! Get in touch to sign up for your Yale   Waitlist Letter Consultation , and the team at College Essay Advisors will help you increase your chances of admission.

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Advising Resources

Upcoming Events

Announcements, ►  environmental humanities course listings for fall 2024.

The Fall 2024 Yale Environmental Humanities  guide to undergraduate and graduate course offering   is now live (as of April 1, 2024).

Yale offers dozens of courses each semester approaching environmental issues from diverse humanities perspectives. Some courses are entirely focused on the environment and the humanities; others approach the environmental humanities as one of several integrated themes.

Undergraduate students interested in exploring the intersection of environment and culture— including literature, history, anthropology, philosophy, religion, the arts, and other humanities disciplines— are encouraged to  sign up for the Yale Environmental Humanities newsletter  that circulates every Monday morning during the semester. During the last semester, the newsletter and calendar publicized more than  100 different events  across the campus.

Questions about environmental humanities? Contact Prof.  Paul Sabin , faculty director of  Yale Environmental Humanities .

► Yale College Writing Center Spring 2024

Questions? Email Paula Rawlins , the Yale College Writing Center’s assistant director .

The Writing Center offers one-on-one consultations to Yale College students at any stage of the writing process. Students are welcome to bring drafts to sessions, though they are not required to do so. Tutors and Writing Partners can help writers brainstorm, provide feedback on drafts, and assist students in building their editing and proofreading skills. Sessions are offered in a variety of formats:

• Residential College Writing Tutors :   Make an appointment  with a professional writing tutor. 
• Writing Partner Drop-In Hours : Writing Partners (Yale undergrads and graduate students who are talented writers who love helping others) meet with Yale College students to talk through ideas or give feedback on drafts on a first-come, first-served basis. They may be found upstairs in the Poorvu Center (301 York St.), seven days a week, at a variety of morning, afternoon, and evening times.
• Writing Partner Online Appointments:    sign-up to meet with a Writing Partner  via Zoom. Online appointments will be available 7:00-10:00 pm Sunday, Monday, and Thursday evenings. Students may also “drop-in” for help during these hours by using the Zoom link provided once signed into WConline.
• Fellowship Writing Partners : Fellowship Writing Partners offer feedback on proposals and essays written by students applying to scholarships or fellowship programs over a course of approximately three appointments.  Request a Fellowship Writing Partner here . 
• Weekly Writing Partners : Designed for students taking a writing intensive course or working on a long-term writing project who seek to meet with the same Writing Partner each week.  Request a Weekly Writing Partner  for the Fall 2023 semester.
• Study Halls : Poorvu 121 is the location for weekly study ahlls on Wednesdays (evenings) and Sundays (afternoons). Writing Partners are on hand to offer feedback and share snacks. A Writing Partner familiar with Directed Studies in on hand on Wednesdays.

►  Resources for Math Courses and the Math Major

Information about mathematics courses, including calculus and the math major introductory sequence, is available on the Mathematics Department’s  first-year student resources site .

The website features sections on placement, advice for choosing your first math course at Yale, links to other resources, and contact information for further inquiries.

► Meet with Your Personal Librarian

For individual support for coursework and research assignments, reach out to a librarian! Find the name and contact information for your Personal Librarian at this link .

► Health Professions and STEM Advising for First-Years

First-year students interested in health professions or STEM fields related to health professions are invited to watch  Health Professions & STEM Advising for First-Years , a summer 2023 webinar with Kristin McJunkins, Director of Health Professions & STEM Advising, and Sandy Chang, M.D., Associate Dean of Science.

► Health Professions “Quick Questions” Advising for First-year Students

First-year students: interested in the health professions, but unsure where  to start at Yale, are invited to meet with the Office of Career Strategy’s health professions quick questions adviser, Helen Cai. Helen is a Yale College graduate and, currently, a Yale Med student.  Possible topics:

• Med school process
• Exploring the medical professions
• Preparation timeline for applying to med school
• Pursuing research and clinical experience (including STARS) at Yale

Log in to  Yale Career Link   to make an appointment.

► Education Studies Weekly Tea and Cookies

The Education Studies multidisciplinary academic program invites all students interested in connecting with other EDST students and meeting the DUS, Prof. Mira Debs, to a Weekly Tea and Cookies on Fridays. Fall 2023 information TBA.

Students interested in Education Studies are also invited to sign up for the EDST mailing list , for information about gatherings and education-related opportunities.

► Academic Strategies Program Individual Peer and Staff Consultations

Meet with an Academic Strategies peer mentor! Mentors can help you create a weekly schedule, work through academic challenges, and identify goals for the semester. Mentors are availible via request by emailing academicstrategies@yale.edu .

►Women in Economics Study Halls

Women in Economics (WiE) holds reguar, twice-monthly evening study halls in the HQ Undergraduate Students’ Lounge. The fall 2023 start date will be announced in September. Study halls are held every other week.

• Contacts: TBA
• To join the WiE GroupMe for reminders and other events:  https://groupme.com/join_group/89203453/jhfn3zR5

►Major Roadmaps

The Yale College Deans Office in consultation with the Directors of Undergraduate Studies has undertaken a project to create a series of “ roadmaps ,” or visual representations, indicating

• how students go through that major
• a typical course sequence, in some cases

AFST, AMST, ANTH, BENG, CHEM, CGSC, LITR, CPSC, EAST, E&EB, ECON, ENGL, EVST, EP&E, ER&M, GMAN, GLBL, HIST, HSAR, HSHM, HUMS, ITAL, LING, MATH, MENG, MB&B, MCDB, NSCI, PHYS, PLSC, PSYC, SOCY, SPAN, and S&DS currently have roadmaps . More are on the way.

Many majors offer multiple paths, and the maps are designed to facilitate comparison. The roadmaps and typical course sequences are visually uniform so that students may easily compare one major with another at a glance.

More detailed descriptions of the requirements for each major can be found under  Subjects of Instruction  in the Yale College Programs of Study.

► Graduate-Undergraduate Mentorship Initiative

The  Yale  Graduate-Undergraduate Mentorship Initiative  maintains a database that pairs Yale undergraduate  mentees with postdoctoral and graduate and professional student mentors from a wide range of fields. An experienced mentor can make all the difference, and GUMI aims to provide mentors who can impart valuable advice to undergraduates considering graduate or professional school.

► Energy@Yale Handbook

Yale’s Energy Liason, Sena Sugiono ‘25, and the director of Energy Studies, Prof. Michael Oristaglio, have produced a comprehensive handbook on all things Yale energy-related. The link to the handbook can be found   here .

► Peer Mentorship Program for Leave of Absence Students

The Yale College Council has launched a peer mentorship program for students considering a leave of absence or currently on a leave of absence. Information is available at this link .

► Economics Department Resources

Economics course consultations with departmental faculty.

Students considering taking an economics course this spring will be interested to know that, in addition to  Yale Course Search  and the economics  course description  and  course schedule  websites, they may also gather course information by speaking with the course professor.

Introductory microeconomics is taught in two formats, depending on the semester:

• Econ 115 is a large lecture class. All students may pre-register for Econ 115
• Econ 108 is a smaller course intended for students with limited or no experience in calculus. It places greater emphasis on quantitative methods and examples

► Computer Science Advising Resources 

►molecular biophysics and biochemistry “quick facts”.

All students who desire information about the MB&B major, including faculty advising, the curriculum, working in a research lab, and MB&B activities are invited to click  here  for the MB&B “Quick Facts about Majoring in Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry.”

►Peer Mentoring and Peer Advising

Information about peer mentoring and peer advising, and links to some campus offices, departments, and majors that offer such resources, is available on the  Peer Mentoring and Peer Advising  page (under Your Adviser and Advising).

►Yale IEEE Big Sib/Little Sib Program

Concerned about student diversity in SEAS majors and eager to provide advising to first-years and sophomores, the Yale IEEE student group has started a Big Sib/Little Sib group to help address both issues and welcome students of all backgrounds into the SEAS family.

https://forms.gle/sWHesPhCwcy99JrcA

►Yale Undergraduate Research Association Database

The Yale Undergraduate Research Association (YURA)  released a new version of the Research Database (RDB), a cross-disciplinary, searchable, integrated database of 1400+ professors across all undergraduate departments and fields of study. It was built to help fellow undergraduates find potential mentors for research and beyond, and learn more about their professors.

The database can be found at  https://yura.yale.edu/database .

Questions or inquiries can be addressed to  yura@yale.edu .

► As a First-year, You Can’t Avoid Reinvention

Meera Navlakha writes in her  The New York Times  Opinion piece, “Before I went to college, I thought of change as something I could control.”  As a Freshman, You Can’t Avoid Reinvention

►What Influences International STEM Students’ Decisions? 

A  British Council survey  of 1,348 international undergraduate and graduate students studying in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States asked about factors affecting their decision making in choosing a country and course of study. The report found that undergraduates tend to choose U.S. universities with the goal of increasing their career prospects globally. Graduate students are drawn by perceptions of rigorous education and high-quality research, and affordability.

“The U.S. perhaps has the most well-rounded value proposition to international STEM students: it is a country where students perceive they can engage in high-quality education and gain skills and research experience to apply to work either there or in their home countries; post-study work experience in the U.S. has expanded and STEM students can now spend 29 months working – though there remains debate about  the future sustainability of this policy ,” the survey report states.

The survey found that while significant numbers of international students hope to stay in their destination countries to work after graduation, a comparatively small proportion (15 percent) hope to migrate permanently.

Inside Higher Ed Quick Take .

►Goals for All Yale College Majors

The Yale College Dean’s Office launched the “Intensive Majors Project” with, as its top priority, the goal of helping to advise students about their courses of study.  Other goals centered on the faculty, the departments, and Yale’s national accreditation requirements.

It is expected that roughly fifteen majors will conduct self-reviews each year, allowing all majors to undergo review in a four- to five-year cycle, at which point — because major requirements and goals change over time — the self-reviews will begin anew.

You can now read the goals for each Yale College major , as approved by undergraduate departments and programs. 

► Sophomores on Sophomore Year

“Sophomore year, and especially the summer after that, should be a time to explore different fields.”

“Look ahead to junior and senior years because there are some provisions like studying abroad and class load in senior year that should be taken into account.”

“You can still join extracurricular groups in sophomore year. It’s a great time to try something new.”

“It’s OK if you don’t have your entire life planned by now. Most will change their minds anyway.”

“The best advice I can give about ‘sophomore slump’ is just to stick it out. Don’t drop anything you’ve previously liked just because you’re feeling down. Chances are, when your situation improves, you’ll appreciate it even more. Be careful about making major decisions (changing a major, quitting an activity, etc.) when you know you’re not really at your best.”

“Don’t be afraid to have fun! People get stressed out, but you should have a few nights when you just stay up watching movies with your friends. Make sure that you leave time for yourself in addition to all of your commitments. Also, sleep is good.”

Environmental Studies students are expected to work closely with Yale faculty from various departments. Faculty advisors share responsibility with the DUS for advising students on their course selection, graduation requirements, and most importantly on their senior essay project. The faculty advisor is also a valuable mentor to students after their education at Yale, providing career advice, and writing recommendations for students.  You can find a list of the EVST Faculty Advisory Committee members here , and our full list of affiliated faculty here .

Senior Essay Advising

Choosing Your Advisor

You are required to choose your advisor before submitting your senior essay title form in October.  October of senior year is way too late for finding an advisor.  Yale College Environmental Studies strongly encourages you to recruit the essay advisor during your junior year.   Having an advisor in place at an early stage will give you the opportunity to work with your advisor to finalize courses that you are taking as part of your concentration and to receive guidance (and if necessary, seek funding) for a summer research project.  For many research projects conducted outside of a campus laboratory or the Yale library, the summer before the senior year is a critical time for gathering data.

Your advisor does not need to be formally affiliated with Yale College Environmental Studies.  Your advisor must be a member of the Yale Faculty, however, and needs to agree to supervise your essay and to provide you with guidance and feedback along the way.  If you are having difficulty finding a senior essay advisor, please speak with the EVST Director of Undergraduate Studies, preferably during the spring term of your junior year.

You must find your own senior essay advisor.  Environmental Studies does not have its own faculty and instead relies on faculty volunteers from departments and programs across the university.  You are encouraged to begin identifying a senior essay advisor during your junior year, or, as soon as possible, if you are a rising senior.  Enrolling in a seminar with a possible advisor is one way to establish a potentially productive advising relationship.  Students interested in pursuing a science-based essay are encouraged to seek opportunities for supervised research within a faculty research laboratory.

Review the list of Yale College Environmental Studies Affiliated Faculty and identify several whose interests may overlap with yours.  Visit their websites and consult their publications and course descriptions.  If you think your interests may overlap, schedule a meeting to talk with the faculty member about your potential project ideas, and to hear their suggestions for possible senior essay projects.

You do not need to have a fully formed senior essay topic when you meet with a prospective advisor.   You also are encouraged to meet with more than one possible advisor to identify the best fit.

Working Effectively With Your Advisor

Once you have identified your advisor, you are responsible for communicating with her or him and for jointly working to establish an effective advisor-advisee relationship.  Many advisors respond to advisee requests for meetings and comments, rather than imposing a regular structure.  Few faculty advisors will seek you out to check on your progress.  You are responsible for initiating and maintaining regular contact with your advisor.  As you establish your relationship with your advisor, try to get a clear understanding of your advisor’s approach and expectations, and be straightforward about your expectations.   Since your advisor may not be familiar with the EVST senior essay, review this handbook and its assignments and deadlines with your advisor, and discuss the best way for you to receive substantive feedback on your progress.  Make sure to share work that you are completing in the senior colloquium and meet with your primary advisor to discuss your progress.

Remember that EVST faculty advisors typically supervise your senior essay work above-and-beyond their regular academic commitments.  Present yourself and your work in the most professional manner possible by communicating clearly and regularly, meeting deadlines, and taking responsibility for your progress on your senior essay.

Faculty leading EVST’s senior colloquium are an additional resource committed to helping you develop a productive relationship with your primary advisor and to the successful completion of your essay.  You should consult with them frequently and especially when their additional perspective or alternate resources might be helpful.

At home, abroad, working, interning?  Wherever you are this summer, contact OCS or make an appointment for a virtual advising session. We are available all summer! 

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Yale College and Yale Information Technology Services (ITS) are collaborating to improve the Advising Resources website. As part of this project, we seek to better understand the current experience and needs of students like you.

We are currently scheduling one-on-one interviews over Zoom to gather input. These conversations are typically between 15-30 minutes. If you are willing, you can schedule a time that works for you here: https://calendly.com/yale-ux-hw/yale-college-advising-interview .

The Office of Career Strategy posts job listings for the convenience of students. The University does not endorse or recommend employers and a posting does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation. The University explicitly makes no representations or guarantees about job listings or the accuracy of the information provided by the employer. The University is not responsible for safety, wages, working conditions, or any other aspect of off-campus employment without limitation. It is the responsibility of students to perform due diligence in researching employers when applying for or accepting private, off-campus employment and to thoroughly research the facts and reputation of each organization to which they are applying. Students should be prudent and use common sense and caution when applying for or accepting any position. All concerns and issues related to job and/or internship opportunities, including those posted within the Yale Career Link, should be addressed promptly via email to the Office of Career Strategy.  

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Are you seeking one-on-one college counseling and/or essay support? Limited spots are now available. Click here to learn more.

Best College Admissions Consultants – 2024

May 7, 2024

As you look through the various lists of the “Best College Admissions Consultants” on the internet, you’ll be treated to an array of lists compiled by what appears to be some impartial ranking entity (“Aha, I’ve finally found the Consumer Reports/Wirecutter of college counseling!”). In reality, each of these lists is created by a particular college consulting agency, and published via a proxy server with no identifiable author. It’s about as “2024” a marketing technique as you can employ, but it’s also disingenuous and misleading, qualities that likely aren’t exactly aligned with what you’re looking for as you seek counseling and support for your child who is about to make what could be a $400,000 investment in tuition, housing, and other costs.

This list of the Best College Admissions Consultants only has one entry and it is, of course (spoiler alert), for our own company. While we do think we are “the best,” we also believe that there are dozens (or more) of other fantastic private counselors and essay coaches spread across the United States. Many others also provide research and experience-based advice that leads to positive outcomes for clients. As such, we aren’t knocking any other excellent company out there; in this space, we simply want to present the case as to why, for certain types of students and families, College Transitions may be the best fit.

Ready to Speak with a College Transitions Counselor?

Fill Out a Free Consultation Request

What makes College Transitions unlike any other college counseling agency?

• The CT Founders have authored two published books: The Enlightened College Applicant (2016, 2023) and the annual college guide Colleges Worth Your Money (now in its 5th edition).
• We’ve published research in top higher education journals such as Education Evaluation & Policy Analysis ,  Research in Higher Education,  and  The Journal of Higher Education.
• We’re regularly quoted by top national/global publications (example here ).
• CT maintains a free Dataverse,   Common Data Set Repository, blog, and newsletter for parents, students, and counselors.
• We developed a College List-Building Tool.
• We are certified in and able to offer valuable Career Assessments.
• Our essay coaches are highly trained professionals who all have teaching or tutoring experience, typically at the college level. Many of our coaches are also published writers or researchers who hold master’s or doctoral degrees in English, writing, or education.

In addition to these specific features and achievements, our philosophy also differs from many competitors. In short, we take the long view with our students and work backward. Through developing a sense of what future happiness and career success look like to a given individual, we can help develop an undergraduate plan of attack designed to get them on a successful and realistic path toward that vision.

Finally, we work with all our students 100% virtually in a model that we have honed relentlessly over the past decade. We deeply understand that building trust in a remote environment requires responsiveness, a value that is at the core of our counseling and essay coaching services. Accordingly, our efficient and effective counseling and essay coaching model makes it possible for students to receive expert, personalized support on a flexible schedule. This model also enables students to dedicate the bulk of their time to what matters most: schoolwork, activities, test prep, essays, and actual applications.

Best College Admissions Consultants (Continued)

College transitions clients’ recent acceptances, class of 2023.

Representing 36 states, 11 countries, and 126 different high schools, the College Transitions Class of 2023 was our largest, most diverse, and most accomplished yet. With support from our team of counselors, CT students earned admission offers from more than 200 colleges and universities. We have included a sampling of our most popular schools below. Institutions listed in  bold  accepted five or more of our students.

We have plans for high school students of all grade levels:

Mentorship & Planning

Grades 9 and 10.

Provide guidance for all essential college planning tasks during the first half of high school, including:

• Academic advising and course selection for all grades
• Extracurricular planning
• Summer activity planning (including support for summer program essays)
• Resumé building
• Diagnostic standardized testing and score assessment
• Preliminary college visits and demonstrating interest

Grades 11 & 12, and Transfers

Offer support throughout the entire college search and application process, including for the following tasks:

• College list development
• Preliminary review, assessment of chances, and strategic positioning
• Course selection
• Essay coaching (for personal statements and supplemental essays)
• Activities list and resume development
• College interview prep
• Standardized testing strategy
• Letter of recommendation strategy
• Financial aid and scholarship guidance
• College decision guidance and college transition support

We sincerely believe that you will find the Best College Admissions Consultants for your needs right here at College Transitions. Again, we invite you to get to know us more through our website and/or by filling out a Consultation Request .

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This article was a collaborative effort of multiple members of the College Transitions writing/research team.

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“I have fought for both Zionist and anti-Zionist students to feel safe.”

I feel caught in the middle of two different worlds: my jewish community i hold so dear and the campus activism with which i deeply empathize..

My name is Irene Raich, and I’m a current first-year at Yale. When I arrived at college, I did not assume my first year would be dominated by Israel-Palestine. I feel caught in the middle of two different worlds: my Jewish community I hold so dear and the campus activism with which I deeply empathize. I often feel these two worlds are at odds with each other.

I came to college wanting to be involved in Jewish community. Immediately, Yale’s Slifka Center for Jewish Life provided me with a welcoming, warm, beautiful space: a building I could enter and find friends across the political and religious spectrum, a community to hold me up at my worst and cheer me on at my best. Like many of Yale’s Jews, I value the beautiful pluralism at Slifka. However, that pluralism has suffered in the wake of the protests that have swept college campuses.

Yale was one of the first universities to arrest students. On April 22, 2024, at just past 6 a.m., Yale police arrested 47 people , most of whom were students. I spent the morning of April 22 on the phone with my Slifka friends, many of whom are members of Yale Jews for Ceasefire. I was petrified by the thought that my friends, protesting in an expression of their Jewish values, had been arrested. Just two days earlier, I had been in both the Gaza Solidarity Encampment’s Jews for Ceasefire tent and the pro-Israel table that sat across the quad, affirming my dedication to the people in both. Yet supporting these two groups has proven to be a fraught position. I have overheard arguments between students, and between students and staff, about what should be considered appropriate for the Jewish community. As someone who simultaneously believes in the aims of the protests — ceasefire , disclosure and divestment — and is dedicated to upholding Jewish community, I feel pressured, sometimes, to choose.

I am on the board of Yale’s chapter of J Street U, which has made the conscious choice to operate within Yale’s Jewish community. Much of what we do within Slifka has been to affirm political pluralism. That work has been extremely fulfilling, as I have fought for both Zionist and anti-Zionist students to feel safe and welcome within Yale’s Jewish community. My Judaism is defined in conversation with, and not by, Zionism. I believe that conversation between Judaism and Zionism — rather than clear division or outright conflation — is essential for the health of the Jewish communities I hold dear. I have done everything from staying up late working on Divrei Torah ensuring that the voice of leftist students can be heard at Shabbat dinner to engaging in ongoing conversations with staff and students about the importance of making sure every single student, regardless of political beliefs, feels held and understood by Yale’s Jewish community. Campus politics can be difficult and stressful, and our Jewish spaces need protection, care and people to fight for them.

— Irene Raich from Fayetteville, Arkansas; Yale University, Class of 2027

This 2007 Film About Motherhood Is Surprisingly Jewish

“then she found me” shows a woman (played by helen hunt) whose judaism helps her navigate major life challenges and find joy in unexpected places..

What Does It Feel Like To Be Jewish on Campus Right Now?

Nine jewish students, representing a wide range of perspectives, tell us how they've experienced this moment of campus protests surrounding the israel-hamas war..

“I am looking for a community, but I do not fit anywhere.”

I've tried both shabbat dinners at hillel and seder on the encampment..

10 PhD Students Named 2023-24 Prize Teaching Fellows

Ten PhD students from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) have been named Prize Teaching Fellows for the 2023-2024 academic year: Camille Angelo (Religious Studies), Carissa Chan (Microbiology), Grayson Hoy (Chemistry), Nghiem Huynh (Economics), Kimberly Lifton (Medieval Studies), Benjamin Schafer (History), Jillian Stallman (Economics), Audrey Tjahjadi (Anthropology), Alexa Williams (Chemistry), and Novak Yang (Immunobiology). 

The Graduate School has awarded the teaching prizes annually since 2000. Recipients are nominated by their undergraduate students and the faculty members they assist while serving as Teaching Fellows.

"Doctoral education is more than just a journey from knowledge acquisition to knowledge creation," said Lynn Cooley, Dean of the Graduate School. "It is fundamentally about equipping scholars with the ability to share their insights broadly—to impact society positively through education. Reviewing the nominations, I am profoundly impressed by the innovative and engaging ways in which our teaching fellows have made complex ideas accessible and exciting to their students."

Biographies of the winners are included below.

Camille Leon Angelo (Religious Studies)

Camille Leon Angelo is a sixth-year PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies in the subfields of Eastern Mediterranean and West Asian Religions and Ancient Christianity. Her work examines materiality, sexuality, and space in late antiquity through new materialist, feminist, and queer lenses. She is a field archaeologist and has excavated in the eastern Mediterranean and the Caucasus. Her current research primarily engages archaeological, papyrological, and epigraphic evidence, related to late antique Egypt. Her past projects have analyzed the archaeological remains of several early Christian sites in the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, most notably Dura-Europos, to elucidate sensory experiences in late antiquity.

Carissa Chan (Microbiology)

Carissa Chan is a fifth-year PhD candidate in Microbiology. Her research investigates how bacterial pathogens adapt to infection-relevant stresses, thus promoting survival inside mammalian host cells and disease. She has served as a teaching fellow for Physiological Systems for the past three years, including two as head teaching fellow. Each year, Carissa is inspired by the dedication and level of engagement from students in the class as they cover fascinating topics about the human body from fundamental cellular physiology to complex interactions between organ systems. Working with undergraduate and graduate students in Physiological Systems and sharing her excitement for science with them has been one of the highlights of her time at Yale.

Grayson Hoy (Chemistry)

Grayson Hoy is a first-year PhD student in the Chemistry Department. His research focuses on using super-resolution infrared microscopy to study metabolism in living cells to better understand metabolic dysregulation. Before Yale, he attended William & Mary, where he learned how transformative professors and mentors can be from a student’s perspective. Inspired by his undergraduate researcher professor, Dr. Kristin Wustholz, and other teachers throughout his life, Grayson aims to create a supportive learning environment where students feel empowered and excited by chemistry. 

Nghiem Huynh (Economics)

Nghiem Huynh is a doctoral candidate in Economics at Yale University, graduating in May 2024. His research evaluates the effects of government policies on regional and gender inequality. Nghiem holds a BA in Economics and Mathematics from New York University Abu Dhabi.

Kimberly Lifton (Medieval Studies)

Kimberly Lifton is a PhD candidate in the Medieval Studies program. She studies how Burgundy, England, and France's relationships with the Ottoman Empire materialized in manuscripts during the fifteenth century. Her research has been supported by the Fulbright, FLAS, and the Dhira Mahoney Fellowship. In the classroom, she works to develop compassionate pedagogy for neurodiverse students. 

Benjamin Schafer (History)

Benjamin Schafer is a PhD candidate in American History. He studies urban and social history in the late-twentieth-century United States.  His dissertation, “Life and Death in Rust,” is a study of poverty and inequality in post-industrial Buffalo, NY, his hometown, from the late 1970s to the early 2000s. Prior to Yale, Ben received an AB, magna cum laude with highest honors; Phi Beta Kappa, in History with a secondary in African American Studies from Harvard College, where he was awarded the Thomas T. Hoopes Senior Thesis Prize, the David Herbert Donald Prize in American History, and the Rev. Peter J. Gomes Prize in Religion and Ethnicity. He also holds an MPhil in Economic and Social History from Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge. He works as a research assistant for Professors Elizabeth Hinton and Vanessa Ogle and has previously worked as a researcher for Professor Fredrik Logevall (Harvard) and the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. He has been a teaching fellow for Professor David Engerman (Fall 2023, The Origins of U.S. Global Power) and Professor Marco Ramos (Spring 2023, The History of Drugs in America).

Jillian Stallman (Economics)

Jillian Stallman is a PhD student in the Economics Department interested broadly in the intersection of economic development, environmental economics, and political economy. She's writing her dissertation about cooperation over freshwater resources in developing countries using a combination of economic theory, surveys and administrative data, and remote-sensing measurements. Jillian spent her undergraduate years at Williams College, where she worked most semesters as a teaching assistant to her peers in courses ranging from macroeconomic development to multivariable calculus to introductory Chinese. After graduating, she spent several years travelling in, among other places, China, Chile and Senegal, operating under the belief that she would have a difficult time ultimately doing research about places and people she hadn't lived around for a good while.

Audrey Tjahjadi (Anthropology)

Audrey Tjahjadi is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Anthropology focusing on human evolutionary genetics. She is interested in how local environments have shaped the evolution of diet-related adaptations in Southeast Asian and Oceanic populations, particularly in genes involved in fatty acid metabolism. Outside of research, Audrey is also involved in science communication and outreach through Yale graduate student organizations. 

Alexa Kim Williams (Chemistry)

Alexa Williams is a PhD student in Materials Chemistry. She completed her BS in Chemistry in 2021 at Montclair State University in New Jersey. At Yale, her research explores the fundamental reactivity of H-terminated silicon nanoparticles and aims to inform broader studies on silicon-based hybrid materials for CO2 reduction. This work is part of the CHASE solar fuels hub.

Xuan (Novak) Yang (Immunobiology)

Novak Yang is a third-year PhD candidate in Dr. Lieping Chen’s laboratory at the Department of Immunobiology. He received his BS in Biology and MS in Cancer Biology and Translational Oncology degrees at Emory University, and was the first to accomplish this in a “3+1” timeline at Emory. Prior to joining Yale, Novak was trained by Dr. Haian Fu and Dr. Andrey Ivanov at the Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology, Emory University School of Medicine, with a primary focus on cancer-associated protein-protein interactions and high-throughput drug discovery. He has multiple first-author and co-author publications, and is the recipient of American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) Travel Award and Program Committee Blue Ribbon Pick, and Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS) Tony B. Academic Travel Award. Novak was recruited to Yale Immunobiology in 2021 as a Gruber Science Fellow. His research focuses on the discovery of actionable targets in the tumor microenvironment that drive the resistance to current immunotherapies, and pre-clinical development of innovative therapeutic strategies that normalize anti-tumor immunity for cancer patients.

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Opinion Guest Essay

This Is Peak College Admissions Insanity

Credit... Illustrations by Pete Gamlen

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By Daniel Currell

Mr. Currell, a lawyer and consultant, was a deputy under secretary and senior adviser at the Department of Education from 2018 to 2021. He is a trustee of Gustavus Adolphus College.

• May 1, 2024

Selective college admissions have been a vortex of anxiety and stress for what seems like forever, inducing panic in more top high school seniors each year. But the 2023-24 admissions season was not just an incremental increase in the frantic posturing and high-pressure guesswork that make this annual ritual seem like academic Hunger Games. This year was different. A number of factors — some widely discussed, some little noticed — combined to push the process into a new realm in which the old rules didn’t apply and even the gatekeepers seemed not to know what the new rules were.

It happened, as these things often do, first gradually and then all at once.

It started with a precipitous rise in the number of people clamoring to get in. The so-called Ivy-Plus schools — the eight members of the Ivy League plus M.I.T., Duke, Chicago and Stanford — collectively received about 175,000 applications in 2002. In 2022, the most recent year for which totals are available, they got more than 590,000, with only a few thousand more available spots.

The quality of the applicants has risen also. In 2002, the nation produced 134 perfect ACT scores ; in 2023 there were 2,542 . Over the same period, the United States — and beyond it, the world — welcomed a great many more families into the ranks of the wealthy, who are by far the most likely to attend an elite college. Something had to give.

The first cracks appeared around the rules that had long governed the process and kept it civilized, obligating colleges to operate on the same calendar and to give students time to consider all offers before committing. A legal challenge swept the rules away, freeing the most powerful schools to do pretty much whatever they wanted.

One clear result was a drastic escalation in the formerly niche admissions practice known as early decision.

Then Covid swept through, forcing colleges to let students apply without standardized test scores — which, as the university consultant Ben Kennedy says, “tripled the number of kids who said to themselves, ‘Hey, I’ve got a shot at admission there.’” More applications, more market power for the schools and, for the students, an ever smaller chance of getting in.

Last year, the Supreme Court’s historic decision ending race-based affirmative action left colleges scrambling for new ways to preserve diversity and students groping in the dark to figure out what schools wanted.

Finally, this year the whole financial aid system exploded into spectacular disarray. Now, a month after most schools sent out the final round of acceptances, many students still don’t have the information they need to determine if they can afford college. Some will delay attending, and some will forgo it entirely, an outcome that will have lasting implications for them and, down the line, for the economy as a whole.

These disparate changes had one crucial thing in common: Almost all of them strengthened the hand of highly selective colleges, allowing them to push applicants into more constricted choices with less information and less leverage. The result is that elite admissions offices, which have always tried to reduce the uncertainty in each new year’s decisions, are now using their market power to all but eliminate it. This means taking no chances in pursuit of a high yield, the status-bestowing percentage of admitted students who enroll. But low uncertainty for elite colleges means the opposite for applicants — especially if they can’t pay the full tuition rate.

Canh Oxelson, the executive director of college counseling at the Horace Mann School in New York, says: “This is as much uncertainty as we’ve ever seen. Affirmative action, the FAFSA debacle, test-optionality — it has shown itself in this one particular year. Colleges want certainty, and they are getting more. Families want certainty and they are getting less.”

In 2024, the only applicants who could be certain of an advantage were those whose parents had taken the wise precaution of being rich.

The Early Bird Gets the Dorm

For Ivy Wydler, an elite college seemed like an obvious destination, and many of her classmates at Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School in Washington, D.C., were headed along the same trajectory. After her sophomore year of high school, she took the ACT and got a perfect score — on her first try, a true rarity. Her grades were stellar. So she set her sights high, favoring “medium to big schools, and not too cold.”

Touring campuses, she was dazzled by how great and exciting it all seemed. Then she visited Duke, and something clicked. She applied in the binding early decision round.

It’s a consequential choice. Students can do so at only one college, and they have to promise to attend if accepted, before knowing what the school’s financial aid offer will be. That means there is at least a chance an applicant will be on the hook for the full cost, which at Duke is $86,886 for the 2024-25 year. Students couldn’t be legally compelled to attend if they couldn’t afford it, but by the time they got the news, they would have already had to withdraw their other applications.

If full tuition isn’t a deal killer, as it wouldn’t be for Ivy’s family, the rewards are considerable. This year, just over 54,000 high school seniors vied to be one of only 1,750 members of Duke’s incoming class. The 6,000 who applied in the early decision round were three times as likely to get in as the 48,000 who applied later.

Until recently, early decision was a narrow pathway — an outlier governed, like the rest of this annual academic mating season, by a set of mandatory practices laid out by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, which is made up of college admissions officers and high school counselors. Those rules said, for example, that colleges couldn’t recruit a student who was already committed to another school or actively encourage someone to transfer. Crucially, the rules said that colleges needed to give students until May 1 to decide among offers (noting early decision, which begins and ends in the fall, as a “recognized exception”).

The Justice Department thought those rules ran afoul of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which bars powerful industries from colluding to restrain competition. At the end of 2019, NACAC agreed to a settlement mandating that the organization “promptly abolish” several of the rules and downgrade the rest to voluntary guidelines. Now, if they chose to, colleges had license to lure students with special offers or benefits, to aggressively poach students at other schools and to tear up the traditional admissions calendar.

At that point, nothing restrained colleges from going all in on early decision, a strategy that allows them to lock in students early without making any particular commitments about financial aid. Of the 735 first-year students that Middlebury College enrolled last year, for example, 516 were admitted via binding early decision. Some schools have a second round of early decision, and even what amounts to an unofficial third round — along with an array of other application pathways, each with its own terms and conditions.

With the rules now abandoned, colleges got a whole new bag of tricks. For example, a school might call — at any time in the process — with a one-time offer of admission if you can commit on the spot to attend and let go of all other prospects. Hesitate and it’s gone, along with your chances in subsequent rounds. “We hear about colleges that are putting pressure on high school seniors to send in a deposit sooner to get better courses or housing options,” says Sara Harberson, the founder of Application Nation, a college advising service.

To inform these maneuvers, colleges lean on consultants who analyze applicant demographics, qualifications, financial status and more, using econometric models. High school seniors think this is checkers, but the schools know it’s chess. This has all become terrifying for students, who are first-time players in a game their opponents invented.

Application season can be particularly intimidating for students who, unlike Ivy, did not grow up on the elite college conveyor belt. When Rania Khan, a senior in Gorton High School in Yonkers, N.Y., was in middle school, she and her mother spent two years in a shelter near Times Square. Since then she and her younger brother have been in the foster system. Despite these challenges, she has been a superb student. In ninth grade, Rania got an internship at Google and joined a research team at Regeneron, a biotechnology company. She won a national award for her study of how sewage treatment chemicals affect river ecosystems. Looking at colleges, she saw that her scores and credentials matched with those of students at the very top schools in the country.

One of the schools she was most drawn to was Barnard. “I like that it’s both a small college and” — because it’s part of Columbia — “a big university. There are a lot of resources, and it’s a positive environment for women,” she said. And it would keep her close to her little brother.

Barnard now fills around 60 percent of its incoming class in the early decision round, giving those students a massive admissions advantage. It would have been an obvious option for Rania, but she can’t take any chances financially. She applied via the general decision pool, when instead of having a one in three chance, her odds were one in 20.

Officially, anyone can apply for early decision. In practice it’s priority boarding for first-class passengers.

Unstandardized Testing

When selective colleges suspended the requirement for standardized testing, it didn’t really seem like a choice; because of the pandemic, a great many students simply couldn’t take the tests. The implications, however, went far beyond mere plague-year logistics.

The SAT was rolled out in 1926 as an objective measure of students’ ability, absent the cultural biases that had so strongly informed college admissions before then. It’s been the subject of debate almost ever since. In 1980, Ralph Nader published a study alleging that the standardized testing regimen actually reinforced racial and gender bias and favored people who could afford expensive test prep. Many educators have come back around to regarding the tests as a good predictor of academic success, but the matter is far from settled.

Remarkably, students still take the exams in the same numbers as before the pandemic, but far fewer disclose what they got. Cindy Zarzuela, an adviser with the nonprofit Yonkers Partners in Education who works with Rania and about 90 other students, said all her students took the SAT this year. None of them sent their scores to colleges.

These days, Cornell, for example, admits roughly 40 percent of its incoming class without a test score. At schools like the University of Wisconsin or the University of Connecticut , the percentage is even higher. In California, schools rarely accept scores at all, being in many cases not only test-optional, but also “test-blind.”

The high-water mark of test-optionality, however, was also its undoing.

Applicants tended to submit their scores only if they were above the school’s reported median, a pattern that causes that median to be recalibrated higher and higher each year. When Cornell went test-optional, its 25th percentile score on the math SAT jumped from 720 to 750. Then it went to 760. The ceiling is 800, so standardized tests had begun to morph from a system of gradients into a yes/no question: Did you get a perfect score? If not, don’t mention it.

The irony, however, was that in the search for a diverse student body, many elite colleges view strong-but-not-stellar test scores as proof that a student from an underprivileged background could do well despite lacking the advantages of the kids from big suburban high schools and fancy prep schools. Without those scores, it might be harder to make the case .

Multiply that across the board, and the result was that test-optional policies made admission to an elite school less likely for some diverse or disadvantaged applicants. Georgetown and M.I.T. were first to reinstate test score requirements, and so far this year Harvard, Yale, Brown, Caltech, Dartmouth and Cornell have announced that they will follow. There may be more to come.

The Power of No

On Dec. 14, Ivy got an answer from Duke: She was rejected.

She was in extremely good company. It’s been a while since top students could assume they’d get into top schools, but today they get rejected more often than not. It even happens at places like Northeastern, a school now ranked 53rd in the nation by U.S. News & World Report — and not long ago, more than 100 slots lower than that. It spends less per student on instruction than the Boston public schools .

“There’s no target school anymore and no safety school,” says Stef Mauler , a private admissions coach in Texas. “You have to have a strategy for every school you apply to.”

Northeastern was one of the 18 other schools Ivy applied to, carefully sifting through various deadlines and conditions, mapping out her strategy. With Duke out of the picture, her thoughts kept returning to one of them in particular: Dartmouth, her father’s alma mater. “My mom said, ‘Ivy, you love New Hampshire. Look at Dartmouth.’ She was right.” She had wanted to go someplace warm, but the idea of cold weather seemed to be bothering her less and less.

Meanwhile Rania watched as early decision day came and went, and thousands of high school seniors across the country got the best news of their lives. For Rania, it was just another Friday.

A Free Market in Financial Aid

In 2003, a consortium of about 20 elite colleges agreed to follow a shared formula for financial aid, to ensure that they were competing for students on the merits, not on mere dollars and cents. It sounds civilized, but pricing agreements are generally illegal for commercial ventures. (Imagine if car companies agreed not to underbid each other.) The colleges believed they were exempt from that prohibition, however, because they practiced “ need-blind ” admissions, meaning they don’t discriminate based on a student’s ability to pay.

In 2022, nine current and former students from an array of prestigious colleges filed a class-action antitrust lawsuit — later backed by the Justice Department — arguing that the consortium’s gentlemanly agreement was depriving applicants of the benefits of a free market. And to defang the defense, they produced a brilliant argument: No, these wealthy colleges didn’t discriminate against students who were poor, but they sure did discriminate in favor of students who were rich. They favored the children of alumni and devoted whole development offices to luring the kinds of ultrarich families that affix their names to shiny new buildings. It worked: Early this year, Brown, Columbia, Duke, Emory and Yale joined the University of Chicago in conceding , and paying out a nine-figure settlement. (They deny any wrongdoing.) Several other schools are playing on, but the consortium and its rules have evaporated.

This set schools free to undercut one another on price in order to get their preferred students. It also gave the schools a further incentive to push for early decision, when students don’t have the ability to compare offers.

For almost anyone seeking financial aid, from the most sought-after first-round pick to the kid who just slid under the wire, the first step remained the same: They had to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid form, or FAFSA.

As anyone knows who’s been through it — or looked into the glassy eyes of someone else who has — applying for financial aid can be torture at the best of times. This year was the worst of times, because FAFSA was broken. The form, used by the government to determine who qualifies for federal grants or student loans, and by many colleges to determine their in-house financial aid, had gotten a much-needed overhaul. But the new version didn’t work , causing endless frustration for many families, and convincing many others not even to bother. At mid-April, finished FAFSA applications were down 29 percent compared with last year.

“The FAFSA catastrophe is bigger than people realize,” says Casey Sacks , a former U.S. Department of Education official and now the president of BridgeValley Community and Technical College in West Virginia, where 70 percent of students receive federal funds.

Abigail Garcia , Rania’s classmate and the 2024 valedictorian of their school, applied to in-state public colleges as well as Ivies. She couldn’t complete the FAFSA, however, because it rejected her parents’ information, the most common glitch. She has financial aid offers from elite schools, all of which use a private alternative to the government form, but she can’t weigh them against the public institutions, because they are so severely delayed.

For most students, 2024’s FAFSA crisis looks set to take the uncertainty that began last fall and drag it into the summer or beyond. “That’s going to reduce the work force in two to four years.” Ms. Sacks says. “FAFSA completions are a pretty good leading indicator of how many people will be able to start doing the kinds of jobs that are in highest demand — registered nurses, manufacturing engineers, those kinds of jobs.”

As the FAFSA problem rolls on, it could be that for the system as a whole, the worst is still to come.

Can Any of This Be Fixed?

On the numbers, elite college applicants’ problems are a footnote to the story of college access. The Ivy-Plus schools enroll less than 1 percent of America’s roughly 15 million undergraduates . If you expand the pool to include all colleges that are selective enough to accept less than a quarter of applicants, we’re still talking about only 6 percent of undergraduates. The easiest way to alleviate the traffic jam at the top is to shift our cultural focus toward the hundreds of schools that offer an excellent education but are not luxury brands.

Luxury brand schools, however, have real power. In 2023, 15 of 32 Rhodes scholars came from the Ivies, nine from Harvard alone. Twenty of this year’s 38 Supreme Court clerks came from Harvard or Yale. If elite colleges’ selection process is broken, what should we do to fix it?

Here’s what we can’t do: Let them go off and agree on their own solution. Antitrust law exists to prevent dominant players from setting their own rules to the detriment of consumers and competitors.

Here’s what we won’t do: Legislate national rules that govern admissions. Our systems are decentralized and it would take a miracle for Congress not to make things worse.

But here’s what we can do: Hold the schools accountable for their processes and their decisions.

Institutions that receive federal funds — which include all elite colleges — should be required to clearly state their admissions criteria. Admissions as currently practiced are designed to let schools whose budgets run on billions of taxpayers dollars do whatever they want. Consider Stanford’s guidance to applicants: “In a holistic review, we seek to understand how you, as a whole person, would grow, contribute and thrive at Stanford, and how Stanford would, in turn, be changed by you.” This perfectly encapsulates the current system, because it is meaningless.

Colleges should also not be allowed to make anyone decide whether to attend without knowing what it will actually cost, and they should not be allowed to offer better odds to those who forgo that information. They should not offer admissions pathways tilted to favor the rich, any more than they should offer pathways favoring people who are white.

It just shouldn’t be this hard. Really.

The Envelope Please …

Ivy has the highest academic qualifications available inside the conventional system, and her family can pay full tuition. Once upon a time, she would have had her pick of top colleges. Not this year.

Over the course of the whole crazy admissions season, the school she had come to care about most was Dartmouth.

Along with the other seven Ivies, Dartmouth released this year’s admissions decisions online on March 28, at 7 p.m. Eastern. Ivy was traveling that day, and as the moment approached, she said, “I was on the bed in my hotel room, just repeating, ‘People love me for who I am, not what I do. People love me for who I am, not what I do.’”

She was rejected by Duke, Vanderbilt, Stanford, Columbia and the University of Southern California, where Operation Varsity Blues shenanigans could once guarantee acceptance but, as Ivy discovered, a perfect score on the ACT will not. She landed on the wait list at Northeastern. She was accepted by Michigan and Johns Hopkins. And Ivy was accepted at both her parents’ alma maters: the University of Virginia and Dartmouth, where she will start in September.

For Rania, the star student with an extraordinary story of personal resilience, the news was not so good. At Barnard, she was remanded to the wait list. Last year only 4 percent of students in that position were eventually let in. N.Y.U. and the City University of New York’s medical college put her on the wait list, too.

A spot on a wait list tells applicants that they were good enough to get in. By the time Rania applied to these schools, there just wasn’t any room. “It was definitely a shock,” she said. “What was I missing? They just ran out of space — there are so many people trying to get into these places. It took two weeks to adjust to it.”

She did get lots of other good news, a sheaf of acceptances from schools like Fordham and the University at Albany. But then came the hardest question of all: How to pay for them? Some offered her a financial aid package that would leave her on the hook for more money than undergraduates are allowed to take out in federal student loans. Even now, some colleges haven’t been able to provide her with financial aid information at all.

Rania had all but settled on Hunter College, part of the City University system. It’s an excellent school, but a world away from the elite colleges she was thinking about when she started her search. Then at almost the last moment, Wesleyan came through with a full ride and even threw in some extra for expenses. Rania accepted, gratefully.

For Rania, the whole painful roller coaster of a year was over. For so many other high school seniors, the year of broken college admissions continues.

Daniel Currell, a lawyer and consultant, was a deputy under secretary and senior adviser at the Department of Education from 2018 to 2021. He is a trustee of Gustavus Adolphus College.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Teaching & Learning

Harold j. berman, 1918-2007, a scholar of great social account.

Professor Emeritus Harold J. Berman, an expert on comparative, international and Russian law as well as legal history and philosophy and the intersection of law and religion, died Nov. 13. He was 89.

Known for his energetic and outgoing personality, Berman recently celebrated his 60th anniversary as a law professor. He joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1949 and held the Story Professorship of Law and later the Ames Professorship of Law. A prolific scholar, Berman wrote 25 books and more than 400 scholarly articles, including his magnum opus, “Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition.”

“Harold was a scholar of boundless and lofty ambition,” said HLS Professor Emeritus Henry Steiner ’55. “His projects reached deeply not only into comparative analysis and history, but also religion and jurisprudence. This is a record that any distinguished scholar would take pride in.”

Born in 1918 in Hartford, Conn., Berman received a bachelor’s from Dartmouth College in 1938 and a master’s in history from Yale University in 1942. After a year at Yale Law School, he was drafted by the Army and served as a cryptographer in Europe, earning a Bronze Star. He returned to New Haven and finished his degree in 1947.

Berman’s interest in the Soviet legal system began during his law school years, when he studied Russian and taught himself Soviet law. He argued his first case in Moscow in 1958, representing the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. Seeking to obtain royalties from the Soviet state on the millions of Conan Doyle books sold in the Soviet Union, Berman won the case in a Moscow city court. He later lost on appeal to a higher Russian Federation court.

Berman was a frequent visitor to Russia as a guest scholar and lecturer. As a result of his firsthand knowledge of the Soviet Union—rare for an American in the Cold War era—he became a leading consultant to Russian officials in the mid-1980s during glasnost and perestroika.

HLS Professor Emeritus Detlev Vagts ’51 was part of a group of academics Berman brought together to teach what they referred to as “capitalist law” in the Soviet Union during that time. Vagts recalled the challenges of their task:

“The young Muscovites had been trained to think of the act of two persons getting together to buy goods low and sell them high as a conspiracy to profiteer—which would get you five years of re-education in Siberia. Now they had to adjust to the idea that it was a legitimate partnership,” he said. “The first Russian law on corporations was drafted by lawyers who could not bear to use the term ‘capital’ for the account in the lower right corner of the balance sheet; they called it ‘the social account’ instead.”

In 1985, faced with the prospect of mandatory retirement, Berman left HLS for Emory Law School. At Emory, he held the Robert W. Woodruff Professorship of Law—the highest honor Emory bestows on a faculty member—for more than 20 years. He was the principal founder of the American Law Center in Moscow, a joint venture of Emory and the Law Academy of the Russian Ministry of Justice. He was also co-chairman of Emory’s World Law Institute, an organization that sponsors educational programs around the world.

Reflecting another of his long-term interests, Berman helped to develop Emory’s Center for the Study of Law and Religion. In 2003, he published “Law and Revolution, II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition.”

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Fellowship recipients to continue their studies in the u.k..

Top row, from left, Paulina Pimentel-Mora, Tony Wang,Galia Newberger, Ellie Burke, and Giuliana Pavanelli Durón. Second row, Yosef Malka, Joshua Nguyen, Anjali Mangla, Sophie Kane, and Vijay Pathak.

Eight Yale seniors and two recent graduates have been awarded fellowships from various organizations for graduate study in the United Kingdom.

These are in addition to students, previously announced in Yale News, who have won Rhodes and Marshall scholarships.

The fellowship winners and their awards follow:

Ellie Burke , who is studying history at Yale, was awarded a Paul Mellon fellowship to pursue an M.Phil. degree in World History at the University of Cambridge. For her thesis project, Burke, who is originally from Kansas City, examined the impacts of the South African musical “Sarafina!” on anti-apartheid protest in the United States with advisor Professor Daniel Magaziner. At Cambridge, she will expand this project to more broadly examine the role of anti-apartheid theater in the United Kingdom. During her time at Yale, Burke produced multiple independent theater shows, sang in a cappella groups, and served in arts leadership roles including Outreach Coordinator for the executive board of the Yale Dramatic Association. She also worked as a barista in the Silliman student-run coffee shop, served as a First-Year Outdoor Orientation (FOOT) Leader, and is currently finishing her year as a First-Year Counselor in Silliman.

Giuliana Pavanelli Durón , who will graduate from Yale with a degree in Urban Studies and Architecture, was awarded a Paul Mellon Fellowship for graduate study at the University of Cambridge, where she will pursue an M.Phil. degree in Architecture and Urban Studies. As an Edward A. Bouchet Research Fellow, she has explored the history of landscape architecture in Mexico City, focusing on how the Mexican Revolution affected the design of urban parks and citizens’ relationship to land. In her thesis, she has explored the political and cultural dimensions of water infrastructure in Mexico City. She addresses how Indigenous histories and colonial legacies have been memorialized in hydrologic monuments within the city’s parks, specifically El Bosque de Chapultepec. She has also interned at the Housing and Health Equity Lab, analyzing the effects of pandemic-era moratoriums on housing-insecure individuals. As an Urban Fellow, Giuliana also works on data analysis for New Haven's Fair Rent and Housing Commission, advocating for tenant rights and healthy living conditions. Her research at Cambridge will focus on urban gardens in Mexico City, with an emphasis on how these community spaces serve as a source for alternative planning strategies based on grassroots practices. 

Sophie Kane , a Senegalese-American who has grown up across seven countries, is an American Studies major aspiring to a career at the intersection of law and social policy. On the Yale campus, she served as the first president of the Yale Votes student organization and led the Intercultural and Social Justice program at the AFAM House. In her senior thesis, she compares restorative and reparatory justice commissions in the United States and South Africa. As an undergraduate, she has worked on a presidential campaign, in Congress, and at two nonprofit policy advocacy organizations: Solitary Watch and the Legal Action Center. She has been a Women in Government and Arthur Liman Fellow and is a former student of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy. This summer, she will work at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia before pursuing a Master of Science (M.Sc.) degree in comparative social policy at Oxford in the fall. At Oxford, she will investigate targeted universalism as a strategic tool to reinvent American welfare.

Yosef Malka , a history major whose academic interests lie in the history of political thought, modern Jewish history, and legal theory, was awarded a Paul Mellon Fellowship to pursue an M.Phil. degree in political thought and intellectual history at Cambridge University. Malka, who is from Rockville, Maryland, will examine 20th-century debates over minority rights, the nation-state, and liberalism while at Cambridge. During his time at Yale, Malka served as co-editor-in-chief of Shibboleth, Yale’s undergraduate journal of Jewish studies, worked as an editorial assistant for the Yale Law Journal, interned for the Office of the New York State attorney general, co-led a Sephardic singing group, and founded a student forum for the study of political theory.

Anjali Mangla , who is completing a double major in Neuroscience and Global Affairs, received a Rotary Global Grant Scholarship that will allow her to pursue a master’s degree in Global Health Policy at London School of Tropical Hygiene and Medicine and London School of Economics. Mangla is interested in global health policymaking, particularly in investigating sustainable financing mechanisms for global health care policy and community-based initiatives. She is currently leading the HAVEN Free Clinic’s pilot “Food as Medicine” program, and, as the clinic’s community relations and advocacy director, has started a variety of initiatives such as reproductive health workshops with Planned Parenthood, and advocacy with the HUSKY4Immigrants Coalition to expand access to public health coverage for all eligible Connecticut residents regardless of immigration status. She has also engaged with the New Haven community through Community Health Educators and volunteering at the hospital and with IRIS' family literacy program. During spring break, she traveled to Liberia to learn more about global health initiative funding for her capstone project on the need for more indirect cost funding for low- and middle-income countries. She hopes to pioneer sustainable global health financing policies with a focus on mitigating noncommunicable diseases in the future.

Galia Newberger  was awarded the King’s-Yale Fellowship to pursue an M.Phil. degree in politics and international studies at the University of Cambridge. She will study the rise of illiberalism in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. At Yale, she double majored in Humanities and Political Science, and her joint senior essay explored what Plato’s Republic can teach modern readers about preventing a backsliding of democracy. Newberger competes on Yale’s Model United Nations team, and previously served as communications director for the Yale College Democrats and as managing editor at the Yale Daily News Magazine. Outside of Yale, she has served as a legislative and communications intern for U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Illinois, as a political advocacy intern at the ACLU, and as an intern at the Federal Defenders of New York.

Joshua Nguyen , who graduated from Yale in 2023 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology , was awarded the Rotary Global Grant Scholarship to pursue an M.Sc. degree in Digital Health at the University of Oxford. During his time at Yale, Nguyen worked as a research assistant at the Yale School of Medicine, investigating the underlying genetic mechanisms of lymphedema, and was recognized as a Dean’s Research Fellow and STARS II Scholar. His interest in health care equity will guide his studies at Oxford, where he plans to delve into leveraging digital health innovations to serve marginalized populations. While at Yale he spearheaded patient care initiatives for uninsured individuals at the HAVEN Free Clinic and Yale New Haven Hospital, and serving as an ESL tutor for refugees and immigrants in the New Haven area. He was also a peer liaison for Yale’s Asian American Cultural Center, the president of Yale Outdoors, and a clarinetist and recorderist in various music ensembles. He aspires to a career dedicated to improving health equity, with a focus on supporting uninsured and low-income communities.

Vijay Pathak , a senior from Luxembourg and France who will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Ethics, Politics, and Economics, has been awarded the Rotary Global Grant to pursue studies in European Politics and international conflict prevention in the United Kingdom. His academic interests lie at the intersections of statecraft, international law, and the foreign and security policies of the EU and United States. He has pursued these interests at Yale as a scholar in the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and also as a Fellow of the Peace, Dialogue, and Leadership Initiative. Pathak has worked as a research assistant at Yale Law School on the United Nations Legal Committee’s efforts to introduce legal frameworks on crimes against humanity, and is also a European Studies Undergraduate Fellow at the Yale MacMillan Center. He has completed coursework in international relations at Bocconi University in Milan, international law at the University of Oxford, and South Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a recipient of the Yale SASC Light Fellowship.

Paulina Pimentel-Mora , who graduated from Yale in 2023 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science, has been awarded the Sidney Hellman Ehrman Studentship pursue a M.Phil. degree in health, medicine, and society at King’s College, Cambridge. Her research will delve into the realm of reproductive autonomy within health care systems, employing a comparative approach to analyze reproductive policies and the diverse factors influencing women’s reproductive decisions. A first-generation community college transfer student at Yale, Pimental-Mora served as a transfer peer advisor, admissions officer blogger, and residential teaching assistant with Yale Pathways to Science and the Yale School of Art’s “The Way We See It” workshop. She was also a member of the Yale College Student Health Advisory Council and participated in the Political Science Undergraduate Advisory Committee, in addition to working at the Yale University Art Gallery. Outside of Yale, she was a 2022 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Future Public Health Scholar at the University of Michigan, where she was awarded the 2022-2023 CDC Williams-Hutchins Health Equity Award for her work as a COVID-19 case investigator.

Tony Wang , a double major in Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations and History of Art at Yale, has been awarded the 2024 Henry Fellowship to pursue postgraduate studies in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Oxford University. His academic pursuits are deeply anchored in the ancient history and archaeology of the Silk Road, with a keen focus on the Buddhist and Persian material cultures that flourished within Central Asia's heartlands. An active member of the “Guardian of Bamiyan and Gandhara” initiative, Wang is committed to the preservation of cultural heritage and the advancement of local education in the historically rich regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He also served as a curator and educator at the Yale Art Gallery, the UNESCO-recognized Dunhuang Academy, the Iran National Museum, and the Tsinghua University Art Gallery. He served as a research assistant with Professor Valerie Hanson, in Yale’s Department of History, and as a junior researcher at the Institution of Global Art History at Shanghai International University.

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Here’s How Ivy League Schools Evaluate Student GPAs

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One of the main gates on the Brown University campus, decorated with the University crest. (Photo by ... [+] Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Images)

A stellar GPA is one of the building blocks of a successful Ivy League application, and as the school year winds down, many students are anxiously seeking to give theirs a final boost. While most students and families understand the importance of a 4.0, few are aware of how top colleges evaluate student GPAs or what they look for when reviewing student transcripts. Though your GPA may seem to be a simple metric, nothing could be further from the case—colleges consider more than just the number, accounting for complexities such as diverse grading systems across schools, trends in grade inflation, and level of course rigor.

Here are three important facts to keep in mind about your GPA as you choose your courses:

1. Your GPA doesn’t directly compare to that of students at other schools.

One common misconception among college applicants is that they can compare their GPAs with those of students attending different schools. However, the GPA is not a universal metric but rather a reflection of an individual's academic performance within their specific educational environment. As a result, comparing GPAs from different schools is like comparing apples and oranges. For instance, some schools offer a plethora of AP, IB, and honors courses, while others may have limited options or offer none at all. Additionally, the weight assigned to AP versus honors versus regular classes varies from school to school. So, your GPA may not hold the same weight as those of your peers at different schools, even if you all have 4.0s.

Admissions officers understand that schools vary in their rigor, curriculum, and grading policies. Therefore, they evaluate your GPA in the context of your high school, considering the courses offered and the academic challenges presented. Instead of fixating on how your GPA compares to your friends’ from other schools, focus on challenging yourself and taking advantage of all the opportunities available to you at your school.

2. GPAs across the country are inflated—and colleges know it.

The last few years have seen surges in high school student GPAs nationwide. While GPA inflation has been on the rise over the last decade, average ACT composite scores are steadily declining. “For the 1.4 million ACT test-takers in the high school class of 2023, the average composite score on the exam was 19.5 out of 36, the lowest score since 1991,” according to The New York Times . The parallel differences, coupled with academic differences across schools, suggest that GPA must be considered in tandem with multiple other factors. Simply put, an A no longer means what it used to on a transcript.

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Ivy League and other top colleges are well aware of this trend and evaluate student GPAs alongside other metrics such as standardized test scores and AP exam scores in order to better understand a student’s academic skill sets. While some Ivy League and other top schools remain test-optional , they still place emphasis on course rigor and the context offered by your high school profile in order to understand the grades on your transcript.

3. Colleges will recalculate your GPA.

Given the abundance of variables in GPA calculations, colleges often recalculate the metric to create a standardized baseline for comparison between students across different schools. The recalibration may involve adjusting for variations in grading scales or the weighting of honors, International Baccalaureate (IB) or Advanced Placement (AP) courses. The University of California system, for example, calculates students’ UC GPAs by converting grades to grade points (an A is equivalent to 4 points, a B to three points, etc.) for classes taken between summer after 9th and summer after 11th grade, and adding one point for each honors class, and dividing by total classes taken to yield final GPA.*

Other colleges also take additional factors that impact academic performance into consideration, and envelop GPA into a broader, holistic consideration. For instance, the Harvard University lawsuit over affirmative action revealed that Harvard rates students on a scale of 1–6 (with one being the most desirable) in academic, extracurricular, athletic and personal categories. A student’s GPA and test scores are folded together into an academic score which “summarizes the applicant’s academic achievement and potential based on grades, testing results, letters of recommendation, academic prizes, and any submitted academic work.”

This process aims to provide a fair and equitable evaluation of students from different educational backgrounds. Keep in mind that Harvard considers not only your grades, test scores, and academic rigor in this score, but also “evidence of substantial scholarship” and “academic creativity,” which can make the difference between a 1 and a 2 in the scoring system. These systems underscore the importance of taking advantage of every opportunity, showcasing your unique personality and creativity, and seeking to maximize opportunities to improve your performance within the academic landscape of your institution.

By understanding the complex way by which colleges evaluate students’ GPAs, you are better equipped to present a comprehensive and competitive picture of your academic achievements on your transcript and stand out in the competitive Ivy League admissions landscape.

*Variations exist for in-state versus out-of-state students and by high school. Be sure to calculate your GPA following the UC issued guidelines.

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