hi everyone, unfortunately i have a question that I think can only be answered by a yale alumni or current student. I was accepted to Yale early action and I have a question about directed studies. the website says some students are accepted to directed studies based on their application alone. first question: if a student is automatically accepted to DS, when will they know? does Yale tell them right away? I haven’t received anything about DS at yale, so I am assuming I was not automatically accepted. if that is the case, the DS website says AP scores are considered when selecting students to accept. second question: which AP tests do they look for? are there one or two I should try to take in may to boost my chances of being accepted to DS? any info would be great! thanks!
Congratulations on your acceptance!
From what I have heard, pretty much anyone interested can go the DS route if they choose. It sounds like a great program but since only a subset of Yale students are interested in participating (my daughter for example was not interested), the numbers of spots and interested students seem to align well.
It seems to be a humanities focused program, so if slots are in fact limited, I would assume they’d look more at APs like European History.
You might contact either the DS staff (link below) or the questions email box in your acceptance letter.
Hi OP, our S is doing DS. He also did EA. Often kids will start off thinking they want to do it, but once they look into it, they realize some of the drawbacks:
- the books are expensive. You can only use certain translations/editions which means that even tho S already had many of the works, he still had to buy the exact version required by prof
- you will be limited in your extra curriculars throughout the whole first year. Reading 500 pages a week (but not of novels, rather, of dense material) does not leave time for much else
- Three out of four classes are already chosen for you if you do DS. Of the 2,000+ classes at Yale, S will only take 2 non-DS classes this whole year.
Ok so here is his rebuttal:
- he gets used books
- no matter what you decide to do at Yale you can’t do everything anyway bc there is simply too much to choose from
- supposedly this is helping him to discipline his reading, his time management, his writing, etc.
Also his profs are “incredible” (isn’t that true of all so many of them at Yale?) and there is a camaraderie among the students which he loves to belong to.
As you can see, his dad and I were hesitant but hey it is his choice – and he has no regrets!
I guess what I am saying to you is that it is probably more important for you to decide if you really want to do DS, and take it from there. I do remember a short supplemental essay submitted in the spring. I remember notification in early summer. If you do decide to do it, and get accepted, get going on the reading ASAP.
Best of luck!
Congratulations on your acceptance, and I echo what the previous two posters have written. I highly recommend that you attend Bulldog Days, Yale’s Admitted Students days in April. I was there last year, and not only was there an informative session specifically about the DS program and the application process, but those days solidified my decision to attend Yale.
You may want to search the last couple of years of the CC Yale forum. Every spring/summer, there are lots of discussions of the pros and cons of Directed Studies, and you can probably get a sense of when the invitations go out, when people apply, etc.
My impression is like everyone else’s: I haven’t ever heard of a student that really wanted to do DS who was not admitted to the program. The university wants to preserve the option of excluding people, probably mainly because it’s expensive (all those small seminar sections) and they don’t want to have to dedicate more faculty to it if it’s oversubscribed. But also because there is a handful of students at Yale who probably shouldn’t take it for various reasons. I really wouldn’t worry about being admitted to DS.
DS is great for students who want to do it. I just want to note that you don’t have to do DS to “win Yale,” or for people at Yale to think you are smart.