<p>I was wondering whether Yale has the same bad teaching problem as Harvard.</p>
<p>Several of the Crimson articles have highlighted this and here's one:</p>
<p>I heard that Yale puts its main emphasis on undergraduates so i'm guessing that faculty know how to actually teach. What are current students' experiences?</p>
<p>In the next 50 years we will all see many public schools exceed the Ivy League</p>
<p>My junior D, who flies back to Yale today, has glowing reports about her professors. She has repeatedly told friends and family that she has yet to have a bad teacher. A couple of her friends have had one so far, howeever, and that the weakest teachers seem to be the foreign language teachers.
My daughter was worried about statistics, as it can be dull if not taught well, but she liked the class last semester and said he made it interesting. Science, humanities and art classes have been wonderful without exception throughout her 2 1/2 years. The workload is fairly heavy as you have to take 5 courses at least half of the time, but grading has been pretty much what she expected - neither too hard or easy. A lot of profs ask for rough drafts of papers before the final is submitted, so students sometimes have a chance to improve their work before they receive a final grade.</p>
<p>some people on this board mentioned that the introductory math teachers up until multivariable calculus are pretty weak.</p>
<p>amnesia's wrong... </p>
<p>but, I've heard that Yale is a lot more focused on Undergrad education than Harvard.</p>
<p>Every school will have it's poor professors. The important question is whether or not a school prioritizes its undergraduate college, and in that context, yale is second to none.</p>
<p>Actually, second to Princeton.</p>
<p>Agreed :).</p>
<p>
[quote]
I've heard that Yale is a lot more focused on Undergrad education than Harvard.
[/quote]
You only hear that from people that didn't get in:)</p>
<p>The ratio of undergrads to grad students who share the respective faculties of arts and sciences is virtually identical at Harvard, Yale and Princeton.</p>
<p>This whole "undegraduate focus" thing is a total crock.</p>
<p>An enduring myth.</p>
<p>Professors at Yale, Harvard, and probably every research university in the US are hired primarily for their accompliments in their field. Teaching ability is hardly considered in the tenure process so many professors have little inclination to design good courses and prepare before lectures. Despite the lack of incentive, many professors truly love teaching and work hard to create intersting and challenging courses. Thus, classes at Yale and peer institutions range from dreadful to exceptional.</p>
<p>The great thing about Yale is shopping period. You can visit classes for two weeks before committing to take them, which allows ample time to get a feel for the professor and ditch the class if necessary. This works especially well in the humanities where you can most often choose from a whole array of classes to satisfy a given requirement. In the sciences, where classes need to be taken in a certain order, shopping period is less useful, but generally allows you to avoid complete train wrecks for professors. By using shopping period to its full advantage, most Yalies finish with many more memorable classroom experiences than negative ones.</p>
<p>If you're looking for great professors and a school that really focuses on undergrad experience (just as much as, if not more than, Yale or Princeton), come check out Brown... we have shopping period, too!</p>
<p>doesn't Harvard have a "shopping period" as well?</p>
<p>harvard's shopping period is a week, Yale's is 2 weeks in the fall and 1 and a half in the winter.</p>
<p>Some people love the extra time to decide on their classes before they have to commit, others end up wishing they had less because they didn't keep up in all the classes they were shopping.</p>
<p>There are very few really bad teachers here, I've found. There are a few I'm not too fond of, but generally professors tend to be good.</p>
<p>That's all I needed here. I'm convinced. :P</p>
<p>i can really only speak from personal experience (and as a second-semester freshman, i don't have all that much of that), but i have yet to have a bad teacher. obviously, some teachers are exceptional wheras others are just good or average, but on the whole, i've heard a grand total of one horror story about a bad teacher.....everything else has ranged from "he was fine" to "oh my god, this class is amazing, you have to take it!" i've heard so many endorsements of good teachers that the one bad review i heard seems to just be an exception to the rule. also, i have yet to see an opinion piece in the yale daily news complaining about bad teaching (and i work for the ydn as well as read it at breakfast).
TFs are basically the same. i had the unfortunate luck of having a chemistry TF last semester who didn't feel it necessary to either do the problem sets or...y'know...know anything about chemistry. but i haven't heard any other complaints about TFs, and the other ones i've had have seemed to be genuinely enthusiastic about teaching undergraduates.
the math department is kind of the exception to this rule; the teaching there seems to range from average to bad. but with this one exception, yale's teaching is good. you should not be deterred by yale's status as a research institution, because chances are that the vast majority of your proffesors and TFs will actually (gasp) enjoy teaching.</p>