<p>Is it really easier to get Yale if your application points towards a Computer Science major? Compared to more popular majors like Economics or Political Sciences?</p>
<p>From what I've heard, it might be slightly easier because admission officers want to create a well-rounded class, meaning a class filled with students coming from different backgrounds and having different academic interests. The majority of Yale's applicants are interested in Humanities and Social Sciences but not Computer science.</p>
<p>It might also be true that Yale is admitting more CS or engineering students to help to develop its weaker areas.</p>
<p>Of course Yale would not lower it's standard significantly just for those reasons, but it could still be a factor to consider. What do you think?</p>
<p>While Yale (and other selective colleges) ask about your interests, students do not choose a major until the end of their sophomore year – everyone is admitted to Yale College as a Liberal Arts Major. Admissions Directors understand that most college students change their major at least once during their 4 years of school, so they don’t hold you to your choice when you fill out the application. </p>
<p>I may be wrong, but I don’t think Yale’s Computer Science Department participates in recruiting STEM students – it’s more for Math, Bio, Bio Medical Engineering, Engineering, Chem, Physics, Medicine, etc. And when looking for STEM students, Yale tends to look for students with a demonstrated passion for what they do – summer research projects, after school research projects etc.</p>
<p>Computer Science is one of those majors that when studied at the highest levels requires commitment from day 1 in college. I don’t know of many students who have drifted into computer science recently. That used to be the case in the early days of the profession, but surely not recently. So the notion that many strong want-to-be computer science majors change their minds after freshman + sophomore year doesn’t ring true. What does happen is that some students who start out as computer science find that it is quite hard and then change majors. I assume that you’re not one of those students.</p>
<p>So if you have a passion for computer science, and you have a strong academic record, surely there are other colleges, most of which (Stanford, MIT, Caltech being the obvious exceptions) have much better computer science programs than Yale and are not as selective as Yale.</p>
<p>And, yes, I am familiar in some detail with the Computer Science program at Yale.</p>
<p>My long winded post is basically “why pick a college that is renowned in fields that are not of interest to you and mediocre in fields that are”. Find a match.</p>
<p>Thanks that was an useful article. I’m pretty sure Com Science is considered a STEM field but you might be right that the CS department might not participate in recruiting STEM students.</p>
<p>Hey thanks for the response. Admittedly, I only apply to Yale for it’s global reputation. I’m an international applicant from Singapore and it’s sad to say that the local employers place an unusually heavy emphasis on shallow things like prestige. My father, who is a senior Electrical Engineer and EE professor at National University of Singapore, hasn’t heard of great EE schools like Harvey Mudd, Cooper Union or Olin College.</p>
<p>Yale is also one of the top schools that has need-blind admissions and I have a few friends studing there too, so I guessed I’ve explained why I chose a school that’s mediocre in the field that interests me.</p>
<p>“What does happen is that some students who start out as computer science find that it is quite hard and then change majors.”</p>
<p>FWIW: My son started out as a Computer Science major, but recently switched his major after hating the way CS is taught at Yale. Without going into specifics, let just say some of Yale’s CS teaching is very “old school” – the head of the CS department still checks his email in terminal, rather than in a program like gmail etc – that’s how old school it is! After slogging through CS for a year and half, my son found that it was so uncreative, and all the “creative” CS courses at Yale are taught through the Fine Arts Department. So, he’s now a FA major.</p>
<p>sfsy12 I am disheartened by your rationale for “choosing” Yale as a top choice: mediocre in my major is ok, prestige among a select group of potential future employers many thousands of miles away from New Haven is what matters most, and hopefully they’ll pay my way. What kind of college would Yale become if its entire 2018 class were of this mind?</p>
<p>"my son found that it was so uncreative, and all the “creative” CS courses at Yale are taught through the Fine Arts Department. So, he’s now a FA major. "</p>
<p>This!</p>
<p>How is fine arts able to pull off offering CS classes?</p>
<p>“So if you have a passion for computer science, and you have a strong academic record, surely there are other colleges, most of which (Stanford, MIT, Caltech being the obvious exceptions) have much better computer science programs than Yale and are not as selective as Yale.”</p>
<p>Surprised that no one jumped on this statement so I will. What? Not as selective as Yale? Wonder in which parallel universe this is occurring.</p>
<p>I would say that if you are a CS major, the competition to get into one of those three schools is much tougher because they are arguably the top schools in the field (okay throw in CMU and Cal).</p>
<p>I’m taking some liberties by saying this but the original poster is wondering if applying to Yale as a CS major is a back door way of getting into Yale. Our tour guide mentioned how she was a passionate molecular biologist in HS and was given a Likely letter to attend YES weekend but became a liberal arts major the very first day she got to Yale. I’m sure when Yale accepts a STEM student they hope they remain a STEM student or at least gives it the old “college try”.</p>
<p>^^Falcon1: if you read what fogcity wrote a little more carefully you will note he/she noted “(Stanford, MIT, Caltech being the obvious exceptions)”…which makes sense…</p>
<p>…stating exactly what you are saying…I know it could have been clearer…but I get the message.</p>
<p>“How is fine arts able to pull off offering CS classes?”</p>
<p>Courses such as Website Design, Motion Design, GameStop, Digital Animation, Mobile Computing, all of which use use HTML5, JavaScript, Flash etc. are all under the Graphic Design banner of the Fine Arts Department. The CS Department teaches basic code while the Fine Arts Department teaches the actual skills that web designers use everyday. It’s the way the’ve broken it up at Yale; maybe because the head of the department is 60-70 years old and isn’t able to teach those things.</p>
<p>I shopped a relatively advanced CS class (223) here at the beginning of last term. I thought it was telling when it took the professor (who has been here for at least twenty years and is well known in the department) ten minutes and the help of several students to turn on the projector!</p>
<p>That said, I think it’s largely a bad idea for high schoolers to pick which colleges to apply to based on what they want to study. Sounds silly, I know, but really, most people change their mind. I applied here as a Polysci major, then switched to math, and now am officially an astronomy and physics major. Many people go the opposite direction as well. I think the general environment of the college is much more important to consider than the specific programs one is interested in.</p>
<p>If you check the course offerings in CS at MIT, to take just one example, you won’t find courses with labels such as ‘web site design’ there, either. What you will find are courses in ‘old school’ topics as computation structures, algorithms, artificial intelligence, etc., the same types of courses that Yale and any serious computer science department offers.</p>
<p>The complaint that the computer-related courses that are offered as fine arts courses are not offered by the computer science department because the department chair is old and out of touch is not reasonable. It would be like complaining that the mechanical engineering department offers such out-of-touch classes as fluid dynamics instead of teaching students how to repair their Priuses.</p>
<p>^^ I can’t find MIT’s course catalog on-line through google. I’m just finding their OpenCourseWare free on-line courses, so maybe you can provide a link.</p>
<p>In addition to ‘old school’ topics as computation structures, algorithms, artificial intelligence, etc., many other computer science departments teach ‘new school’ courses such as Web Application Development, Cloud Computing, Computer Animation, Virtual Reality, Computer Vision, 2D Game Engines, Game Playing, Digital Photography etc. You just don’t find those ‘creative’ topics being taught through Yale’s CS Department. Compare for yourself and decide.</p>
<p>It’s common for CS professors to check e-mail through Unix-like systems (terminals in gabby’s mail), because some of them are still concerned about privacy issues of e-mail systems such as gmail; these professors usually know exactly what they’re doing and they’re not necessarily old school. Also, top CS programs (including the one at Yale) often attract students who have much background in CS even before they enter and they focus on fundamentals (possibly coming across as old school) for preparing them for grad programs. Once schooled on these ideas, it’s usually not difficult to catch up on latest technologies. To someone not sold on hard core CS, these programs may not be fun. For starters, Yale CS-201 is a difficult CS breadth course and it doesn’t get easier after that. As gabby’s son has found, of course, there are alternatives.</p>
<p>gibby:
As a potential CS major at Yale, I’m admittedly biased, but I just wanted to point out that many of the ‘new school’ topics you mentioned are indeed taught at Yale.
Let me go through them one by one:
Game Playing: Looking at the syllabus of Stanford’s “Game Playing” course, it’s essentially an intro to AI class, which Yale indeed offers.<br>
Computer Vision is taught at Yale, both as part of the AI class and as a separate course with a special emphasis on biologically inspired computer vision (which is about as cutting-edge as you could hope).<br>
Digital photography is taught by the art department, which makes much more sense than calling it CS. You’re not learning how to build a camera, you’re taking pictures that you want to look good.
Cloud computing is taught at Yale under the course name “Building Decentralized Systems”.
Virtual Reality: not exactly sure what you mean by teaching virtual reality, but looking at Brown’s class by that name it seems like more of an art/design class, so I wouldn’t really blame Yale’s CS department for not offering it.<br>
Computer Animation is again more of an art class than anything else, but Computer Graphics, which focuses on the skills that allow you to write the software that animators use, is taught.
Game Engines: If you know anything about programming or the software world at all, you’ll know that there are so many different game and graphics engines that it’s a waste of time to have a class teaching the use of one of them; by the time the student graduates there’ll be something bigger and better and their knowledge will be obsolete. Much better is the approach that Yale and most other schools with strong CS departments take: teaching you the basics of how these engines work, mathematically and algorithmically.
Web Application Development: This is the only one I really agree with you on. It’s a very useful skill that requires a good bit of technical knowledge to do properly, and it should be part of Yale’s CS department. I would, however, point out that HackYale, a student organization, is trying to fill this void by offering immensely popular courses in web development. It’s also really not that hard to learn on your own, if you have a decent amount of motivation.</p>
<p>I’m not suggesting that Yale CS has anywhere near the breadth of say, Stanford or MIT (how could it, with 10 or 20 graduating majors each year?), but in terms of quality, the department is certainly top-notch.</p>