@college4many - I used to tell my D that “C’s get degrees”. She did not think that was funny but I did ask her what the first person and the last person in the graduating class have in common. Answer - both their degrees say YALE.
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@am7311 - I also recruit for Yale so I answer this question a lot. @IxnayBob gave you a very good answer. Except for classes required for your major (which you don’t lock in until the end of sophomore year), there is not one class at Yale that is required for all students to take. There are distribution requirements that mandate you take a broad range of classes. However, there are so many classes in these areas that you have a lot of choices. My humanities D took a class called Geometry of Nature, taught by a professor that was world renowned. But, this was a math class that a math major could not use toward their major because it was geared toward social science majors to get in the requirements. There are classes like this in each discipline (for the most part), they are lovingly called guts.
Re distributional requirements, IMO Yale hits the sweet spot: not as loose as Brown, not as restrictive as Columbia.
TPerry1982’s D breezes through lit and language courses that my son gingerly takes the required minimum of. DS loads up on graduate math classes whose names I don’t even understand while @Tperry1982’s D gets to see the beauty of the Fibonacci series in flower petals. They will both graduate much stronger than they entered.
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@IxnayBob - I love it!! Our kids, both juniors, are on the opposite ends of the academic interest spectrum. It has been a joy to watch their journey and they are definitely examples of the how Yale can be very different for students with varying interests. But they all flourish. Just one more year!!
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I went to Yale from a pretty weak high school (a long time ago), and my kids went there from a very strong high school program. Our experiences were quite different, although it was good for all of us.
If you are really coming from a weaker high school program, I have a couple of suggestions: first, be very careful about picking what level of math and foreign language you get into. If the placement test puts you on the bubble between a lower and higher level class, take the lower level one, even if it means you’ll have to take more foreign language. This is an especially important point if you are a good test-taker (as I was)–doing better than you really deserve on the placement test can put you into a class with people who are ahead of you.
Second, you may find that your preparation is particularly weak with respect to writing papers. Take a class the first semester that is designed to help you with this.
Third, don’t overload your schedule, especially the first semester. Give yourself time to acclimate yourself to the pace of college classes.
Finally, don’t feel like you have to “win Yale” by taking the most challenging classes possible as soon as possible.
Last fall, I chatted with a Yale professor whose kid is a freshman. The professor said that students definitely have to work to get As, but it is really difficult to get a C.
@Hunt - perfect advice, as always.
Thank you for your super helpful and greatly needed advice everyone!!! @Hunt Are our placement test results recorded and shown to someone or are they strictly shown to the student?
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Placement tests for some languages (such as French) are posted physically in some buildings, or at least they used to be when I went through. Sciences and math were electronic.
I assume the placement test results are used by the relevant department to determine what level you should be in. My advice goes to what you should do if your advisor says that your test would allow you to go into a higher level, but that you might want to consider a lower level. If that happens, take the lower level.
My daughter sailed through the math placement test but when she was in the class that they placed her in, she found herself in a class with others that had already taken the class and the teacher taught to them rather than the students new to the topic. She eventually dropped it. I agree that when it comes to math that you should consider one level lower than what you are placed into. As for language- she had taken UCONN Latin 5 in high school but then could not use it at Yale. She just took it again and was surprised that it was taught from an entirely different angle than she had been previously taught. Most of the class was filled with Grad students. She did fine but it took some adjusting. I say this because you should not assume that you already had that covered. Where she thought it was going to be a cake walk, it was actually quite challenging.
@gibby very insightful comment (post #3). I am, however, a little confused about your “pressure cooker” comment. I feel like it doesn’t really answer the question, and serves just to brag about your son. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Even if a high school is filled with peer pressure and overly-competitive students, that doesn’t help us, as readers, gauge the academic rigor and intensity at Yale. Rather, it tells us about the Community at your son’s high school. Any other feedback you can provide about the rigor of the Yale course-load compared to high school course loads in your son’s experience would be greatly appreciated.
A poster says
Well, it’s actually four courses. That’s not the whole story though.
http://yalecollege.yale.edu/new-students/transfer-students/general-academic-information/creditdfail-option The unfortunate (IMO) result of this is that non-STEM students take ridiculously easy STEM courses to meet the distribution requirements.
I am NOT a fan of Yale’s distribution requirements, but do not worry about failing the classes. There are LOTS of guts you can choose among to satisfy the STEM requirements. You do, however, have to take them for a grade.
@jonri, DS would probably appreciate it if the FL requirement could be Credit/D/Fail.
The science classes for non-science majors are rarely anywhere near as rigorous as the social sciences and humanities taken by science students. I tutored some of these non-science major classes, which was surprisingly difficult because they were simplified so extensively (ie. 8th grade math level) that they were no longer intuitive.
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@DryMango: The question I responded to specifically asked “in comparison to your high school workload” but let me see if I can answer the question without a comparison.
At Yale, tests, papers and homework are NOT distributed back to students in reverse-grade order. At Yale, no one knows what grade another student received, unless a student decides to share that information. At Yale, students are NOT calculating their GPA to the 100th of a percent and comparing it to the overall class body tying to gauge where they fit in to the mosaic. At Yale, no one knows another student’s GPA, unless that students decides to share that information. At Yale, no one knows who will graduate with high honors or honors. At Yale, in some classes it’s acceptable to collaborate, however, in other classes it’s not okay to collaborate – much depends upon the professor. At Yale, most freshman take 4 classes a semester and those classes meet twice a week, except for introductory foreign language classes which meet every day. At Yale, it’s normal for students to have 3 to 6 hours of homework/reading/writing/P-sets per class/per day. At Yale, most freshman have one to two classes each day, so it’s possible to have 6+ hours of homework every day. At Yale, some kids can get their work done without having to pull all nighters, others kids however must pull all-nighters to get their work done. At Yale, many students could be classified as having a “Type A personality” meaning they have a high level of ambition and drive – qualities often associated with “over-achievers” or “workaholics.” And because many Yale students have a high level of ambition and drive, trying to the best-of-the-best for themselves, they worry they are not good enough. At Yale, some students worry so much they need to seek out professional help from mental health professionals. At Yale, some students don’t have any worries at all beyond “where is the next party?” At Yale, just like in the real world, students have different abilities and mechanisms about coping with stress. At Yale, just like in the real world, some students are more successful at coping with the workload than others. Was that better?
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@gibby Thank You! That provided a lot of useful information. I hope you can see that, from the perspective of a neurotic high school senior, hearing about the competitiveness of your son’s high school didn’t help me gauge how Yale compared to his high school WORKLOAD (unless I just don’t understand the definition of workload), instead, it just gauged the environment.
Thanks for your new answer and all the specifics about classes and psets (much more relevant to work load 
). Very helpful.
^^ Every high school has a different level of rigor and workload expectations. If you’re attending a high school that requires 1-2 hours of homework a night, you will definitely find Yale’s workload challenging. However, if you attend a high school that requires students regularly do 4 to 5 hours of homework a night, plus 4 to 8 hours of weekend homework, then Yale’s workload will not seem that onerous in comparison to what you are currently having to do in HS.
FWIW: My son made this observation during his freshman year at Yale: The kids who struggled with the workload at Yale lacked good time-management skills, as they had difficulty balancing the demands of their extracurricular activities, sleep requirements, and homework. My son learned his time-management skills in high school; other students must learn them in college.
I think 5 or 6 hours of outside-class work per day would be on the high side for most Yale students, except perhaps during limited periods. My kids were both humanities majors, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t work that much–I think they found the overall workload a bit less then the IB program they came from.
But did they do every word of the assigned reading? Did they start working on papers well before the due date? Well…
I agree with both Gibby and Hunt. Time management is key. My daughter is obsessed with her GCAL. But that said she does not seem to have 4-5 hours of homework a night and she is a history major on pre-med track. P-set assignments take a long time and cramming for a quiz or exam sometimes requires an overnight but for the most part she blocks off set times for writing, set times for reading and sticks to her schedule so that its not overwhelming and all at once. She is also active with EC’s so she needs to keep the rehearsals and activities organized in her GCAL as well. She attended an average regional high school so her experience may be closer to yours than a highly competitive private school. But again, once she got into a rhythm and accepted that her final grades were no different than her friends, she was fine. You too should be fine.