I just got pre-admitted into the program, and I have 2 questions.
Thank you so much!!
why do you care about these things? Do it if it fits you, don’t do it if it doesn’t. You do not do it because it “looks good on your resume.”
@donnaleighg it’s a valid question, I simply don’t know a lot about this program. 
Do you know whether getting pre-admitted into Directed Studies is an honor or not? How many kids apply?
You have been accepted as a freshman at Yale and you are wondering if the program you were accepted into is prestigious and exclusive enough for you?
My issue is the question you asked. More relevant questions (which I can’t answer as my kid was a STEM kid, YES-W likely letter, and not at all interested in DS) is “what is the reading load like? Did you feel you missed out on other courses Freshman year? Was it a good intro to Political Science/History/Economics/Literature/Philosophy? Or would you have rather not done it?”
I don’t have any firsthand knowledge about Directed Studies. I read about it on its website, and it says it takes 125 freshmen per year with year long courses in philosophy, history and political thought in Western Civilization. It sounds like you found a niche market with a college committed to fill 125 spots per year. You must be a good fit given your interest and ECs and GPA/test scores. In regard to prestige, Yale itself is prestigious, how much more prestige do you need?
It probably won’t help with employers, insofar as you will have had years of other accomplishments by the time you’re speaking to employers. It won’t hurt either. It also depends on what kind of employer you’re looking to impress: Facebook probably won’t swoon.
Half of freshman think that they’re the smartest kids on campus, whether they’re in Directed Studies or not. That usually fixes itself over the first couple of semesters. The other half suffer from Imposter Syndrome. Hopefully that gets fixed also, but I find it the more charming half 
Most freshman know that Directed Studies has an extensive reading list. HS IB graduates are advantaged because they have already learned “reading triage:” what must be read, what should be skimmed, and what can be ignored.
Based on the limited sample I’ve encountered, I think most Yale students form nuanced opinions of their classmates’ intelligence and academic chops, rather than basing their views on simple attributes.
I do see being pre-admitted as a nice honor, but also my sense is that, for the most part, any incoming Yale student interested in the program can get into it. It sounds like a great program, but not everyone at Yale wants to do it as it’s a lot of reading and also limits options for other courses in the first year.
We called it “Directed Suicide” in my day. Some of the students I knew in the program thrived and loved it, others did not. No one I knew thought students in DS were somehow superior, it was only that they had a very focused interest that most of us did not. Go into DS if the program appeals to you, and this is how you want to spend your freshman year. The classes you took, your GPA, academic honors and professors’ recommendations and connections have a much bigger impact on your employability than whether you were in DS or not.
@HenryFeddersen - it’s a fantastic program, found nowhere else, but you have to be the right sort of person to handle the work, benefit from it and enjoy it. Most weeks you have hundreds of pages of reading and have to write a five-page paper. It accounts for three of the four or five courses you take in each semester of freshman year, so your options are relatively constrained (in that year). You’ll emerge from the program with a great grounding in Western culture (literature, history & politics and philosophy), obtained in relatively smaller classes taught by some of the best professors at Yale. You might want to check out the program’s webpage (http://directedstudies.yale.edu/) and consider contacting its Director of Undergraduate Studies, who can put you in touch with current/former students. Here’s a story from the Yale Daily News this week which provides additional color: http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2017/02/15/higher-enrollment-more-dropouts-for-directed-studies/
The way I would put this is that DS is a great program if you are interested in it, but you don’t need to be in DS in order to “win Yale.”
That’s just not true. There are always more students who want to take it than there are available slots.
@jonri Well that’s what my daughter tells me based on what she hears on campus, but I don’t have any information beyond that.
My experience was that students who weren’t admitted prior to the beginning of classes always got a place by the end of shopping period.
Also never really understood why all prefrosh think DS is so much work. It didn’t really seem much more work than 3 standard Yale classes, and was definitely less strenuous than other classes available to freshmen (such as math 230). I guess prefrosh have never taken a regular Yale semester though, so there’s no proper comparison.
@exyalie15 , haha, I agree. Son’s roommate did DS, son did Math 230. I don’t think either were eating bonbons by the pool :). His roommate had never learned reading triage (which son had mastered while getting an IB diploma in HS), read everything on the reading list, and had a busy semester.
I took Math 230 many years ago (same course number for many decades). I found it straight forward and not tons of work. My friends in DS seemed to always be under the gun to finish a lengthy paper.
Decide whether you want to spend a whole year’s worth of classes in the humanities. It can tie you up later as Yale is rigid about applying classes to other majors.
Yale wasn’t rigid in my experience. I had three electives outside of my faculty applied to my major. I also did my senior thesis with a professor in a different department.
@HenryFeddersen ,
This is what I knew about directed studies in 2012.
125 Students are in it, which is 10% of the freshman class. It covers the most central writing and books which are considered to be the most important and influential in shaping Western culture (a term called “Western Canon”). There is 1 4-6 page paper due every Friday (for the total of 3 classes, each class has 1 paper due per month). You read approx 750-1500 pages per week. The Odessey in 1 week. War in Peace takes 2 weeks. The group of 125 kids gets very close because of the very small classes 16-18 people and all of the discussion. It’s not super hard, except for the huge reading volume.
Of the 125 students, 50 were offered preadmission, and 150 apply for the remaining 75 spots. Of the preadmits, many do not take DS or start it and then drop DS. So that anyone of the 150 who persists and wants the class will be able to get in.
DS takes up 3 full-year classes in your freshman year. This fullfills 3 of the 6 “distributional requirements” (Humanities, social science, writing) – the requirements outside of major that you need to graduate.
For background, my DD was offered pre-admission and chose not to go into DS. One of her frosh suitemates was in DS and spent lots of time studying and with her DS cohort and seemed to enjoy it very much. My DD wanted to handpick which distributional requirement classes that she took so she did not do DS.