<p>hey people,</p>
<p>I was interested in knowing about the proffessors at yale. Are they around if u need help with a particular topic or do u have to rely on TAs most of the time?</p>
<p>And also, how are the people at yale? Are there cliques? Are study groups common and easy to start?</p>
<p>How is the security? </p>
<p>Thanx.</p>
<p>I'm not a student there, but here's what I was told:</p>
<p>TAs lead the study groups, but Professors actually teach. They like to see you during office hours, like to have tea with you, are annoyed that not enough people want to do research with them. They're obliged to do it by the administration.
I assume there are cliques just like everywhere else, but you don't have to live by them if you don't want to. Science people hang out with science people, humanities people hardly ever see the science people because the buildings are so separated. Study groups would be common, because the school is full of people who did a lot of studying. And the classes are really small, comparatively, so you'll get to know the people in your area pretty darn fast.</p>
<p>Security is fantastic. They have these blue poles all around campus with emergency buttons. If you push them, the police come out within 30 seconds to help. Just stay inside campus, don't go wandering out into New Haven after dark, and it's secure as a cacoon.</p>
<p>Hey,</p>
<p>Thanx for all this input. U mentioned something about small class sizes at yale? Would u by any chance, know how small they are? Like 20-30 people is small?</p>
<p>the profs are totally cool with having students just show up to office hours (and sometimes at other random times as well... this is waaaay on the extreme end, but one of my profs last year essentially said, "I want Tuesdays and Thursdays for research, but any time on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, you're welcome to just show up at my office unannounced and ask questions")</p>
<p>that being said, in large lecture courses (not, of course, in small seminars), if you want to interact with the professors, you do have to take the initiative to GO to their office hours. otherwise, all you'll get out of the deal is interaction with your TAs during section. TAs are sort of a grab bag; of my TAs last year, two were AMAZING, one was pretty good but nothing special, one wasn't good at all, and the last one I never got to know because I never went to section (:p). so yes. email profs, show up at their office hours, ask them about their research... if you get to know them well enough, they're often more than happy to write you a good letter of rec when you need it!</p>
<p>study groups/cliques ~ yes, there are cliques, but most of them don't feel nearly as exclusive as the catty ones at my high school. they're more just groups of people with the same interests, and if you don't share those interests, you tend not to hang out with them... it's not like they'll bite your head off and tell you to go away if you want to hang out w/them for a bit</p>
<p>security ~ lock your doors, carry a cell phone, and don't walk alone at night, and you'll be fine. the residential colleges are gated communities, and the Yale police are pretty visible all over campus (esp. at night)... to me, it doesn't feel unsafe here unless it's REALLY late at night and I'm by myself, and then all you have to do is call 2-WALK and get security to excort you to where you're going. yale takes a lot of steps to make sure students are safe; as long as you exercise common sense and don't do anything really stupid, you'll be fine.</p>
<p>small classes ~ seminars are usually capped at 16 or so; lecture courses can get to 120 or even 200 for really popular courses, but there's always a TA session that's under 20 people. even in some "lecture" courses, you can end up with a really small group... I shopped a sociology lecture that ended up being 14 people last semester, my german class was 4 (yes, only four) people, and my physics lecture started off as forty people but was down to twenty by the end of the year.</p>