Hi all!
I’m wondering what Yale’s curriculum emphasizes. For example, Penn emphasizes interdisciplinary learning; Columbia has the core; Brown has an open curriculum. Is there anything specific about Yale that makes hem unique? If not completely unique, which school are they most like in their curriculum and in what sense?
Thank you!
It doesn’t have a core, it is not fully open like Brown; I think (from my experience with my DD) that it is a fairly standard college – has some distribution requirements which are filled without much difficulty. One thing it may be different from a lot of schools is a fairly hefty foreign language requirement (my daughter, a STEM kid with not much interest in FL) had to take a full year of intensive (5 day a week) French after completing AP French in HS.
http://yalecollege.yale.edu/academics/academic-requirements/distributional-requirements-chart
^ yes, the FL requirement was a drag for my CS student also, and at 1.5 credits the B had an outsized effect. But, his future employer didn’t seem to mind the blemish 
FWIW, as one who is multilingual, the fact that I had to take even one FL class in college was one of the things that turned me off about Yale.
“There is no specific class you have to take at Yale, but you are required to learn broadly and deeply. Depth is covered in your major. Breadth is covered in three study areas (the humanities and arts, the sciences, and the social sciences) and three skill areas (writing, quantitative reasoning, and foreign language).”
The above is from Yale’s website. It says something about the philosophy underneath the curriculum.
Foreign language is an important set of skills that go beyond the use of language itself; it has an essential cultural component. Pairing this requirement with possible freshman year summer experience (say funded by Light Fellowship) in a foreign country is a very cool part of Yale education.
One can always argue whether there should be any requirement at all. If there has to be at least one requirement, I would personally say that foreign language provides no less value than say writing or quantitative reasoning for a typical Yale student. After all, SAT has reading, math, and writing, and most Yale students are doing very well on them. But there would be probably a wider variation on Yale’s incoming students’ foreign language skills when they enter Yale. A requirement on foreign language provides some sort of quality control on all Yale graduates; I think that is what a requirement is all about. Also if a requirement can be waived, then it is just not a requirement any more. This applies to not just foreign language, but also writing and quantitative reasoning. I do not think Yale would waive the writing requirement just because an incoming student has done a lot of good writing or is even already a famous young writer.
prof2dad, I tend to agree with your views, but while “foreign language is an important set of skills that go beyond the use of language itself,” this could also be said of, say, math. There is no foreign language equivalent of “Math in Nature,” which, while an interesting topic, isn’t very rigorous. This has been a friendly topic between me and a frequent poster on CC, whose daughter is gifted in languages but not equally so in math, the exact reverse of my son.
I think that a case could also be made that ASL, for example, would be a useful skill and would benefit those who have a tin ear for language, but who can learn to “see/hear/speak” sign language.
Yale doesn’t make students take Math 230, and they can meet their quantitative reasoning distributional requirements quite handily with less difficult courses. There really aren’t “gut” foreign language courses.
@DLithium - take a look at the Yale catalogue and you’ll find plenty of interdisciplinary courses, and even majors, such as Economics, Politics and Ethics.
What may be really different about the Yale curriculum is the college’s intensive Directed Studies Program, and (perhaps) the availability of seminars, for first year students. All of my courses are being taught by professors who are prominent in their fields of study, in addition to being terrific teachers.
As far as the foreign language requirement is concerned, even though my language placement test put me at a year 4/5 level, 4 wasn’t offered in the fall and I didn’t feel my skills were really strong enough yet for level five, so i chose a level three class instead, which is still challenging. So, based on my own experience, I’d hope that the FL requirement shouldn’t feel so off-putting to prospective students. Also nice is the college’s combined use of dept. placement and AP test scores to place students into appropriate-level classes. Mine allowed me to skip a year of introductory Econ classes and place into a higher level Calc. course.
Best of luck to you this year!
Tbh, I haven’t researched how many other schools (Ivy or otherwise) offer combined MS/BS or MA/BA degrees in 4 years, so I don’t know if that’s unique. The combined degree is not a cakewalk, but some students choose to pursue it. There is a maze surrounding the requirements and approvals, but it appears to be navigable.
My son is thoroughly enjoying his FL requirement. He took 4 years of French in HS and could easily have tested into higher level if he wanted to continue it but decided to do something completely different…LATIN! FWIW he is leaning STEM but still loves his Latin courses…
I don’t see this as significantly different than Columbia’s or U of C’s core. Some students love it and others feel it is too rigid time-wise when coupled with a language requirement to have enough flexibility to fit in other interesting classes freshman year.
I’m glad I attended when there was no FL requirement. I took a year of into language and that wouldn’t have been enough by today’s standards. I have retained almost nothing from that year making me think it was a waste of valuable credits. Not that I remember much linear algebra :).
“There really aren’t “gut” foreign language courses.”
Very true.
“There really aren’t “gut” foreign language courses.”
There are. You need to know where to look. Look at the languages where the football and hockey teams are disproportionately represented and then you’re onto something.
I took two languages at Yale, and one of them was a true gut (the other was a lot of work). I took it because I was passionate about the language, as did a handful of other students.
@exyalie15, I heard that Indonesian was pretty easy, but that wasn’t offered at DS’s HS, so he would have had to start at square 1.
Thank you all for the helpful replies!
@zoebrittany the DS program looks very interesting! I was confused about the timing of it though. Is it just for the freshmen year? Also, how would the courses I take for program affect distribution requirements or my major requirements?
@DLithium - Hope this helps: http://directedstudies.yale.edu/prospective-students/media
There’s a lot of information on the Yale website that can answer your questions! But yes, DS is only for first year students, who must apply for admission to the program. What major are you interested in? As a double major who is also very involved with music, I chose not to pursue DS, but you will have to look at the requirements for your prospective major to figure out whether DS makes sense for you.
@IxnayBob - thanks for the shout out. I am purposely not getting involved in the debate about languages at Yale. And, what a STEM oriented student may see as a “softball” math class may still be overwhelming for a non math oriented student (and also a GPA buster).
Your DD could breeze through French standing on her head, while my DS only managed a B because there was a written final. Had it been graded entirely on oral presentations, he would probably have flunked. It’s too bad that we never figured out a way to have them take each other’s classes :))
I guess the moral of the story is that “in for a penny, in for a pound.” Yale’s distributional requirements created some speed bumps for both of our kids, but they survived, thrived actually, and by this time next year, will be on to another chapter in their lives. I hope my grumbling hasn’t obscured the fact that Yale has been a win for most kids I know, including my own.
OP, perhaps this is a bit off from the question you asked, but I think that Yale, as can be seen from the responses here, attracts a diverse group of students who will thrive there, regardless of what their major is, or what their particular choice of classes is.
@Ixnaybob - anything but French or Spanish. That would be too normal for her.
Since coming on CC ins 2011 (I think), I have watched kids go through the high school years, the application process, ups and downs of acceptances and rejections, freshman angst and its ups and downs, and now, waiting for our kids to graduate. The Class of 2018 CC parents have been a great source of advice and comfort to me. I just hope we can pay it forward to those Yale parents that come behind us. The parents, like the students they raised, are diverse and we have had some heated discussions over the years. But I think we all believe that Yale has allowed our kids to grow into amazing adults who, whether entering the world of work or continuing their schooling, are going to do awesome things. So, while I can’t argue the merits of how Yale does its curriculum, all I can say is that they do a darn good job of selecting students who will thrive in that environment. So they must be doing something right.