Yale freshman blogging for YOU

<p>Hey guys,
I'm a freshman at Yale, and I wanted to help out and answer any questions you might have about Yale. But I wanted to do it via a blog I recently started. You can leave a question here or as a comment on my blog (which only has one post at the moment) about anything you want to know...academics, social scene, location etc and I'll do my best to answer it. For those of you accepted early, congrats and you should seriously consider Yale. For those of you still waiting, best of luck with all your applications (and don't worry too much about them!).</p>

<p>-Yale freshman</p>

<p>I have applied to Yale freshman year and I realize that Yale is a liberal school (from a political standpoint) if I get accepted I am going to major in applied physics so I don't have to deal with alot of the ideology in class. But outside of class are there like a lot of protests going on? Are people really vocal about liberalism? Bc I would very much prefer it if they did not.</p>

<p>What RC are you in and I'm hearing a lot about cochroaches & mice in the dorms. What's your experience with this?</p>

<p>^ Haha yes, I want to know about the cockroaches. Mice I can tolerate. Maybe. They COULD be cute.</p>

<p>Ratatouille was a breakthrough for rodent tolerance.</p>

<p>^^ oh my gosh, SO true. (about my personal tolerance AND the breakthrough)</p>

<p>oh, and by the way, einnoc07, how IS the food?</p>

<p>haha, hey guys. I just answered the first batch of questions. Let me know if you have any more :)</p>

<p>This is a cool idea :) Thanks for the insight..i think most people (myself included) are extremely curious about what really goes on behind those walls, but are just a little too self-conscious to just straight up ask that. </p>

<p>So even if you don't have specific questions, please keep blogging! It's interesting to read. </p>

<p>I DO, however, have another question ;)
It seems to me that the different "buildings" in the Old Campus are for freshman filtering into certain colleges. My understanding is that Durfee is for Branford, Bingham for Calhoun...etc.
a) Is this true?
b) Which buildings are for which houses (and pros/cons for each? clearly we already know the con for LW..that's disgusting)</p>

<p>i can answer this real quick:
ldub (lanman wright hall)- saybrook and pierson (small and old, but cool location, nice little courtyard)
durfee- morse (one of the better ones, singles, nice common rooms)
farnam- je (honestly, never been in there lol)
lawrence- ezra stiles (nice rooms and location)
welch-davenport (one of the better ones, huge doubles, princess suites and nice common rooms)
bingham- trumbull and calhoun (smallish but really pretty, nice location too)
vanderbilt- berkeley and branford (nice suites with large common rooms and a cool courtyard)
and of course silliman and timothy dwight frosh live in their colleges, silliman freshmen dorms are really nice, with large common rooms and really nice high ceilings, TD...well they're small but still really nice</p>

<p>all are really nice and probably better than housing you'll find at other colleges</p>

<p>They have courtyards?...where? </p>

<p>I went to visit in April and they seemed just like flat buildings all around the quad (but obviously on a tour you don't get THE most comprehensive look at a college)</p>

<p>thanks for the info. though! i was just curious ;)</p>

<p>can someone pm me the url for the blog? thanks</p>

<p>apparently they don't allow links to blogs, which i find to be very unnecessary red tape.
but it's entitled, oldcampusconfessional. you can figure it out from there.</p>

<p>just a note on old campus. bingham and l-dub kind of have "courtyards"...sort of, and i gues vanderbilt too. since they bingham and l-dub are in the two opposite corners, there's benches and stuff outside. they're nice to sit on in the fall and just hang out, although it's obviously too cold to do that now. for some reason, l-dub's courtyard is way more social than any of the other old campus courtyards...i guess they just like the outdoors better?</p>

<p>another note about some of the buildings. i know farnum and lawrence have this really cool thing where all the suites connect. rather than a hallway with doors off to the side, they have doors that go through the suites. i don't know if that makes any sense, but basically you can open a door to the suites to the left and right of you, and thus basically walk anywhere in the building without going outside. this is actually really cool because it makes it easier to meet people and socialize, and i kinda wish we had that in bingham too.</p>

<p>Can I link to someone else's blog? I realize they don't want spammers on here, but when it provides useful information it seems like the policy should be flexible.</p>

<p>Yeah can someone else post the link or PM me the link?
I took a look at it the other day but I dont remember the website...and I thought it was really good..</p>

<p>I'm just going to post this, because it's interesting. </p>

<p>So this isn't necessarily informational (per se..) but it's a blog by a bunch of Yale freshman that I found and it was interesting to read. (binghamc13 and wordpress)</p>

<p>Are the distributional requirements for all majors really only 11 courses?
(2 writing, 2 quantitative reasoning, 2 Humanities, 2 SS, 2 Science, and 1 foreign language)</p>

<p>yep, those are the distributional requirements, although language could be more than 1. you only have to take one if you place into L5 and possible L4. otherwise, you'll have to take more.</p>

<p>i mean, 11 credits isn't insubstantial, considering how you need 36 credits to graduate. however, it's pretty easy to meet because every requirement has classes that are less hardcore than straight up math or science or whatever.</p>

<p>So can classes that are required for a major, for example English, count toward the distributional requirements (not just writing, but humanities)?</p>

<p>so if you have to take a math class, but you're not that fond of math are there less intense math courses you could take that aren't boring because of their "less intense" nature..? But that still fill your requirements? </p>

<p>I wish they would send you the blue book in the mail, Vassar does (well not the blue book because that'd be weird..but they send their own course book when you request information)
actually..speaking of which, I signed up on the Yale website to request information and that was back in freshman year (2006) and I still haven't gotten anything..anyone else have this experience? I was expecting a viewbook or something..</p>

<p>^ Haha I signed up for that this year and it said that it'll send out a viewbook and an application the summer before your senior year. I'm excited =]</p>