<p>I stopped by this board, and noticed there were few Yale students posting. I am on break, so ask away about academics, social life, etc.</p>
<p>me too. IM me at p7tsr or email me at <a href="mailto:steven.le@yale.edu">steven.le@yale.edu</a></p>
<p>Awesome, 2 Yalies on this board answering questions. Well I've got pretty general ones. Please feel free to answer.</p>
<p>How's life in the residential colleges? What are your suitemates like? Any good roommate stories? How's the food (haha)? What do you guys do for fun? Are you guys involved in any clubs/groups/intramurals/etc? What do you guys miss most about Yale (now that you're home, I'm assuming)?</p>
<p>I read in the Princeton forums that "Yale surprisingly, was the school that lived up to the "Princeton stereotype", and another agreed with this.</p>
<p>Is this true?</p>
<p>I've heard that Yalies never sleep. I don't consider this to be a problem, but I'm curious: do people get a decent amount of sleep there, or are they all insane caffeine addicts like me?</p>
<p>yeah, how's the food....:D</p>
<p>sorry for interrupting, but how do you go about creating another thread?</p>
<p>thanks...(yea i know its a stupid question...)</p>
<p>haha...first post eh?
on the main page, click on 'New thread'.</p>
<p>About the "Princeton Stereotype," it seems to me that the Princeton stereotype lives on with a large segment of the population at Princeton (I went to a football tailgate there and saw many people wearing blazers and such). As far as it applying to Yale, I am sure you can find some waspy elitists here too, but I don't think they define the Yale culture. I think Yale's culture is extremely heterogeneous... there are a wide variety of things you can do and a wide variety of campus scenes. No real campus culture dominates, though you could say that about Princeton and to a lesser extent Harvard.</p>
<p>What the people may have been getting at is that Yale does have a lot of quirky tradition that it sticks by, more than most colleges I have come across.</p>
<p>Hey, what are some Yale traditions?</p>
<p>Food and caffeine...</p>
<p>Food varies from college to college, but is overall pretty good (renovated colleges generally have better food). I'm sure you have all heard about Berkeley organic food.</p>
<p>As far as sleep, some students do better than others at getting a lot of sleep, if you are efficient with your work, you can get sleep, if you are not efficient and you take on a lot of extracurriculars and such, prepare to drink a lot of coffee and Red Bull. This goes for any college.</p>
<p>Personally, I like having the suite system a lot better than having just doubles all along a hallway. First of all, most of us have four or six people in a suite, which means that if you're in a single or you don't like your roommate, there are other people to talk to. Second of all, the common room system means that most of the activity is gathered in another room, leaving your bedroom for sleep (and, err...). That means that you don't have to worry about your roommate doing her paper at three o'clock in the morning when you have a nine o'clock class the next day. </p>
<p>Personally, I'm not one of those people who are attached to the hip with their roommate (we have not eaten together since the first day of school), so my roommate stories usually consist of her getting really drunk, me putting her to bed, and her asking me what happened the next day. To be fair, I've been on the opposite end as well.</p>
<p>The thing that I miss the most about Yale? Gosh, where do I begin... mostly, my friends. I miss midnight trips to get pizza, designated TV nights, going to parties, being able to just stop in and say hi. The suite dynamic is awesome and everything, but I never felt like I had to stay in the suite. Some of my best friends live downstairs, so I was always able to just drop into one of their rooms and talk. I miss that a lot, being away. </p>
<p>As for the sleep question -- I'm lucky if I get more than 6 hours a night. Especially during finals week, I was getting by on three. To compensate for that, I've been sleeping until one o'clock every day that I've been on break. My advice: get used to drinking Red Bulls before you come here.</p>
<p>And the food is not Cornell-quality, but a lot better than most other schools. I haven't eaten a single bowl of those noodles in a cup thing since I've gotten here. Weekend brunch is especially good, and there's always a variety of food menus on campus (Berkeley, Commons, residential colleges, Hall of Graduate Studies always has different foods). But if you're a nut for gourmet food and won't eat anything else, either 1) buy your way into Berkeley, or 2) live off-campus.</p>
<p>How ridiculously smart are the people there?</p>
<p>Oh, wait, are they?</p>
<p>Its actually YALE (not Princeton) that has the highest percentage of preppies of any school in the Ivy League (according to USNews) ... if that's what you mean.</p>
<p>just nod your head to whatever byerly says...if you don't you'll never hear the end of it.</p>
<p>Ah, ok.</p>
<p><em>nods</em></p>
<p>(j/k)</p>
<p>thanks! its really appreciated</p>
<p>I understand that Freshman year students are assigned a residential college. Most students live on Old Campus Freshman year and then go to their residential colleges. But a few of the Residential Colleges have the Freshman go directly to that College Freshman year. I would prefer to be assigned to a residential college that has its Freshman live on Old Campus. Is there any way of increasing my chances for assignment to the Old Campus with all the Freshman?</p>
<p>It is true that Yale has more private school graduates than Princeton, but I see that for the most part, Princeton carries more of the "prep" attitude, at least on the surface. </p>
<p>To be fair, I find Yale to be a bit preppier than Harvard.</p>
<p>To answer scott723's question: not really. The only way you can make sure you're not assigned to Silliman or Timothy Dwight (the only two colleges where the freshmen don't live on Old Campus) is if you had relatives who went to Yale and put down on your housing sheet that you'd prefer the colleges that they belonged to. Otherwise, nobody is supposed to interfere with the random selection of the residential colleges.</p>