yale student taking questions

<p>underthebelljar: mostly true. i personally try to keep a balanced view of getting grades and what they mean--if ive worked hard in a class and feel like i deserve a good grade, ill be a little upset if its not the way i turned out. but then again, one b+ in one class matters so little in terms of the big picture that i try not to let it stress me out. i think most of my friends have this outlook as well...grades just dont come up that often in conversation, but when they do we know were all friends and it doesnt matter anyway. there are certainly people who torture themselves over a's and a minuses, but they arent common. sometimes the quite obvious and visible stress they go through makes me feel a little better--i know thats a little sadistic but its true. schadenfruede, i guess :)</p>

<p>iv4me: i dont know from personal experience, but would have to say anything you can think of. off the top of my head, i would posit that a yale degree in those subjects is about as good as you can get for fields like journalism, grad school, non profit business, for profit business, law school, social work, arts and entertainment, the list goes on. i wouldnt think that anyone coming out of yale with a ba in english is up nights worrying about where theyre next meal ticket is coming from, no matter what avenue q says (yikes i know i used an avenue q reference above also. thats kind of sad).</p>

<p>=] Thanks Goldoro! :]</p>

<p>Any suggestions on which classes and which professors to sit in on for a prospective physics major with interests in french and art history as well? How strong are sciences at Yale, physics in particular?
Thanks!</p>

<p>I just read an article that said Harvard was starting this massive investigation into the origins of life. This is the sort of thing I'd really like to study, but Yale is my first choice. Will I be able to do this kind of research at Yale? Even if it's not sponsored by the school, can I design my own experiments?</p>

<p>Also, can a student design his or her own major?</p>

<p>Yale's Sociology program?</p>

<p>SNEAKiiE,
I took three years of Spanish, but it was because I was in a special science program freshman year and language wasn't offered.</p>

<p>underthebelljar, I def. agree with Goldrodo, you will find most of competitive students in the premed program, but again, there aren't that many of them. I don't care about grades as much as I do about learning, and my social life and sanity is much more important than straight A's. Students do work hard, but getting all A's is not a priority.</p>

<p>mommamia: i dont have any personal experience with those fields, but you should check out yale.edu/oci where you can view all the upcoming courses for the 2005-6 year. i dont know if youre a prefrosh or just thinking about applying but if youre a yalie, when shopping period begins you can see ratings of each class and each prof based on previous students evaluations. its pretty helpful and gives you a good idea of what youre getting into. as for the sciences and physics, i know some physics majors who are very happy with their work, doing crazy research in the movement of extraterrestrial solar systems or something like that...and as for sciences in general, well, its hard to lump them all together but im very happy with the bio major and i know many others who are also...engineering isnt as big but chemistry, physics, bio are all great.</p>

<p>gorbachev_sez: life, eh? well thats a pretty big one right there but im sure such an undertaking wouldnt be frowned upon by the yale bio folks. seriously, there are lots of ways to embark on your own research or projects (ie, yale has lots of money that they throw at students who have cool/different/new ideas). i mean, i dont know how specifically you would go about starting up this research but im sure you could do it. amazing that you already have something that amounts to a bio senior project lined up, by the way. you have any ideas for me?
oh and, you definitely can design your own major. not the most popular option, but students have done it.</p>

<p>redlinekid2: dont know anything about them, except that they run experiments a lot and pay people to take them. i guess that means they have a lot of $.</p>

<p>Hee hee. Let me tell you, I LOVE the idea of Yale's Physics and Philosophy major. So awesome (by the way, do you know anything specific about it?) Also, one in biochemistry and theology would be good. I'm a kind of a science nerd with a religious side.</p>

<p>Well, a couple theses that I think would be interesting are:</p>

<ol>
<li>The Theological Implications of the Miller-Urey Experiment
and</li>
<li>Concepts of Infinity in Physics and Religion</li>
</ol>

<p>I have no idea whether either of these are feasible, though. I wanted to do one for my IB extended essay, but you can't do cross-subject projects. Also, for some strange reason, no one wants to let me mess around with a 10,000 volt corona. How odd.</p>

<p>goldoro, do u have any friends in the mb&b major? How good is it? What are their opinions of it?</p>

<p>You sat across from me in TV Sitcom this summer!</p>

<p>Is the construction that was everywhere during the summer so prevalent during the schoolyear? Because getting woken up by the noises of construction (and sirens) kind of sucked.</p>

<p>gorbachev_sez: no, i dont know anything about it. good luck with all your (ambitious) theses.
wrathofgod64: the people i know in the mb&b major really like it. it has a lot of overlap with the regular bio major, and a lot of bio majors take classes in the mb&b department because the subject matter is, in my opinion, a bit more interesting. youve got classes like physiological systems and advanced genetic analysis that draw a lot of premeds and other bio majors looking for something even more exciting. the only thing holding someone like me back from mb&b is that the prereqs are pretty steep, and you also dont get to study much on the ecology or evolution side, which im also very interested in.
amanda38: construction usually amps up in the summertime, just because the weather is more conducive to working outside. same with sirens. in winter there just arent as many cars on the road. not to say you wont get the usual city noises when youre there, but it certainly settles down a bit.
and wasnt lomans class awesome? last year i took golden age of television and loved it. its a shame hes leaving for boston.</p>

<p>Goldoro, is there no way to see ratings of each class and each proffesor based on previous students evaluations before shopping period begins? How do we view them once they become available?</p>

<p>You can try ratemyprofessor.com...the coverage is spotty and maybe only kinda reliable...but it's info!</p>

<p>justin871, they are supposed to be available when you are looking at classes descriptions on yale.edu/oci. However, they don't like posting them for some reason. For some classes, they do exist, for others, they don't. I think there is a newspaper or something that you can read once you get to Yale in which students describe different classes they took, but they only talk about selected classes. We complaned about this already because they ask us questions (electronically) about the profs, the workload, etc. after we finish each class and there is no reason to not publish all of them!</p>

<p>good laptops, specifically id say good performance, meaning not slow
good for note-taking
good internet
and possible floppy drive</p>

<p>Thanks barski and antimatter. I haven't seen any ratings yet on yale.edu/oci, but I'll keep looking</p>

<p>Oh okay. Thanks Antimatter :D.</p>

<p>yes, we all LOVE antimatter, dont we</p>

<p>Exploratorium?</p>