Yale To Begin Construction on Two New Residential Colleges

<p>This is probably old news for most of you...I wanted to share just the same. Construction should be completed just in time for the class of 2021. I am surprised at the number of students that the RCs will house. It seems awfully low. I thought for sure it would increase the incoming classes by a larger amount. Is it just me? I'm sure they have their reasons.</p>

<p>Oops. I forgot the link! Sorry…
It’s early
L-) </p>

<p><a href=“Construction of new residential colleges moving forward, thanks to fundraising efforts | YaleNews”>Construction of new residential colleges moving forward, thanks to fundraising efforts | YaleNews;

<p>The goal for each Res College is ~400. Thus the increase in yearly matriculants will be ~200 additional freshmen. I think the two new res colleges will house Freshmen (ala Silliman and TD) or will their Freshmen squeeze into Old Campus? I think that’s unlikely. If Freshmen are in the new res colleges, then they’ll have to have housing for 400 each.</p>

<p>What does this mean for admissions? If we assume a 65% yield, Yale will offer admissions to an additional 308 students per year up from their current range of 1900-2000 per year.</p>

<p>Thanks for the clarification!</p>

<p>If they hold about 400 each, that is about normal, isn’t it? My daughter is in TD, and I think they have about 400 there.</p>

<p>TD is the second smallest college (behind Trumbull) with just over 400 students. Pierson is the largest with almost 500 and most of the others fall in the 450-470 range.</p>

<p>Somewhere along the way I heard that one of the goals of the new residential colleges is to relieve the pressure on the other colleges and make them smaller because many of them are over capacity and must annex a decent portion of students every year. If I had to guess, the new colleges will be able to accommodate more than 400 students each and fewer kids will be assigned to the rest of the colleges. Even if they housed 450 each (comfortably and without annexing) and the Yale population increased by 800 students, that would mean 100 more open beds in the original 12 colleges. Some colleges (like Pierson, Silliman, and Saybrook) currently don’t - or only rarely must - annex students would likely stay the same size while the ones annex a larger portion of their junior class would get more than their allotted 10 extra spaces.</p>

<p>From what I’ve heard, the freshman in the new colleges will be housed in the colleges - not on Old Campus. I doubt that the freshman housing situation would change much, but I think it would be interesting if the new colleges relieved enough housing pressure from the colleges that annex to McClellan, in which case, the administration might consider housing TD freshman there instead of in the college. (I suggest TD rather than Silliman because TD has the smallest freshman class at just 102 this year.) McClellan currently houses 74 students and - with a bit of creative restructuring of rooms - could most likely handle 100.</p>

<p><em>With the exception of the number of students in each college, this is all speculation</em></p>

<p>I don’t think 100 beds would be enough to eliminate all annexing, but perhaps it could reduce it. They probably need some annex space for renovations, etc., anyway.</p>

<p>Oh, the new colleges would only completely eliminate annexing if Yale only admitted 250-300 more students instead of their estimated 800. There are several colleges that annex almost their entire junior class (JE, TD, etc) and some also annex sophomores. I would guess that there are 500ish students not living in their college who would want to if they could (including students who move off campus to avoid being annexed).</p>

<p>Some JE juniors really like McClellan (the annex), for what it’s worth.</p>

<p>I loved being a JE upper classman in McClellan. Had a quintet my 3rd year and was in the super octet my 4th year. It was a blast! </p>

<p>Oh, I’m sure McClellan is great, but I was just suggesting that the space might be better allocated to freshman to give them the “freshman Old Campus experience” rather than to upperclassmen. Although I do think that having the new colleges house their freshman not in the colleges will change the attitude towards New Campus freshman because nearly 30% of freshman will be living in their colleges instead of on Old Campus. If nearly a third of the class is not on Old Campus it will be less weird to not live there and it may reduce some of the stigma associated with it. It’ll definitely be interesting to see how campus changes in the next few years.</p>

<p>Not a good idea. Yale wants to compete with small liberal arts colleges and Princeton, no? Offering the best education possible for Yalies is more important than accepting more students. Yale performs well in student and alumni satisfaction metrics despite its size and perceived weakness in STEM, and I don’t want to see it become another Harvard or Stanford. </p>

<p>(H’s and S’s uniformly strong departments make up for some of the shortcomings of large undergraduate studentries. Y isn’t as strong on the graduate level.)</p>

<p>"Yale wants to compete with small liberal arts colleges and Princeton, no? " No, not really. They want to expand primarily because they want to educated more undergrads. To this end, they are expending half a billion dollars. They’ve thought through the the plusses and minuses for several decades. This isn’t an impulse buy: walking past an endcap at Target “Wow, that’s a good deal!”</p>

<p>They’ve gone down this road before (MC and ES). They know that protection of the entire intimate undergrad experience is paramount in any expansion.</p>

<p>The article linked to says construction to begin Feb 2015, so what’s the construction already going on just south of the Whale along Prospect? Is “groundbreaking” a term of art referring to some formal ceremony?</p>

<p>I was wondering the same thing! I had lunch at the food carts this week & was curious about the changes.</p>

<p>Do many students, especially those who have classes on the science hill, have lunch at the food carts?</p>

<p>DS seems to have mentioned the food carts quite often. (Maybe the graduate students eat at the food carts more often because more of them may live off-campus and they do not live at a RC.)</p>

<p>My daughter (physics major) typically eats lunch at KBT (Klein Bio Tower) which gives them a voucher or something of that sort on the meal plan. Seems it would get expensive eating at the carts-</p>