Freshman Experience

 

I want to go to a Yale where freshmen feel supported from the moment they step on campus. As FCC Chair last year, I led the creation of a report on the freshman experience. There are so many memorable parts of freshman year, like Camp Yale, the Holiday Dinner, Freshman Screw, the Freshman Snowball Fight, and Freshman Olympics, but there is also a good deal of uncertainty and confusion, including dissatisfaction with the freshman advising program. YCC should work to identify changes that can be made to Camp Yale, the freshman advising program, the Freshman Counselor program, and other critical aspects of the freshman experience, and encourage administrators to enact reforms.

Yale should:

  • Add a spring extracurricular bazaar, so that freshmen have an additional opportunity to find new student activities after their first semester.

  • Increase the stipend for freshman counselors to include all of room & board. Frocos are some of the university’s most vital resources, and they deserve a full room and board credit.

  • Include more programming about diversity at Yale in the style of CCE training, specifically workshops on issues of race and socioeconomic differences, in order to help students become comfortable discussing these issues openly, respectfully, and productively. Include, in particular, students of color and low-income students in the design and implementation of these workshops.

  • Reform the freshman advising program, specifically:

  1. Clarify that freshman advisers are primarily academic advisers, a preference a majority of students expressed in the recent YCC advising survey.

  2. Develop a system for matching advisers with students by academic and career interest as much as possible, rather than randomly. Colleges that match with these criteria in mind, like Berkeley, have higher advising satisfaction rates, as the Report on the Freshman Experience discovered.

  3. Equalize student-to-adviser ratios. Some advisors are assigned far more freshmen than others, which dilutes the attention they can give to each student.

 

What YCC can do:

  • Survey freshmen immediately after Camp Yale to compile a report on their Camp Yale experience and recommend changes. Did freshmen feel as if all their questions were answered? Which workshops did they find the most valuable? Did they feel able to navigate all the various extracurricular and social events? What else would have been helpful?

  • Commit to increasing freshman representation on YCC, by institutionalizing two elected positions for freshmen, elected after Fall Break in their first semester on campus.