/Cupertino

Yale

Name: Sameer

Major: Economics and Politcal Science

High School: Bellarmine College Prep, San Jose, CA

1. Can you introduce yourself (name, college, major, high school and city)

Hi, my name’s Sameer. I’m currently a junior at Yale, and I’m double majoring in Economics and Political Science. Before Yale, I attended Bellarmine College Prep, in San Jose, CA.

2. 2.  How did you select your college and major?

I was deciding between Yale and Stanford till the day my registration was due; both are great schools with excellent academics, loads of opportunities, and happy students. In the end, the kicker was that I wanted to get a taste of the East Coast, instead of going to college 20 minutes from home.

As for my majors: I’ve always been interested in analyzing social and political issues, and Yale is known for its strong Political Science department. I’m double majoring in Economics because economics runs the world—on some level, economic incentives underlie almost all human behavior. I also like that it provides a systematic way of analyzing social issues and arriving at precise, rigorous conclusions, in contrast to the softer approach of other social sciences. Plus, it looks good on a résumé.

3. Did you do anything special in high school that helped you in getting admission to this college?

My main focus in high school was speech and debate, and I definitely think that helped me with admissions.

Because I enjoyed it so much, I was motivated to put in a lot of time and energy, and that meant I really got a lot out of it.

It developed a vast range of skills for me, I enjoyed a reasonable degree of competitive success, and I served as captain of the debate team senior year, and these were all things I was able to write about with genuine passion on my college application: rising to new challenges, learning how to lead a team, coaching novice speakers and debaters.

I wasn’t one of those people who did 10 different activities; aside from speech and debate, I did some community service, and I was a member of the Indian Student Coalition. I also did a couple of internships—one in Santa Clara County government, and another at the Public Defender’s office in San Jose. But speech and debate was definitely the core of my high school experience.

Now that doesn’t mean, “if you want to get into Yale, do speech and debate.” When I was in high school, I saw a lot of kids doing the activity halfheartedly because their parents were making them, and I can’t imagine they got a lot out of it. So I definitely think it’s a fantastic activity, but my advice is to do things you can get excited about, things that will challenge you, and work hard at them.

4. What do you think of the classes in college? Professors, Class size, are the classes interesting?

I’ve really enjoyed most of my classes so far. It’s pretty great to be able to study interesting things with the guidance of expert scholars.

Classes at Yale vary from 500-person lectures to 4-person seminars. Many intro classes, particularly in the sciences, tend to be large lectures, but it’s definitely possible to start taking some small classes right away. Even in lectures, you’ll usually have weekly sections in which a graduate student leads discussions or reviews problem sets in a group of about 10 students.

One problem with Economics and Political Science at Yale is that there are a lot of students in both majors, so sometimes you can’t always get your first choice for upper-level seminars. But there are so many classes I want to take, and such little time, that I’m pretty happy with my schedule nonetheless.

In both lectures and seminars I’ve had many fantastic professors, experts in their field who did an excellent job keeping students engaged and thinking hard. I’ve also had some less interesting professors, but that’ll be true at any university. Luckily, Yale offers an Online Course Information system with student reviews for almost every class; also, at the beginning of each semester there’s a 2 week “Shopping Period” during which you can visit multiple classes before finalizing your schedule.

5. How hard is it to cope with transitioning from studying in high school to college?

College has required a lot more self-discipline when it comes to managing my time. Since you don’t have nightly readings, daily class meetings, and daily homework exercises, the burden is on you to make sure you’re working hard enough to really learn the material.

Also, an average courseload of 4-5 classes assigns a lot more work than 4 classes in high school, and it takes some adjustment to juggle that with a social life and various extracurricular activities. Many classes (especially in the social sciences) assign more reading than you think you can do in the time allotted, so you get good at figuring out what you absolutely need to read and what is less important.

It takes some getting used to, but you eventually figure it out.

6. What do you think about campus life?

Campus life at Yale is fantastic; there are more organizations and activities than you could think of. (Check out this link to see some of our student organizations). In my time here I’ve done all kinds of things, playing intramural sports, dancing on the bhangra team, and writing for a variety of publications.

One thing I want to mention in particular is the Yale Political Union, which is a group of debating societies where students gather every week to argue about political and philosophical issues, often with a famous person to kick off the debate. To my knowledge, the opportunity to first hone your ideas in an intimate intellectual community outside the classroom, then argue with famous people like Justice Scalia, John Bolton, and Al Sharpton, is something you can’t get at any other college in the country.

7. Any Negatives?

A few activities, such as Model UN, Mock Trial, Parliamentary Debate, dance teams, and a capella groups, require a tryout in which you compete with many other bright, ambitious Yalies for a spot. But aside from those, most organizations and activities are open to anyone who wants to join.

8. How are the dorms?

One of the best things about Yale is its unique residential college system, which provides a smaller community of 400 students amongst the larger student body of 5,000 undergrads.

All students are randomly assigned into one of 12 residential colleges before they arrive on campus. The first year, you live with other freshmen from your college in a building on “Old Campus,” the freshman quad. Sophomore year, you move to your residential college, where you’ll live for the rest of your time at Yale. It’s really nice to be able to walk into your dining hall for any meal and find familiar faces every time.

9. Food?

The food is pretty decent, with a variety of vegetarian and non-vegetarian options. Yale is also expanding its sustainable food program, which offers a couple of sustainably grown items every week.

10. People and Social Scene?

You’ll find a wide variety of people here, but Yale students are generally intelligent, hardworking, friendly, and happy.

The social scene is pretty much centered on campus; New Haven offers all kinds of restaurants, but there isn’t a whole lot to do in the city. But it’s unlikely you’ll ever be bored. For those who want a quieter social scene, there are plenty of student organizations, cultural events, and talks, in addition to Yale’s two art galleries. There are also plenty of parties every weekend (some thrown by frats, some by residential colleges and student organizations, and many smaller parties in dorm rooms), and every Saturday night, Yalies crowd into Toad’s, a popular New Haven nightclub right in the center of campus. The frat scene exists, but is much smaller than at big state schools.