B
It Is What You Make It
It's easy to find guts, and sometimes difficult to get really good seminars. As with most large universities, it's hard to avoid taking a lecture at some point (especially in sciences), but there are often multiple levels of intro classes to accommodate students with different levels of preparation or interest. Seminars can be competitive to get into when the topic is popular, but there are enough classes available that overcrowding tends not to be a big problem in upper level classes (I have never been denied a seminar, so long as I stayed with it all through shopping period, but I know people who have.) The registration process SUCKS abysmally. It's important to have backup plans in case you can't get into a class (and often you don't know until two weeks into the term whether you are in), and shopping period is the worst kind of limbo for students and professors-- nobody knows who will end up in the class, or what the atmosphere, size, or sometimes even the final syllabus will look like. The class you see during shopping period is seldom the class you get stuck with for the rest of the term.
I have actually found the seminars at Yale a little disappointing. Professors are usually great (though sometimes it's easy to tell they are overworked and don't really have time for your class), but discussion can be a letdown. The 36 course requirement means that many people are taking 5 courses per semester, and there's a lot of pressure to take on an "above-average" extracurricular load, so without a "fifth class" (something a little lighter), it can be difficult to be thorough with all of your classes. This means that you often have to discuss books with very vocal people who only read analyses, peer review "drafts" that look more like short outlines, and tolerate incredibly vague, incorrect, but bombastic monologues about things that happened "all throughout history" or what makes something "so human." It's really frustrating to take a junior seminar (a core requirement for your major) with people who decide they just won't do several of the assignments, because they can still get away with a B if they don't turn in this or that. (Grade inflation, by the way, is a real thing. Easy to get away with a B in most classes. Credit-D is kind of like a sport for a lot of people: how low a grade can you get within the C- to A spectrum? It's actually really difficult to get something below a B in some classes.)
May 25, 2012
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