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"To understand the structure of the human soul we must understand the structure of society; to understand the structure of society we must understand the structure of the human soul."
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"In our collective cultural consciousness, whether we like him or not, we tend to think of John Milton as powerful."
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"Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner are the iconic figures of American Literature."
Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn.
- All lectures were recorded in the Yale College classroom and are available in video, audio, and text transcript formats
- Registration is not required
- No course credit, degree, or certificate is available through the Open Yale Courses website. However, courses for Yale College credit are offered online through Yale Summer Online including OYC professors John Rogers and Craig Wright."
A Welcome From Diana E. E. Kleiner Founding Director and Principal Investigator We welcome you to explore Open Yale Courses where you can discover a wide range of timely and timeless topics taught by Yale professors, each with a unique perspective and an individual interpretation of a particular field of study. We hope the lectures and other course materials, which reflect the values of a Yale liberal arts education, inspire your own critical thinking and creative imagination. We greatly appreciate your enthusiastic response to this initiative and hope you will stay in touch!
School of Management Online Executive Education
Published: Winter 2022
Description
Every leader has to compete in a complex and fast-moving international marketplace. Yale’s unique approach to business education leverages our global reach and integrated thinking, as well as the intellectual wealth of a great university, to give you an elevated line of sight over that landscape.
Yale School of Management Executive Education’s work doesn’t stop at the edge of campus. Covering a wide range of topics, our collection of online executive programs thoughtfully weave cutting-edge faculty research with the latest online learning tools to create accessible and meaningful program experiences.
Current offerings include both live and asynchronous (self-paced) programs. For more information on program topics and schedules please visit the Executive Education Digital Programs page here .
Live Self-Paced Learning
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Financial Markets
Introduction to Negotiation: A Strategic Playbook for Becoming a Principled and Persuasive Negotiator
Capitalism: Success, Crisis, and Reform
Financial Markets (2011)
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Central to the mission of Yale College is ensuring a broad education rooted in the liberal arts and sciences. That education should provide both breadth and depth across a wide array of disciplines, and it should be responsive to the shifting landscape of those disciplines and their interrelationships. To encourage students to engage within and across departmental and disciplinary boundaries, Yale College offers both disciplines-based and skills-based certificates. A certificate is not a smaller version of a major; instead, it offers opportunities for students to deepen a skill or to bring disparate elements into focus. There are three types of certificates offered in Yale College: Advanced Language Certificates, Skills-Based Certificates, and Interdisciplinary Certificates. See Certificates in Yale College . Only students enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program are eligible to earn a certificate.
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Students should submit a Declaration of Candidacy for a Certificate form , found on the University Registrar’s Office website. The form should be submitted early, but at the latest, before the start of the student’s last semester at Yale. Once submitted, the form goes to both the Certificate Director and the Registrar's Office. Submission of the form, and approval from the Certificate Director, is necessary to ensure that the earned Certificate appears on student transcripts.
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Education Studies
Scholars intensive certificate.
The Fall 2023 application cycle has closed. Applications for the Scholars Intensive Certificate will reopen in Fall 2024.
Yale students can apply to join the Education Studies Scholars Intensive Certificate in the fall of their sophomore and junior year. The Scholars Intensive is capped at a seminar size to facilitate advising and community learning, and it is ideal for students with extensive curricular, practice, and research interests in education who want to commit a substantial amount of their time at Yale towards this focus, culminating in a senior capstone.
Each cohort of Education Studies Scholars consists of 20-25 students from majors across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences with a range of educational interests.
Community engagement, through the summer or year-long field experience , coordinated with an Education Studies mentor, Dwight Hall, or the Office of Career Strategy, offers students greater purpose, perspective, and humility in their academic studies. This field experience can take place before or after acceptance to the Scholars Intensive Certificate.
Though the Scholars Intensive Certificate does not provide teacher certification, completion of the program is recognized on Yale transcripts. After graduation, 90% of Education Studies Scholars go into education immediately after graduation. They become preK-12 teachers in a variety of school settings; they also enter PhD programs or law school, work in think tanks, education or political consulting, educational technology, journalism, non-profits, and government, among other fields.
Following Yale guidelines about combining programs , Yale students may participate in a total of 3 academic programs including majors and certificates.
Scholars Structure: 6 course credits, including
- EDST 110 Foundations in Education Studies
- EDST 261 seminar for new scholars
- one EDST elective each in Social Contexts & Policy & Individuals and Society (see a list of courses by category)
- the two-semester senior capstone
Up to two courses may be counted for both Education Studies and the students’ major. O ne of the two elective courses may be taken Credit/D/Fail. EDST 110, 261, and the senior capstone seminars must all be taken for a letter grade.
In Yale Education Studies courses, students learn the historical, political, economic and social contexts of US education, practice a variety of research methods, and are knowledgeable about contemporary policy debates. Each Scholar develops a course plan within the Education Studies curriculum, taking a minimum of six courses in Education Studies including Foundations in Education Studies (EDST 110) in their freshman or sophomore year and culminating in a yearlong senior capstone project where students conduct original research, design curriculum, evaluate policy, create a creative project or design an educational innovation.
Education Studies coursework includes discussion and data analysis on current education policies. Yale summer funding enables Education Studies Scholars to participate in unpaid internships, and scholars complete one or more field experiences to gain experience through a summer or academic-year educational opportunity. Education Studies Scholars have interned at the Brookings Institution, Teach for America’s Accelerate Social Impact fellowship, the Campaign for Educational Equity, the New York State Department of Education, Washington DC Public Schools and the West Virginia Department of Education.
Field experiences in the classroom, as observers and teachers, give students an awareness of the challenging work of teaching or creating educational interventions. Practice field experiences include working as teaching assistants and teachers, curriculum designers, tech workers and more. Students direct the New Haven U.S. Grant summer program, work in school-based legal clinics, in New Haven Public Schools as Dwight Hall Public School Interns, serve as teaching fellows around the country for Breakthrough Collaborative, intern at Khan Academy and write high school Computer Science curricula for Harvard’s free online Introductory Computer Science course. They intern at the Musée de l’Illustration Jeunesse, a museum of children’s book illustration in Moulins, France and develop curriculum at the Hmong Preparatory Charter School in St. Paul, Minnesota and the Yale Prison Education Initiative.
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What’s Happening in Ed Studies
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Summer Opportunities
- New! Due April 1: Yale Education Studies Summer Field Experience Award
- New! Due April 5: Michael Manzella Fellowship for Summer 2024
- New! Rolling: Counselors Needed, Oxford Royale Academy (Hosted at Yale)
- Due March 1: Anderson Ranch Internship & Award Program
- Due April 5: Funding Available for Undergraduate Education Research (via SREE)
- Rolling: Community Organizing for Ed. Justice with New Haven Federation of Teachers
- Rolling: Citizens Thinkers Writers Program
- Rolling: AP Psychology Curriculum Development Intern Needed
- Rolling: Yale Pathways Summer Scholars Work Opportunities
- Due March 15: MeshEd Curriculum Design Collective
- Rolling: Intern for The National Coalition on School Diversity
- Rolling: School Integration Communications Internship
POSITION DESCRIPTIONS:
Yale Education Studies Summer Field Experience Award
The Yale Education Studies program offers summer fellowship support to undergraduate Yale Education Studies Scholars and Certificate students in gaining field experience in education practice, policy and/or research. We will award grants of up to $5,000 maximum. Students may apply for less than that amount in combination with other funding sources, but may not apply for additional TOTAL funds beyond $5,000. Awardees must demonstrate that they have no other sources of funding available to support their internship (for eg. they have applied to all other university funding sources, and they have already used an SEA for internship or research purposes).
The Fellowship is intended to support full-time work/study that is your primary commitment of the summer, for a period lasting at least eight weeks. This fellowship is designed: 1) provide compensation and cover living expenses for what would otherwise be an unpaid or underpaid education internship; or 2) fund a student research project in education. The fellowship can fund travel to the internship location, housing for the duration of the internship, food, and daily transportation expenses. At the end of the summer, Fellows will submit a brief report describing their learning through the field experience.
Deadline for the Field Experience Fellowship is April 1, although funds are limited and applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Apply here .
Michael Manzella Fellowship for Summer 2024
Michael Manzella (Yale ’93) touched all the people he knew with his energy, talent, and willingness to give of himself. In 1993, this remarkable young man succumbed to a two-year struggle with cancer. In 1994, the Michael Manzella Foundation was founded to honor Michael’s legacy through its support of cancer research, music and the performing arts, education and youth development. The Summer Fellowship program is the cornerstone of our philanthropic strategy to invest in talented undergraduates whose summer projects align with the Foundation’s core areas of focus.
Yale undergraduates who are currently in their First year, Sophomore or Junior year are eligible to apply. The project can be a pre-existing opportunity (internship, formal research position) or an innovative idea designed by the undergraduate him/herself. Grant awards range from $3000 to $5000, to be used toward expenses (e.g., project supplies and/or lab fees, room/board, project-related travel expenses) according to the application budget. Click here to learn more.
Counselors Needed, Oxford Royale Academy (Hosted at Yale)
Oxford Royale is a leading global provider of elite summer schools. Driven by a firm belief that education is about much more than a formal classroom, we offer young people unparalleled cultural and learning experiences, giving them a window to a world of opportunity.
Counselors are the first point of contact for our students outside of lessons, not only responsible for their everyday safety and well-being (on campus and on trips) but also for their broader academic achievement and enjoyment. The US pastoral team provides students with enduring memories and the experience of a lifetime, fulfilling two key roles: 1) supporting an integrated academic program led by a team of experienced teachers and 2) delivering extra-curricular activities
Position Details
- This role will be based at one of our summer sites in Yale for the month of July
- Working hours will be 50 hours per week across 6 days. This includes morning, afternoon, and night shifts as assigned by Campus Management
- The weekly salary range is $700 to $1,000 depending on experience and assigned duties, and is subject to satisfactory background security checks
- Our courses are for international students aged 16-18, and run in 2-week sessions in July
- Mandatory training and campus set up will take place during the week before student arrivals
Learn more about the position here .
Anderson Ranch Internship & Award Program
Anderson Ranch Arts Center is a year-round visual-arts not-for-profit, tax-exempt organization with a 55-year history of providing transformative experiences that celebrate artists, art-making and creative dialog, at the intersection of craft and the global contemporary art world. The Anderson Ranch Internship & Award Program is an intensive learning experience, with rigorous full day workshop and studio observing, teaching, supporting, and studio management in a world class art-making environment. Intern expenses for room, board, and travel are arranged and paid for by Anderson Ranch during their internship period in Aspen/Snowmass, CO. This year, interns are needed for the following areas:
- The Children’s Program
- Digital Fabrication
- Painting, Drawing & Printmaking
- Photography & New Media
- Sculpture / Woodworking & Furniture Design
For more information, click here . Applications will be accepted through March 1st, 2024.
Funding Available for Undergraduate Education Research (via SREE)
The Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE) is pleased to announce a new round of funding for our undergraduate internship program. In the summer of 2024, up to 12 current undergraduate students will receive a scholarship to support their summer 2024 internships in education research. Eligibility is open to students who identify as Black, Latinx, and/or from a racial or ethnic group traditionally underrepresented in the scientific workforce. Applications are open now.
Selected students will receive up to $5,000 scholarships (paid directly to the students) to support unpaid or stipended internships, and/or living expenses. Students are responsible for securing their own internships. We encourage students to check with our institutional partners for open internships. To be considered in the first round of funding, applications must be received by April 5, 2024. If funds continue to be available, the second deadline will be May 1, 2024.
Community Organizing for Ed. Justice with New Haven Federation of Teachers
About the New Haven Federation of Teachers
NHFT is a union of 1800 teachers, school counselors, library media specialists, school psychologists, and other school personnel who work in New Haven Public Schools. While Connecticut is one of the wealthiest states in the nation, Connecticut is also one of the worst states in terms of school funding inequity. NHFT organizes campaigns to win the public schools that all New Haven students deserve, by bringing together public school workers, families, and students.
About the internship
Interns will develop community organizing skills under the mentorship of experienced union and community organizers. Current campaigns focus on Libraries for All; Healing Schools that support the mental health and wellbeing of the school community; and school funding equity.
Interns will engage in the following activities:
- Develop a storytelling campaign to disseminate the stories of public school families, teachers, and students.
- Design social media posts and web content to share these stories and bring more people into the movement.
- Conduct outreach to parents and families at school. Listen to their concerns and visions for education justice.
- Collect stories of teachers and educators using phone calls and one-on-one meetings.
- Create fact sheets, policy briefs, infographics, and other community organizing and advocacy tools.
This internship is a good opportunity for students who want to work in education, policy, grassroots organizing, or journalism / communications, who share a vision for a progressive Connecticut rooted in racial equity and justice. Because many of our public school families speak Spanish, Pashto, or Arabic, it is helpful – although not required – to speak one of these languages.
NHFT is not in a position to provide paid internships, so we encourage you to seek summer stipends through your university. This is a 6 week internship from late May through early July, although there is some flexibility with the dates.
Interested students should send a resume along with a few lines about why they are interested to [email protected]
Citizens Thinkers Writers Program
Yale’s Citizens Thinkers Writers program is seeking Yale sophomores and juniors to join us in a program discussing transformative texts of political thought with New Haven high-schoolers and mentoring them.
CTW is a two-week residential summer program and year-long fellowship program at Yale University for students from New Haven public schools who want to think deeply about fundamental questions of civic life in a college setting. Residential Teaching Assistants (RTAs) provide mentorship, lead small breakout groups, organize supplementary workshops, work with students on analytic reading and writing skills essential for success at college, and facilitate a positive learning environment and community.
For more information and to apply, please click here .
AP Psychology Curriculum Development Intern Needed
This position provides an excellent opportunity for aspiring educators to gain hands-on experience with educational materials. As a Curriculum Development Intern, you will contribute to the design and improvement of educational resources to align to the new AP Psychology Course Framework (updated in 2020).
The student will work closely with Grace Kim (EDST alum, YC ‘22) to update existing curricular materials, develop culturally sustaining assignments, and create & implement lesson plans. The position is open to all Yalies of all years (even first-years!), is flexible enough to complement another summer program/internship happening simultaneously, and is eligible for Yale Summer Experience Award funding. Read more here .
Yale Pathways Summer Scholars Work Opportunities
Every year, the Yale Pathways Summer Scholars Programs welcomes over 150 local public high school students to campus free of cost to take part in STEM and Arts & Humanities classes with Yale faculty and students. Students will have the unique opportunity to learn about coding, neuroscience, engineering, art-making, art history, college essay writing, and more. From start to finish, the Scholars Programs run for one month, July 1st to August 2nd. We’re seeking Yale undergraduate and graduate students to serve as Teaching Assistants or Residential Advisors!
Teaching Assistants (TAs): TAs help with logistical needs of the program, plan activities, serve as mentors and chaperones to students, and aid instructors in the classroom. Prospective TAs must be able to commit to a one month-long commitment, July 1st to August 2nd. This is a full-time position with an hourly wage; we’ll be working from 8:30am to 4:30pm five days a week. We’re looking for folks with maturity, enthusiasm, organizational skills, a sense of humor and a genuine interest in young people and outreach. If you have worked or volunteered in education, tutored young people, or anything else that’s related, we want to hear it in your application. Previous work with youth is preferred but not required, and content knowledge in STEM or Arts & Humanities is not required.
Residential Advisors (RAs): During the STEM program, about 40 rising high school seniors are granted the special opportunity of living in one of the Residential Colleges, returning home on the weekend between each one week-long session. RAs live with students in the Residential Colleges and their primary responsibility will be to supervise and mentor residential students. They will also be asked to help with logistical needs, plan activities, and participate in college readiness programming. Each RA will be responsible for about 10 students. Prospective RAs must be able to make a three week-long commitment, July 1st to 19th. This is a full-time paid position; with shifts starting at 3 PM. Room and board are provided for the duration of the program in addition to a $1600 stipend.
Join us this summer in inspiring the next generation! For more information and to apply, search “Pathways” at www.yalestudentjobs.org .
MeshEd Curriculum Design Collective
Mesh Ed – an enrichment education public benefit corporation (PBC) working in partnership with schools, cultural institutions, and nonprofits – is committed to designing and offering the highest-quality enrichment courses. MeshEd courses prepare students for the next stage in their educational journey and for the future of innovative work.
MeshEd Collective’s 6-8 week summer internship program consists of two parts: (1) training in curriculum writing and our teaching practices, and (2) apprentice-teaching our action lab courses to students in grades 5-11.
Click here to read the internship job description in Yale Career Link. The webinar will be hosted by MeshEd CEO Betsey Schmidt, Internship Director Lili Davis, and Sales Associate Libby Kern (YC’23).
Internship applications are open now through March 15th. Hiring decisions are made on a rolling basis, but final decisions will be made by April 5th. To apply, please email resume and cover letter to internship director Lili Davis at [email protected]
Intern for The National Coalition on School Diversity
Founded in 2009, The National Coalition for School Diversity (NCSD) is a cross-sector network of 50+ national civil rights organizations, university-based research centers, and state and local coalitions working to expand support for school integration across the United States. NCSD functions as the main national hub of the school integration movement.
NCSD is housed at the Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC), a civil rights law and policy organization based in Washington, D.C. PRRAC’s mission is to promote research-based advocacy strategies to address structural inequality and change the systems that disadvantage low income people of color. PRRAC is unique in its focus on policies that address structural segregation directly.
About the internship: NCSD is seeking summer interns to contribute to NCSD’s efforts, with a heavy emphasis on communications. As part of this work, education policy interns will assist in legal and policy analysis of federal, state, and/or local education programs relevant to NCSD policy goals (described here and here ); provide research and writing support in order to bring several publications to completion; help create materials designed to effectively communicate our work to key NCSD audiences; contribute to event planning connected to NCSD’s national conference and programming related to the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education .
NCSD is not in a position to provide paid internships at this time; summer stipends would need to be obtained through your university. This is a 10 week internship, with some flexibility on the start date (between May and September). NCSD interns are expected to attend a two day orientation, along with PRRAC interns, which is usually held right after Memorial Day. **This is a remote opportunity, with an option to visit NCSD’s offices in Washington, D.C.
We’ll be interviewing and hiring on a rolling basis. (Last year, all offers were made by early April.) Interested students should send a resume or LinkedIn profile along with a few lines about why they are interested in NCSD to Gina Chirichigno ( [email protected] ).
School Integration Communications Internship
About Integrated Schools : Integrated Schools was founded in 2015 by Courtney Everts Mykytyn, as a group of mostly White parents. Informed by researchers and thought leaders of color, we encourage “White and/or privileged” families to enroll our children in schools where they are not in the majority, with the understanding that when we arrive, our impact matters more than our intent.
About the internship : Integrated Schools is seeking summer interns to assist in several areas, as interests align.
- The Integrated Schools Podcast – with over 500,000 all-time downloads and over 120 episodes produced, the podcast is one of our primary vehicles for reaching our audience.
- Organizational Communications – Our current communications focuses on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. In addition to our public pages, we also have a private Facebook community. We are looking for assistance in several areas.
Integrated Schools is not in a position to provide paid internships at this time; summer stipends would need to be obtained through your university. This is a 10 week internship, with some flexibility on the start date (between May and September).
We’ll be interviewing and hiring on a rolling basis. Interested students should send a resume or LinkedIn profile along with a few lines about why they are interested to [email protected] .
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Yale announces new test-flexible admissions policy.
(Illustration by Eri Griffin)
This week Yale’s office of undergraduate admissions announced a new policy on standardized testing for first-year and transfer applicants. After four years with a test-optional policy that allowed applicants to decide whether or not to submit test scores, Yale will resume requiring scores of all applicants. But it will expand the list of tests that fulfill the requirement to include AP and IB exams in addition to the SAT and ACT.
Here, Jeremiah Quinlan, dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid, discusses Yale’s new test-flexible policy and the data and analyses that helped persuade the admissions office to reinstate a test requirement for all applicants. He also reflects on the office’s responses to the pandemic and the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision on the use of race in admissions.
You’ve worked in admissions at Yale for nearly 20 years. What role do standardized tests play in the undergraduate admissions process?
Jeremiah Quinlan: Test scores convey a relatively small amount of information compared with the rich collection of insights and evidence we find in a complete application. I believe standardized tests are imperfect and incomplete alone, but I also believe scores can help establish a student’s academic preparedness for college-level work.
When used together with other elements in an application, especially a high school transcript, test scores help establish the academic foundation for any case we consider. Of course, our admissions decisions reflect much more than just a student’s academic preparedness, and, indeed, a majority of our more than 50,000 applicants for undergraduate admission each year present credentials that demonstrate they are well prepared to succeed at a demanding college like Yale.
Because the admissions committee needs to first establish an applicant’s academic foundation before it can consider their many other strengths and potential contributions to Yale, we’ve found that standardized tests are especially valuable for students attending high schools with fewer academic resources and fewer college-preparatory courses.
What are some common misconceptions about standardized tests and their role in Yale’s selection process?
Quinlan: The greatest misconceptions are that scores are fed into a weighting rubric or algorithm, and that scores below a certain threshold “hurt” an applicant. The reality is that a real person is always reviewing an applicant’s scores and considering them in combination with other academic indicators as well as a student’s secondary school context.
We also admit students with a wider range of scores than people might expect. The job of the admissions committee is much more complex and, thankfully, interesting than simply lining up students by their scores! Our process is, of course, very selective, but it is also holistic and contextual. Each applicant is considered as an individual, and officers conduct a whole-person review of each file.
What would you say is your goal for the new test-flexible policy?
Quinlan: Our first goal is to better align our policy to our communication to prospective applicants and to our practice. We found that by inviting students to apply without any scores, some applicants unwittingly hurt their chances of admission by withholding scores that would have been useful to the admissions committee, even though they were below the median range of our enrolling students.
I want to be honest and transparent with our applicants: test scores are not the core of our review process, but they are useful, and they can help applicants, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Along those lines, our second goal is to give our admissions committees reliable evidence to respond to strong students from all backgrounds. Over the past four years, we learned that our admissions committees can function without test scores. But when operating a process that requires you to make predictions about the future with incomplete information, more evidence is better than less.
And finally, we want to empower students to put their best foot forward in the application. If the pandemic has taught us anything it’s the value of flexibility! I like that the inclusion of the new test types pulls some of the focus away from the ACT and SAT, and we now have the research to support that subject-based exams such as AP and IB also predict Yale grades, even when controlling for other factors .
Let’s talk about that research. What insights did you glean from analyzing your admissions data during the test-optional admissions cycles?
Quinlan: Yale’s Office of Institutional Research has been an incredible partner over the past four years. After each admissions cycle they’ve analyzed our applicant pool, the group of admitted students, and the first-year class. They’ve also looked at the academic performance of students admitted with and without test scores.
First, we found that test scores have continued to predict academic performance in Yale College. Simply put, students with higher scores have been more likely to have higher Yale GPAs, and test scores are the single greatest predictor of a student’s performance in Yale courses in every model we have constructed.
We also found that students who have been admitted to Yale without test scores have done relatively well in their Yale courses. However, we have further found a statistically significant difference in average GPA between those who applied with and without test scores.
Yale has now enrolled more than 1,000 undergraduates who did not include scores with their applications. In each of those cases, the admissions committee felt confident that it had evidence of a student’s academic preparation from other components of the application. Our analyses have found that applicants without test scores have been less likely to be admitted; concerningly, this was especially true for applicants from lower-income backgrounds and those attending high schools with fewer college-preparatory courses.
Finally, Yale’s applicant pool has grown tremendously since 2020. More than 57,000 students applied for first-year admission this year, up from 35,000 before we adopted a test-flexible policy — an increase of 66% in just four years. The pool has become larger, but we have not seen that it grew to include many more applicants with strong academic preparation..
Many critics of standardized tests argue that they are a barrier for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. What is your response to those who view Yale’s new policy as step in the wrong direction?
Quinlan: The entire admissions office staff is keenly aware of the research on the correlations between standardized test scores and household income as well as the persistent gaps by race. Our experience, however, is that including test scores as one component of a thoughtful whole-person review process can help increase the diversity of the student body rather than decrease it.
We believe that a student body that is diverse along all dimensions provides a better learning experience for everyone. I am proud of the initiatives we have launched in response to the 2023 Supreme Court ruling on race in admissions, and the progress we have made in just a few months. If I thought this policy was likely to set any of those efforts back, we would not adopt it.
In addition to the research suggesting that requiring scores can help students from disadvantaged backgrounds, I am buoyed by the experience of significantly increasing the diversity in Yale College in my years as dean before the pandemic necessitated a test-optional policy. Between 2013 and 2019, the number of first-year students eligible for a Pell Grant increased by 95%, first-generation college students increased 65%, and under-represented minority students increased 52%.
Yes, students with greater resources earn higher scores on average, but they also benefit from advantages in every other element of the application. Our whole person review process allows us to consider every piece of the application, including testing, in the context of a student’s high school, neighborhood, and household.
Our research and experience with tens of thousands of applications over the past four years have demonstrated that when an application lacks testing, admissions officers place greater emphasis on other elements of the file. For students attending well-resourced high schools, substitutes for standardized tests are relatively easy to find: transcripts brim with advanced courses, teachers are accustomed to praising students’ unique classroom contributions, and activities lists are full of enrichment opportunities. A policy that results in increased emphasis on these elements, we found, has the effect of advantaging the advantaged.
For students attending high schools with fewer resources, applications without scores can inadvertently leave admissions officers with scant evidence of their readiness for Yale. When students attending these high schools include a score with their application — even a score below Yale’s median range — they give the committee greater confidence that they are likely to achieve academic success in college. Our research strongly suggests that requiring scores of all applicants serves to benefit and not disadvantage students from under-resourced backgrounds.
This flexible testing policy is new for Yale. Given your experience and this research, why not simply return to requiring the ACT or SAT?
Quinlan: During our four years of considering roughly half of our applicants without ACT or SAT scores, we found that subject-based exams such as AP and IB can add valuable evidence to our committee discussions, just as ACT and SAT do. We also have new data from the Office of Institutional Research on the predictive power of these exams.
The second reason is simply that the world has changed, and the ACT and SAT are now less central to many students’ college application processes. Most selective colleges remain test optional, and some — including the entire University of California system — are now “test-blind.” We do not want to disadvantage or disqualify applicants who have not had the ACT or SAT as part of their planning for college.
Finally, we are in a dynamic moment for standardized testing. There are efforts to design and roll out new tests, and there is more energy for developing alternatives to the SAT or ACT than ever before. Although our research on the predictive power of the four tests we will accept next cycle is compelling, I like that our policy is flexible by design and can easily accommodate future additions to the list of required scores.
What is your advice to students who attend schools that do not offer AP or IB courses? Does this new policy disadvantage those students?
Quinlan: Yale’s policy does not mean that students without AP or IB courses or scores are disadvantaged. I hope students and educators will base their curricular decisions around their community’s interests and needs, and not interpret this policy as elevating AP or IB courses over other rigorous college preparatory programs, such as dual enrollment and Cambridge A Levels, to name just two. One of the most fascinating and rewarding parts of admissions work is seeing remarkably promising and well-prepared applicants who have completed an amazingly wide range of secondary school programs.
Students who have not completed any AP or IB exams before their senior year of high school should ensure that they complete the ACT or SAT. Fortunately, many schools, districts, and states now allow students to complete either of these exams for free during the school day.
Scores that are lower compared with Yale’s overall first-year class can still be helpful to the admissions committee. As tempting as it is to reduce the complexities of our process down to a number, students should know that scores are always considered in context and always in combination with other elements of the file.
What is your advice to prospective applicants as they think about their scores?
Quinlan: The holistic admissions process is, by its nature, opaque. In my experience, this tends to drive students, counselors, and families to place disproportionate emphasis on standardized tests, which offer the allure of consistency and transparency. But, fortunately, the accomplished, complex, and dynamic young people who apply to Yale are much more interesting than their test scores.
My advice to students is to not let your scores define you: whether your scores are perfect or are below Yale’s typical range, it is other factors that make an application stand out in our pool. These include qualities like curiosity, leadership, creativity, care for others, and resourcefulness. Test scores don’t shine a light on any of those qualities. Our office is fond of the maxim “not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” I think it captures our values well.
How can prospective students and educators learn more about Yale’s new policy?
Quinlan: We’ve put a lot of new content on our website, admissions.yale.edu. The particulars of our new policy are laid out at admissions.yale.edu/standardized-testing and my statement announcing the policy is at admissions.yale.edu/test-flexible-announcement .
We also recorded three episodes of our popular podcast, Inside the Yale Admissions Office , about the new policy. We cover the big picture, the details, and how we got here. Episodes are available at admissions.yale.edu/podcast and on all podcast platforms.
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Yale to Require Standardized Test Scores for Admissions
Officials said test-optional policies might have harmed students from lower-income families.
By Stephanie Saul
Yale University will require standardized test scores for students applying for the class entering in the fall of 2025, becoming the second Ivy League university to abandon test-optional policies that had been widely embraced during the Covid pandemic.
Yale officials said in an announcement on Thursday that the shift to test-optional policies might have unwittingly harmed students from lower-income families whose test scores could have helped their chances.
While it will require standardized tests, Yale said its policy would be “test flexible,” permitting students to submit scores from subject-based Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests in lieu of SAT or ACT scores.
Yale’s decision, which will not affect students who applied during the current admissions cycle, followed a similar decision in February from Dartmouth College. Dartmouth, in Hanover, N.H., said an analysis had found that hundreds of students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who had solid scores — in the 1,400 range on the SAT — had declined to submit them, fearing that they fell too far below the perfect 1,600. In 2022, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that it had reinstated its testing requirement.
These institutions remain in the minority. Many decided to keep their test optional policies in place as the pandemic waned. Columbia announced last year it is test optional, and Harvard has said it is test optional through the class that will graduate in 2030.
The California university system has enacted a “test-blind” policy, meaning they will not look at scores, even if they are submitted.
The University of Michigan, one of the country’s most selective public universities, announced on Wednesday that it was moving to a test-optional policy, which it said was a move to “providing access to high-achieving students from all backgrounds.” Michigan had previously used a test-flexible policy.
More than 80 percent of four-year colleges — or at least 1,825 of the nation’s institutions that grant bachelor degrees — will not require SAT or ACT scores this fall, according to the organization FairTest, which has fought against standardized testing. In 2022, the number of students taking the SAT dropped to 1.7 million, a decline from 2.2 million in 2020.
The anti-testing movement has long said that standardized tests help fuel inequality, because many students from affluent families use tutors and coaches to bolster their scores.
But recent research has questioned whether test-optional policies may actually hurt the very students they were meant to help.
In January, Opportunity Insights, a group of economists based at Harvard, published a study that found that test scores could help identify lower-income students and students from underrepresented populations who would thrive in college. High scores from less privileged students can signal high potential.
Yale, in New Haven, Conn., said that test scores were particularly valuable in evaluating students who attend high schools with fewer academic resources or college preparatory courses.
Jeremiah Quinlan, the dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale, said in a statement that the university had determined that test scores, while imperfect, were predictive of academic success in college.
“Simply put,” he said, “students with higher scores have been more likely to have higher Yale G.P.A.s, and test scores are the single greatest predictor of a student’s performance in Yale courses in every model we have constructed.”
When students do not submit test scores, the admissions committee focuses on other elements of the student’s file, Mr. Quinlan said.
“For students attending well-resourced high schools, substitutes for standardized tests are relatively easy to find: Transcripts brim with advanced courses, teachers are accustomed to praising students’ unique classroom contributions, and activities lists are full of enrichment opportunities,” he said in the statement. “Increased emphasis on these elements, we found, has the effect of advantaging the advantaged.”
After the Supreme Court’s decision last year banning race-conscious admissions, many experts predicted that some schools would use test-optional policies to protect themselves from future litigation. In the cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, standardized test scores were used to show disparate admissions treatment for some ethnic and racial groups.
In an interview, Mr. Quinlan said Yale took that into account in its decision over whether to reinstate test requirements.
“I think we’re pretty confident that we can still run a pretty thoughtful and legal admissions process with this policy,” Mr. Quinlan said. “We couldn’t let that legal concern, or let potential litigation, impact this important decision.”
In making its announcement, Yale released the middle range of SAT and ACT scores of its 2020 first-year class. Since Yale instituted a test-optional policy, the university said that roughly half its applicants had not submitted SAT or ACT scores.
Applications to Yale and other highly selective schools have spiked as a result of test optional policies. Yale, which has an acceptance rate of about 4 percent, said recently that it had received over 57,000 applications for this fall’s admission, a record number and an increase of about 20,000 since 2019 , before the pandemic. The increase included a huge number of international students, Mr. Quinlan said.
“The quality and quantity were not increasing in lock step,” Mr. Quinlan said.
Bob Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest, downplayed the potential impact of Yale’s move. “Since an overwhelming percentage of future Yale applicants will have taken Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams, which have long been a factor in admissions at super-selective institutions, the impact will not be very significant,” he said.
He did, however, think the new policy could create a barrier to international students, some of whom have complained about limited access to standardized tests.
“I think it’s safe to say we will see some decrease moving forward,” Mr. Quinlan said. “We don’t want more applications. We want the right applications.”
Stephanie Saul reports on colleges and universities, with a recent focus on the dramatic changes in college admissions and the debate around diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education. More about Stephanie Saul
Watch CBS News
Yale joins other top colleges in again requiring SAT scores, saying it will help poor applicants
By Aimee Picchi
Edited By Anne Marie Lee
February 23, 2024 / 7:00 AM EST / CBS News
Yale University on Thursday said it is reversing a pandemic-era policy that made standardized test scores like the SAT exam optional for applicants, joining other top colleges such as Dartmouth and MIT.
In a statement posted to its website, Yale said it is abandoning the test-optional approach that it began four years ago, when the pandemic shut down testing centers and made it difficult for many high school juniors and seniors to sit for the exams. Many other colleges became test-optional for the same reason.
Yale accepted about 4.5% of applicants last year, making it one of the nation's most selective universities.
At the same time, standardized exams such as the SAT have come under fire from critics who point out that higher scores are correlated with wealth , meaning that richer children tend to score higher than poorer ones, partly as high-income families can pay for tutoring, test prep and other boosts. But Yale said it decided to reverse its test-optional policy after finding that it may actually hurt the chances of lower-income applicants to gain admissions.
"This finding will strike many as counterintuitive," Yale said in its post.
During its test-optional admissions, applicants could still submit scores if they wished, but weren't required to do so. Yale found that its officers put greater weight on other parts of the application besides scores, a shift that the university found "frequently worked to the disadvantage of applicants from lower socioeconomic backgrounds," it noted.
The reason is due to the fact that students from wealthy school districts or private schools could include other signals of achievement, such as AP classes or other advanced courses, Yale said.
In contrast, students from schools without deep resources "quickly exhaust the available course offerings, leaving only two or three rigorous classes in their senior year schedule," Yale noted. "With no test scores to supplement these components, applications from students attending these schools may leave admissions officers with scant evidence of their readiness for Yale."
Providing a standardized test score, even one that's lower than the median SAT range for Yale students, can give Yale admissions officers confidence that these applicants can succeed at the school, it added.
Yale said its new policy will require that students submit scores, although they can opt to report Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) exam scores instead of the ACT or SAT.
Does wealth gain access?
The decisions of Yale, Dartmouth and MIT to require SAT or ACT scores come amid a debate about the fairness of admissions at the nation's top universities.
Last year, the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in college admission decisions, effectively ending the use of race as a basis for consideration in whether to accept an applicant. At the same time, critics have pointed out that top universities often provide advantages to certain types of students who tend to be wealthy or connected, such as the children of alumni who have an edge over other applicants through legacy admissions.
The "Ivy plus" colleges — the eight Ivy League colleges along with MIT, Stanford, Duke and University of Chicago — accept children from families in the top 1% at more than double the rate of students in any other income group with similar SAT or ACT scores, an analysis found last year.
There's a reason why so many people are focused on the admissions policies of Yale and other top colleges: the Ivy-plus universities have collectively produced more than 4 in 10 U.S. presidents and 1 in 8 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
For its part, Yale said its research has found that test scores are the single best predictor of a student's grades at the university, even after controlling for income and other demographic data.
Still, the school added that it will continue to examine other parts of a student's application, noting, "Our applicants are not their scores, and our selection process is not an exercise in sorting students by their performance on standardized exams."
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Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports.
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Housing Course Joining Law, Architecture, and Business Wins Design Education Award
A Yale course on affordable housing that is about to yield eight new homes in New Haven is being held up as an example of design education.
The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture awarded Housing Connecticut: Designing Healthy and Sustainable Neighborhoods — which joined students and faculty from Yale Law School, Yale School of Architecture, and Yale School of Management — its AIA/ACSA Housing Design Education Award .
The award , presented with the American Institute of Architects, recognizes the importance of good education in housing design to produce architects ready for practice in a wide range of areas and able to be capable leaders and contributors to their communities.
The Yale course pairs cross-disciplinary teams of students with local nonprofit housing developers to produce proposals for affordable housing. Projects are eligible for funding from the state of Connecticut, which selects the nonprofits as clients. State officials also give students feedback on their proposals throughout the course.
“This award is an honor and a testament to the value of teaching architecture, law, and business students to collaborate with each other in service of a mission — in this case, livable, safe, accessible, affordable housing,” said Clinical Professor of Law Anika Singh Lemar, who teaches the course with Yale School of Architecture’s Andrei Harwell, Alan Plattus and Elise Barker Limon, and with Yale School of Management’s Kate Cooney.
This award is an honor and a testament to the value of teaching architecture, law, and business students to collaborate with each other in service of a mission — in this case, livable, safe, accessible, affordable housing.” —Clinical Professor of Law Anika Singh Lemar
Designed as a three-year pilot with funding from Yale Law School’s SNF Fund for the Integration of Theory and Practice, the course was first offered in the fall of 2022 . Students that year worked with three New Haven nonprofits, Neighborhood Housing Services, Beulah Land Development Corporation, and NeighborWorks New Horizons.
One of the proposals from that round received city approvals in the fall to start construction. The project will add four new two-family houses to New Haven’s Newhallville neighborhood — eight new homes, for renters and homeowners, less than two miles from Yale.
Singh Lemar noted that it’s “unheard of” to go from identifying a building site to receiving approvals in just one year.
“That the project moved so quickly from concept to approvals is a testament to the students’ focus on legal and financial feasibility alongside innovative design,” Singh Lemar said.
Before meeting their community partners, students had a boot camp-style introduction in affordable housing design and development. In five weeks, they got an overview of topics including local urban history, GIS mapping, data analysis, zoning, building codes, and community engagement. The course uses teaching methods from all three disciplines, exposing students to classroom practices outside their area of study. Students experienced clinical rounds from law, studio critiques from architecture, and case studies from business.
“Teaching this course has opened my eyes to the importance of interdisciplinary graduate education and the barriers, from teaching modalities to scheduling,” Singh Lemar said.
Natalie Smith ’23, a student from the course’s first round, agreed that working across disciplines was invaluable.
“As a third-year law student, this was the first course I’ve taken that involved working with a team of peers across schools, and will inform how I work with other professionals outside of the legal field in the future,” Smith wrote at the time.
The course has since been offered again with students working with local partners in two other Connecticut communities, Wallingford and Middletown.
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Yale will again require standardized test scores for admission
After many colleges went test optional in the pandemic, the debate is reigniting about the role of testing in admissions.
Yale University will again require students to submit standardized test scores when they apply for admission, school officials said Thursday . The change comes after officials found that the scores were the single best predictor of students’ academic performance and that not considering them could be a disadvantage for those who have already faced daunting challenges.
The decision — which includes greater flexibility for applicants by allowing more types of tests — is likely to be closely watched not only by students aspiring to highly selective colleges and agonizing over test scores and other metrics, but also by other universities evaluating their own policies in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The change will go into effect for first-year and transfer applicants for fall 2025 admission.
The switch comes after another Ivy League institution, Dartmouth College , announced earlier this month that it would require SAT and ACT scores again.
For generations, tests such as the SAT have been a mandatory rite of passage for ambitious students, spawning a whole industry of test-prep classes, books and tutors.
Before the pandemic, there had been growing concern that the standardized tests at best reflected inequities in society, and at worse amplified them, said David Hawkins, chief education and policy officer for the National Association for College Admission Counseling, and a movement toward test-optional policies. With the pandemic, many colleges dropped requirements that applicants submit standardized test scores “because the infrastructure for testing evaporated overnight,” he said.
With debate over the value of those tests — including criticism that they provided another barrier to disadvantaged students — many schools continued their test-optional policies even as the public health crisis eased.
The test-optional movement meant even students applying to ultracompetitive schools could skip the exams altogether, or hold back their scores if they thought they would hurt their chance at admission. (It was easy to see how their own scores tracked with current students, with a simple online search.)
At many schools, the number of applicants rose dramatically after the test requirements were dropped.
Now schools across the country are trying to figure out what to do next.
Those test-optional years provided a chance for schools to examine the impact of the change, and many have not announced final decisions about what their policies will be.
A few have: The University of California system in 2020 instituted a test-free policy — eliminating any consideration of tests for admissions. MIT reinstated test requirements in 2022. The University of Tennessee System now requires scores from first-year applicants.
And on Wednesday, the University of Michigan announced its undergraduate admissions would be test-optional for future terms.
The College Board, which administers the SAT, reported in September that more than 1.9 million high school students who graduated last spring had taken the exam, an increase from 1.7 million in 2022.
“The vast majority of the college-admissions world is going to remain test-optional,” said Harry Feder, the executive director of FairTest, which opposes the SAT and ACT — by their count, more than 80 percent of four-year colleges would not require those scores for admission in the fall of 2025. He said most schools are finding they’re getting more applicants and more diversity when they don’t require the scores.
Feder said he preferred Yale’s more flexible policy to Dartmouth’s, because requiring the SAT or ACT will shut out more socioeconomically disadvantaged students who simply won’t apply.
Every institution needs to make its own decision, Hawkins said. “I don’t think there’s a clear trend line yet,” he said. “I think we are still very much in a churn phase.”
“The pandemic was an unanticipated, precipitous change to our work,” said Jeremiah Quinlan, dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid at Yale. He said Yale had already begun studying the value of standardized testing in their process even before the pandemic. “And then obviously, some of our questions changed as we went through cycles of test-optional admissions. We’ve now been through four.”
In analyses of the applicant pool, the admitted class, the freshman class, and comparisons of students who were admitted with and without test scores, Yale found that the scores accurately predicted academic performance. Students with higher scores were more likely to have higher grades at Yale.
Test scores also predicted students’ grades at Yale better than anything else on their applications, school officials said.
That finding was consistent with a recent study of a dozen highly selective colleges from Opportunity Insights, in which researchers found that even among otherwise similar students with the same grades in high school, SAT and ACT scores “have substantial predictive power for academic success in college.”
“The first question you have when you open up an application file, is ‘Can this student do the work at Yale?’” Quinlan said. Tests, along with transcripts, are a huge part of answering that question, he said.
In recent years, Yale has enrolled more than 1,000 students who did not submit scores. But analyses found that applicants who withheld scores were less likely to be admitted. That was especially true for those from lower-income families and high schools with fewer college-preparatory courses.
“The entire admissions office staff is keenly aware of the research on the correlations between standardized test scores and household income as well as the persistent gaps by race,” Quinlan said in a statement to the Yale community. “Our experience, however, is that including test scores as one component of a thoughtful whole-person review process can help increase the diversity of the student body rather than decrease it.”
The findings mirror those of Dartmouth. Sian Leah Beilock, Dartmouth’s president, said earlier this month that the school concluded the numbers could be particularly helpful in identifying students with fewer advantages who otherwise might be overlooked.
Dartmouth will require SAT scores from applicants again
Yale will also allow more types of tests than in the past, adding Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate scores as options along with the SAT and ACT.
The “test-flexible” policy was influenced by another reality: With some schools not considering scores, Quinlan said, “There are plenty of students in states, particularly in California, where taking the SAT or ACT is not going to be part of their college plans.”
Applications surged after big-name colleges halted SAT and ACT testing rules
Yale did gain more applicants since it made the scores optional, from 35,000 to 57,000 — 66 percent more in four years. Those pools included high numbers of applications from students whose parents didn’t go to college, from lower-income neighborhoods and from underrepresented minority groups.
But when applications without scores were reviewed, admissions officers put greater weight on other aspects of the application — in ways that inadvertently hurt such students.
While some students can supplement their applications with extras such as rigorous classes, personalized recommendations and impressive extracurricular activities, others at schools with lesser resources are left with fewer indicators of their performance and potential, Quinlan explained.
Before the pandemic, requiring testing hadn’t hurt Yale’s ability to increase diversity: From 2013 and 2019, according to the school, the number of underrepresented minority students increased 52 percent, the number of students who were first in their families to attend college increased 65 percent, and the number of freshmen eligible for a Pell Grant increased 95 percent.
The university created podcasts to help explain and clarify the decisions. Mark Dunn, senior associate director of admissions for outreach and recruitment at Yale, said officials understand the holistic admissions process is opaque and they want applicants to get information directly from the school rather than paying a self-proclaimed ‘expert’ or searching corners of the internet.
“The amount of energy people spend fretting about test scores, asking us really specific questions about elements of testing policies and even just trying to improve their scores is, we think, disproportionate to their actual role in our process,” Dunn said.
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