I attended Yale University for graduate school. I enrolled in a Ph.D. program in statistics, choosing Yale over Harvard. I left the program with a master's after one year, because I did not find the university to be a good environment for me to have a self-actualizing experience.
I chose Yale over Harvard (which has a much more prestigious statistics program) because at Harvard, professors voiced to me a sort of "territoriality" of academic disciplines that I found unnecessary and not particularly constructive. At Yale, in the statistics department, the professors seemed eager to collaborate, with older, established professors drawing in new professors to research in related areas. I thought this was a fantastic environment, the way I wanted to do academic research. The professors in the Statistics program were intelligent, friendly, and generous with their time.
I was disappointed, however, with the actual program I was in. The coursework in my program did not work well for me. Classes were large and mixed students of vastly different ability levels. Coursework was straightforward, and the time-frame for assignments was very short (mostly less than one week), making it hard for me to manage my time effectively--I'd have a day free with no assignments to work on, followed by crunch time with 3 assignments to work on a day later. The professors seemed to encourage me to "get through" the first few years, explaining to me that the coursework was not very important. However, my time is valuable. As someone who has worked in business for a number of years before returning to graduate school, and often bills a high hourly rate, I am not interested in spending a few years on something that is not self-actualizing. I think that, given the intelligence of the professors and the financial resources available in the university, Yale and my program could have done a lot better.
I was also disappointed with the environment of the school as a whole, especially, concerning the environment for arts and sciences students in the graduate programs.
Yale has amazing financial resources, but I was disappointed by how they were put to use. A lot of things that I would consider very basic were poorly executed. For example, I would think it reasonable, given the finances of Yale, that they would do basic things like keep windows and doors in building well-insulated, and keeping the heating systems in most buildings in good repair, but the building maintenance, except for some of the newer buildings and the undergraduate colleges, lagged behind the other schools, public and private, that I have spent time in.
There was also a lot of negativity and cynicism among the graduate student culture. I found heavy alcohol use to be the dominant pastime of graduate students. People had sleep schedules that I found to be unhealthy, and I found it hard to socialize with other grad students on a schedule that I would consider to be sane (i.e. going out for happy hour, or maybe as late as 9PM, rather than midnight, when many of the grad students went out). A lot of the graduate students would bash the professors, spewing negativity, rather than taking responsibility and looking for solutions. I found it unpleasant to be in this sort of environment.
My intuition is that Yale would be a much better place for undergraduates than graduate students. Unlike most universities, Yale does not have a student union. Many of the communal resources at Yale are housed in the undergraduate colleges, which are not accessible to graduate students (unless you befriend the undergraduates). However, the undergraduates have full access to the graduate facilities, including the building that houses the graduate school's main dorm and dining hall. The school effectively has a tiered system where graduate students are given fewer resources and opportunities than undergraduates. Another problem I had was that the school separates graduate student organizations from undegraduate organizations, and makes it hard to integrate the two.
I might have stayed at Yale, had I had a better experience with the coursework, or a social environment I found more conducive to the sort of lifestyle I had wanted. I am glad that I left my program after 1 year, with a master's. But I am a bit sad: I think I would have worked well with the professors in my department, on research. And I think Yale is losing a lot of opportunities. Not only will they fail to attract and retain the best graduate students, given their current atmosphere, but I think that most of the graduate students there are not going to be realizing their full potential. read more