Surprise! Getting admitted is just half the battle

After all the efforts that a student exerts in order to get admitted by Yale, one would think that she deserves automatic admission into any major offered. However, even upon acceptance, students who want to major in art, humanities, ethics, politics, and economics (EP&E), and international studies (IS) are subjected to an application process. There are numerous advantages and disadvantages to the process. Turning away students may deprive them of studying an area in which they have developed a great interest. On the other hand, limiting the majors seems to allow more personal interaction between professors and students. Furthermore, getting denied from a major happens much less frequently than most students think.

KATHERINE ALDRICH/YH Arun Agrawal, DUS of EP&E, (above) and Steven Schwartzberg, DUS of IS, (below) must turn away some applicants to their majors each year.

As Richard Lytle, the director of undergraduate studies (DUS) of the art department, said, "Application to the major ensures that students are properly counseled by a faculty committee. Many prospective majors benefit from the advice and plan their courses more intelligently." He also claims most students are self-selecting. In the case of the humanities major, the application process was instituted not as a means of finding the most qualified students, but as a way to fulfill the dictates of the Mellon fund donated to found the major. Maria Georgopoulou, the DUS of the humanities major, explained that the Mellon fund stipulated that all humanities seminars must be capped at 18 students.

On the other hand, Georgopoulou added, "I believe that like every other major, the Humanities has its own specific demands which cannot be met by every student at Yale. From my experience, [the requirement that humanities majors must take]...a class in the literature of a certain language...taught in that language...is the one thing that keeps students from coming to the humanities major." The application process for the humanities major will be abolished next year because the numbers of students in seminars have not been large enough to warrant restrictions. In the past few years, nearly all of the art major applicants, who number about 25, and all of the humanities applicants, also of about the same number, have been accepted.

KATHERINE ALDRICH/YH

But the situation is very different in EP&E and IS. They are far more limiting in the number of applicants the majors accept. Out of the 65 to 75 students who apply to the EP&E program each year, 40 to 45 are admitted. Likewise, about 42 out of 80 applicants are accepted into IS. Arun Agrawal, DUS of EP&E, explained that the major cannot accommodate all interested students due to limited teaching resources. Thus, the admissions committees of both departments take into account several factors when considering interested applicants, including an essay, the applicant's course selection, and any background information that particularly suits the applicant for the program.

Students in these selective majors are ambivalent about the application process. Humanities major Joshua Karton, TD '01, explained, "It is, by its very nature, `unfair' to exclude anyone. However, part of what makes the humanities major desirable is its smallness. I know just about everyone in the major and that makes for a real community feeling." Lisa Rudikoff, JE '01, said of her major, "I think the selectivity of EP&E is intended to keep the major small and intimate, rather than to make distinctions among students who are already excellent by virtue of their admission to Yale." She believes that the major tries to create an atmosphere of "close-knit intellectual exchange among students and between students and faculty." But a Trumbull sophomore who wished to remain anonymous said, "I think that it would be better just to make the majors bigger and offer more classes."

Georgopoulou admitted that although she is not in favor of having applications to majors, she sees some advantages to the application process. Students who have to apply to majors, she explained, are forced to come to the DUS of their prospective department in their sophomore year, thus forcing them to examine different course options in advance and also programs such as Junior Year Abroad, which otherwise might not receive such careful attention so early in a student's career. "I would...not advocate abolishing application procedures across the board without seriously evaluating their merits," she said.

Although the value of having an application process for a major continues to be debated among Yale students and faculty, it is clear that acceptance into Yale does not guarantee a student's acceptance into her preferred major.

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