Students leave Ivy Tower in search of better fit

Samantha Chanse, SY '99, decided to leave after completing her freshman year because she felt alienated by Yale's "tradition of exclusion." Chanse, who is Asian-American, was disappointed with the Administration's weak commitment to diversity. "There really wasn't enough support for people of color on the campus," she said. "The main thing which stuck to me was the scant offering of ethnic studies courses and the ineffectiveness of the ethnic counselors program...There was nothing Yale could've done to make me stay except an immediate show of dedication to reforming these areas."

Chanse, now a junior at Brown, added, "It was definitely the right decision for me to transfer...Yale is definitely the right school for a lot of my friends who are still there. It just wasn't a good fit for me."

Timothy Dwight Dean John Loge can only recall a handful of TD students who decided to leave Yale. He commented that most of these cases concerned students with "an insurmountable complexity of difficulties outside of academic life." Loge also pointed to problems concerning academic support, counseling, and financial aid. "I can think of one student, an international student, who transferred to Harvard because the financial aid package was much better," Loge said.

Of the two percent of students who withdraw, many do so for reasons unrelated to Yale's academic or social offerings. Rich Harvell '01, who was seeking a calmer college environment, decided to transfer from Yale to Dartmouth when he was a freshman last year. "I'm quite a fan of Yale and was sad to leave. [My decision to leave] extends a lot further--peace of mind is much harder to find in a city, and was a crucial part of my life," he said. "Students at Dartmouth tend to be a little more laid back because they live in a more peaceful part of the world."

Many students who leave Yale early actually change their minds and return. "Most Yale students who leave are interested in coming back," Associate Dean and Director of the Special Student Program Jill Cutler said. "One of the reasons why the retention rate at graduation is so high is that most of those people who leave come back at some other moment. If you start and finish, you become part of the 98 percent [graduation rate], even if you took some time off."

Erin Ferenc, PC '00, returned after taking four years off. He left Yale because of "a general feeling that I was wasting my time because I didn't know what I was doing," he explained. "I felt this huge pressure to decide on my life's work in two years and just do it, and I never had someone say to me, `You're not going to know what you're doing for a while, and that's okay.'"

Ferenc said that coming from Colorado, he had difficulty adjusting to the East Coast and felt intimidated by fellow Yalies. "I feel like Yale is a pretty lonely place...It's all a huge mix of students who work very hard and are future-oriented, which is great, but it also tends to make it hard to find time to hang out together and do what you care about doing together," he said.

The isolation Ferenc experienced during his freshman year is characteristic of the experiences of many students who decide to withdraw. Sarah Fremerman, TD '99, left after her freshman year and spent eight years at a meditation center in Japan before returning to Yale. And while she's glad to be back, she does have a few regrets. "The reasons I left had to do with my own instability," Fremerman said. "When I was here, I felt isolated because I was so concerned with issues that people around me were not. I felt like it was such a great place to be, and I was missing out on it all."

Fremerman said she wishes she could have found people to discuss issues of spirituality with outside of class during her first stay at Yale. To this end, she is currently organizing a meditation group to explore these topics.

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