Yalies give UCS failing grades for career prep

PATRICK MCGARVEY/YH UNDER DECONSTRUCTION: There's no scaffolding, but inside the Office of Undergraduate Carrer Services (UCS), the fellowships and study abroad departments prepare to split off.

Fellowships

Trowbridge is understandably satisfied with the UCS assistance she received from Fellowship Director Linda DeLaurentis. "Ms. DeLaurentis knows the fellowhips inside and out, and she gave very good advice all along the way," Trowbridge said.

However, many students feel UCS isn't doing everything it could to help them succeed in the cutthroat competition for fellowships. Trowbridge recalled one student who was enraged when she found out that no one had notified her that the Rhodes Scholarship application deadline was rapidly approaching--by the time the student found out, she had already missed a crucial information meeting. To Trow-bridge, this story illustrates how many Yalies mistakenly believe UCS will cater to their needs. "While it is true that no one called me up personally to ask whether I would be attending, all that the enraged student had to do was walk into the fellowship office sometime during the spring of her junior year to find out about the meeting," she said.

Nonetheless, many students believe Yale's fellowship advising system is not up to par with Harvard's, and, on paper, this judgment seems to hold. Yale holds meetings for all juniors interested in competing for some of the most prestigious fellowships, such as the Rhodes and Marshall Scholarships. However, the primary support network for the hundreds of Yalies seeking fellowships consist of just one person--DeLaurentis.

At Harvard, the system is very different. The fellowship division of the Office of Career Services for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (OCS) is not the main source of advising for fellowship applicants. "Harvard's OCS serves as a clearinghouse for information," said Steven Hill, who graduated from Harvard College in 1998 and is now a first-year student in the law school. OCS invites alumni to come and discuss their experiences with various fellowships, and two staff members are responsible for administering the competitions. More specific advising takes place in each of Harvard's residential houses. Each house has a fellowship advisor who keeps in close contact with students in order to provide individualized help.

"Harvard does very well in the fellowship competitions each year," Harvard OCS Director Bill Wright-Swadel said. He attributed this success to the school's strong, multi-level fellowship advising system. OCS takes on the general responsibility of "preparing students in the sense of understanding the demands of each fellowship and thinking about which ones would be most appropriate," he said.

Pre-law and pre-med advising

JULIA TIERNAN/YH LEFT HANGING: UCS Director Susan Hauser is retiring at the end of the current school year, and a replacement has yet to be found.

Disappointed with UCS's scant pre-law resources, Virginia Desilets, CC '99, decided to hunt down advice from other sources when she applied to law school this year. After meeting with the pre-law advisor at UCS once, Desilets decided she could probably get more information by going online and researching each law school on her own. "If the pre-law advisor had known a little more about each of the different schools, I probably would have met with her more often," she said.

Preston Hopson, SM '98, LAW '01, also didn't have much faith in UCS's pre-law advising system when he was applying to law schools last year. "I did not make use of the pre-law advisor or any of the other services," he said. On the other hand, Hopson did have a positive experience with UCS's law school panels. "I went to most of the UCS-sponsored panels that included admissions deans from many law schools. Those were extremely useful and informative, because the representatives talked not only about their own schools but also about the law school admissions process in general," he said.

For pre-med application advice, Ben White, SM '99, also found UCS panels to be a valuable source of information. UCS offers theme-based panels for juniors on topics ranging from health management organizations to the life of the average medical school student. White said Yale's pre-med advising system is helpful for students who pursue it. "The one negative for some people is that you need to take an active role in looking for the advice you need. Like most things here, no one is going to track you down to make sure you get your questions answered," he said.

At Harvard, however, informed pre-law and pre-med advising is only a few steps away from every student's dorm room. "Each house has pre-law and pre-med tutors," Hill said. "Many are Harvard law and medical students who were in that house as undergraduates." In addition to providing advice, the tutors are responsible for writing composite recommendations for both medical and law schools.

Cornell University has similar pre-med and pre-law advising systems. According to Jane Levy, interim director of Cornell Career Services, pre-law and pre-med advising each have a coordinator in the school's University Career Center. Most of the undergratuate colleges also have such advisors.

Pre-med Staci Mesher, SY '99, wishes Yale would make the same effort to provide students with one-on-one attention. "A lot of meetings are available, but that's not enough," she said. "There needs to be some sort of pre-med advising." One of Mesher's biggest qualms is that every medical school application requires a composite recommendation by a pre-med advisor. "The composite recommendations at Yale are written by a UCS advisor after a one-hour evaluative interview. It would help if the person who wrote it actually knew you," Mesher said.

However, Harvard's pre-med and pre-law advising systems, with advisors in each of the houses writing composite recommendations, may not be perfect either. For one, Hill said, "Some houses are really good, and some houses are really bad" in terms of the quality of advising offered. Hill explained that even in houses with strong advisors, advisors will often put more effort into helping those students with whom they have fostered personal relationships. "The problem with the system is that if you don't have a good relationship, you start to fall through the cracks," he said.

On-campus recruiting

Ben Creighton, PC '99, believes UCS's on-campus recruiting program leaves seniors a step behind in the race for jobs by allowing recruiters to give on-campus interviews only in the spring. "A few companies informed me that they had filled a lot of spots prior to coming to Yale" in their earlier visits to other schools, Creighton said. Harvard has succeeded in giving its students an edge by encouraging recruiters to start coming in the fall as opposed to waiting until the spring. "The vast majority, roughly three-quarters, of recruiters have been in the springtime, but we do have about one-quarter of our recruiting taking place in the fall," Wright-Swadel said.

Students who seek non-traditional careers may feel even more lost. The UCS homepage (www.yale.edu/career) reads, "What do you want to do with your life? Can't decide among journalism, law, arts, administration, business, or public interest? UCS Career Counselors are available to help." But music major Homer Hsu, PC '99, insists this isn't the case."UCS is very self-service. You have to take it upon yourself to get information and have all of the
initiative."

This scenario is not unique to Yale; some believe it just isn't possible to cover all the bases. "A centralized office with about 10 people working couldn't possibly do as thorough a job as people would like," Hill said of Harvard's OCS. Stanford sophomore Elizabeth Reeds agreed that university advising can only do so much. "The Career Development Center at Stanford is quite useful for setting up job fairs, and counseling, but in practice it is less useful than it seems," she said.

Plans for the future

UCS has plans to improve its services by creating a new, separate office for the fellowships and study abroad programs by next fall. This new division will split off from the rest of the professional advising UCS does and move to a new office of as-yet-unknown location. But the new office does not yet have a director--nor does the old one. Hauser will retire at the end of this academic year, and a replacement has yet to be found to carry on and revamp
the office.

Splitting the services UCS currently offers won't necessarily result in better or more available counseling, either. Wright-Swadel believes OCS's greatest strength is the "cohesion of the program"--its centralization and unity of mission. "The strength of our program lies in the diversity of our services," he said. "Students are working with the same coordinated staff. We are all working collaboratively to develop our programs and services." Whether the changes in UCS's structure will satisfy Yalies who wish they had the career guidance and individual support Harvard offers remains to be seen.

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