June 4, 2020

To the members of the Class of 2024,

Welcome! With classes starting on August 31, I am delighted that you will soon be joining the Yale community. My colleagues in the Yale College Dean's Office have long been planning for your matriculation, and we are all very excited to meet you. 

Ordinarily, much of the information you are awaiting in order to make your plans is available by now, and I would be writing to share it with you. In this extraordinary year, though, it will be another few weeks before the university has enough public health information to finalize its plans and meet the demands of our new circumstances. In the meantime, faculty are re-imagining courses in exciting ways, and administrators are considering how to keep the community safe and Yale's special culture strong. Yale undergraduates have been vital partners in this effort, and you will be, too, as members of a historic class -- a real distinction given that the university is over 300 years old.

In early July, the university will be announcing its plans for the fall semester, and you will receive much more information then. Later in the summer, you will receive your residential college affiliation, the name of your first-year counselor, and any housing information. But starting next week and continuing throughout the rest of the summer, the office of first-year affairs will keep you informed through weekly messages. This is information that your parents and guardians will want to receive, so my office will send it to them as well, using the email addresses you have provided for them previously. If you would like to review those addresses or add to them, you can do that by updating your contact information here.

Travel arrangements are understandably on your minds, but I urge you to hold off on making them until the university has announced its plans in July. By then, much more will be known, including the orientation schedule. Registration for pre-orientation programs, which will be online this year, will open after the university's announcement in July. 

You will receive more information in next week's message, which will come from Dean Hannah Peck, and throughout the summer, the first-year counselors, who are especially excited to meet you, will be available to you. If you have questions any time during the summer, you can always write to first-year.affairs@yale.edu.

With best wishes from New Haven,

Marvin M. Chun
Dean of Yale College
Richard M. Colgate Professor of Psychology; Neuroscience; Cognitive Science