Yale College Summer Updates (May 19, 2023)

Yale College Summer Updates (May 19, 2023)

May 19, 2023

Dear Yale College Class of 2027,

Welcome from the Office of Undergraduate Education in Yale College. We look forward to your arrival!

We are confident that your time at Yale will provide an exciting and unique opportunity for exploration and growth. And while we recognize that your education will occur in settings beyond the classroom — in residential college suites, dining halls, athletic facilities, cultural centers, recital halls, and elsewhere — we hope that your Yale experience will be deeply shaped by the courses you take.

We will write in the coming months with tips on how to make the most of Yale’s academic offerings, and to prepare you for selecting courses for the fall semester in August. With more than 1,000 courses per semester offered through over 80 programs of study, course selection for your first semester might seem overwhelming, but we are here to help. Starting on June 15, for example, a robust team of peer advisors will be available by appointment to answer your questions about academics.

We also want to take this opportunity to introduce you to Yale’s approach to undergraduate education and encourage you spend time reflecting on your educational goals. You can begin by clicking on the links below to read about the principles and structures that shape the liberal arts education that Yale offers and which, in turn, will shape your own educational experiences here. This framework provides the rationale for our academic requirements, such as our distributional requirements, and the need for students to pursue both a general and a specialized education.

We hope you keep these principles in mind as you approach your course selections, even as we realize that you are eager to gain practical advice for assembling your fall-term course schedule. In subsequent messages, we will provide suggestions for how to begin and details about the resources available to you this summer and in the academic year.

Office of Undergraduate Education,


Pamela Schirmeister
Deputy Dean of Yale College and the Graduate School
Dean of Undergraduate Education 

Sandy Chang
Associate Dean for Science & Quantitative Reasoning Education
Professor of Laboratory Medicine

Kate Krier
Associate Dean for the Arts
Director of Production

George Levesque
Associate Dean of Yale College
Dean of Academic Programs
Lecturer in History

Risa Sodi
Assistant Dean of Yale College
Director of Advising and Special Programs

Please go to New Student Dates and Deadlines for a full list of deadlines.

Please go to New Student Forms & Tasks for first steps and important resources.

Residential college, housing, and First-Year Counselor assignments will be communicated later in the summer.