Following the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, some scholars started calling for the “decolonization” of Eastern European studies by centering the experiences and voices of non-Russian nations in the region.

Per the Yale Course Search website, Yale’s academic offerings about Ukraine increased over the last two years from zero in the 2020-21 academic year to eight this semester, as professors in Eastern European studies and other departments started offering classes about Ukrainian history and the ongoing war. Some professors, in addition, added Ukrainian authors to their existing curricula. 

Even then, Edyta Bojanowska, chair of the Slavic Languages and Literatures department, said that the new offerings are consistent with a longtime aim to critically study Russia’s colonialism — an effort that has grown nationally since the outbreak of the war.

“[The] field is really abuzz with decolonial rhetoric. It’s a field in transition,” Bojanowska wrote. “Scholars are responding to the shock of the war by trying to account more fully and more critically for the legacies of Russian and Soviet imperialism and by charting alternative visions of Russia and Eastern Europe, their histories and cultures, that counter those emanating from the Kremlin.”

East European studies during the war in Ukraine

In his teaching, history professor Timothy Snyder focuses on examining the origins of Russia and Ukraine in a manner contrary to what he calls Putin’s “understandable imperial national construction” of the emergence of the two countries. While Snyder has long taught about Eastern Europe, he began teaching “The Making of Modern Ukraine” in the fall of 2022 following the Russian invasion and offered it again this past fall. The class aims to unpack and challenge this “myth” of Russia.

According to Snyder, some historians of Russia have already seen the war as an opportunity to question what they were taught about Russia.

“The Making of Modern Ukraine” considers Ukraine as “an early example of European state formation and an early example of anti-colonial rebellion.” The lectures from the course were recorded and uploaded online to YouTube and as a podcast series, many of which have amassed millions of views. 

Snyder said that he thinks that historical survey courses are especially effective ways to educate students and members of the general public.

“I think the reason that it was popular was that it was a survey [that] gave people a basic structure of knowledge,” Snyder said. “I think we don’t have enough of that at Yale or universities in general, and we feel that lack when we hit a crisis like this.”

Andrei Kureichik is a Belarusian playwright and self-described civic activist who began teaching “Art and Resistance in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine” last fall and “Drama and Russian-Ukrainian Conflict” this semester.

Kureichik came to Yale as a Yale World Fellow in the fall of 2022. Half a year before the invasion of Ukraine, the Artists at Risk program helped him leave Belarus after the government pushed him out for his criticism of President Alexander Lukashenko.

He said that one of the most important aspects of his teaching is creating opportunities for students to have direct contact with people on the ground in Ukraine and Russia, often virtually bringing guest speakers into his class over Zoom.

“Understanding the human side of the war helps you to understand the historical side, political side, or any other side,” Kureichik said. “So this connection to real people on the ground is crucial for me.”

Nari Shelekpayev, another recent hire, focuses on the history of Kazakhstan in his two ongoing works, according to the Slavic department’s website. In the fall of 2022 and 2023, he taught the “Ten Eurasian Cities” seminar, in which he, besides Russian cities, included cities in countries like Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Shelekpayev was not available for an interview. 

Professor of intellectual history Marci Shore said that she long incorporated thinkers from Ukraine in her teaching. This semester, Shore also started teaching a first-year seminar titled “The War in Ukraine and the Problem of Evil.”

“I’ve been so mentally consumed by this war — these are my friends and colleagues being slaughtered,” Shore wrote. “And I believe that students benefit when I can share with them the material I’m intellectually immersed in at a given moment.”

Shore’s class considers questions of evil, historical determinism and individual choice, which she said the “extremity of the moment” brings to the forefront.

Longtime efforts to decolonize Russian history

Bojanowska and Molly Brunson, who serves as a chair of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies program, both highlighted the work of their colleagues in conversations with the News, who, they said, had been doing “decolonial” work for a long time.

“I see the primary task of REEES to support, promote, and encourage the work that [my colleagues] are already doing,” Brunson wrote. “I don’t think it’s always a question of doing more on colonialism in the REEES fields, but more a question of amplifying the excellent work already being done by REEES faculty and students.”

She added that the program hosted numerous speaker events, symposia, conferences, and workshops, most of which were focused on non-Russian experiences and voices in the region. 

Last year, REEES also cosponsored the launch of the Central Asia Initiative, which Brunson wrote “seeks to promote interdisciplinary research on the area and cultivate a new generation of scholars and policymakers.”

Still, Brunson said that REEES has a limited budget, and with more money, the program could start postdoctoral and visiting scholar programs, provide grants for research, or start international partnerships. 

“I would turn this question around and ask what the University can do to help its REEES community support and expand the diversifying efforts in the field,” Brunson responded when asked about REEES efforts on promoting “decolonial” scholarship about the region.

In her own teaching and research, Bojanowska, who works on Russian literature and intellectual history, has been focused on decentering Russian perspectives and studying colonized nations long before the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014 and the full-scale invasion of 2022. 

She added that, with the war, her research, which used to be “on the margins,” is now moving toward the center in terms of its efforts to decolonize Russian history.

In her first book, for example, she highlighted the engagement with Ukrainian nationalist concerns of Nikolay Gogol, a writer who is usually considered to be Russian.

As a department chair, however, she said she does not push her colleagues toward decolonial scholarship or teaching.

“It is not my place to encourage my colleagues to teach anything in any special way. They have the intellectual [and] academic freedom to make those decisions,” Bojanowska said. “The way we constitute ourselves, [and] the colleagues that we hire, speaks to our values and speaks to where … we want to go.”

In the hiring process, according to Bojanowska, the department prioritized interdisciplinarity and a comparative look into non-Russian cultures. Bojanowska also told the News that the Slavic department wants to hire more professors who specifically work on non-Russian Eastern European cultures.

East European and Eurasian languages at Yale

Brunson believes that the key to “genuine decolonizing work” is language study.

While Ukrainian has only been offered as an online course in the past through Columbia University, Yale hired lector Olha Tytarenko, who will spearhead the Ukrainian language program starting next semester. 

“Edyta Bojanowska in Slavic [department] did go to heroic lengths to find a way to get the Ukrainian language taught and that’s very important,” Snyder said. “It was not the result of some kind of general flowing of support from [the] University.”

Bojanowska told the News that her department has long worked on bringing in-person Ukrainian language instruction to the university. Now, the success of this program will depend on whether students demonstrate an interest and take Ukrainian language classes, she said. 

Bojanowska said that the Slavic department also hopes to change its beginning Russian language textbooks. The new textbooks will include interviews with Russian speakers from a variety of ethnic and social backgrounds, which she said “will solidify the idea that the Russian language is not the sole property of the Russian nation.”

“We have become very sensitive, both professors and graduate students, about making a distinction between Russian and Russophone … and making sure that the research and teaching that we do conveys … the Russophone world as diverse, multicultural, and also shaped by imperial legacies,” Bojanowska said.

Yale also moved its Russian summer study abroad program to Georgia starting in the summer of 2023.

During the transition, Bojanowska said that the faculty was careful not to turn the program, which continues to teach Russian, into a “colonial venture,” given the colonial history of Georgia. Thus, students are also required to learn some Georgian and take classes in Georgian culture. 

Brunson wrote that she would like to see the University invest in expanding other language offerings beyond Ukrainian, such as in-person Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian or Central Asian languages classes, all of which have strong faculty and student interest, per Brunson.

Focus on Ukraine across departments, schools

After the Russian full-scale invasion, some professors outside of Eastern European studies started to teach classes on Ukraine or include materials about the country in their curricula across schools and departments.

“What perhaps has changed [since the full-scale invasion] is that students interested in the language of propaganda, in security studies, in intelligence work, in the history of totalitarianism, in European affairs are now focused on Ukraine,” Shore wrote to the News.

In the Law School, professors Eugene Fidell and Margaret Donovan co-teach the course “The Russo-Ukrainian War” on what the war shows about the law of armed conflict and international legal issues. The course, which is law-focused but not limited to law students, is cross-listed with the School of Management and the Jackson School of Global Affairs.

Fidell told the News that he feels a personal connection to Ukraine because three-quarters of his family originally come from the region. He said that he and Donovan also relate to the course because they are both military veterans. 

Fidell said that he wanted to offer the course because he expected it to be “pretty stimulating for us to teach, as well as for students” because there would be “so many potential flashpoints.”

The class brings speakers who talk about legal aspects of the war in Ukraine and cover topics like child abduction, the legality of possible peace settlements and the question of whether Russia commits genocide in Ukraine. 

The other course at YLS that centers on the war is “International Law and War in Ukraine and Gaza,” taught by Professor of law and the humanities Paul Kahn. Lectures in the class, frequently by guest speakers who speak to either the war in Ukraine or the Israel-Hamas war, seek to understand how the wars “are both shaped by law and shape the law.”

Kahn said that he decided to pair the two ongoing wars together because they illustrate two concepts in international humanitarian law and create a “comprehensive approach” to structuring a course about the law of war.

“Anybody who’s going to teach a class on international humanitarian law or the law of war from this point forward has got to address these events. They’re seismic,” Kahn said.

The class this semester has focused more on Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, Kahn said, because Gaza is “absorbing more attention than Ukraine at the moment.” He sees this reflected in a larger number of student questions about the war in Gaza.

Political science professor David Cameron teaches the department’s only Yale College seminar about Ukraine this semester. His course, titled “The War in Ukraine,” covers the historical context of the war, its causes and its developments. 

“The focus of my work has been on the European Union and European politics. Anyone interested in Europe is presumably interested in what is happening in this war,” Cameron said. “But from my perspective, anyone in this world should be thinking about and concerned about what’s happening in Europe, and specifically in Ukraine in the war.”

Nataliia Laas, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, believes that qualified professors can drive interest in Ukraine further. The country, she said, can be an important case study in a variety of disciplines.

This semester, Laas is teaching a history seminar on the Chornobyl disaster. She told the News that students in the class are not only those interested in Soviet history — two-thirds of students in the class are environmental science and engineering majors interested in energy studies, she said.

According to Laas, the demand for the class was large enough for her to potentially teach several sections.

Philosophy professor Jason Stanley told the News that he first visited Ukraine in 2017 and has been closely following its politics since then. 

Together with Snyder, he taught a class comparing Gulag camps and incarceration systems in the United States, which he said are two of the largest prison regimes in world history. 

“I’m … a scholar of fascism,” Stanley said. “I became very interested in how Ukrainians were thinking through this situation where they’re being attacked by a fascist imperialist country.”

Eastern Europe, he said, provides examples that are vital to a full understanding of “the philosophical concept of colonialism, authoritarianism.” 

In his classes, he said, he therefore includes Ukrainian authors and has added more since Russia’s invasion. This semester, for example, one of the first authors his students read in his class “Propaganda, Ideology, and Democracy” was Ukrainian novelist Victoria Amelina, who was killed by a Russian air strike in Eastern Ukraine. 

“It’s the first massive land war in Europe since World War Two, and we had hoped this wouldn’t happen again in Europe,” Stanley said. “Understanding how and why it happened, maybe we can prevent these things from happening again in the future.”

Slavic Languages and Literatures department was founded in 1946.

The post Yale professors reflect on teaching about Ukraine, Eastern Europe amid war appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The partnership follows a September commitment from Yale College administrators in response to the Supreme Court’s summer ruling to overturn affirmative action. One of the initiatives on the list was to host a “high-impact college preparatory summer program” for students from underrepresented backgrounds within two years. Now, Yale’s partnership with LEDA will seek to accomplish that goal.

LEDA’s free five-week intensive program — the Aspects of Leadership Summer Institute — focuses on providing “leadership training, academic writing instruction, standardized test preparation, college guidance, and community building” to high-achieving, lower-income students, according to the nonprofit’s website. The program has historically been hosted on the Princeton University campus; students will still spend their first four weeks in New Jersey before coming to New Haven for their fifth and final week.

Moira Poe, Yale’s senior associate director of admissions for strategic priorities, said that the University was impressed by LEDA’s ability to reach high-achieving high schoolers with “an amazingly diverse set of under-resourced backgrounds.”

“For many years, Yale admissions office staff have connected with LEDA scholars and staff during the program at Princeton,” Poe wrote to the News. “We think spending time residing on a college campus provides LEDA scholars with a tangible sense of what to expect in college, empowering them to feel confident that they have the skills needed to navigate university resources.”

In 2023, 55 percent of LEDA scholars were admitted to at least one Ivy League school, MIT or Stanford University, including 21 who were accepted to Yale.

Almost 100 LEDA scholars have matriculated to Yale since the program’s founding in 2003, according to Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan. He also noted that LEDA Scholars are often “exceptionally strong and compelling college applicants.”

Diego Lopez ’24 said that his college counselor at his high school in a low-income area of Los Angeles recommended that he apply to the summer program, which he was accepted to and attended. He said that LEDA has been very helpful to him during both high school and college, especially in terms of providing mentorship and guidance.

“LEDA has done so much to expand opportunity and help first-generation, low-income students believe in themselves and know that they’re capable of applying to these higher-ed institutions,” Lopez said.

Lopez, who is graduating this year, remains involved with the organization and said he plans to apply for LEDA Legal. The program, which guides students through the law school admissions process, was established last year in partnership with the Yale Law School.

David Garza, executive director at LEDA, said that Yale has consistently been a top destination for LEDA Scholars, and that conversations have long been underway to create a partnership beyond LEDA Legal.

“For several years, we have had conversations about ways that we can partner together to make sure that we are creating this avenue for students from underserved communities to be able to get into a school with the talent and sort of resources of Yale,” Garza said.

Charlize Leon Mata ’26 participated in the Aspects of Leadership Summer Institute when she was in high school. She said she submitted her application after coming across a YouTube video where a college student who offers advice to high schoolers mentioned the program.

Leon Mata said that she thinks most LEDA Scholars share a passion for social justice and helping their lower-income communities, which she said creates a unique community among Scholars.

“The Aspects of Leadership Summer Institute was very instrumental for us to start thinking of our communities from a different perspective,” she said, explaining that part of the program consists of reading social justice literature and “applying those lessons from greater literature to our personal experiences.”

Like Lopez, Leon Mata has remained deeply involved with LEDA since coming to Yale. In addition to staying close with several members of her cohort, she now mentors a Yale first-year student through LEDA’s mentorship program, participates in the Yale LEDA club and is a LEDA Career Fellow with the organization’s career development program.

Leon Mata said that she is excited that the summer program will be coming to Yale, but hopes that the program will expand in future years for students to stay on Yale’s campus for longer.

“I’m not sure if one week is really enough time for students to grapple with what it would be like to be a student here at Yale,” she said. “But I do think that it’s a great starting point for Yale to make this partnership and also for LEDA to expand beyond Princeton.”

Both Garza and Poe told the News that there are ongoing discussions about expanding the partnership in future years. Poe added that in following up on its September commitment, Yale is “continuing conversations with other high-impact summer enrichment programs.”

As of 2022, LEDA has worked with 1,850 students across its enrichment programs.

The post Yale to host 100 low-income high schoolers over summer through new partnership with nonprofit appeared first on Yale Daily News.

All other testimonies — which came from students, student collectives, college groups, a non-profit and the Yale College Council — supported the bill. One organization, the Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges, did not fully support or oppose the bill.

If passed, the bill –– SB 203 –– would prohibit public and private institutions in the state from “inquir[ing] about or consider[ing] a prospective student’s familial relationship to a graduate of such institution” when making admissions decisions.

Committee co-chair Sen. Derek Slap, who has championed the bill, said that he was encouraged by the hearing, which he called “part of a national movement” in state governments to reevaluate legacy admissions.

Slap said that the hearing was “by far the most robust conversation about admissions, legacy, privilege and opportunity in higher education” in which he has participated while part of the General Assembly. 

According to a study last year that drew on internal admissions data from several elite colleges, including Ivy League schools, legacy applicants are often “slightly more qualified yet are four times as likely” to be admitted to top schools.

Yale’s Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid, Jeremiah Quinlan, testified against the bill for more than an hour over Zoom. In his remarks, Quinlan said he does not believe the General Assembly has the right to interfere with the university admissions practices.

“Just as every Connecticut college or university teaches different classes in different ways in fulfillment of its educational mission, each institution should likewise be allowed to assemble a student body that promotes its educational goals,” Quinlan wrote in a statement that he read out at the hearing. “A university may make a voluntary decision to forgo consideration of legacy status in the application process, but a Connecticut state law dictating that decision for independent colleges and universities would be unprecedented and would invite future legislatures to impose their own views on who should be admitted in ways that threaten academic freedom.”

Quinlan further described progress that the University has made toward enrolling more first-generation and low-income students since he began his tenure as Yale College’s dean of admissions. He argued that banning legacy admissions would not be necessary or useful to the cause of recruiting diverse classes, given the work Yale has done to increase access.

Per his testimony, 22 percent of students in the Yale College class of 2027 are eligible for Pell Grants, 21 percent are first-generation college students and 59 percent are domestic students who identify as members of a minority racial or ethnic group. Over the past 10 years, he said, the number of Pell-eligible students has doubled, and the number of first-generation students has increased by more than 60 percent.

Instead of banning legacy admissions, Quinlan suggested tht the state prioritize initiatives that directly help promote access for first-generation and low-income students, such as increased support for recruitment and outreach programs. He specifically noted increased support toward enrichment programs for less-advantaged high school students and increased funding of the Roberta Willis Scholarship Program, which offers need-based grants to Connecticut students enrolled at any of the 18 participating public and non-profit private colleges in the state. 

State Rep. Gary Turco said that preference for applicants with legacy status creates an “uneven playing field” that he believes has contributed to a larger national trend of decreased trust in higher education. Citing nationwide declines in enrollment numbers, high student loan debt and admissions scandals, Turco said that the message the bill might send about fairness would be as important as any practical impact on the universities’ diversity.

Turco estimated that currently, around 40 or 50 legislators would be prepared to vote in favor of the bill, noting that most others have not yet made a decision and only a “handful” would likely vote against it, out of the total 151 legislators in the House. He hypothesized that those who would vote against the bill are likely to do so because they are concerned about overregulating private institutions, not necessarily because they are in favor of maintaining legacy preference in admissions.

Turco said that although he thinks the bill is likely to pass in committee, he suspects it will struggle in a broader vote in the legislature because “private universities hold a lot of weight in the state.”

Rep. Dominique Johnson said that while they support the idea of a bill banning legacy preference, they are not satisfied with the current bill and would like to see it also ban schools from considering the donor status of an applicant’s family. Johnson is also advocating for the bill to clarify whether it applies to graduate and professional schools as well as undergraduate schools.

Birikti Kahsai ’27, who is a senator representing Branford College in the Yale College Council, testified at the hearing on behalf of the YCC. She told the News that the YCC has begun to advocate against legacy admissions as part of a broad collaboration between several student governments of Ivy League universities that have been adopting a unified stance against legacy admissions.

“We emphasize that the archaic practice of granting advantages in the application process on the basis of familial ties is antithetical to Yale’s commitment to meritocratic admissions,” the YCC testimony states. “Those historically granted the opportunity to form such connections were overwhelmingly White, wealthy and Protestant, due to the inaccessibility of higher education.”

Kahsai stressed that the goal of the YCC in opposing and testifying against the bill is not to attack individual legacy students but rather to pressure the Yale administration about its use of legacy preference, which she said YCC views as “incompatible” with Yale’s other admissions policies.

The testimony from the YCC was undersigned by seven Yale cultural clubs as well as The Yale First-Generation and/or Low-Income Advocacy Movement.

Jim Zhou GRD ’24 also testified at the hearing. He explained that he relied on food stamps throughout his time at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he earned his undergraduate degree. He said that UCLA’s legacy-blind admissions approach has allowed the school to “excel with socioeconomic diversity” — and that Yale is lagging behind.

“I think that legacy admissions are perhaps one of the biggest barriers to achieving socio-economic diversity on campus because legacy applicants overwhelmingly come from backgrounds that have enormous amounts of privilege,” Zhou told the News.

New Haven civil rights attorney Alex Taubes LAW ’15 explained that the Connecticut legislature draws its authority to regulate private institutions, including universities, from an authority of state governments known as “police power.”

“This power allows the state to impose certain requirements on private institutions to ensure they contribute positively to the state’s goals for its education system and the overall well-being of its residents,” Taubes wrote in an email to the News. “When it comes to education, states have a particular interest in ensuring that institutions serve the public good, as education is closely linked to economic development, civic participation, and social equity.”

Taubes added that consumer protection law specifically could provide potential justification for a ban affecting private universities, with prospective students considered as consumers who ought to be protected from unfair or discriminatory practices.

Slap said that a vote on the bill in the Higher Education and Employment Advancement Committee will likely take place on either Tuesday or Thursday of next week; if passed, the bill will progress to the Senate floor of the larger legislature.

The bill, if enacted, would go into effect on July 1.

The post Yale opposes state bill to ban legacy preference appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Since going test-optional in 2020, Yale has seen a disproportionate increase in applications from international students. In the past three application cycles — excluding the current year — applications from international students increased at three times the rate of increase of domestic applicants.

In a survey conducted earlier this month about the experiences of students taking standardized tests, the News received 110 responses from international students. For domestic respondents, 95 percent who took the survey reported that they took a standardized test before college, as opposed to 83 percent of international respondents.

Several international students told the News that for them, inability to access the tests was a bigger concern than deciding whether to submit their scores. Students said that access to ACT and SAT test centers was sparse and tended to favor wealthier students. 

“I am a low-income student, so that meant that I struggled with the access part,” said Jesse Okoche ’25, who is from Botswana. “I want [the admissions office] to be considerate of the fact that not everybody has access to [the tests].”

Tajrian Khan ’27, who receives almost full financial aid to attend Yale, said that he is the only student from Bangladesh in his year and the first person from his school to ever attend the University. Khan described a litany of obstacles to taking the SAT in Bangladesh.

He explained that he remembers only seven test centers operating in all of Bangladesh when he was applying. He said that the centers were located in private schools in the two largest cities, making students from other areas of the country to bear travel costs. He recalled that the SAT cost the equivalent of 109 dollars to take, which he said his family could afford because both his parents worked. But Khan pointed out that the average monthly income in Bangladesh –– which was the equivalent of around $295 in 2022 –– makes the price difficult for most families.

Khan said that he thinks standardized tests should not be optional because they provide an important metric to evaluate international applicants. However, he stressed that changes should be made to make the tests accessible to lower-income international students.

“If you’re low income in the U.S., you get to take the test for free,” Khan said of free testing days offered in many U.S. high schools. “That should be the same for internationals, because so many people just can’t take the test. It’s a huge burden.”

The survey also found that international respondents who receive no financial aid from Yale — wealthier international students — were more likely to have taken a test than those who receive aid, the gap being especially pronounced for those receiving a large amount of aid. Of international respondents who do not qualify for financial aid, 89 percent took the test, in contrast to 75 percent of respondents receiving full or almost full aid.

Per data available in Yale’s Common Data Set, and confirmed by Director of Undergraduate Financial Aid Kari DiFonzo, 64 percent of international students at Yale College overall receive some amount of financial aid.

“The admissions office is, of course, familiar with the challenges associated with accessing test administration sites outside of the U.S.,” Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan wrote in an email to the News. “It is not surprising that removing a testing requirement would be associated with a large increase in applications from international students.”

Earlier this month, Dartmouth College announced that it will resume its standardized test requirement for applicants in the next admissions cycle. 

Okoche said that when he was first applying to college, there was only one SAT or ACT test center in all of Botswana. He said the center was five hours away from his home and extremely difficult to access.

Because his grades and extracurricular activities were strong and the journey to take the test was long and pricey, Okoche said he decided not to take an ACT or SAT and applied without test scores to all U.S. colleges. 

He was not accepted to any U.S. private four year colleges straight out of high school and ended up spending two years at a Massachusetts community college before transferring to Yale last fall. Okoche said that he also did not include test scores when applying to Yale as a transfer student.

AJ Nakash ’26 traveled to Florida, where he had family, on two separate occasions to take the test after numerous SATs were canceled in his home country of Jamaica.

Tian Hsu ’26, who went to a private high school in London, said that the inaccessibility of test centers outside of the U.S. is a process that tends to favor wealthier international students who come from private schools and have the resources to take the exams no matter the cost of travel, preparation or missing school.

She recalled counselors at her high school telling students that, even though U.S. colleges were test-optional, omitting scores from their applications would put them at a disadvantage, because the schools “knew they had the resources” to take the tests and do well. 

By “resources,” Hsu said, they were referring to the fact that she and her peers had the financial means to travel as far as necessary to access a test center.

“I think the most distinctive thing about the international experience taking the ACT, and maybe the SAT as well, is the fact that it’s definitely not going to be easy to take, but you’re expected to take it anyway,” Hsu told the News.

Overall, Hsu said that it tends to be international students with the resources to travel long distances who have the ability to access test centers. 

“For Yale to reinstate their testing requirement, it’s like saying to that one international student who couldn’t take it that there is no place for them here,” Okoche said. “Just because they don’t have access to that one required thing, not because they aren’t good enough.” 

Yale instituted need-blind admissions for international students in 2000.

The post International students describe unequal access to standardized test centers appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Even before she sat for her SAT, Gazard said she knew that she would not be submitting those scores with her applications to Ivy League or other selective schools.

Still, when it came time to apply to college, Gazard worried about the possible implications of omitting scores from her application. 

She asked for advice from her school counselor, who said, “[it’s] up to you.” She looked at the average test scores listed on the Yale admissions website, which cite a score of 1450 as being in the 25th percentile. She attended talks with admissions officers in her county, who assured her that withholding a score would not be held against her.

Ultimately, she decided not to submit her test score — which was well below Yale’s average — to any Ivy League school.

The deciding factor, Gazard said, was that she did not want schools to “write her off” just because she had a low score. Instead, she hoped that omitting a score would allow the other, stronger parts of her application to shine.

“I’m a top student, I’ve done some interesting extracurriculars, I am really strong in my supplemental writing and my interview went really great,” Gazard said. “I felt like if I put the test score down, it would have probably been to my detriment, and taken away from all that.”

As the debate over the merits of requiring standardized test scores in applications at universities across the country has swelled, the News found in a survey of nearly 1,000 undergraduates that Yale College students receiving financial aid are less likely to have included an ACT or SAT score in their Yale applications than students not on aid. 

But this finding comes at a time when new research from policy institute Opportunity Insights suggests that test scores may be better predictors of college success than high school grades, which could help colleges facilitate upward mobility. Previous research from the institute found that requiring test scores may act to enhance the diversity of admits, rather than restrict it.

The News received 978 responses to a survey sent to all students in the College, marking a 15-percent response rate overall. Of those who took the SAT, the ACT or both since Yale adopted a test-optional policy in 2020, 86.7 percent submitted a score with their application. 

The survey revealed that 95 percent of respondents receiving no financial aid who took a test submitted a score, compared to only 75 percent of respondents receiving full or almost full aid. 

Bruce Sacerdote, one of the researchers at Opportunity Insights, told the News that the survey results are consistent with his findings, which both indicate that disadvantaged students submit their tests “at too low a rate” given their scores.

“We hypothesize that this stems from applicants not having full knowledge of how test scores are used in context,” Sacerdote wrote to the News. “Scores are used as only one input and are viewed in the context of the applicant’s background, neighborhood and high school. As a result, applicants may not realize that their score is an impressive one that could help their admission chances.”

Earlier this month, Dartmouth College announced that it will resume its standardized test requirement for applicants in the next admissions cycle. Several other selective colleges such as Georgetown University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have also reinstated requirements, which — like Yale’s — were originally suspended during the pandemic.

Yale plans to announce its long-term testing policy at the end of the month, according to Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan. 

Stuart Schmill, dean of admissions at MIT, where the testing requirement has been reinstated, told the New York Times that when low-income students and students of color submit their scores, those numbers are considered in the context of their economic situation and are useful to flag promising applicants whose potential might otherwise go overlooked.

The News survey found that students on no financial aid who took a test were 19.6 percentage points more likely to have submitted those results than students on full or almost full financial aid, and 14.8 percentage points more likely to submit than students on any level of financial aid.

Out of the 978 students who responded to the survey, 529 students, or 54.1 percent, are on some amount of financial aid. This figure is similar to Yale’s overall share of 53 percent, according to Mark Dunn, senior associate director for outreach and recruitment at the Office of Undergraduate Admissions.

The News’ results coincide with a trend in increased application rates from first-generation and low-income students in the years since Yale went test-optional. Between this year’s application cycle and last year’s, applications from first-generation college students increased 13 percent more than the overall uptick in applicants, and applications from students from neighborhoods with below-median household incomes increased 19 percent more than the overall pool, according to data shared with the News by the Office of Undergraduate Admissions.

According to Yale’s submission to the Common Data Set from the 2022-2023 academic year, an annual report of statistics and information about various colleges, 88 percent of all students who matriculated last year submitted a test score with their applications to Yale.

This 88 percent figure refers to the total number of students who had a test score in their application materials; however, when applying to Yale, students had the option to opt out of their test scores being considered by Yale specifically. There is no figure available on the total number of students whose test scores were considered with their Yale applications, but Dunn said that the figure is lower than 88 percent. In other words, less than 88 percent of all students who matriculated last year had test scores considered with their Yale applications. Yale has not released any further details about admissions patterns

Quinlan wrote to the News that the admissions office is not reporting data on test scores, the choice of applicants to share test scores or the share of admitted students who submitted test scores.

The News spoke to 21 students about their experiences with taking standardized tests. 15 students submitted test scores when applying to Yale and six did not.

The choice to submit

Several students told the News that they decided to submit their test scores in order to distinguish themselves from other students from their high schools and areas that admissions officers would be comparing them to.

Annalie Diaz ’27 — who was admitted to Yale through the QuestBridge match program — chose to submit her score. She said that she decided to submit her score, which was below Yale’s average, because she knew it stood out in comparison to scores from other students at her high school.

Diaz described her high school as “extremely” under-resourced. She said the average SAT score ranges from around a 900 to a 1000. Since colleges went optional, Diaz said most students stopped taking the SAT altogether.

Even a score in Yale’s 25th percentile, when considered in the broader context of her high school environment, would show her commitment and capability, Diaz recalled thinking.

Freddie Rivas-Giorgi ’26 was also compelled to submit a test score in hopes of standing out. In his case, however, he hoped to stand out in comparison to students from wealthy urban areas.

Coming from a rural high school, Rivas-Giorgi said he didn’t have access to the same impressive extracurriculars as his peers in larger, more affluent cities. As an example, he recalled not being able to conduct research at a university because of geographic barriers. 

“[Submitting a score] really helped in my case, simply because it provided an objective measurement of my own skills and preparation,” Rivas-Giorgi told the News. “That certainly could overcompensate for a relative weakness in extracurriculars compared to students coming from larger cities. I think scores certainly can level the playing field, at least in my situation it did.”

Owen Haywood ’26 came from a public school where students are rarely admitted to Ivy League schools. 

Early on, Haywood wanted to “aim low” and be realistic in his college plan, but when he got his score, he realized he was a competitive student for a school like Yale. 

“Getting the score was something that I felt not only helped my application in the end but also gave me the confidence to even send in that application in the first place,” Haywood said.

Several other students on financial aid who took a test told the News that they opted not to submit a score because they felt that their score did not represent them and that a low score would take away from other, stronger parts of their applications.

David Rutitsky ’27, who receives financial aid from Yale, said that he was too busy with other commitments in high school to devote enough time to study for and score well on the SAT. 

With many AP classes and two jobs, he had too much on his plate to add test prep to the mix, he said.

“I really think SAT scores are more of a reflection of just how good of a school you’re in and even your income,” Rutitsky said. “Because some people don’t have to work two jobs.”

Impending University decision 

With the University slated to announce its long-term testing policy in the coming weeks, students were relatively split on their opinions on the role of standardized testing in college admissions.

Some students said that they are opposed to a test-required policy, saying that tests are not accurate predictors of success and that they disadvantage students who face difficulties accessing them. Others were open to the University requiring tests so long as scores are considered in the context of an applicant’s overall academic background.

“I think, when considering standardized test scores, what colleges have to do is look at the score as just a part of who the student is and within the broader context of that student’s demographic and personal background,” Haywood said. “A student who’s coming from a Title I funded public school who gets a 34 on the ACT is very different from a student coming from a private boarding school who gets a 34 on the ACT.”

Diaz said that, as a low-income student, she believes she greatly benefited from submitting her test score. 

Even though it was below Yale’s median, her score was 400 points above her high school average, something that she believed showed her ability to excel within her environment. 

“But, if they switch back to test-required, Yale needs to make themselves seem more welcoming to low-income students,” Diaz told the News. “They need to be transparent about how they’re considering scores. And they need to work alongside organizations like QuestBridge, which taught me that, regardless of test scores, Yale welcomes people like me.”

On the other hand, Rutitsky said that tests pose a barrier to entry that may not accurately measure applicants’ capability.

If Yale reinstates a test requirement, he said that he fears Yale may be depriving itself of highly capable students who simply do not have the time or resources to test well.

“I want to stress the fact that I’m doing well in college, even though my test scores were low,” he said. “A big reason why I don’t think tests should exist anymore is because the whole idea of the tests in the first place is to judge how well you would be able to get college work done. And in my case, the test is not a reflection of that.”

But Evan Burkeen ’27 said he believed submitting his test score was crucial to demonstrating his academic ability and validating the upward trend of his high school grades.

He said he believes that because test scores are a quantitative measure of achievement, they become a scapegoat for disparities in the admissions process, even though there are disparities in extracurriculars, essays and other qualitative parts of the application.

“This is the wrong thing to attack if we need to make sure that admissions is a more equitable process,” Burkeen said.

The first SAT was offered in 1926.

Update, Feb. 15: The article was updated to clarify the context of the data included in Yale’s Common Data Set.

The post Financial aid recipients less likely to have applied to Yale with test scores appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Alexis Ramirez-Hardy ’26, Hardy Eville ’26 and Phaedra Letrou ’25 are three members of the 41-person undergraduate cooking club that hosts bi-weekly restaurant-style meals. They spent the evening drizzling neat stripes of raita over aloo chaat potato patties and stylishly delivering flights of Malabar fish curry to expectant patrons assembled for the club’s “Masala Magic” South Asian dinner.

It was clear from the almost 100-item Thursday night shopping trip and the 12-hour, day-of cooking marathon that hosting these multi-act dinners is no small feat: “Let’s keep it simple this time and do only, like, five courses,” Eville said at the Sunday planning meeting. But as laughs reverberated around the buttery, any stress was hardly discernible.

Members being amicable and cooperative is key to the club’s productivity and success, explained Coby Wagonfeld ’26, one of the club’s head chefs.

“You need to be able to work as a team … and to be able to stay somewhat calm in a pressured situation,” he said. “There’s a euphoria to it at the end, and that community of accomplishment is a great feeling.”

Y Pop-Up-hopefuls “audition” for the club Chopped-style. Of the applicants who complete an initial 11-question form, a fraction are invited back to tackle a live cooking challenge. A table full of ingredients such as tofu, cup noodles, veggies, sauces and spices greets them, and a 30 minute clock starts ticking. There are no rules or limits on what they can make, and one of the head chefs helps out as sous-chef. The applicant’s ability to give them directions and banter with other club leadership in the room as they cook is taken into consideration, Wagonfeld said.

Applicants to the club’s business team fill out a 10-question form and then complete an interview to be considered.

The club then makes its selections. This past year, 21 percent were accepted, an unusually high rate according to club leadership. Others are sent an email thanking them for their time and lamenting that “unfortunately, there can only be so many cooks in the kitchen.”

Eville, this year’s other co-head chef, said that the competitiveness of the application process is necessary because of how demanding the club is for members.

“The scale of what we try to put on and the professionalism that we try to have requires that we have to be pretty strict about who we let into the club,” he said.

Despite Y Pop-Up’s competitiveness, members say its ethos remains one of trust and flexibility.

“I came in thinking I’d work under someone and do smaller tasks, but there’s an entirely flat structure to the community,” cook team member Taimur Moolji ’25 said. “They switch up the teams so we get to meet lots of new people.”

James Han ’24, a former head chef, said that the club’s simultaneous commitment to high standards of achievement and an attitude of open-mindedness is reflected in the quality and variety of food they produce.

Most Indian restaurants in America serve North Indian or Punjabi food. Friday’s opening intentionally took a different direction. The menu focused on food from South India, such as masala dosas and the Malabar fish curry, and even included bun kebabs, a dish from the neighboring country of Pakistan.

“There’s a world in which we could have cooked butter chicken and chana masala and naan and called it a day,” Han supposed. “And then there’s the version that we did, which was showing different kinds of India. I’m really happy there’s a culture of learning.”

Y Pop-Up was founded in its current form in 2013 by Lucas Sin ’15. He went on to open Junzi Kitchen, a Chinese restaurant, in New Haven in 2015, adding a New York location in 2017. In 2020, Sin was named one of Forbes’s 30 Under 30 for Food and Drink.

The club, which was much smaller at its founding, vastly expanded its business team in 2019 after holding a popular Harry Potter-themed dinner. In a decked-out Silliman buttery, guests were sorted into Hogwarts houses and handed admissions letters sealed with wax stamps. The success of the event grew into today’s 14-person business team, which now assists with finances, event coordination, table service, clean up, decorations and material transportation.

“Everyone has different skills that they contribute, which makes you feel like people are happy to have you there,” Ramirez-Hardy said of the relationship between the cooking and business teams.

On Friday night, 70 guests arrived at 16 different times between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. to take their seats. Menu adjustments were planned for three vegetarians, a tree nut allergy and requests for no seafood, no gluten, no pork, no coconut, no dairy and no red meat. Birthday candles were added to two mango lassi panna cottas.

Openings are tall orders, but “you get dopamine hits the entire time,” Wagonfeld said. “It’s very satisfying to see a problem coming and then fix it live.”

Y Pop-Up’s next opening will take place on Feb. 16.

The post Y Pop-Up is cooking with gas appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Hannah Mendlowitz, senior associate director of undergraduate admissions, who helps oversee the University’s response to file-viewing requests, described the admissions committee’s process of reviewing applications as “a group of people sitting around having a candid conversation,” which she argued means that the full picture of why a student was admitted may not be reflected in their file.

In an email to the News, Mendlowitz described the files that students can view as “an incomplete artifact of a much larger and more complex process.”

“I understand students’ desire to peek behind the curtain, but viewing the application you submitted as a high school senior alongside very short notes that summarize the contents of that application will not reveal why the admissions committee voted to admit you,” Mendlowitz explained.

Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, which governs access to educational records, students have a right to review their admissions files within 45 days of requesting access.

Students submit a request to the admissions office, typically over email, to begin the process and receive a set of possible dates and times for viewing. All six students the News interviewed about viewing their admissions files said that it took almost the entire 45-day period to hear back from the office.

The viewing appointments take place over Zoom with a representative from the admissions office present to answer any questions. The student’s admission file is shared on the screen, and students are allowed to take notes but not pictures.

Grant Tucker ’27 agreed that viewing an admissions file is not akin to being in the room where the discussion happened but argued that it can still provide students with valuable insight.

“You don’t know what they were splitting hairs on,” he admitted. Nonetheless, he added that he sees the file as “an accurate representation” of why a student was ultimately admitted because it “makes clear to you what Yale sees in you as a future leader, what they want to see more of from you and how they see you fitting into the campus.”

Admissions files consist of a full copy of the student’s application alongside a set of comments from reviewers called a “workcard,” with notes and scores on essays and letters of recommendation. Students’ essays, recommendations, test scores and grades are all assigned scores, which students can ask the admissions office representative to interpret for them. The paragraph that alumni interviewers submit is also included.

Aidan Pulmano ’26 told the News that because his workcard contained only comments about his character and none about his test scores or grades –– an experience shared by every student interviewed by the News –– he felt more at home at Yale after viewing his file.

“Afterwards, I felt more comfortable because it made me feel like I belonged at the school,” he said. “Not just on a competence basis, but on a personality basis, too.”

In January 2016, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan announced that the admissions office would increase its emphasis on “authentic intellectual engagement” and “a concern for others and the common good” over quantifiable achievements. The updated process heeded recommendations from a report released by the Harvard Graduate School of Education on reforming college admissions.

On Jan. 31, Quinlan wrote to the News that he is not concerned about the effect of individual students viewing their files but does worry when students share the conclusions they draw from the experience widely with others.

Yale admissions files have become the subject of much fascination online, with dedicated Reddit threads, dozens of YouTube videos and a Buzzfeed article documenting their contents.

“When students attempt to turn that small slice of information into viral video content or the foundation of counseling for future applicants, those incorrect impressions can turn into bad advice disseminated to large audiences,” Quinlan wrote.

Of the six students the News interviewed, four said that they had given advice to prospective applicants. All of those four students said that the advice they provided was based on what they learned from viewing their files.

Mandy Buster ’25 said that she now tells applicants to focus on their Common Application; Ken Huynh ’25 said that he now advises students to focus on a singular passion. Tucker emphasizes that Yale values students who are easy to talk with, and Pulmano encourages high schoolers to write in a personable style.

“I feel that I can give better advice to people applying to college because I saw what stood out in ways that I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t looked at the file,” Buster said.

The registrar’s office is located at 246 Church St.

Correction, Feb. 6: This article was updated to reflect that it is the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, not the University Registrar’s Office, that handles admissions file viewing requests, appointments and questions.

The post Students, administrators weigh merits of viewing admissions files appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Yale opposed a similar bill –– HB 5034 –– in 2022. In a recent email to the News, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan reiterated his concern about the autonomy of universities and the efficacy of banning legacy preference.

“I am against legislation that interferes with a university’s freedom to set its own admissions policies,” Quinlan wrote. “Yale College has become much more diverse over the past ten years … without changes to other admissions policies and priorities,” he added, pointing to Yale’s efforts this year to update its selection process.

Quinlan cited increases in the diversity of the first-year class in the past decade of a 130-percent increase in the number of Pell-eligible students, a 115-percent increase in the number of first-generation students and a 96-percent increase in the number of students of color.

Public and private colleges alike vehemently opposed the 2022 bill, and it died in the House chamber. But since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the use of affirmative action in college admissions this summer, Connecticut lawmakers have warmed to the idea of influencing college admissions through legislation.

“I think that the argument to ban legacy admissions is much stronger after the Supreme Court decision,” Senator Derek Slap, co-chair of the committee, said. “A lot of members of the committee are very interested in this topic and fairness in college admissions.”

The University of Connecticut, the largest college in the state, opposed the bill two years ago despite already having done away with considering legacy status in their own admissions process. It cited concerns that any government-level regulation of college admissions would be a slippery slope. The university told CT Insider last week that this time around, they would be “neutral” on the proposal.

In 2022, Quinlan expressed in written testimony about the previously proposed bill that he does not believe a statewide ban on legacy admissions is the right way to increase accessibility. He argued that while universities could consider whether to bar legacy preference at their own institutions, a state restriction may set precedent for “other intrusions on academic freedom.”

“Even without [legacy] preference, students with more resources will still have an advantage in college admissions, just as they have an advantage in securing a good job and in many other aspects of daily life. Instead, the state should support schools in their efforts to identify, recruit, and graduate low-income and first-generation students,” Quinlan wrote. “Yale has already realized a dramatic increase in the representation of these students on our campus in the past decade, without eliminating other admissions preferences.”

Slap and committee co-chair Rep. Gregory Haddad will together  co-author the new bill. Slap and Haddad, as well as fellow committee Democrats Rep. Dominique Johnson and Rep. Hector Arzeno, all told the News that they would heavily weigh the testimonies of the universities or university-affiliated groups in their decisions.

“Everything’s on the table in terms of what the outcome is,” Haddad said. “It’s only fair for us to listen to everybody as we consider legislation.”

Johnson said that she is especially interested in the opinions of Yale affinity groups for alumni of color and Slap added that he hopes to hear testimony during the bill hearings from current Yale undergraduates and student groups.

The new bill will be proposed in a higher education committee that saw large-scale turnover last year. Thirty-two percent of the committee’s members –– seven of the total 22 –– were elected for the first time in 2023, including Johnson and Arzeno. These seven members were not part of the legislature when the first bill to ban legacy admissions was proposed and affirmative action has been overturned throughout their time in office.

“In the legislature, you can never assume that just because something passed before or didn’t pass that people are going to take the same direction,” Slap said of the new face of the legislature.

The upcoming bill comes as several other states have also begun to discuss bans on legacy preference.

On Jan. 23, the Virginia state Senate unanimously passed a bill that would ban legacy admissions at public universities only. The bill will soon face a vote on the House floor, and if passed, will be brought to Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin to sign into law. Legislators in New York, Pennsylvania, California and Massachusetts have discussed or presented similar bills.

Haddad speculated that Yale, while resistant to government regulation, might be more likely to end legacy admissions on its own terms.

“They would probably prefer to do it themselves and to be told by the legislature to end [legacy preference],” he said.

University President Peter Salovey revealed at a panel in October that Yale opened a self-review of its use of legacy preference. He said that Yale’s deliberations were focusing on whether the use of legacy preference was hampering the University’s ability to diversify its applicant pool.

In July, the Department of Education also opened a probe into legacy admissions, responding to a federal complaint alleging that Harvard is violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by favoring white applicants. 

The next legislative session will begin on Feb. 7.

The post State legislature to propose legacy admissions ban, Yale signals opposition appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The News spoke to former QuestBridge finalists at Yale and Harvard to understand the influence the QuestBridge program had on their college application process.

“I feel like QuestBridge is just a really, really amazing thing to have,” said Ihechikarageme Munonye, a student at Harvard who receives full financial aid. “It’s kind of unfortunate and almost a disservice to a lot of intelligent students who may not come from the most financially sound backgrounds to not have access to a school like Harvard.” 

Munonye was a QuestBridge finalist but did not match with any of the schools she ranked in the National College Match process, so she applied to Harvard in the regular decision cycle.

Despite being the only Ivy League school not to partner with QuestBridge, Harvard has the highest economic diversity ranking of the conference, according to a New York Times Magazine article from September. Twenty-two percent of Harvard students receive Pell grants; Yale and Columbia trail closely behind at 21 percent each. 

Even so, Munonye said that she believes partnering with QuestBridge would likely encourage more low-income students to apply to Harvard. 

Munonye explained that she had not originally planned on applying to Harvard because it was outside of the QuestBridge application and she did not realize that many schools, including Harvard, independently grant large amounts of need-based aid.

“I learned about institutions giving out aid, funnily enough, through QuestBridge,” Munonye said. “It was through a seminar they had that was very much to encourage low-income students to apply to Ivy League schools.”

Jeremiah Quinlan, dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid at Yale, said that part of the appeal of being a QuestBridge partner is the program’s ability to amplify messaging about affordability and financial aid to high-achieving low-income students.

Yale has been a QuestBridge partner for 17 years and welcomed its most recent class of QuestBridge match scholars in December.

Emily Zenner ’24, a QuestBridge scholar who was admitted to Yale in the regular decision cycle, said that she had never considered attending college out-of-state until QuestBridge reached out to her about affordability. 

She added that when she did apply, she ranked schools in part based on her familiarity with them, including their name cachet. Because Zenner only applied to out-of-state schools that partnered with QuestBridge, she never submitted any application to Harvard, despite its prestige.

“I definitely would have put Harvard on there and applied,” she said. “[I feel like] there’s some sort of idea that Harvard had that they were such a big name brand, they didn’t need to be discovered through QuestBridge.”

Munonye spoke to this point, saying that the main reason she applied to Harvard in the regular decision round was because of its renown.

In 2008, the Harvard Crimson reported that William Fitzsimmons, who has served as Harvard’s dean of admissions and financial aid for 38 years, cited Harvard’s robust outreach to low-income students and the fee colleges pay to participate in QuestBridge as the reasons the school has yet to become a partner.

The price colleges pay Questbridge to be listed as a partner is not publicly available, but the QuestBridge website states that “college partners use a combination of their own funds as well as state and federal aid to fund the scholarship.”

Fifty-five percent of Harvard undergraduates and more than 50 percent of Yale undergraduates receive some level of need-based aid, according to the Harvard and Yale websites respectively. At Yale, this 50 percent includes QuestBridge scholars. Harvard guarantees full scholarships to students whose families earn less than $85,000 per year –– it has raised the threshold by $10,000 each year for the past two years. Yale still makes the promise at a lower bar of $65,000.

Harvard College also established the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative in 2004, a recruitment program intending to “raise awareness of college affordability.” The Initiative’s budget has increased by more than 200 percent since its formation, from $80 million to $246 million.

At the time of the Crimson’s interview with Fitzsimmons in 2008, Harvard did not offer an early application round, and Fitzsimmons mentioned that early action admission programs like QuestBridge disadvantage low-income students because applicants are unable to compare aid packages across colleges after they receive regular decisions. Harvard reinstated their non-binding early admissions program in 2011 but the News could not find evidence that the school reconsidered their participation in QuestBridge then.

The 72 newly-admitted Yale QuestBridge match students who were accepted in December will join the approximately 306 QuestBridge scholars currently at Yale.

“Ultimately, having a lot of talented, high achieving, low-income students from around the country apply to Yale using the QuestBridge application and through the QuestBridge match program is a valuable part of our admissions process,” Quinlan told the News.

Representatives from QuestBridge and the Harvard Admissions Office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Around 10.8 percent of QuestBridge applicants matched with a partner school in 2023.

The post Harvard now only Ivy without QuestBridge appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Low-income high schoolers can seek early admission to selective colleges through QuestBridge, an organization that offers full scholarships to successful applicants. Students rank the organization’s partner schools in order of preference and commit to attending the top-ranked school with which they match. Now, 52 schools nationwide partner with QuestBridge.

Cornell and Harvard were previously the only two Ivy League schools that were not QuestBridge partners; now, Harvard is the sole member of the eight-school conference to not offer the option to prospective applicants. 

The News could not immediately reach representatives from QuestBridge or the Cornell admissions office.

“We are thrilled to announce our newest college partners, Cornell University and Skidmore College,” QuestBridge wrote on social media around 1:30 p.m. on Thursday. “Welcome to QuestBridge!” 

Cornell and Skidmore will welcome their first classes of QuestBridge scholars to campus in 2025.

In the most recent admissions cycle, 2,242 students across the country matched with 50 QuestBridge partner schools. At Yale, 72 students will join the undergraduate class of 2028 next fall as QuestBridge Scholars.

Yale has been a QuestBridge partner since 2007.

Anika Arora Seth contributed reporting.

The post Cornell and Skidmore join QuestBridge, Harvard only Ivy yet to partner appeared first on Yale Daily News.