How to Choose Summer Courses
When choosing courses, there are a variety of factors you may consider:
Personal Interests
Consider what subjects you have enjoyed studying in school and what topics you like to explore through reading, videos, podcasts, etc. You can search by these topics, expanding your search beyond a specific academic department.
Degree Requirements
Your current or intended major/minor/certificate, as well distributional or general education requirements in your academic programs, may inform which classes you may want to take.
Future Goals
For those who are interested in pursuing undergraduate, graduate or professional schools in the future, consider classes that align with your plans, offering you an opportunity to explore academic interests in more depth and strengthen your future applications.
Prerequisites
A prerequisite for college students is a required course or condition that must be completed before enrolling in a more advanced course. Read the course description to determine if there are any prerequisites.
Preparation
Consider whether a course is a good fit based on your academic background, skills, and English reading/writing/speaking level.
Schedule
Which session are you attending (A or B), which days are you available, and at what times of the day do you complete your best work?
Class Format
Approximately half of our summer course offerings are held in-person in New Haven and the other half are online. All of our online courses have a synchronous component in which students are required to meet at scheduled class meeting times with their cameras on.
Workload Balance
Consult course syllabi to evaluate the expected workload and whether it aligns with your ability to manage your time. Mix difficult courses with ones that you may find less demanding to maintain academic balance.
Courseload Requirements
International students who have been issued a student visa and pre-college students who live on-campus are required to maintain full-time enrollment (equivalent to two courses in a session totaling 2 credits), at least one of which must be an in-person course.
What to Expect in a Summer Class
Courses are fast-paced and carry heavy workloads. These are Yale College courses, many of which are offered during the standard 13-week academic semesters (Fall or Spring) but have been condensed into a 5-week format for summer. As such, the workload is distributed over a shorter period of time and things move quickly! For example, for courses that have a midterm exam, students may be taking this exam in Week 3, possibly after only 4 class meetings. For this reason, students need to attend every class, keep up with assignments, and seek out help early if they start to fall behind.
Yale Summer Session classes range in size (8-30 or more students), where the majority are seminar-style (i.e., discussion-based) classes with an average class size of 12 students. Therefore, these are not large lecture classes where a student can passively attend, hide, or hope to “coast” through. Instead, each student is expected to be actively engaged in the classroom experience.
All online courses have a synchronous component where students must login at a specific day and time for live class meetings. These meetings require all students to have a working webcam and a clear audio connection. If your audio or video is not working, it will count as an absence.
Learn more
Students can learn more about student expectations and academic regulations in the YSS Student Handbook.