Please contact your sophomore advisees before classes start to introduce yourself and to begin arranging one-on-one advising meetings (the Monday or Tuesday before classes start are the ideal time). But, if those days have gone by and you haven’t contacted your sophomore advisees yet, now’s the time!
- One might hope that sophomore advisees would take the first step and contact their sophomore advisers but, practically speaking, that doesn’t often happen
- The best days for advising meetings are the Thursday and Friday after the first day of classes. Your advisees presumably will have been to a few classes by then, and will have also received a fair amount of information from their instructors, residential college deans, and others and will benefit from discussing that information and their plans with you earlier in course selection period rather than later
- The next best day for advising meetings is the Tuesday after Labor Day
- Your meetings should be holistic in nature (academics, including course selection, but also include your advisees’ reflections on their first year at Yale and their changing goals for their Yale College education and beyond)
- Any questions about academics that you’re not comfortable handling should be addressed to the relevant director of undergraduate studies (DUS) or to the residential college deans. Please remember that you’re not expected to know the ins and outs of all 2,000 Yale College courses or 85+ majors!
- Advising meetings for sophomores generally last between 30-60 minutes, depending on the flow of conversation
- Students neither “seal” nor “submit” their course schedules in fall 2021. Instead, the courses listed on their Yale College registration worksheets are simply “finalized” at 5:00 p.m. on the last day of add/drop period. No further student action is required
- Advisers neither approve nor sign student course schedules in fall 2021. Such action may be reinstated in subsequent terms. The lack of an adviser’s signature or approval does not obviate the need for adviser/advisee meeting, however, and instead shifts the emphasis to conversation and discussion and away from what sometimes was a transactional act
- Sophomores are expected to meet with their college advisees one or two times early in the fall term:
- a substantial one-on-one meeting (30-60”) during add/drop period
- as needed, a brief follow-up meeting to discuss updates to the student’s course schedule or other matters
Also keep in mind:
- the first Friday of classes in the fall term follows a Monday course schedule
- classes do not meet on Labor Day
- the director of undergraduate studies or the DUS’s designee becomes the official adviser of any student who declares a major
- Yale College students may have only one adviser at a time. Thus, if your sophomore advisee declares a major, that student then disappears from your roster of advisees (though you may opt to stay on as an unofficial adviser)
- sophomores should be encouraged to elect a faculty member as a sophomore-year college adviser, especially if they’ve identified a faculty member as a mentor or have narrowed down their choice of major