Spring Checklist for College Advisers to First-Years

When to contact your advisees

• Please contact your first-year advisees by Wednesday, January 15 — the third day of the term. (For those of you reading this after that date, now’s the time!)

Where to find your advisees’ contact information

• Your advisees’ contact information, fall grades, and other advising-related information are available via Student Profile (under Advising, DUS, and DGS Resources on the Registrar’s Office’s website). The URL for Student Profile, for those who want to bookmark it, is https://studentsystems.yale.edu/StudentSelfService/ssb/termSelection.
  • N.B. The Registrar’s Office deactivated the Academic Adviser Website (the old advising portal) in fall 2019.

What your email to your advisees might say

• Your welcome back email might contain words of greeting plus the dates and times you’ve set aside for one-on-one advising meetings (or a link to your calendaring app)

When to meet with your advisees and for how long

• Plan to meet your advisees twice between January 13-22:
  1. once for a thorough (30-60”) one-on-one meeting
  2. once for a brief (15”) check-in before signing the schedules

Please keep in mind that there’s no spring-term equivalent to fall’s group advising meeting in the residential colleges, so advisers are responsible for taking the initiative to arrange January advising meetings.

What to talk about during your advising meetings

• Your meetings should be holistic in nature (academics, including course selection, and extracurricular activities, but also — and perhaps more important — a recap of the fall term, including your advisees’ thoughts on lessons learned and adjustments they plan to make in their second term at Yale.
• First-years who intend to major in a STEM field normally declare a major by the end of the first year. Nearly all other students wait until the sophomore year — and generally the end of the sophomore year — to declare a major. For those students, their second term at Yale is still a term of exploration and they should be reassured if they don’t have a major selected after a single term of college.
• Any questions about academics that you don’t know how to handle should be addressed to the dean of your residential college deans or to the relevant DUS. In other words, you’re not expected to know all 2,000 Yale College courses, 80+ majors, and the academic rules and regulations!

When spring 2020 first-year course schedules are due

• 5:00 p.m. on January 22 is the spring 2020 deadline for submitting course schedules for the Class of 2023. All schedules are submitted to the residential college dean’s office
• Students must print a paper copy of their course schedules and procure your “wet” signature by the deadline

What if …

• You’re unable to sign your advisees’ course schedules by the deadline
  • click here for instructions.
• You’re unavailable to meet your advisees before January 22
• inform your residential college dean so that the dean may make alternative arrangements.
• there are two possible explanations:
  • your advisee has selected a new college adviser for the spring term
  • your advisee has declared a major and the DUS has become your advisee’s adviser
• Students are missing from your list of advisees

Only the Registrar’s Office has full access to adviser/advisee matches, so please direct any questions about “missing” advisees to registrar@yale.edu

What else to keep in mind

• January 17: Monday classes meet on Friday
• January 20: Martin Luther King Jr. Day; classes do not meet
• Spring deadlines
  •  Yale College Calendar with pertinent spring deadlines is available here
  • January deadlines are printed below: