LAS wrote:I didn't get the call with lots of questions about my interests, but I did get an email asking me if I wanted Mr. Jacinek to forward my information to the Outlaws group. He said he'd forgotten to ask during the call.
any other queermos in the class so far?
kp429, i'd love to hear your thoughts from visiting. any ideas about where to live?
Hey,
I visited on Saturday -- it was about 3 degrees with the wind chill, flurrying, and just a generally dreary day. Most students had already headed home. I checked out the Sterling Library (which is the main campus library) and it was breathtaking. They just renovated the lower levels of the library ("Bass Library") and it is one of the nicest two stories I've ever seen. There's an obscene amount of study space, everything is super high tech, the chairs are all leather, there are individual closed-door study rooms, the group study rooms all have huge flat-screen HDTVs, and the stacks are gorgeous. Everything is spotless and clean, and the gothic architecture is even nicer on the inside than out (imho).
I then headed over to the Law Quad and was again blown away. It's really neat that everything is basically in one place -- admissions, finaid, all of the professors offices, the library, the classrooms, the dining halls, student lounge, etc. The courtyard is really great and relatively spacious and the inside of the Law "quad" is everything you'd imagine Yale to be. I come from another "lesser" Ivy and although our endowment is large, our facilities simply do not compare to Yale's.
The gym is was nice, but not as nice as I had imagined. I am a gym rat myself and will spned a lot of time working out during my 3 years of law school so the gym was a potential selling point for me. The gym is about 9 stories high I believe -- a pool on the 3rd floor, weights + cardio on the 4th, basketball courts on the 1st.. all very nice I suppose. A lot of the weight equipment is very old and while there is an enormous amount of "options," so to speak, I was a bit underwhelmed by the facility for some reason.
As far as dorms go, I didn't get to see any of them b/c I wasn't sure exactly where law students resided. I couldn't get a straight answer from the few people I asked so I assume a lot of the students live off-campus.
Speaking of off-campus, New Haven leaves a lot to be desired. The immediate area around Yale consists of a few strips of stores, a few small clothing chains, and a few independently-owned restaurants. I was not very impressed at all and find that it might be very, VERY boring and difficult to find things to do in the "city." I come from a huge city and high school so the small size of New Haven is not so appealing to me.
Overall, the campus is small, beautiful, and cozy. The facilities truly are world-class and the law quad is really amazing. New Haven is quite a downer, however, but I think that might depend on the perspective of the visitor. If you have any specific questions, feel free to PM me or reply here. Hope this helps even a little bit!
Although, much less people apply to Yale b/c they self-select themselves out of YLS - the pool of YLS applicants, I imagine, are a bit more accomplished/numerically stronger than that of HLS, in general. 
