Author Archives: Pamela Shen

For most American students, the SAT takes three hours and 45 minutes out of a Saturday — painful, but not nearly as painful as the experience endured by some international students. For students living in a country where the SAT is not offered, traveling to the test requires more time and money — and that »

Amidst the trumpeters, eggnog and gingerbread houses, the doors decorated as presents, melons carved into the shape of birds and breads from all around the world, the annual Yale College freshman holiday dinner has a few key centerpieces: the ice sculptures. Carved out of 300-pound blocks of ice with a chain saw by Commons chef »

Last winter, Reny Diaz ’08 described a typical day at Yale. “Anyways, I’ve spent the day marveling at the amount of fellowships and internships available through Yale’s Office of International Education and Fellowships,” he wrote on his blog for Yale’s admitted students Web site. “Once I get tired of doing that, there’s a SigEp mixer »

In an effort to keep on-campus jobs competitive and accommodate the increasing cost of attending Yale, the University increased Yale’s student minimum wage this year from $10.50 to $10.90 an hour. But for many of the 1,725 students working at Yale this semester, the increase in the student minimum wage is welcome but insufficient, as »

In one of the stained-glass windows in the Calhoun College dining hall, a black man and woman walk through a field, baskets of produce on their heads. Although no explicit description of the window’s contents is provided, the image it presents is unmistakable: this is John C. Calhoun’s South Carolina, the produce in the basket »

Rebecca Fabbro ’09 may have a Jewish first name and belong to a Jewish sorority, but she is not a Jew. Growing up in the large Jewish community of Scarsdale, N.Y., and having many friends who are Jewish, Fabbro said she always felt very at home with the Jewish culture, which is why she joined »

In order to accommodate the high demand for the oversubscribed journalism seminar of Steven Brill ’72 LAW ’75, the English Department is considering hiring a “Pulitzer Prize level journalist” to teach the class during the spring semester. Last January, CourtTV founder Brill donated $1 million to fund the Yale Journalism Initiative, which will invite journalists »

Beginning next month, the University will stop mailing students paper copies of bills to their homes and continue to send monthly financial statements only by e-mail, a move expected to save Yale thousands of dollars annually. The discontinuation of paper bills for tuition and bursar charges will eliminate printing and mailing costs, which often climb »

Two years ago, political commentator Rush Limbaugh dismissed in his blog the importance of School of Medicine surgery and neurobiology professor Joseph Santos-Sacchi’s in vitro chloride ion and hearing study. But Limbaugh recently received a cochlear implant to help with his hearing, and Sacchi says he wonders what the talk show host would say about »

When asked whether he feels more Afghan or more American, Hyder Akbar ’07 would rather skirt the question. “My identity itself isn’t intrinsically interesting; it’s the perspective it gives me that’s compelling,” Akbar wrote in the prologue to his memoir, “Come Back to Afghanistan,” published last year. “I probably don’t totally understand either world, but »

A Yale College Council resolution passed last Wednesday night calls for Yale to overhaul its system of reporting and responding to accusations of sexual assault on campus, but administrators and student groups are divided about the merits of the YCC’s proposal for reform. The resolution proposes the creation of an official University advocacy position dedicated »

The Paris Review prints one or two of the more than 20,000 submissions it receives every year, and editor Philip Gourevitch said Tuesday that their taste is somewhat eclectic — citing published interviews with a professional mourner, a graverobber and a man who runs a public toilet. Gourevitch, a former reporter for The New Yorker, »