Academics

Yale University Library System

Making your academic life easier: We know how stressful that classes can be (and how costly they can be!) One of the most underutilized resources is the Yale University Library system! It is the second-largest academic library system in North America and has over 15 MILLION volumes. Here are some tips to successfully navigate that:

• Borrow Direct: For humanities majors with classes that assign five or more books, Borrow Direct is an easy resource to avoid spending hundreds of dollars on readings. Borrow Direct lets you check out books from any school in the Ivy League for the semester. Books typically arrive within a few days, which comes in handy if you're on a time crunch. Read more here. 

• Personal Librarian: Everyone gets assigned a personal librarian when they come to Yale. If you need helping finding resources for a research project or thesis, you can ask these folks questions and set up meetings with them to find the answers. Find out who your PL is here! 

• Renting Out Equipment: If you need to take video/pictures for class (or just want to have a photoshoot with friends!), Bass has equipment that you can rent out for free. You can see what they have available here!

source: FGLI Newsletter (Volume 3 issue 04)

Textbooks

Textbooks can be one of your major expenses at the very start of the school year. Following is a list of possible tips and advice to help you decrease the cost of textbooks: 

• Prioritize the use of your Start-Up Grant to purchase textbooks, course materials, and lab materials. 

• If your professor staggers their readings throughout the entire semester, do not buy all your books at once but rather as needed! 

• Purchase or rent your textbooks from an online retailer like Amazon. 

• Check books out from the Bass Library Course Reserves. 

• Share textbooks with friends, suitemates, or classmates. 

• Ask your professors if they have any extra copies of the books and/or have an online version that can be accessed as a PDF.

source: FGLI Newsletter (Volume 3 issue 01)

Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning

We help students learn how to navigate the “hidden curriculum” of Yale–that invisible set of underlying assumptions and expectations about how to do well as a student that are implicitly embedded in Yale’s culture and are not taught in the classroom. By becoming aware of these implicit cultural-academic norms, students become empowered to take a new and more active kind of ownership over their own academic choices, and ultimately, to get the most out of their academic experience, no matter who they are or where they are in their educational journey. 

We give students the tools to do this through 1-1 mentoring sessions, group mentoring sessions, and interactive workshops with our amazing team of peer mentors. Check out the mentorship program for students in STEM: STEM Navigators.

Want to make an appointment? Email us anytime at academicstrategies@yale.edu (link sends an e-mail)!

We work with all students. See our menu to the left for links to our different kinds of support. Sign up for our weekly newsletter by registering with us on YaleConnect:  https://yaleconnect.yale.edu/PoorvuAcademicStrategies/club_signup