Communities Event Highlights What’s Special about Yale SOM
Yale SOM hosted its Communities event at Evans Hall earlier this fall. As one of the Consortium liaisons for Yale SOM and also the admissions chair on our Student Government, I am very committed to ensuring that Yale SOM continues to bring in a diverse and eclectic student body of all backgrounds, so I was really excited to help plan and execute many of the events for the weekend.
The event started with prospective students visiting SOM classes to get a feel for the academic program and curriculum. It is hard to understand the true academic culture of a school until you have personally experienced it, and I vividly remember visiting campus a few years ago and going to my first class session. Many of the prospective students I talked to said visiting classes and seeing the level of engagement from both faculty and students was one of their highlights of the weekend.
On the first evening, we hosted a special happy hour reception for all attendees at 116 Crown, a downtown favorite of SOMers. A large number of current students came out to meet prospective students and share their experiences in a more casual setting. It was very exciting to speak with prospective students with so many varied interests and to give them insights into my experience while helping them think about how SOM could fit into their future goals. The night was a blast and also entailed dinner at Cask Republic and eventually a stop at GPSCY, a popular Yale graduate student bar.
The second day was our main day of programming. We started the morning with an opening talk from the leaders of some of our various affinity groups at SOM: Consortium, Black Business Alliance (BBA), and the Latino Leadership Association (LLA). All leaders gave an overview of the mission of the clubs as well as our goals and objectives for the year ahead. Following the overview, we held numerous panels for perspective students on everything ranging from our academic curriculum and global studies programs to the career development office, clubs, and student life. We ended the day with a panel of first- and second-year students giving advice and answering questions about their experiences at Yale SOM as students of color. Overall, we received tremendous feedback following the event from the attendees we interacted with. I think the event was a great testament to what is so special to me about Yale SOM: it’s a warm, mission-driven community that celebrates diverse perspectives and builds lasting relationships.