For 21 New Haven Public School graduates, college begins at home. The students were admitted into Yale University’s class of 2028 and they are the largest group to enter as freshmen in the school’s history.
“I’m very happy I had the opportunity to get in,” said Christopher Vera. This week, he’s starting at Yale - his dream school - walking distance from his home downtown.
He always knew about Yale, but he didn’t realize how prestigious it was until he was in middle school. Vera tried not to think too much about the competitive application process.
“I wasn’t too worried about it going in. I understood that whatever happens, happens,” he said. "And either way, whatever school I got into, I’d make the most of it.”
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But it’s what happened while he was in New Haven Public Schools that likely made a difference, and it made a difference among nearly two dozen New Haven students now at Yale.
He signed up for a Yale student mentoring program called New Haven Reach, where a first year student helps guide a public school senior through the application process.
He also joined the Yale Pathways to Science program, which offers a number of STEM programs for middle and high school students in New Haven, West Haven and Orange. Vera stayed with it through his senior at Wilbur Cross, where he interned at a Yale lab.
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“Thermal conductivity of very thin, nanometer thick films,” Vera said. He now plans to study science at Yale.
“Molecular cellular developmental biology and I’m on the premed track," he continued.
Vera and the 20 other New Haven students made up the total admissions offered to city students, and all of them accepted their offers. New Haven Assistant Superintendent Keisha Redd-Hannans said this is exciting news for the school system.
“Yale is being intentional in their efforts to reach back into the community and help our students, and our community will benefit immensely from these efforts,” Redd-Hannans said. “To hear that number, it sets us apart from many other districts and it talks about the opportunities that we are providing our students.”
The partnership between the university and the school system has grown, according to Redd-Hannans, which has also led to helpful programs for students.
She said New Haven Public Schools has also worked hard to offer stronger educational opportunities to make students more competitive. Their own pathways program is just getting started, plus they have dual-enrollment programs for students to take college classes while still in high school.
“We believe this has increased the level of rigor for our students and made them more marketable to universities such as Yale University,” said Redd-Hannans, who says 70% of graduates this year went on to college. Many stayed in state, but others went to out of state schools, she said, including to Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Yale University’s educational support programs for the city include the Pennington Fellowship which offers New Haven students scholarships to attend HBCU’s, and New Haven Promise, which supports K-12 students in preparation for college. The program has 900 students who have graduated from 2- and 4-year college programs.
“A huge priority for the university to continue the existing partnerships and then grow them as well,” said Alexandra Daum, Yale University’s associate vice president for New Haven Affairs and University Properties.
The most popular program is Pathways to Science and she says most of the 21 students were part of that program.
“Any given time, there's about 1,000 New Haven Public School students that are participating in Yale programming in STEM,” Daum said. “That could be a one-hour presentation on a specific topic to younger kids with a shorter attention span, and it could go all the way up to internships for high school students in a Yale lab. And so, this Pathways program is how we get kids onto campus involved in STEM and learning from Yale resources.”
And the goal, she says, is to get kids excited about Yale, on the Yale campus and able to leverage Yale resources. The program is so popular, there is a Pathways to Humanities program in development.
As the vice president for New Haven Affairs, Daum said it’s exciting to see students take part in free, community programs offered by Yale, and now become members of the Yale family. Many of them came through the Pathways program.
“So, there is a strong tie, we believe, with our programs and those admissions numbers,” Daum said.
Vera said he is glad to see the university’s efforts at helping to make Yale accessible through local support programs. And according to the university’s website, there have been policy changes across the board for undergraduate financial aid, an increase in Pell-eligible students, as well as increased numbers of first-generation students.
It’s something that isn’t lost on Vera.
“A lot of us are coming from low income or minority groups. So, I think it’s very important that we’re given the opportunity to come to such a prestigious university," Vera said.
He said it’s still surreal to be at Yale, and while he’s excited to meet so many people from around the country and across the globe, knowing 20 other people who are from New Haven helps ease the new student anxieties.
“It felt very surreal in the greatest way possible because you look around and you see these people I went to high school with and it’s like, we’re really here!” Vera said.
