Sophia Catsambi

“My favorite part of Yale has been the community the international student body provides. For my first 3 years I was involved in OIS, which was one of the most wonderful & rewarding experiences of my time at Yale. There is something incredibly special about bringing together people from different parts of the world & seeing how quickly they grow close to each other-partly because they have the shared experience of being far away from home. Being part of the OIS team gave me the chance to both witness friendships blossoming & also to feed off the energy personally.

Jemimah Orevaoghene

“The most beautiful things about Yale are all the people you meet. When I arrived on campus for the Orientation for International Students (OIS), I was sad to see my mom leave. It suddenly hit me that I was 2 oceans away from everything I knew to be familiar, and everyone I loved. I was now in a new place where I'm just another face–another student in a class. I started to feel small and invisible. At Yale though, since you have access to all these different spaces, I learned the importance of actively choosing the people you surround yourself with.

Valentina Wakeman

“I was born in London, but spent my childhood in Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Puerto Rico, and Miami before coming to Yale. My upbringing was both composed and defined by change. The only constants were the three other people living through it all with me. As a result, I am completed by my family, and am nothing without them. My brother is the centre of my life, my mom is my best friend, and my dad is my hero. Having each other was the only source of solid ground–especially when we felt most alone.

Joseph (Sang Wuk) Lee

“I was born in South Korea, but I grew up in the Philippines. Not really returning to Korea, felt very much like never being “home”. I had to both reimagine and recreate that feeling with the friends and communities I was with.

Tom Digby

“I grew up near Henley, where rowing is everything. Upperclassmen in my school were famous for winning the famous Henley Regattas every year. I admired them greatly for their success, and thought I could maybe create my own athletic potential. So I started training. I had no idea what I was doing, but there was a rowing machine in the shed, and a couple of weights. One day, I broke one of our school records, which boosted my confidence. Ambition somewhat followed achievements; the school record turned into a world record, and contemplating the Olympics first came at the age of 15.

Faith Chumo

“I grew up in Nairobi. I always knew I wanted med school, and have always been both outspoken and academic. I'm also a feminist, even though my family doesn't understand that; my older brother & father especially. As much as they support me, I've always been misunderstood. They think I'm too radical; my dad even told me that feminism “is a cult”. I've always been the little girl in my family, and in African communities, males are heavily celebrated. There have been female genocides, where mothers kill their own female babies because they are ashamed to bear them.

Devyani Aggarwal

“Hello world! I am Devyani Aggarwal, a native of New Delhi and a final-year student at Yale College. I am a History and French major, heading to Cambridge University for an MPhil program this fall. I know a thing or two about art, culture and politics. I hope to some day be an advocate for artisanal communities in developing countries.

Seon Augusto Ferreira

“It's somewhat of a crazy path that I took to end up at Yale. I didn't know what I was doing when I decided to apply to US colleges; I had never even gone abroad. I spent 19 years in my native Salvador, Brazil–a city, but nothing compared to something like New York. Everything started when one of my friends showed me a video about MIT, and said she couldn't wait to apply. I didn't want to let her down, so we decided to apply together. I Googled MIT and found Yale's website as a related link, and I quickly became very interested in the liberal arts system.

Subscribe to Front page feed