If you listen closely, there are nuances in how Yale students talk compared to non-Yalies. It is not that Yale students use more sophisticated vocabulary or are more eloquent, but it is because of Yale lingo. Yale students love having abbreviations for more efficient communication and most of all, we’re lazy. After accumulating such wisdom, I decided to pass this wealth of knowledge to you, so that you too, can sound like a well-adjusted, thriving college student.
Some first-fear specific lingo (we don’t use the word freshman at Yale)
- Baby Bulldogs: What Yale students refer to recently admitted students as (congrats baby bulldogs!)
- Pre-frosh: What Yale students refer to incoming students as (can be used interchangeably with Baby Bulldogs but pre-frosh is more like a toddler bulldog)
- Camp Yale: Orientation program for First Years after they move in
- HoC: Head of College
- FroCo: First Year Counselor
- FCC: First-Year Class Counsel, first-year student government
Popular lingo (probably the most useful section in this blog post)
- Buttery: Student-run snack shack, where students can buy cheap late-night snacks in their residential colleges
- Feb-Club: When seniors have a party every night of February (it’s a thing), seniors who go every night of the month get the honor of being a Feb-Club All-star
- CourseTable: The preferred website students use to find classes
- GroupMe: Group messaging app, somehow all clubs, organizations, and colleges have one
- GCal: Google calendar, every activity needs to go here or else it doesn’t exist
- The Game: Annual Harvard-Yale football game on the first Saturday of Thanksgiving Break
- G-Heav: A site for late-night eats, refers to Good Nature Market on Broadway, its nickname was from when it was formerly named Gourmet Heaven
- TD-Heav: Good Nature Market on Whitney (it’s the one close to TD, hence TD-Heav)
- GLC: The Good Life Center, there is one located in Schwarzman and another located in Silliman
- P-Set: Problem sets, the bane of my existence
- Reading Period/Reading Week: The week before finals week when students prepare for finals
- Resco: Pronounced “res-co”, short for residential college
- Shopping Period/Bluebooking: First week of classes in a semester when students “shop” for classes, blue-booking was used back when the process involved giant blue books
- Snackpass: An app to order food around New Haven
- Woads: Wednesdays at Toad’s Place, a popular nightclub
- Yague: Yale plague, trust me, you can never avoid it
- Yub: Yale hub, the website for all Yale-related things
Residential Colleges (abbreviations + lingo)
- BF: Benjamin Franklin College (students refer to it as Franklin)
- BK: Berkeley College
- BR: Branford College
- DC: Davenport College (students refer to it as D-port)
- ES: Ezra Stiles College (students refer to it as Stiles)
- GH: Grace Hopper College (students refer to it as Hopper)
- JE: Jonathan Edwards College (students refer to it as JE)
- MC: Morse College
- MY: Pauli Murray College (students refer to it as Murray)
- PC: Pierson College
- SM: Silliman College
- SY: Saybrook College
- TC: Trumbull College
- TD: Timothy Dwight College (students refer to it as TD)
Some popular buildings and places
- AACC: Asian American Cultural Center
- Af-Am: African American Cultural Center
- AKW: Arthur K. Watson Hall, basically CS building
- Bass: Bass Library
- Bow Wow: The Bow Wow, a convenience store with fancy airport vibes
- CEID: Pronounced “seed”, stands for The Center for Engineering, Innovation and Design
- Commons: A giant, Hogwarts-esk dining hall open for lunch, formally known as The Steven A. Schwarzman Center
- The Co-op: LGBTQ Student Cooperative
- Davies: Shortened for Davies Auditorium in Becton Center, a popular lecture hall
- HQ: Humanities quadrangle, home to humanities offices and classrooms
- KT: Kline Tower, a super tall building on Science Hill (see below)
- La Casa: La Casa Cultural
- LC: Linsly Chittenden Hall, located on Old Camps, home to many different classes and some lecture halls
- L-Dubb: Lanman Wright Hall, a dorm on Old Campus
- NACC: Native American Cultural Center
- PWG: Pawne Whitney Gym, a giant gym by Stiles and Morse
- RH: Rosenthal Hall, where some students in TD live
- RKZ: Rosenkranz Hall, I prefer to say RKZ but some say Rosenkranz
- Science Hill: A hill with many science classroom buildings by Franklin and Murray
- SML (or Sterling): Sterling Memorial Library, a famous old library
- SOM: School of Management, not to be confused with Yale School of Medicine, it is a cool glass building and some undergrads have classes there
- SSS: Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall (not to be confused with Est Est Est, a popular late-night pizza store)
- WLH: William L. Harkness Hall, a building for humanities, language, and social science classes
- XC: Cross Campus (I prefer to say Cross campus but XC is more convenient for texting)
- YSB: Yale Science Building
- YUAG: Pronounced “you-ag”, Yale University Art Gallery
- The Zoo: A space with a bunch of computers for CS students, located in AKW
Hopefully, this helps! Unfortunately, as fast as Yale students adopt Yale-lingo, they are subject to frequent changes. When in doubt, just add a “Y” in front of the word and you’ll be set for these next four years.
