Yale Fan goes to Harvard
Photo courtesy: Michael Marsland, Yale University
Hypathway's Notes: A brilliant high school senior from Oregon won the second place of this year’s Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. In the efforts of competing the talent pool each year, elite colleges usually offer attractive packages to the top award winners of major science contests to influence their decision making process. As a result of this award, he was accepted by Harvard, Yale and Princeton for the class of 2014. However, this Chinese-American student attracted the media attention beyond his strong stride in the academic competition, his unique Chinese name and his subsequent college decision by choosing Harvard over Yale were more interested.
His initial Chinese name was Ye Fan as “Ye” was part of the given name of Shiye, and of course, Fan as his surname. His parents thought that “Ye” was too short so they inserted two letters of “al” in the middle to transform his given name from “Ye” to “Yale” that eventually led his official name to Yale W.Fan. There is no place for us to verify if Yale was in his parents’ mind when his name was formally changed. Putting this into a perspective of a traditionally rivalry between Harvard and Yale, he would be the only Yale Fan among Harvard students who will be attending the fall Harvard-Yale football game.
While parents have the right to name their kids anything they want, but Harvard, Yale and Stanford in the end are pretty much peoples’ surnames, particularly the noted individuals of WASP background (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). That is why Yale is also the name for a place or a security company. Actually Yale as a name per se is not easy at all, we still remembered that our daughter informing her friends that “my brother is going to jail” when her brother decided for Yale. Traditionally, common America’s given names were derived from Bible, such as John, Peter and David. In contrast to the Chinese culture, these names do not have the same notorious meanings as Chinese names for 聪 (smart), 勇 (brave) or 强(strong) imply. One of the local Chinese parents named their son“Intelly” to mimics their wish of 聪. You would image how socially awkward this kid would be as he is trying to be fitting into America's culture. This kid was indeed a smart student with a perfect SAT score and has a promised career down the road, but what if he is only a mediocre student? For civilized individuals we should not judge a book by its cover, but you hope that your ambitious in naming your child would not be counterproductive. For example, when your son or daughter is ready for a serious job interview, a senior member of the search committee would not tease out that “I never knew someone who named their child a famous university.”
Yale Fan Chooses Harvard
The Harvard Crimson's Fly By blog, Jun 9, 2010
Despite what his name might suggest, Yale W. Fan will be joining the incoming class of 2014—at Harvard.
Curious, we asked Fan about his interesting name and wise decision.
"I don't think my name is that interesting," said Fan, who told us that"Yale" was just phonetically close to his Chinese name, "Ye"—which is part of "shiye," meaning "undertaking." His parents decided that two letters was just too short for a name (how unfortunate for this Flyby correspondent), so they added "al" in the middle and made "Yale."
"When I introduce myself to people, people like to ask, 'Do you want to go to Yale?'" Fan said. "I had never really seriously considered it until this year because I had only thought of [Yale] as a law school...and I only decided to apply to Harvard last year."
Fan, a competitive science researcher from Oregon, was accepted to Yale,Princeton, and Harvard, among other universities that were "similar in academics." After visiting these three in that order, he decided on Harvard.
"I chose Harvard because it combines the different aspects of what these schools have to offer," Fan said. "I like the flexibility of the curriculum. It provides the opportunities to do a lot of different things."
Other than perhaps not knowing where to sit at The Game, as Fan told the Yale Alumni Magazine Blog,Fan doesn't foresee many problems with telling new people his name. He too thinks it's funny—at least, for now.
"If I constantly hear jokes about my name for four years," Fan said, "it might not be funny anymore."
Fan assured us that he is still a fan of Yale. We'll see about that in the fall.
Harvard’s Only Yale Fan
By Michael Sewall, The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 21, 2010
An Oregon high-school student named Yale W. Fan will be rooting for the Bulldogs' biggest rival this fall when he starts at Harvard University.Despite reportedly having been accepted to Yale, Mr. Fan opted for Cambridge over New Haven.
Maybe he didn't want to be "that guy," with his name sewn on his sweater. Or maybe he just preferred Harvard's science and math program.
We wouldn't know. He wouldn't talk to us.
The blog of the Yale Alumni Magazine first pointed out the irony after spotting an Oregonian articles that highlighted Mr. Fan's second-place finish in a national science competition. After talking to the magazine and to The Harvard Crimson's Fly By blog, Mr. Fan told Tweed that the situation had been "blown out of proportion" and that it was"non-newsworthy."
That is precisely why we were interested.
As Harvard's admissions director, Marlyn McGrath, observed in an e-mail message, Yale Fan is a "very snazzy" name. But once you cleave the student's given name from his boosterish surname, things get less exclusive. At least two Yales attend Cornell University, a couple Yales teach at Penn, and of course Cornel West is a professor at Princeton.(Perhaps somewhere a young woman named Ivy League is puzzling over which prestigious Northeast university to attend.)
After checking Harvard's online directory, we found one more Yale who's enrolled at Harvard: Yale Michaels. Unlike Mr. Fan, he applied to Harvard but not to Yale. Here's why, or at least his joke about why, he didn't apply to the university with which he shares a name:
"The first thing everyone asks when I introduce myself is why I didn't go to Yale," says Mr. Michaels, a rising sophomore. "So I usually say I had a dream of going to Yale, and they would get my application and see 'Yale' on it and think, 'We already know the name of this school; this kid's an idiot.' And because of that, I say I didn't even bother applying."
Mr. Michaels recalls one memorable day in which heplayed against Yale in a rugby game and later attended the Harvard-Yale football game.
"I never had so many people cheering for me," he says.
But his fellow Harvard fans, perhaps cursing his name?
"I think it's hilarious." —Michael Sewall
Two Catlin Gabel students bring home top Intel international science awards
Published: Friday, May 14, 2010
Wendy Owen, The Oregonian
Yale Fan and Kevin Ellis celebrate their Intel International science fair win this afternoon. Two Catlin Gabel students were awarded $50,000 each for their computer science projects today at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in San Jose.
Yale Fan, 18, of Beaverton and Kevin Ellis, 18, of Vancouver, were the second-place finishers out of 1,611 competitors from 59 countries, regions and territories.
It is the first time in the Intel International competition's 14-year history that two of the top three winners have attended the same school, said Bill MacKenzie Intel Communications Manager.
Caught by cell phone an hour after the competition, both teenagers still sounded a bit shocked.
"It was loud and we were surrounded by the press and we were mobbed onstage and it was kind of hectic," Fan said as he rode a train to his hotel.
Both boys had already won ribbons in other categories for their projects — physics and astronomy for Fan, computer science for Ellis — and were waiting in the audience at the San Jose Convention Center for the names of the top three overall winners.
Amy Chyao of Richardson, Texas, came first. She received a $75,000 prize in honor of Gordon E. Moore, Intel co-founder and retired chairman and CEO. Fan and Ellis were next.
"It didn't quite seem fathomable," Fan said. "The thing is it still is kind of like winning the lottery."
Confetti rained down as the boys held plaques and smiled for all the news cameras.
Both teenagers plan to use the money for college. Ellis will attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Fan will head to Harvard.
Ellis ran off a list of majors, "Computer science, but I'm also interested in math and physics and robotics," he said. "I want to try all different things."
Fan plans to major in physics and math but also continue studying computers.
Both teens created projects around computers. Ellis developed a method to automatically speed up computer programs by analyzing the programs while they are running so that work could be divided across multiple microprocessors.
Fan's project demonstrated the advantages of quantum computing in performing difficult computations. The Oregonian featured Fan and Ellis in a story in January after they were named national finalists.
Back in Oregon, Catlin Gabel, a private school in Beaverton, was abuzz with the news.
"We are so proud," said Karen Katz, communications director. "They're amazing boys and they're very humble and really well liked by their peers. They have described their research at assemblies and they get standing ovations."
Katz said she expects to see them one day win Nobel Prizes.
Both students are returning home tonight.
The Intel Foundation also awarded $8,000 each to 19 Best of Category winners and provided $1,000 grants to the winners’ schools and the affiliated fairs they represent.
In addition to Fan and Ellis, Oregon had three category winners:
Avilash Cramer, 17, West Linn High School, won the environmental management category with his project "Design, Fabrication, and Evaluation of a Deployable In Situ Nitrate Sensor for Real-Time Analysis of Sediments."
Akash Krishnan,15, and Matthew Fernandez,16, both of Oregon Episcopal School, won the physical sciences category with their project, "The Classification and Recognition of Emotions in Prerecorded German Speech: Using MATLAB 7.8 Student Edition." The Portland teenagers also won top team project for the European Union Contest for Young Scientists.
The Intel International Science and Engineering Fair finalists were selected from 539 affiliated fairs around the world, according to Intel. Their projects were then evaluated on site by more than 1,000 judges from nearly every scientific discipline, each with a Ph.D. or the equivalent of six years of related professional experience in one of the scientific disciplines.
Posted 星期日, 07/04/2010 - 14:17 by Fishville at www.tongjiyiren.com (hypathway@hotmail.com).
