Yale College 2024: Meet some of the graduates
Top row, left to right, Nathan Chen, Awa Cisse, and Rohan Krishnan. Second row, left to right, Olivia Sally, Max Hammond, and Mirabel Nguyen.
Here, Yale News spotlights a few of the exceptional members of the Yale College Class of 2024, a group whose accomplishments and contributions have strengthened the Yale campus and the world beyond.
Selected from nominations submitted by residential college heads and deans, these outstanding students include poets and physicists, pianists, and environmentalists, even an Olympic gold medal winner. One arrived on campus with visions of becoming a neurosurgeon, but soon found his calling as a writer. Another, who came to Yale through the Eli Whitney Students Program, returned to her native Senegal with other Yale scientists waging a long-term battle on malaria. When they weren’t in the classroom, they were assisting migrant communities, creating new curricula for schoolchildren, or looking to prove long-held physics theories.
We hope this small but impressive sample offers a sense of the creativity, compassion, and resilience of the undergraduate Class of 2024.
Nicole Alleyne
For Nicole Alleyne, the human body is a versatile instrument — a maker of music, a channel to the past, a tool for learning, and a link to the land. She has tapped into these potentials while inspiring others to do the same through her academic and extracurricular pursuits at Yale College and beyond.
In her capstone project at Yale, Alleyne reimagined outdoor education with a focus on connecting Black students to the land. She also did fieldwork for a “land-based pedagogy” project during a gap year, leading a natural science curriculum for 5th-graders in Oregon.
“Something that is totally missing in traditional education is treating students’ bodies as active parts and interlocutors in their learning experience,” she said. “For instance, when learning about plant species, we were using our senses. We were looking or touching, smelling… Your body has all of these tools in order to learn about the world. How can we use our bodies and these gifts in ways we might not be able to do in the classroom?”
Read more about Nicole Alleyne
Nathan Chen
Nathan Chen always knew his Yale career would be split in two: when he arrived in the fall of 2018, the figure skater already had the 2022 Winter Olympics in his sights, and would need to take time off to prepare and compete.
While on campus, the demands of training meant that his days were packed, with classes in the morning and rink time in the afternoon. And even as he carried a full course load, he embarked on a remarkable competitive winning streak. He continued to dominate the sport during two years of leave from Yale, reaching the summit of the sport with a gold medal in men's single figure skating at the Beijing Olympics in 2022. Then came a whirlwind few months that included talk show appearances and a tour with Stars on Ice.
Yet when he returned to Yale that fall, it was with a renewed sense of excitement at becoming a student again — and discovering some of the experiences he’d missed the first time around.
Awa Cisse
There’s a word that carries deep cultural meaning in Awa Cisse’s native Senegal; Téranga, which comes from the Wolof language, connotes the values of selflessness and generosity, and the importance of giving back to one’s community.
For Cisse, the word téranga isn’t just a reminder of her Senegalese roots, it’s a sort of guidepost for how she wants to live her life.
As a young, girl she frequented hospitals for a variety of reasons and developed an appreciation for just how many people it takes to provide patient care. “There is this whole ecosystem of care, from the people who greet you at the front door to those who assist you when you’re leaving,” said Cisse, who came to Yale as part of the Eli Whitney Students Program.
“Every single piece of the puzzle is important, and it all helps make everything work. This is what inspired me to pursue a life in health care.”
Amy Cohen
Drop in on Amy Cohen and chances are you’ll find her creating something beautiful: an architectural frame, a laser-cut puzzle, a strawberry cake, an oil painting. The mechanical engineering student’s online portfolio also displays a music box, a ceramic bowl, even a menorah made of hex nuts.
“My grandfather bought me an Erector Set when I was little — sort of foreshadowing that I’ve always loved making things,” said Cohen.
She chose her major because it combined math and design — “two things I really like.” While completing a professionally accredited track with a near-perfect GPA, she worked with the acclaimed Hatfield Group as a structural engineering intern. Meanwhile, the mechanical engineering department, recognizing her enthusiasm for the field, chose her as an undergraduate representative for committee and recruitment work.
“It’s a small major — we’ve all had many classes together, so I’d say it feels like family,” Cohen said. “And I'm lucky to have several professors who have really taken an interest in helping me far beyond what was required in their class.”
Ben Everett-Lane
Ben Everett-Lane’s academic journey has been driven by a deep curiosity about others — and a desire to connect.
When he learned that in 2012 some residents on the Connecticut shoreline decided to stay in their homes despite the threat of Hurricane Sandy, he became fascinated with how they reached this decision. It would become the topic of his undergraduate thesis.
“How people perceive and behave around climate change is meaningful to me, because fundamentally, we don’t need more science to prove that climate change exists — there’s clearly some disconnect between the science and the way that we perceive it and interact with it,” he said. “I’m interested in being a person who’s able to re-analyze, communicate, and work with different groups of people around climate change to tackle these knowledge gaps.”
Read more about Ben Everett-Lane
Laura Guerra-Lopez
Growing up in Miami, Laura Guerra-Lopez would pepper her parents with questions about their native Venezuela, the once-democratic nation that was by then mired in political and economic chaos.
Looking back, Guerra-Lopez is grateful for the frank, but age-appropriate way her parents included her in those dinnertime conversations. “They would have real conversations,” she said. “They would tell me about what was going on, but they introduced things in a way that was not so devastating that I turned away from it.”
Those interactions with her parents, and their closeness as a family in a new country where they had no other relatives, ignited her passion for social justice and serving the immigrant community.
Read more about Laura Guerra-Lopez
Max Hammond
Over the winter, Max Hammond gave more time than usual to the piano — about eight hours a day, up from his long-term average of about five. He was applying to conservatories and aiming to impress.
The mathematics major from Los Angeles also took care to provide for his customary allotment of nightly rest: “I can’t function without eight or nine hours,” he said.
The extra keyboard and pillow time paid off: Hammond, a past winner of Yale’s Sharp Prize for “most outstanding performer in the junior class,” was accepted at six top music conservatories. After Yale, he’ll enroll at Julliard as a master’s degree candidate in solo piano performance, in tune with his pursuit of a career as a recitalist steeped in but hardly confined to the classical music cannon.
“I want to figure out what’s next in classical music,” he said.
Rohan Krishnan
Supporting refugee students as they navigated their new lives in New Haven was just one of many ways Rohan Krishnan made global connections during his time at Yale.
He came to campus committed to helping young migrants succeed academically — a cause he became passionate about while performing community service as a high school student. Beyond that, he was simply eager to experience as many new people, subjects, and activities as time would allow, thinking “the sky’s the limit.”
Still, he was amazed by the multitude of Yale’s offerings.
“Never would I have imagined that I would meet world leaders, take courses with several former U.S. ambassadors, or tackle a real-world foreign policy issue,” said Krishnan, who majored in global affairs.
Read more about Rohan Krishnan
Alyssa Michel
Before arriving at Yale four years ago, Alyssa Michel imagined that college life would be something like an extension of her high school years. An engaged student in high school, involved in 20 or so clubs, she expected her time at Yale would involve similar pursuits.
“I thought that if I swam in high school, then I would swim in college. Or if I did journalism in high school, I would have to do journalism in college,” said Michel. “What I didn’t expect is that you can do whatever you want. And, especially at a place like Yale, when you do something, it becomes your baby, and you invest a lot of time into it.”
This realization opened up many new worlds to Michel — including podcasting, gardening, teaching, and even launching a business inspired by her grandmother’s traditional sorrel recipe.
Grace Miller
As a Yale sophomore, Grace Miller began working as a student tutor in the Department of Economics. Helping her peers grasp the principles and intricacies of macroeconomics made her realize she that has a passion for education.
A year later, she began working as an intern three days a week at Common Ground High School, a public charter school in New Haven, serving as an aide in an outdoor leadership class and freshman algebra, chaperoning overnight camping trips, and running an afterschool program. And for her senior thesis, the economics major, who also completed the Education Studies Scholars Intensive Certificate, conducted an analysis of the effects of public school district mergers in Vermont.
Next year, she will teach in Chattanooga, Tennessee’s public school system.
John Nguyen
John Nguyen entered Yale with plans to become a neurosurgeon. Instead, he found his calling as a writer.
As a high school student in St. Paul, Minnesota, he had been laser-focused on STEM subjects. But after taking some English classes at Yale he discovered a new love for reading and writing — with the support of a community of humanists that included a Nobel Prize-winning poet.
He decided to major in English and developed such a fondness for poetry that he started writing poems on his own. Last year Nguyen was selected to represent Yale in the annual Connecticut Poetry Circuit, a statewide competition of college student poets.
“I’d never encountered such community in any other space.”
Mirabel Nguyen
Mirabel Nguyen came to Yale having never visited the campus. In fact, she’d barely seen any photographs before arriving in New Haven for the first time. But when selecting a college, she was determined not to be swayed by beautiful scenery anyway; she wanted to choose a school solely on its academic merits.
Nguyen was determined to excel academically and busy herself with extracurricular activities. But after finally arriving at Yale, she began to develop more holistic goals.
“I learned that it’s so much more than academic and extracurricular excellence that matters to me,” Nguyen said. “It’s the relationships that I’ve been building with people that show me how to be a better person.”
Read more about Mirabel Nguyen
Olivia Sally
If you had asked Olivia Sally a year ago where she’d be after graduating from Yale, she would have answered that she would be in law school. But a conversation with Mira Debs last spring changed everything.
Sally had just dipped into the icy waters of the Madison Surf Club as part of a polar plunge event at the invitation of her teacher, Debs, executive director of Yale's Education Studies Program. While chatting over post-plunge tacos, Debs mentioned the life-changing experience she had as a Rhodes Scholar, and asked Sally whether she’d considered applying for a similar fellowship.
After eventually applying for, and receiving, a Marshall Scholarship, Sally decided to pursue a Master of Education and Master of Public Policy during two years in the UK, the first member of the Yale Education Studies Program.
Barkotel Zemenu
Barkotel Zemenu is a believer in the revelatory nature of relationships.
At the most fundamental level, he says, relationships between unseen particles form the scaffolding upon which the universe flourishes; on a more human level, relationships between people — especially when speaking a common language — make the experience of living deeply fulfilling.
Zemenu immersed himself in both kinds of relationships at Yale. He excelled in physics, focusing largely on research and development for a detector that may one day prove the existence of a theorized nuclear process called neutrinoless double beta decay, spoke at scientific conferences nationally and internationally, and conducted research on multiple continents.
In a way, however, Zemenu says his treasures lie elsewhere. “I did not expect college to be the place where academics stopped being my life’s top priority,” he said. “It was a place where I would find far more surpassing joy in the depth of my relationships, living with a fundamental others-centeredness.”
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