Even before Xitlali Montoya-Hernandez SM ’26 had finished the First-Year Scholars at Yale (FSY) program as an incoming student, she knew she wanted to return as a counselor.

“In my time in FSY, all the counselors genuinely wanted to help us. It just felt like such a great community, and it really set me up for success at Yale,” she says. “Because of that positive experience, I wanted to come back to give back to others.” As a rising senior, she’s now serving as an FSY counselor, helping new students find their footing and helping to alleviate anxieties they may have about beginning their journeys at Yale.

The First-Year Scholars at Yale program, or FSY, is a six-week opportunity for incoming first-year students who are the first in their families to attend college or who come from low-income backgrounds. Through classes and coursework during the summer before their first semester, FSY students get early exposure to the Yale academic experience, ensuring that they’re ready for the demands of their first college classes.

FSY also showed Montoya-Hernandez many campus resources that, she says, she might not have known about were it not for the program. The career strategy and study abroad offices, she notes, have proved invaluable to her during her years at Yale. “If not for FSY, I don’t think I would have used these resources,” she says. They have helped shape her academic direction.

Studying abroad for a summer in Barbados, she says, gave her “context for how the world functions today,” leading her to study the Atlantic slave trade. And her semester studying abroad in Barcelona led her to change her major to Spanish.

During her time at Yale, Montoya-Hernandez has connected more with her Mexican heritage. She served as the co-president of Latina Women at Yale, and learned ballet folklórico, a form of traditional Mexican dance she had seen growing up but never learned. She also works in the admissions office as a recruitment coordinator.

As an FSY counselor, she created spaces for other students of Mexican heritage, with themed study breaks featuring traditional Mexican foods and fruits. “I tried to make sure students know that that community exists at Yale and plug them into it,” she says.

Enduring Relationships

Beyond the academic side of the program, says Montoya-Hernandez, FSY builds community. “Most of my friends at Yale are people I met in FSY,” she says. “My junior-year suite was all FSY-ers.”

She recognizes the same excitement in the students this summer that she felt as an incoming first-year—perhaps even more so. “Back in 2022, we were still coming out of COVID,” she says. “This year, this cohort just clicked. Literally on the first day, they were already making friends and making connections. And I know these connections are going to last for years to come.”

After FSY and the start of the academic year—or “Big Yale,” as those in the FSY program call it—Montoya-Hernandez hopes to remain in touch with her students and to remain a resource for them, much as her counselors did for her.

Even with the support that FSY provides, “first year is so tough,” she says. “It was so great to have my counselor in my corner.”