My wife attended and graduated Yale. She arrived as one who was a "progressive" antiwar, fallen away Christian, anti-everything worthwhile. By the time she was a sophomore, she was a committed conservative and by graduation was ready to be received into the Catholic Faith. Today she is more conservative than I am. Needless to say, she was not converted by her professors. Instead, the influences that made the difference were her own native intelligence and the presence in the Yale student body of a substantial number of knowledgeable and principled conservatives, eager to reach out to other students and persuade them.
The young lady you have referenced should seek out the Party of the Right of the Yale Political Union where she will find conservatives ranging from atheist libertarians and Randians to religious conservatives of various persuasions who are united in opposition to the Yale left. The POR gets together for debates and socializing about once a week and provides an education that often exceeds the more formal education at Yale.
As you may recall, my wife homeschooled our elder children and then has been teaching many subjects at a parent-controlled private Catholic K-12 academy which may graduate its first Ivy Leaguer (Harvard) this year.
I also know that Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and Dartmouth, at least, each have their own conservative "undergrounds" often catering to hard-core Catholics but also quite open to participation by others from atheists to Fundamentalists. A student with religious commitment and/or conservative commitment is likely to hone his/her polemical skills in debate with non-believers or other sorts of believers and come away with even deeper commitment.
GeronL:
At Yale and probably the other Ivies, conservative or seriously religious undergraduates resist the zeitgeist and display effective contempt for profs and instructors who try to indoctrinate them to the left. The real killing fields at the Ivies are the faculties where few conservatives survive. Nonetheless, Professor Donald Kagan, Yale's truly conservative and most conservative professor (Ancient History) and himself a member of the Party of the Right, was chosen to be Dean of Yale College in relatively recent years. He had also served for a while as Athletic Director. My suburban Republican Town Committee had Professor Kagan as a Lincoln Day Dinner Speaker on the subject of how Ronald Reagan's candidacy for POTUS converted previously lifelong socialist Donald Kagan into a political right-winger.
Hey BlackElk
I havent’ had contact with this young lady for probably 2 years. But at a Christmas party in I think ‘10, she told me I would be surprised at the number of conservative groups at Yale.
She’s a great young lady and doing good work in a tough area.