abiste, no need to apologize! I'm actually in the process of training to be a Orange Key Tour Guide... wish me luck!
My seminar class was talking to our professor during a break. This guy did his undergrad at Harvard, grad at Yale, and is teaching here at Princeton. Basically, he's brilliant. Anyways, we started asking him questions about the differences in the three schools since he's the first person we've met who's "attended" all of them. Here are some things he said about Yale and Princeton:
- Princeton's social life is centered around campus (Frist, the Street, extracurrics) which makes for a cohesive student body while Yale's students go out to bars our restuarants around town which means more choice.
- Yale has more literary publications and seems more artsy and in touch with the real world. Princeton students live in an "Orange Bubble".
- Because of its small size and cohesive campus, Princeton's administration is very smooth. The example he gave was with dining staff. The dining staff at Princeton is not unionized because wages and benefits are good and because the workers' rapport with both students and administration is great. (I love the people who work in dining.) Yale is very large so its administration is a little more cumbersome... while he was a student at Yale, the university was almost shut down when three unions, including the unrecognized grad student union, went on strike all at the same time!
- Yale's residential college system is for the entire four years which means people are a lot more loyal to their colleges there than at Princeton where the majority of residential colleges are only for two years.
- Princeton's focus is in its undergraduate college while Yale's focus is its top notch graduate schools.
- Princeton students as a whole seem to him, very pragmatic in their approach to solving problems.
- Yale is located in New Haven and the town-gown relationship can be a little strained because Yale is also New Haven's biggest employer. Princeton, NJ, is small, quiet, and not as intricately involved with the university.
- Princeton is tradition rich with extremely loyal alumni in love with Princeton and their undergraduate experience. Yale students seem a little more jaded.
As you can see, he pointed out both the good and the bad. He did conclude that Princeton students seem to have more fun, though (=
I would like to present a little of the Yale perspective on this issue, and particularly to address a couple of the issues raised by debryc.
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- Princeton's social life is centered around campus (Frist, the Street, extracurrics) which makes for a cohesive student body while Yale's students go out to bars our restuarants around town which means more choice.
While the "more choice" part is probably true, I don't think the implication that this makes the Yale student body less cohesive is. Though there is certainly more to do in New Haven than in Princeton (as towns), most Yale students do not stray too far from campus for the most part. The major difference with Princeton is that while Princeton has one major street with most of the restaurants, etc, Yale is surrounded by streets of this sort. That is, Yale students do not go farther from campus, they just have more directions to go.
Quote:
- Princeton's focus is in its undergraduate college while Yale's focus is its top notch graduate schools.
First of all, in the context of PhD programs, Princeton is no weaker than Yale, and grad students there certainly receive as much attention as at Yale (my father got his PhD at Princeton, and he certainly didn't feel neglected). The essential point here is that Yale and Princeton are much more similar in degree of focus on undergraduates than is often claimed. To say that one focuses on undergrads, while the other focuses on grad students is at best exaggeration and at worst a blatant misrepresentation of the real situation. Note that the professor from whom debryc got this description was a grad student at Yale. I'm sure he got plenty of attention as a grad student, but this does not mean that undergraduates are not the central focus at Yale, just as they are at Princeton.
GettinIn1 made a similar, though to my mind even less accurate claim when he said
Quote:
Undergrad students get all the great professors while at other schools like harvard and yale, classes are often taught by TA's and the more 'famous' professors only work with graduate students.
This is demonstrably false. At Yale (I won't presume to speak for Harvard) all professors, as famous as they may be, teach undergraduates. From noted Chinese historian Jonathan Spence to the world's leading Shakespeare critic, Harold Bloom, you will find that Yale's most renowned faculty devote tremendous energy to teaching undergraduates. As for TAs teaching classes, GettingIn1's claim has some merit, in that TAs at Yale lead discussion sections for large lecture classes, which happens to a lesser extent at Princeton (though it certainly still happens, part of the job of a PhD program is to provide its students with teaching experience, so Princeton would be failing its grad students if they did not have the chance to teach undergrads). I personally will go through my entire first year at Yale without being taught by a TA in any context (except for one on one foreign language tutorials, which I would call an extra benefit), so don't think that, to the extent it is true, this claim would have a huge impact on the quality of your education.
Finally, debryc argued
Quote:
- Princeton is tradition rich with extremely loyal alumni in love with Princeton and their undergraduate experience. Yale students seem a little more jaded.
While it is true that Princeton has a higher alumni giving rate than Yale (which is the only way I think you could actually attempt to test this claim) that hardly means Yale alumni are jaded. After all, while Princeton is 1st in the country in alumni giving according to US News, Yale is 4th, behind only Princeton, Dartmouth, and Notre Dame, so unless the alumni of all but three colleges in the country are "jaded" Yale's alumni certainly aren't.
In closing, let me say that both Princeton and Yale are fantastic schools, and if you do indeed have the opportunity to choose between them, you should consider yourself very lucky. I encourage you, if you have to make this decision, to attend both schools' admitted students programs. I was in a similar position last year (choosing between Yale, Princeton, and Stanford), and for me, the visits in April made all the difference. Personally, after my visits, I loved Yale and hated Princeton (though, don't get me wrong, that was just me, and many have the opposite opinion), but if I hadn't visited, I would have been totally unsure as to which I should choose.
Last edited by svalbardlutefisk; 02-21-2007 at 11:02 PM.
You may be right, but at Princeton, the graduate students are in a completely different part of campus, and play little role in the campus social life (so I'm told). In addition, graduate students are outnumbered ~2:1 at Princeton (the ratio is ~1:1 at Yale and ~1:2 at Harvard--roughly). That's a good ratio if you're an undergraduate.
I'm not sure what you mean by saying graduate students are "in a completely different part of campus." If you are talking about where they live, that's true at Yale as well (my impression is that grad students at Yale generally don't live on campus at all), and I doubt that there is any university where grad students play a significant role in undergrad social life.
As for the ratios you bring up, remember that a large reason for that fact is that those graduate student numbers include professional school students. Since Princeton has no professional schools (law, med, business), the result is a much smaller grad student population. These professional school students do not affect the attention given to undergrads, because they are not competing for the attention of the same professors. Law professors, med school professors and business school professors do not (with a few exceptions) play a role in undergrad education. They are basically in separate schools.
In closing, let me say that both Princeton and Yale are fantastic schools, and if you do indeed have the opportunity to choose between them, you should consider yourself very lucky. I encourage you, if you have to make this decision, to attend both schools' admitted students programs.
svalbardlutefisk, thanks for popping in. OP, this is great advice. No matter what others say about the two schools, it ultimately comes down to which one is the best fit for YOU. Yale or Princeton, it depends on the individual. The differences I posted were from the viewpoint of the professor... when you visit you may discover some very applicable in your personal situation, others not so much.
I do want to point out though, that while undergraduates at Yale are undoubtedly getting a great education, Princeton's undergraduate focus is still a very valid strength. Princeton undergraduates DEFINE the university, not just part of the university, but the whole.
For science in general, P-ton is better. It's more difficult to say of biological sciences because that is Yale's strongest science and Princeton's weakest. Perhaps the two are about equal?
Well, the fact that Princeton has 4 and 1/2 buildings devoted to life sciences (Guyot also houses Environmental Science and Geosciences) and has 3 molecular biology laboratories: Schultz, Moffett, and Carl Icahn, definitely implies that Princeton's Molecular Biology department is very well funded, especially because 3 of their 3 1/2 buildings are brand new. I definitely disagree that life sciences are Princeton's weakest science area, at least in terms of facilities and ability to teach undergraduates. Besides, President Tilghman would not let such an inadequacy exist at Princeton, as she is a molecular biologist herself.
Life sciences at Princeton do rock, but not as much as physics and chemistry at Princeton, according to rankings alone, that is. Yale is kinda shockingly bad at physics and chemistry (and engineering), but biology seems to be pretty good, again according to rankings.
<quote> For science in general, P-ton is better. It's more difficult to say of biological sciences because that is Yale's strongest science and Princeton's weakest. </quote>
I am a prospective Mol Bio major and one of the reasons I chose Pton was the mol bio program. I am almost certain that Ptons is stronger than Yale in the sciences, including the molecular bio program.
Clenedator, just wondering, how do you know that the life sciences is Pton's weakest science/ where did you get that from? I'm saying saying your claim is wrong (even though I am skeptical) I'm just curious how you found out, etc.
The reason why im a little skeptical is becuase not only do they have a whole building dedicated to genomics, the mol bio program has a huge endowment, and the president of the university, Shirley Tilghman, is a big supporter of Mol Bio, given that she was a professor in Mol Bio before she became president. When I talked to her about the Mol Bio program, she definitely said that it was one of Pton's strongest programs.
Absolutely guppy, I delineated the usage of that huge endowment in the previous post. I even forgot to mention the Lewis Thomas lab in my list of the Mol Bio laboratories on campus. The Mol Bio facilities at Princeton are top notch, and the faculty are very good as well.
