<p>Yale is the only school I’ve actually attended, so having no reference for comparison I can’t actually say I wouldn’t choose Yale again. There is no perfect school, and anywhere you go you will find flaws; I just happen to be intimately acquainted with Yale’s.</p>
<p>Case in point: New Haven. Yale is basically the only redeeming part of the city. While the area immediately around campus (by which I mean literally a 2 to 3-block radius) is fairly nice and safe even at night, there is no escaping the fact that it is a boring city. There are a few restaurants, a Blockbuster, and Urban Outfitters, all of which get really old really quickly. If you go to Yale, be prepared for much (if not most) of your life to take place on-campus. (A lot of people will tell you that if you just took time to explore New Haven you’d appreciate it more; this is categorically not true. I made a point my first few weeks to venture out around town on the bus, and take long walks away from campus. My job & volunteering also takes me into the city, and I still maintain that while there are definitely some pretty areas, New Haven is not generally a nice place to live). Now, of course this must be taken with a grain of salt. While there isn’t much going for New Haven, chances are that between classes, ECs, etc. there won’t be a lot of time to venture into the city, even if there were a reason to. However, campus can still start to feel claustraphobic at times.</p>
<p>…which brings me to point two: the Yale bubble. Given that students are more or less contained to Yale’s campus, there definitely starts to develop the mentality (consciously or not) that Yale is the world. A lot of kids grew up in bubbles, then are shuttled of to the microcosm that is Yale, I am floored sometimes at how uninformed (and unINTERESTED) people can be about the world. Although political parties are fairly active on campus, to me it seems mostly like theater and I don’t find that people are particularly passionate about issues, let alone engage in activism of any kind. What does take place is generally muted by the overwhelming sense of apathy around the campus. Personally, I wish I had gone to school in a bigger city both because it provides outlets off of campus and because it forces students to become more aware of the real world. But again, a grain of salt. There are plenty of opportunities to get off campus (volunteering in the community, day or weekend trips to New York, etc), to discuss real issues and not to let yourself get dragged into the bubble.</p>
<p>Yale is definitely not a perfect school, and (for me anyway) it has some major flaws that I didn’t necessarily anticipate beforehand, which sort of surprised me when I got there. However, like I said, all schools have flaws and life is what you make it. For everything I hate about Yale, there are 20 things that I love about it to make up for it, so it’s all a trade-off.</p>
<p>I hope I haven’t scared anyone off. Congrats again for getting in–if you choose to come I really don’t think you’ll be disappointed!</p>