Current Yalies, why did U chose yale?

aGiantOreo
Wed, 23 Aug 2006 01:47:46 +0000

I really don’t think it’s necessary to get into a huge argument here about what a “true” residential college system is and make passive aggressive attempts at proving which ivy league’s the best. it’s all really a matter of taste.
To answer the original question, I have to agree with a lot of what posterX said in his/her first post - those are the qualities that really made Yale stick out to me. Princeton and Harvard have college systems too, but I think the difference is that Yale’s really dominates the social scene, whereas it’s didn’t seem like as big a deal at Harvard and Princeton. I ended up choosing Yale because I really dug the environment there - there’s a really great sense of community and friendliness that I could really just sense - that’s not to say there’s not a great sense of community at other great schools, but to me, it seemed like yale’s seemed the most tight-knit. I found this great quality when I visited that really just united the undergrads on campus - and I can’t put my finger on what it was, but it was just kind of a thread that seemed to unite everyone, and it was just so amazing, and it’s something I wanted to be a part of. Princeton had a comparable quality, but it wasn’t nearly as strong there. I felt like Harvard didn’t have as much of a sense of community - it really fostered a sense of independence. I don’t know how true it is, but I feel like schools in huge urban environments like Columbia and Harvard tend to have less tight-knit communities. The trade off is that you get to interact with this amazing city - which opens up all kinds of other opportunities. I LOVE cities, and I haven’t moved into New Haven yet (give it a week though, and I’ll be there!), but while it seems like it’s definitely not a dead town, it’s definitely not a Boston or New York, but I decided that I could forgo 4 years in a city for the sense of community I found at Yale because I’d never get that opportunity to live in that kind of environment again. I also really liked the fact that since New Haven’s a small city, there’s a lot of opportunity to interact with it and actually make a difference. I read articles about Yalies getting elected to city council, which just sounded so cool to me - that doesn’t seem as feasible in small, ritzier cities like Princeton or Palo Alto, and probably not to likely in big cities either.
Sorry that was kind of garbled - I was writing without really thinking of structure. But, if you have any specific questions, I’ll definitely answer them and try to be as objective as possible.