<p>It’s sort of obvious, but if living in a city is going to freak you out and make you anxious, Princeton would be a better fit than Harvard or Yale.</p>
<p>I think Princeton and Harvard have better communities of kids who are really into pure math than Yale has. It’s not that Yale has inadequate math, especially if what you want out of math is to be a good economist or a bond trader. But I don’t think you could find enough kids to stock a Math 55 at Yale – kids who have essentially placed out of college math, but want to do math 40-50 hours/week more than they want to do anything else. Princeton engineering seems better, and better-integrated into the college as a whole, than engineering at Harvard or Yale.</p>
<p>There are wonderful arts stuff happening at Princeton and Harvard, but if you are really into fine/performing arts, Yale has a lot more of that, and more student engagement in it.</p>
<p>In the end, lots of kids with a choice choose Yale because it is a nice place with a wonderful social structure, and lots of kids with a choice – more of them – choose Harvard because it is the most prestigious and the quickest route to the top. I think those choices color the respective colleges, even if it’s only a modest percentage of the students who chose on that basis. There are plenty of kids at either college (or Princeton) who are exactly like the kids at the other, but to the extent there are differences, I think at Yale it shifts towards artiness and sociability, and at Harvard it shifts to ambition, drive, and a certain conventionality.</p>