<p>As someone who has been forced to make the difficult decision between these two schools, maybe I can offer my opinion. As a kid, I grew up loving Yale. I thought Skull and Bones was a sick movie, I sided with W in 2000 because I wanted Yale to beat Harvard, and I would always check the US News rankings to see how Yale was doing. In short, I was in love with the prestige of the Yale name, and this continued up through my high school years. </p>
<p>At the same time, during high school my knowledge of schools expanded and I happened upon Dartmouth. It really struck me as a unique place – an Ivy League school, yet uniquely focused solely on undergraduates and not located in a big city. Sure, it doesn’t have the social outlets of a city, but it has a big Greek scene which is ALL-inclusive and it still has all the intellectual outlets a person needs (just look at all of the political activity there during the past primary season). The D-Plan allows for a lot of special opportunities and there’s a lot of study abroad, while the sophomore summer just emphasizes the sort of tight-knit community that Dartmouth really engenders.</p>
<p>This whole post is going to sound biased, and it is. I’m trying to show you the perspective from which I ultimately arrived at my decision. I live close enough to New Haven and I’ve been there a bunch of times. It used to be a realllly bad city that’s gotten a -lot- better over the years, but I can tell you it’s not a place you’d really want to live in. Sure, there might be other college kids, but are you really going to have any interaction with the kids from U of New Haven or Southern CT State? Have fun with that. You can’t compare New Haven to a city like Boston, and while we’re at it, Dartmouth has an amazingly beautiful campus with lots of sick trails and amazing access to all the skiing you could ever want.</p>
<p>But it’s hard to ignore the big name of Yale, and whether you admit it or not I know that that’s a huge part of why people love it. The residential colleges are cool and it’s a first class education – I’m sure there are other big pluses that I’m less familiar with. But really, is it going to make that much of a difference if you graduate with a degree from Dartmouth or a degree from Yale? No – the difference will lie in your specific record at whichever school you wind up at, and more significantly, it will lie in how you develop as a person. To me, Dartmouth offers the traditional college experience, a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience. You can always go on to grad school at some big-name city Ivy. I’d say that the biggest consideration, at least for me, was the financial aid. I would’ve really benefited from Yale’s new program, but ultimately, I’m going to be paying more than twice the amount to go to Dartmouth. Sure, I might be making the dumbest decision of my life, but I’ve worked my ass off the past four years and for once I’m making a decision with both my heart and my head instead of something based just on the numbers.</p>
<p>And I’m posting this in the Yale forum because the other dude posted in the Dartmouth forum. I’m sorry if I’ve been terribly one-sided, I still like Yale a whole lot and they’re both great schools. But what it really comes down to is what you want and where you think you’ll best fit in. This is probably pretty long too, I’m sorry about that as well. I only hope I’ve offered another dimension to the comparison of the two schools.</p>