For whoever lives around New Haven....

alscharr
Thu, 23 Feb 2006 14:56:05 +0000

Ok, so I wasn’t planning on applying to Yale, it just sort of happened around December 20th when I realized that hey, I actually really like Yale, why not apply? (besides the impossibly tiny percent accepted) So now I’m in limbo, but while waiting, I thought I’d ask anyone who lives around New Haven a question that’s been bugging me. It needs a little intro first.

Being ranked #1 in my class, I am often asked if I am applying to Harvard and people are then surprised when I say no. (I live in metro-north and usually SOMEONE in my school applies to Harvard, and usually one person gets in every year or so) So since I’ve grown up around Harvard, I thought, hey, why not? Then I researched it and found out that the undergrad experience was NOT what I was looking for. It seemed cut throat, uncaring and huge. But more than that, it was my experience with Harvard students. I knew a few, but I just saw many more, I went to track meets at Harvard, with Harvard students. I went to pizza places, ice cream shops and book stores filled with Harvard students…

I always got the impression that most everyone there applied to Harvard and went there because they had something to prove, and now that they were in, they felt validated and extra special. I kept wondering, why the hell else would anyone go to this school that seems to be so uncaring towards undergrads? Where people had to sink or swim? Where the people were often snotty or so priviledged they seemed spacey! Harvard does not seem like a real school to me, at least for undergrads. It seems like a caricature, or a play pen, or a club, or most of all, a joke.

All this because I live so close I think. So I am wondering, for all those who live close to Yale, is this how you see Yale? Are Yale and Harvard the same in this respect, but I just don’t see it in Yale because I live farther away? I think, maybe that’s why intelligent people from the midwest or west coast apply to Harvard; they THINK it’s a glorious intellectual paradise and they aren’t close enough to see that it isnt all that special, but a name tag that they’ll probably have to try to live down the rest of their life. I don’t want to go to a school that is mostly prestige and not substance. So what about Yale?