Help me...Princeton vs. Yale vs. MIT

la_vie_est_belle
Tue, 03 Apr 2007 14:54:54 +0000

First off, congrats on your wonderful acceptance list!

You should definitely visit the schools. You cannot go wrong with your choices, but they all have a unique culture and you will hopefully have a gut reaction about where you’d be most happy when you visit. I was choosing between these schools too and now, several years later, I have had the opportunity to be at all of them). Below are some of the things I considered:

1) MIT has a core science curriculum. You will take math, bio, chem, and physics. Your major will have a very specific set of course that you must complete. Yale and Princeton have distribution requirements, but they tend to be a lot more flexible. The result: with an engineering or science degree from MIT, you wil have a very strong background in anything you should possibly know. At Yale and Princeton you can create this strong background for yourself. They offer the courses you need but will not necessairly make you take them to graduate. On the flip side, Yale and Princeton have a lot more humanities offerings than MIT. Many MIT students go to Harvard for advanced language, literature, and history offerings.

2) Living and eating. This might sound pedestrian, but it is important. If you’re the type of person who likes pretty buildings, dining facilities with all-you-can-eat options, regular meal times, go to Yale or Princeton. If your someone who likes nerd culture, have science experiments running in your room, eating at odd hours from food-courts/restaurants, MIT is a better choice.

3) Atheletics. MIT is Div 3 and Yale and Princeton at Div 1. The talent required and the time commitment at Yale and Princeton is much more substantial than at MIT

4) The school schedules are different. Yale has long summer and Christmas breaks. MIT has January off.

5) Location. MIT is in Cambridge (and some housing is in Boston), but Princeton is close to New York. New Haven has the best cheap eats and free stuff like concerts. Boston is the easiest to fly in and out of.

6) Prestige wise, the schools are the same. As long as you do well and take challenging classes, no grad school or company is going to look down on you.