<p>If, as you claim, you are a “philosophy/science person”, why don’t you use philosophical and scientific analysis to consider important life decisions rather than rumor and caricature? </p>
<p>Anyway, Yale has lots of people who are into music (including lots and lots of singers, more than instrumentalists). But everyone? Nothing like that. I had eight unique roommates in my four years at Yale; only one of those nine people (including me) played an instrument at college. And he did it maybe twice a year, when he desperately wanted to pick up girls. He was a BS/MS in molecular biology, and then MD/PhD, and chairs the oncology department at one of the top five hospitals in the country. Another one HAD been in his high school band (trombone), but never touched an instrument in college.</p>
<p>Yale has lots of people who are into theater, but of the aforementioned nine people I was the only one who did any theater, and that was in my freshman year. I enjoyed GOING to theater, though (as did lots of people). </p>
<p>As for law/political science, probably something like 10-15% of each class winds up going to law school; most of those people don’t study law-related things as undergraduates.</p>
<p>Compared to Harvard – with which you seem to feel comfortable – Yale is different in very small degree, not kind. There are somewhat more people interested in the arts, and participating in them. There are pretty much exactly the same percentage of people who will ultimately go into law/government – if there is a difference, it will be Harvard that has more of them. The Residential College / House systems resemble each other more than any other dorm system on this side of the Atlantic resembles either; sure, there are differences, but if you think Yale’s system is High School 2.0 you will probably think Harvard’s is High School 1.2 (with its emphasis on cliques to form housing blocks). And I shudder to imagine what you think of Oxford and Cambridge.</p>
<p>What you are really questioning are the elements that make Harvard and Yale elite universities. Other elite universities, and universities that aspire to that status, tend to adopt those elements, too. If you don’t value them, there are LOTS of places you can go to college and not be bothered.</p>