<p>D got the impression that at Columbia the track athletes mostly hang out with one another. For one thing, as freshmen they are given a fellow runner as a roommate. The coaches said they don’t want to take any chances, for example that one of their athletes will have trouble with a roommate with a very different sleep schedule. Also, during D’s visit, one of girls was commenting to her suitemate (also a runner) that a guy in their dorm was complaining that they never have time to talk to anyone else in the dorm. She told him that she was sorry, but just busy with track stuff. If you like your teammates a lot and are looking for that close bonding and camaraderie, that can be just fine. Other kids will want a larger social network. None of the other Ivies control roommate selection like this. I’m pretty sure Stanford doesn’t either.</p>
<p>Yale is hyper-intellectual with great minds setting intellectual agendas in many Humanities disciplines, Harold Bloom in English, for example.</p>
<p>D just had the feeling that all the kids had heard the same ideas and were now proclaiming them.</p>
<p>An example was an argument she had with them about the ending of the Iliad. She thought it was pessimistic. They all argued it was optimistic in a way she felt had been taught in their courses.</p>
<p>Nothing wrong with that. We learn by trying on other people’s ideas. Sort of like being an apprentice in a painting studio.</p>
<p>She had the feeling that it was a bit “cultlike” in that they all thought the same thing, but I’m sure they grew away from that with time.</p>
<p>I did not mean to diss Yale. I, too, think it’s awesome.</p>
<p>But I passed on D’s thoughts, for what they are worth.</p>
<p>I do know that many of her friends had difficulty enrolling in their chosen major, so that was a drawback.</p>
<p>And if you can’t remember the end of the Iliad…pick another school entirely!</p>
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<li><p>Wow, mythmom. You’re awfully cryptic today. “[M]any of her friends has difficulty enrolling in their chosen major”? Really? What’s the story there? I never heard of anything like that happening at Yale. At Chicago, where my kids go/went, some of the funky interdisciplinary majors have a real application barrier, with a significant percentage of applicants being rejected, and I know this is true with some popular majors at public universities (e.g., film at UCLA, business majors at Michigan). </p></li>
<li><p>It’s nice to hear that there are places where kids will debate the Iliad. When my daughter did her first small tour of friends’ colleges, her takeaway was that she was really glad she was going to a college where social norms allowed you to talk about things you were studying, and not just Project Runway.</p></li>
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<p>Blossom: Thank you for remembering. Yes it’s the same child, and so I do have the concern you raised! I talked to her about the hyper-competitiveness issue, but she shrugged and said she didn’t feel it when she was at Harvard. If anything, she felt it more at Princeton. Do you recruit at the other Ivies and do you notice a difference? I’m wondering how different it is at the other top schools. Certainly my S at Dartmouth can attest that it exists there too, at least right now as they’re interviewing for jobs! I’m guessing that to gain admission to these institutions, most kids have to be pretty darn ambitious. And ambition often necessitates competition.</p>
<p>Sorry JHS. One friend could not get into neurobiology. Another could not get into some social science major, probably a starred program. And others had this difficulty.</p>
<p>These majors were oversubscribed and they were steered somewhere else. This happened to quite a few kids; these are just the ones I remember. Don’t mean to be cryptic.</p>
<p>And D was debating right there with the Yalies, holding her side herself. And for her efforts she got called “such a girl” because she thought it tragic that the truce would soon be over and both sides would just go back to fighting and Troy would be destroyed, whereas the Yalies thought it was noble that they had a truce for ten days for Hector’s funeral games. Ah the nobility of war, yes. I’m with my girl.</p>
<p>My S can read all this in Greek and would chime in with some horribly arcane comment about the faultiness of their translations. He doesn’t debate these things too much at Williams, I’ll admit, but mostly because he’s too busy translating.</p>
<p>My d is a junior at Princeton. Her closest friend is on the tennis team.While it is true alot of athletes belong to Cap eating club this young women spends alot of time playing, practicing and travelling with her team.It is a very helpful thing that your daughter finds the team’s culture a friendly one.My own d is not in an eating club, has a single in New Butler and has a very happy social life.There is no question that Princeton is a very sporty campus and though my d is not an athlete her best friend there is.</p>