<p>I think it is fair to say Yale is not up there with Caltech, MIT, Stanford, etc in engineering but it is surprisingly good in sciences. </p>
<p>With regards to some of the concerns mentioned, according to [url=<a href=“NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas”>NRC Rankings in Each of 41 Areas]NRC</a> Rankings in Each of 41 Areas<a href=“one%20of%20those%20stupid%20rankings%20kids%20on%20CC%20like%20to%20cite”>/url</a>:</p>
<p>-Yale is 1st in physiology, 6th in biochem, 2nd in neuroscience, 1st in pharmacology, 10 in cell bio, etc so it is definitely very good at biology stuff.
-Engineering is notably lower, but it is improving.
-Mathematics it is 7th, which is good (1 below stanford, several above Caltech so it has fine company).
-Pure physics it is 13th, so that is still good (behind very engineering focused schools but still high).
-Economics it is 6th (1 below Princeton) and the program is pretty well known.</p>
<p>Obviously this is below the stuff Yale is best known for (e.g. 1st in English, 1st in Comp. Lit, 1st in History, etc), but it is certainly high. Considering that the NRC stuff is focused more on grad – and Yale puts its emphasis on undergrads – I was surprised to see how highly Yale ranked across all areas. Yale haters often use the same statistics to try to show that Yale is weak but when I actually looked at the stuff I was very surprised to see the opposite.</p>
<p>My main suggestion is that you choose to attend or not attend based on the Yale community, not on whether someone tells you “they have a good/bad program in X area.” Obviously if you are entirely focused in one area like engineering, that may make slightly more sense, but I don’t think you should pick undergraduate schools based upon whether some kid tells you they are weak on CC or even on any kind of an arbitrary ranking…</p>