Could you share a few words about the culture/the community/the student body of any Ivy or MIT or Stanford? Trying to get an idea of the best fits for my son.
We have other schools on the list; just trying to get an feel for the top tier schools.
Thanks!
MIT - Collaboration.
Stanford- Entrepreneurship, intensity, sun
What is your son looking for in a college? If you give folks on this forum an idea, they will,be helpful in terms of giving you good ideas regarding schools.
My kid went to college in Boston. His two words for MIT…Party school. But that is a sample of ONE.
Any such answers will be hopelessly reductive and so meaningless as to be actually counterproductive. No good can come of this.
So you want third party hearsay on the broad reputations of this subset of ten excellent colleges’ “cultures”? All you will get is a list of people parroting what they’ve heard.
I agree with Marvin100
Here are a few thoughts on some of these schools. Obviously, do some reading and/or visit for a fuller picture:
Princeton: Eating clubs, senior thesis, professor interaction
Harvard: Final clubs, tourists on campus, competitive yet supportive
MIT: Not just STEM, academically intense, parties with Wellesley
Yale: Residential colleges, try out classes before committing, fun-loving and musical
Stanford: Olympic athletes on campus, sunshine, comp sci/entrepreneurial vibe
Chicago: Intensely intellectual, the fun factor is improving, the core
Columbia: Serious/intellectual, the Core, NYC
Penn: The Social Ivy, mix of pre-professional and intellectual, Lotus Walk (right?)
Caltech: Tiny, intense, JPL, sunshine
Brown: Quirky/liberal, open curriculum, laid-back vibe
Dartmouth: Greek scene, D-Plan, outdoor activities, the most LAC-like Ivy
Cornell: Outdoorsy, beautiful, intense but collaborative
Duke: Huge split campus, southern pipeline to Wall Street, camping outside Cameron to buy basketball tix
Northwestern: Lake Michigan wind, strong/hard academics, playful/artsy vibe
Harvard has residential colleges and the finals clubs are a small part of college life. Yale has similar clubs (Skull and Bones fore example). Yale has a grad School of Music but undergrad wouldn’t be more musical than the others. Just examples of how this task is impossible and will differ from individual to individual. No sense generalizing really…
[quote]
Lotus Walk
{/quote]
Grin. It’s Locust Walk (Pine, Chestnut and Walnut streets are also in the area).
I’ll only do my alma mater. Penn == pre-professional. Beyond the standard business, law and medical schools, you can throw in nursing, veterinary, dental and social work. . .just the way Ben wanted it.
Cornell (my alma mater) = pre-professional as well.
The majority of students do not major in the liberal arts, and even the liberal arts majors tend to be in biology or economics.
Harvard - Hardest part is getting in. Once in, graduation is guaranteed unless one goes out of their way to tick off the Profs. Good mix of intellectualism and fun from oncampus ECs and parties on and especially on other Boston-area campuses. Final Clubs exist…but were regarded by most students as bastions for fellow travelers of the ossified old WASP establishment which used to dominate it and other Ivies/peer elites in the past. Supportive environment for the most part even for those from lower SES. In fact, there was a very egalitarian vibe among Harvard undergrad/grad students from many visits there.
Yale - Same as Harvard in most respects with the exception of location being in what some Yale undergrads I knew considered “a dump” and gothic architecture. Secret societies similar to Final Clubs…but seemingly more dominant than at Harvard.
Princeton - Most conservative Ivy in terms of student culture and admissions dominated by legacy/athlete/boarding school grads until recently, very wealthy area, beautiful campus, not very diverse*, very friendly helpful undergrads with one notable exception, LAC environment, academics like HY and peer elites with the exception of a required senior thesis, strong engineering, student culture not very nerd friendly in the past judging by some older alums who were engineering/CS majors there.
MIT - Officially no legacy admissions, supersmart genius types nerds proudly dominate, STEM centered with many topflight non-STEM departments, very intense academics, work exceedingly hard/play hard, best parties in the Boston area, very little sleep to the point caffeine related products like jolt are exceedingly popular, ballroom dance classes in January, very creative pranks against HY rivals(aka Hacks), many students regard the school further down Mass Ave as a fancy finishing school just to tick their H student counterparts off for their own amusement.
Brown - No distribution requirements/core curriculum, failing grades lower than a C aren’t recorded on transcript***, no plus/minus grades, most radically progressive/hippieish college among the Ivies. Kinda like Antioch, Oberlin or pre-'90s Berkeley…but more genteel and far less radical.
Dartmouth - Second most conservative Ivy in terms of student culture, strong Greek system, very sporty/rah rah high school spirit vibe(Was known as the “jock Ivy” by older D alums and HS classmates clamoring to go there), LAC-like campus, 10 week quarters, D plan.
Columbia - Core Curriculum, Philolexian society, small undergrad populations, feel of large university due to large grad population and large bureaucracy, Alexander Hamilton, Morningside Heights/Harlem, pre-professional…especially towards ibanks/wallstreet/finance, some partying…though many undergrads feel NYU has better parties for some reason, Barnard’s(aka “Barnyard” to some Columbia undergrads and older alums) next door and is practically part of the university despite separate admissions/campus, large undergrad and sometimes even grad classes****, Low and Butler Library buildings being across the campus from each other, strong association with IR due to SIPA, strong engineering school, etc.
Cornell - Pre-meds seemingly dominate A & S, strong engineering, hotel school, some association with SUNY and easier in-state admissions through Ag school, parties and some dubious pastimes like cowtipping, academically intense,
Penn - Frequently mistaken for Penn State, Wharton, Ben Franklin, very pre-professional, undergrad experience can leave one feeling like being treated like a number according to several alums, West Philly, not too far from Drexel, lots of parties, the Yuge one, etc,
Caltech - Academically intense, even more STEM-centered than MIT or CMU, very quirky, supersmart/genius types dominate here, nerds proudly dominate, smaller than many LACs, etc.
Stanford - Topflight academics across the board(Not just engineering/CS) combined with strong rah rah Div I sports, strong rivalry with Berkeley, complaining/talking about working hard academically not considered cool, 10 week quarters, Taco Bell architecture, Chelsea Clinton, etc,
** Up until 2004, Oberlin had the same grading policy which was modeled on Brown.
*** One popular grad “seminar” I sat in on had an excessively large official enrollment of over 50 grad students. Ended up devolving into a practical lecture course due to logistical constraints of having so many students.
It cracks me up that everyone here (at CC) of late describes MIT as aggressively into the party scene. Truly, that is kid-dependent.
While I wouldn’t consider MIT to be a “party school” in the sense concerned parents/students are referring to*, it is true MIT students threw some of the best parties in the Greater Boston area. Students from other colleges and young professionals…especially recent graduates come far and wide to join in the fun and free food/drinks. 
Finals clubs at Harvard and secret societies at Yale are different things. You don’t join secret societies until senior year, whereas you join Finals Clubs as freshman. You don’t apply to secret societies; you’re asked to join. Finals clubs cost to belong; secret societies IRC do not. I don’t like either one. I don’t think they matter to most students. However, finals clubs have a bit more impact because you join them early on and participate throughout college whereas secret societies are a senior year only thing.
I think the year my son entered there was a curtailing and serious monitoring of that (those) practices. Pretty sure that just last school year some frats or like-frats lost their houses (and thus party spaces due to structural as well as social safety concerns. ) That being said, though, I have heard of some pretty hard freshman hangovers this year, and it is still college.
Didn’t know that about MIT’s rep, though, Cobrat. Turns a lot of the stiff nerd stuff on its head…kind of.
Jonri, students enter Finals Clubs at Harvard as sophomores. They are nominated and then chosen.
My son, an MIT graduate this past spring, said the same thing about the parties. MIT definitely has the rep for having the "best’ parties. (Son did not go to said parties, but had a rich social life in other avenues)
He loved his time at MIT, and he and his wife miss the camaraderie, intellectual climate, and the great group of friends they had.
I’m going to go against the grain here - apart from certain schools like MIT or Caltech, there really isn’t much of a difference in culture between the Ivies or other top schools. You could switch the student bodies of Harvard, Yale or Princeton around overnight and I’d wager that the students themselves won’t feel much of a difference.
These colleges are so large and are filled with people with so many diverse academic/cultural interests that any kid should be able to find his/her niche on campus.
That doesn’t accord with what I’ve observed on several such campuses.
Columbia, Cornell, Brown, UPenn, and Harvard have much more of a feel of being large research I universities whereas Princeton and Dartmouth has much more of an LAC-like feel
Caltech is so STEM centered even an older cousin and several HS classmates who are proud alums wouldn’t recommend students interested in non-STEM areas or to even have it as a second major/minor consider it as an option.
MIT may have strong non-STEM departments, but the student/campus culture is such that those who major solely in those departments…including Sloan have complained about being regarded/treated as “second-class citizens” by their STEM major classmates and even a few Profs.
Stanford has rah rah competitive Div I sports the other elite colleges on this list don’t have(MIT, Caltech) or aren’t on the same competitive/spirit level(the Ivies).
Brown student culture tends to be the most radically progressive among the schools in this topic, Columbia’s very centrist with some slight right-leanings due to the inclination of many undergrads to aspire for Ibanking/finance/Wall Street careers. Libertarian-right/GOP activist students just as equally loud in their protests as their progressive left counterparts.
Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeton, and Dartmouth seem to have far less pre-professional inclinations among students than Cornell, Columbia, MIT, Caltech, UPenn.
Especially the exceedingly widespread obsession among Columbia, UPenn, Cornell, and MIT students over Wall street/ibanking/finance careers, law, medicine which dwarfed those I’ve seen at Harvard, Princeton, etc
Is the percentage of Princeton graduates going into finance much lower now than when http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/out-of-harvard-and-into-finance/ was written?