Ahh, I wanted to point out another thing about HYP:
While Harvard and Yale have larger endowments sans analysis, Princeton’s is larger per student.
Agreed, @prezbucky - which is why when you walk around Princeton’s spacious, beautiful campus, you feel the old-money wealth like no other school. Not that it’s in your face - the campus is lavish in a generally very tasteful way - but it’s like you’ve landed on Privilege Island (in part because the surrounding town also feels so wealthy). The red brick of Harvard bleeding into Cambridge, and the Gothic castles of Yale surrounded by a small, slightly gritty city, just aren’t the same.
@DeepBlue I think Stanford would be the child of Harvard and MIT. Has the strengths of both of those schools.
I agree about the Princeton campus being the classiest, most tastefully lavish of all the ivies, Stanford, MIT. The location has a lot to do with it too. It is located at an upscale sleepy NJ suburb.
Yale has a lot of faux architecture. Many of these hogwarts-like buildings were built way after it was in vogue to build things like that. So that takes away from the overall feel a bit. Also new haven is not exactly pristine and dreamy.
All of the Hogworts-like buildings on American college campuses were built centuries after the Gothic and Tudor eras in Europe had moved on from that style. Collegiate gothic started in the 1880s with Bryn Mawr, and spread to Princeton, Wash U, UChicago, Yale and plenty of other places. It’s all “faux” architecture if it looks like a castle and is in the United States. It’s still nice.
I myself think that Yale’s overall feel is pretty amazing, even better than Princeton’s, because of all the courtyards and separate college houses. Each to their own, I guess.
@ThankYouforHelp you are definitely right. But there was a movement called collegiate gothic on US campuses in the mid 19th - early 20th century. Yale however continued building in this kind of style well into the 1930s-40s and is also doing the same for its new college houses. Also Yale went into great lengths to faux-age the buildings built later on. don’t get me wrong, the Yale campus is definitely stunning but I find something a bit forced about this. But yeah it depends on the person I guess.
I’m with @ThankYouforHelp on this one - Yale’s version of Collegiate Gothic is more Hogwarts than Princeton’s because of all the quadrangles, courtyards and cloisters (yes, Princeton has some, but Yale has many more, and they’re prettier). If it were surrounded by the town of Princeton instead of the city of New Haven, I think most observers would consider Yale the most beautiful campus of its kind - and many do anyway. The faux-aging (deliberately cracking and repairing stained glass windows, applying acid to stonework, etc.) is part of its charm.
Between attending myself, the graduations of relatives, college tours, and kids activities, I have been to all 10 of the schools, and then some.
In my mind, nothing beats the physical beauty of Stanford. Yes, it is too big, but it is stunning, and the weather is great most of the time. A close second, but completely different, is Columbia. Neither Yale or Princeton had the same appeal to me anyway.
Stanford is truly breathtaking but Columbia? 8200 acres vs. six city blocks. Not sure that the two schools can even be mentioned in the same sentence even though you did say they are completely different. Sorry Columbia.
I spent a lot of time at Princeton and it is a magnificent place as well. But winters are kind of tough so Stanford still gets the nod for me.
What makes Columbia appealing is that it is a picture perfect campus right in the middle of Manhattan.
While I agree Columbia has an appealing urban campus, it’s not “in the middle of Manhattan”. More like the Northwest part of it.
Some Columbia undergrads I knew would also disagree as they felt Columbia’s location was the boondocks compared with NYU which is located much more closer to Midtown and closer to business, cultural, geopolitical, nightlife, restaurants, etc.
While I understood it to an extent, their perceptions of it being a tradeoff was odd IMO as mid/downtown Manhattan was just a short subway ride away…much shorter than my 1 hour commute via subway each way to/from HS.
I totally agree with the appeal of Columbia being in the middle of Manhattan (well, uptown really) but I’ve worked doing research at both Columbia and Princeton and now I am at Stanford and I don’t think the aesthetics of Columbia (and especially the facilities) can begin to compare with the other two. The campus is tiny and cramped and while the Northwest Corner Science building is nice, most of the other buildings are old and in sore need of renovation. The engineering building is kind of depressing. The new Manhattanville campus they are building should help with the overcrowding and lack of space for many departments. Nevertheless, of all the Ivies, Stanford and MIT, I would rank Columbia near the bottom in terms of its campus and facilities. (To be fair, College walk is nice but it’s a tiny area compared to other schools.) Being in NYC, however, elevates Columbia in my mind to the middle of the pack “despite” the campus.
Just my humble opinion. Others will probably disagree.
Compared to NYU’s campus (or lack thereof), Columbia’s urban campus is terrific. Penn’s urban campus, however, is 10 times the size of Columbia’s and really pretty so everything is relative.
Yeah, and Penn has the Locust Walk or, as I like to call it, the Lotus Walk. (Everything Zen. I think so. Those who know '90s music will get that.)
I dunno - Stanford feels to me like a suburban office park with a touch of Taco Bell, and at Columbia the buildings all seem too close together. It’s all what you’re used to, I guess.
I will defer to your description of Columbia since you worked there. We don’t see the run-down parts during a campus visit.
I found this interesting documentary on the emergence of neo-Gothic architecture in civic life on Youtube. Interesting watch on why industrial England first adopted neo-Gothic in a city like Manchester and finally abandoned it after Liverpool cathedral. I feel a lot of the arguments would be valid for why some universities adopted it and later abandoned it, although it is interesting that many universities adopted it as the style was dying out in civic architecture in England, because of its moralistic overtones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg9e-KAyLmg&index=1&list=PLM4S2hGZDSE7bhOa0p-vs4EkDDIVf6ulI
There is also one on the neo-classical style, maybe like Columbia 
As @Penn95 notes, Yale’s using a new style of Collegiate Gothic for the new colleges opening this fall: http://newresidentialcolleges.yale.edu/
Not sure I like it as much, but I hope to tour someday - I’m sure they’re going to be gorgeous inside.
I have to agree with Multiverse7. When we visited Columbia, we went in and explored several buildings. They were really run down. The Havermeyer chemistry building was particularly dreary inside.
Havemeyer, Pupin (Physics), Mathematics Building, Dodge Hall, etc… they’re all the same - old and dreary.
When I was at Harvard, a student fell through the floor in an engineering building. And if people upstairs took showers, our toilets were overflow. Harvard is only now renovating all the houses.