Princeton vs Brown vs Yale

College Search & Lists
1

Blessed to have these choices, but I need help deciding :frowning: Currently interested in applied math/physics, but I also want to explore CS and engineering, so a college with strong departments in these fields would be ideal.

Some background/context:

  • I'm low-income/first generation, so cost is negligible for all 3 thanks to their wonderful aid. Would like to go to a school where I will not feel too alienated from the wealthier, but I understand that all 3 schools will have extremely rich people attending.
  • Would love an undergrad-focused education, where most of my classes are taught by good and really approachable professors.
  • Don't want to be in the middle of nowhere--would like some activities to do outside of campus.
  • Availability for STEM research is a major plus
2

Bump

3

Princeton.

4

You really can’t go wrong with any of them, which you probably already realize. Brown was one of the pioneers in computer graphics. Yale was one of the pioneers in AI. I don’t think of anything in particular when I think of CS at Princeton, but hey, it’s Princeton. None of them is really known for engineering, although I’m sure that any engineering programs they have are pretty good.

If I was forced to pick between the three, I’d go to Yale. Admittedly, that may be because I like the campus so much.

5

Congrats for being in the position to choose among several great universities. The majors that you are interested are very strong at Princeton. All college rankings can be somewhat helpful in understanding the strengths of each university. Here are the grad department rankings by USN&WR.

Math: Princeton #1, Brown #14, Yale #9
Physics: Princeton #3, Brown #35, Yale #12
Computer Science: Princeton #8, Brown #49, Yale #20
Engineering Princeton #17, Brown #47, Yale #38

In your fields of interest Princeton has the higher ranked department. Seventeen Princeton alumni and faculty have won Nobel Prizes in Physics. The two major international awards in mathematics are the Field Medal and the Abel Prize. Most of the Field Medal winners have been Princeton students, Princeton faculty, or have lived in the Princeton area. Filed Medal winners since 2000:
• 2018 Akshay Venkatesh *PhD 2002 at age 20; thesis Limiting forms of the trace formula;

Institute for Advanced Study 2005-06 & 2017-; at age 11 he competed at the 24th International Physics Olympiad in Williamsburg, Va., winning a bronze medal. His PhD adviser, Peter Sarnak is now at IAS.
• 2014 Manjul Bhargava *2001, Professor since 2003
• 2014 Maryam Mirzakhani, Princeton mathematics professor from 2004 to 2010; 1st woman Field Medal

• 2010 Cédric Villani, Institute for Advanced Study, 2009
• 2010 Stanislav Smirnov, Institute for Advanced Study
• 2010 Ngô Bảo Châu, Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, 2 IMO gold medals
• 2010 Elon Lindenstrauss, Professor from 2004 to 2010; also at IAS
• 2006 Andrei Okounkov Professor from 2002-2010 Princeton University
• 2006 Terence Tao *96, a PhD at age 20; scored 760 on his math SAT at age 8; International Mathematical Olympiad, first competing at the age of 10, winning a bronze, silver, and gold medal
• 2002 Vladimir Voevodsky (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 2002-2017)

Professor Manjul Bhargava has been teaching a freshman course explaining mathematics using card tricks. This years Abel Prize winner is Karen Uhlenbeck who was a visiting senior research scholar in mathematics at Princeton. She is the seventh Abel Prize recipient associated with Princeton. Robert Langlands received the 2018 prize for a theory he developed while an associate professor at Princeton; the 2016 prize went to Andrew Wiles, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus; late University mathematician John Nash shared the 2015 prize with Louis Nirenberg of New York University; and the 2014 prize went to Professor of Mathematics Yakov Sinai. University alumnus and former mathematics faculty member John W. Milnor ’51 GS ’54, the 2011 prize recipient; and John Tate GS ’50, who received the 2010 prize.

Alan Turing, called the “father of computer science” received his PhD from Princeton in 1938. John von Neumann joined the faculty in 1930. All computers today are designed with a single memory for programs and data first described by von Neumann in a paper in 1945; computer scientists call this the von Neumann architecture. The first stored program computer, the MANIAC (mathematical and numerical integrator and computer) was built in Princeton starting in 1947. The first commercially available IBM computer, the 701 was built based on the MANIC design. Princeton engineers have had an important role in the development of networking and the Internet. David Boggs BSE ’ 72 was a co-inventor of Ethernet. Robert Kahn MS *62, PhD 64 co-invented the Internet protocol TCP/IP. The largest cloud service provider with over 2 million servers was started by Jeff Bezos EE & CS, ’86. Stanford, Princeton, and MIT are frequently cited as having the best computer science PhD programs. Google has established an AI lab across the street from Princeton University. The lab builds on several years of close collaboration between Google and Professors of CS Elad Hazan *2006 and Yoram Singer, who will split their time working for Google and Princeton. Eric Schmidt BSEE ’76 is the former Executive Chairman of Google. The engineering school founded in 1889 was one of the first engineering schools in the US.

Good Luck in your decision.

6

If you are looking for a college that has off-campus activities, I would say Yale is lacking in that. New Haven is not a particularly exciting place and there isn’t much going on off-campus. I would say Brown, but definitely visit them and go with your gut, as all three are wonderful options. Good luck!

7

You don’t have a bad choice so don’t regret whatever decision you make.

Are you visiting the schools on the Accepted Student Days?

How far away is your home/family from each school? You might benefit from the support of family as you make your transistion. Being close enough to pop in for the weekend can be a great thing.

8

Why did you apply to each of these (other than, they are ivies)?

Princeton is in a suburb but with less than an hour train ride to NYC or Philadelphia.

Which has better support for low-income/first generation students? I have heard many a story about how such students are admitted…but then they don’t have money for books or they don’t know how college “works” and they don’t reach out to find out what to do.
For example, it appears that Princeton has such support…https://sifp.princeton.edu/
Do the others?
My advice to you is to take advantage of these programs and anything you can…tutors, etc. You don’t know what you don’t know about college.

Which is nearer to where you live? How would you get home for breaks?

Read other posts in this subforum that talk about these colleges…there is more feedback.

9

All of these schools probably have a spotty record with lower income students if you ask the lower income students that have attended them. I think they are all working to do better. I can speak of what I know about Princeton and they have made an effort to admit more students that are Pell grant eligible with the total population about 20% I believe. They do things like raise the financial aid for jr’s and sr’s so that all students can afford to join an Eating club if they wish. Their FA for Study Abroad pretty much matches the FA you get so if you are on a full ride you’ll get your Study Abroad costs paid for plus additional things like Health Insurance that not all schools cover.

10

Based on your academic interests and background, I’d have to say that Princeton is more ideally suitable for you. As @PtonAlumnus pointed out in post #4 above, Princeton is stronger over others in your academic interests. Equally significant is the genuine mission, goal and commitment of the current Princeton President, Christopher Eisgruber, for establishing the SES diversity on campus. More than any other Ivy League presidents, he’s proven himself a true leader in this effort. In fact, his effort was featured in ‘60 Minutes’ this past year:

https://www.princeton.edu/news/2018/04/29/60-minutes-features-princetons-transformative-efforts-increase-socioeconomic

Under Eisgruber’s leadership, the percentage of FLI (first-gen, low-income) students has increased each year. The percentage of low-income college students attending Princeton has tripled over the last decade. For the Class of 2023, 18 percent will be first-generation college students and 26 percent from lower-income backgrounds. Of course Princeton and others can do better, and I have no doubt in my mind that they will in the years to come. With roughly one fourth of the student body sharing a similar background, however, you won’t feel isolated. There are also campus resources that you can familiarize yourself with for your benefit. Under Eisgruber’s stewardship, the Scholars Institute Fellows Program (SIFP), for example, was established in 2015 with the mission of empowering those students from first-gen and low-income backgrounds and to help them thrive at Princeton. Princeton does put its money where its mouth is. The current “Endowment per Student” figure is $2,839,298 per student. The next best American university that comes “closest” to that figure is Yale’s $1,907,262, followed by Stanford and Harvard.

11

All great choices and congratulations. Not to argue but post 4 references graduate work I believe? For undergraduate Brown’s applied math ranks above the other 2 using the same source USNWR below.

https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/applied-mathematics-rankings

If you search other surveys Brown will fairly consistently rank in top 5 for applied math. Happy to find them for you but I don’t want to cherry pick.

With all that said I would ignore rankings when deciding amongst these three schools. They are all outstanding academically and differences in the quality of education will hardly be dicernable.

Visiting would be best or at least if possible being put in contact with sutudents with similar academic interests. Once again good luck with such great choices.

12

@Nocreativity1

Your link is also for grad school rankings? But I do agree that rankings shouldn’t be the sole guideline for choosing a particular school over others. Rankings, after all, can fluctuate widely depending on whatever the methodology that was used for that particular ranking system.

13

Apologies so not sure what post 4 was referencing? My bad.

Check at collegeFactual or Niche if you feel so compelled so look at rankings. Once again among the three all tops so who cares!

14

The post #4 was obviously referencing USNWR ranking, except PtonAlumnus used the general Math ranking, whereas you used the ranking for Applied Math, which is more accurately reflective of the OP’s interest, of course. But OP is also interested in CS, engineering and physics. Re-reading my own post, I shouldn’t have stated, “Princeton is stronger over others in your academic interests.” I’d rewrite that "Princeton is very strong in all those fields that OP is interested in. Given that there are no “accurate” ranking systems out there, particularly for specific undergraduate programs and departments, my son and I did use the general grad school rankings just to get a rough idea as a part of our decision making when he was applying to colleges. When combining all the fields that OP is interested in, it’s hard to argue that indeed Princeton is very strong across.

15

Based on the stated desire for an undergrad-focused education that is strong in the STEM areas mentioned, I would pick Princeton.

But since all three are outstanding colleges in general, I suggest to visit all three while classes are in session if possible and see which campus feels like it’s filled with “your people.”

16

In order of recommendation:

  1. Princeton: Beautiful campus, great surrounding area, huge endowment, lots of support for 1st gen, LD students, etc.
  2. Yale: Beautiful campus, surrounding area not so great, collaborative student body
  3. Brown: Lowest endowment, many buildings/dorms in poor condition, most politically active/ sometimes radical student body
17

Imo this isn’t a decision to be made on comparative academic strengths. All three of them will give superlative educations.

Instead, focus on your own level of comfort. Have you visited all three? Did one of them feel more comfortable to you than others? have you seen things in the campus that speak to you? Have you met people that you could see being colleagues with (not necessarily instant best friends, but people you could enjoy doing things with)? Follow your gut.

18

Rankings of Phd/MA programs (based largely on Professors publication output, not their undergraduate teaching liabilities) should be taken with a grain (or more) of salt as indicators when deciding between undergrad programs, particularly as many - if not most - students graduate college with a major different from that which they expected when they were HS seniors.

All three are good choices. If you can, go to the visit weekends and see which feels like the best fit for you.

19

I used graduate departmental ranking because I have not seen departmental undergraduate ranking. I completely agree that ranking are only one factor to consider along with level of comfort, location, student organizations, fit, and anything else a student considers important. The fact remains that Princeton is among the best universities in each of the majors that PyBandJelly is considering majoring in. Nocreativity1 is correct that Brown is ranked #4 in Applied Math and Princeton is ranked #7. In applied math Princeton offers certificates in Applied and Computational Math, Operations Research and Financial Engineering, Statistics and Machine Learning. Other programs related to his interest are Computational and Information Science, Computer Science, Engineering Physics, and perhaps Robotics and Intelligent Systems.

Frequently when high school students say they want to study applied math they mean they want to study mathematical techniques that can be applied to business which is Operations Research. Universities.com ranks Princeton #3 in OR. Neither Yale nor Brown made their listing. I have taken OR type courses at both MIT and Princeton and can attest to the quality of the applied math at Princeton.

PyBandJelly should talk to Princeton students about STEM research. In general, independent research is required to graduate from Princeton. Princeton students have done research at CERN and developed new Internet search algorithms. Recent senior OR independent research includes the following topics:

Options Pricing Using Neural Network Models and Variations on Volatility
Using Machine Learning Methods to Predict Implied Volatility Surfaces for SPX Options
Game of Shows: Using linear regression and integer programming to optimize television ratings
Energy Risk Management: Stochastic Optimization for Industrial Gas Operations

Attend Princeton Preview and talk to students.

20

@PyBandJelly I would say Princeton. Strongest for STEM, really undergrad-focused education, they devote a crazy amount fo resources to undergrads. Campus and location is gorgeous but not very centrally located which might be the the only thing that doesn’t fit exactly with what you want. That said, Princeton is fairly close to NYC and Philly and Yales location is actually worse in my opinion (New Haven is sketchy af). Brown is located in a mid sized city but I would pick brown over Princeton or Yale anyway, let alone just because of location.