<p>Admittedly, the individual strengths of the tour guide that particular day shouldn’t hold that much sway. Like others have said, a lengthy visit can allow one to develop some more founded opinions. </p>
<p>Now…</p>
<p>Let’s say it’s a given that HYP have beautiful campuses, excellent academic features and great and stimulating students.</p>
<p>What I feel stands out about Yale 1) you talk to any alum and they’ll tell you that the residential college system was the largest “systematic” feature of Yale College that affected them. How? By creating an extremely efficient, functional and captivating residential identity for everyone, there’s less of the gravitating to the cliques that is sometimes forced upon students at schools where there’s no social life outside of the clubs, Greek system or teams. The cohesion of the residential colleges is immediately felt and draws everyone in. This also allows you to truly have a diverse set of intimate friends as the residential colleges are mostly randomly selected. I still count my many roommates among my closest relationships today. At my wedding six years after graduation, 13 Yalies showed up. I’ve been to a good dozen of their weddings too. Our spouses are constantly amazed at our cohesion these many years out of New Haven. 2) Amazing schedule, Reading Period: The school schedule is fantastic in that you have a full ten days off after the Yale Harvard game, you come back for one week of classes, then you’re in Reading Period: a catch up time for studying before exams w/no classes. U are finished with Finals before XMas break (about 12/22 – I don’t know about Princeton but Harvard has Finals in January – yeech!). You return after mid-January and crank until April (another 10 days for Sp Break) and then Reading Period and finals are done by mid May. You get a pretty early start to your summers. 3) Shopping Period: you get pretty good flexibility to design your curriculum during your eight semesters at Yale. Besides the requirements in your Major, you have a lot of room outside to really take classes you want and interest you (Liberal Arts in action!). Upwards of 2/3 to 1/2 of your classes CAN be outside your Major concentration if you were to so choose. To encourage experimentation and afford flexibility, the beginning of every semester is Shopping Period. Basically, you don’t submit your final class registration form for about a week. In this time, many Yalies are really sampling many classes to find a particularly interesting lecturer, or topic, or sometimes – an easier course (aka “gut” classes). This was an exciting feature and allowed me to have a fantastically interesting schedule (I almost unexpected double majored in History due to the no. of classes I took). 3) Physical lay out of Campus: the proximity of everything was something we took for granted – until I interned at Standford one summer. Its campus was monstrously large (by comparison) and the housing was scattered everywhere. Yale’s physical surroundings seemed just to foster much more socializing and was everything was pretty convenient. SOmetimes Yale’s relative isolation could be a good thing: most students stayed on campus for weekend events but we were still close enough to many other venues and schools if we wanted to venture.</p>
<p>These are just my anecdotes. If you find yourself in the enviable position to choose btn Yale and Princeton, then check them both out. The Tigers have a lot going on too!</p>