<p>I live in Tucson, Arizona about twenty minutes from the University of Arizona. In pictures, the University of Arizona is a nice-looking place. However, in person, the U of A is a hole. I’m sorry, but it is. The buildings look like bomb shelters, and are haphazardly placed all around in between ghetto parts of the city. It’s disgusting. It is what turned me off the most about the UA - the surroundings. </p>
<p>And then I look at pictures of Yale and the surrounding New Haven. And New Haven looks kinda like Tucson around the UA. But as I know, pictures can be deceiving. Can any current student, or applicant that visited a few months ago, give me their impressions of New Haven? It has been said that New Haven is starting to clean up a bit. Is this true? </p>
<p>Because of my own experiences, an important facet of the college I attend is the surrounding area. Would I be exchanging Tucson for New Haven?</p>
<p>If you are set on Ivies, and are most interested in avoiding gritty city life, you might want to look at Dartmouth or Princeton. If you are admitted to Yale, definitely make the effort to come to Bulldog Days. You will be able to decide if New Haven feels OK to you. </p>
<p>We’ve lived in Phoenix, spent lots of time in Tucson, and my daughter is at Yale. The biggest change for her is the lack of access to wild places. She’s home for her first break, and spent a lot of time by herself in the woods on her skis!</p>
<p>If Gothic architecture appeals to you, you can’t beat the campus. There are enough parks and trees to make it feel green and pretty, especially for someone like you, coming from a desert. The surrounding areas are urban, and probably not unlike some sketchy parts of Tucson.</p>
<p>If you need to be able to walk to or see a wild place from your dorm, Yale isn’t the place.</p>
<p>just like in any urban place (aka city) there are places you wouldn’t want to be at nighttime. I visited Yale by train, and I’m not going to lie, I thought “this place is like downtown LA.” (not a good thing) and I got to the campus by train (which was OK.) I got to see how around the train station there was public housing and the “downtown,” and then I got to the edge of Yale campus (right in front of the place where we have engineering tours.) this could sound scary or maybe not at all, but once I went on the tour, I was so surprised at how the campus building looked as nice as how they looked in the brochure. And I went on a rainy day, too.</p>
<p>The campus is really nice and the area of New Haven around Yale is also nice. That being said, when you begin to leave the areas of New Haven that are around downtown/Yale, it can get a bit sketchy. It is basically like any urban city, however… if you are really concerned about it I suggest finding a school that is in a suburban environment. </p>
<p>The areas around Yale are pretty and safe… just be smart late at night.</p>
<p>I went to visit Yale last April (it was during BDD, but I wasn’t there for that) and it is outstandingly gorgeous…I actually felt like the pictures online/in brochures down played it. The immediate area of New Haven, right around Yale, has cute shops, some local, some chains (like Urban Outfitters and Starbucks were both there) and tons of different types of restaurants (Burger/Pizza joints right alongside Thai and Indian cuisine…you get the gist) so the little Yale bubble is glorious and fairly safe…however once you venture outside of it it’s not the prettiest city and it can get dicey at night, but
a) Yale has been spending about $2mil a year to improve “the 'Have” and it seems to be paying off (no pun intended)
b) it’s like any city, you just have to be safe about where/when you walk around </p>
<p>I also pass through the New Haven train station on Amtrak on my way to New York a lot and that kind of gives you the grungey look at New Haven, but having the train there is also really convenient.
So basically there are pluses and minuses to the surrounding city, but the Yale campus itself is astonishingly gorgeous! I suggest you visit if you have the chance, you’ll be blown away</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If you feel uncomfortable around the University of Arizona in Tucson, chances are you are going to think that Yale is worse. The Yale campus itself is much nicer, but the areas just outside the “bubble” (which is pretty thin) are less attractive than anything I remember in the vicinity of UofA. Basically, there’s hardly anything in Tucson old enough to have gotten as grungy as the run-down parts of New Haven.</p></li>
<li><p>Maybe you ought to try to project yourself into the future as a more worldly and confident person. It would be a shame to limit your college choices because you are freaked out by the standard urban issues that hundreds of thousands of students handle daily without anything awful happening to them. If this is a deal-killer with Yale for you, then it’s probably a deal-killer with 3/4 of the possibly comparable universities you might consider.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I spent the summer at Yale Summer Session. The campus is really safe, security guards at every door, you can only swipe into campus with your card, etc. In terms of the immediate 2-3 block radius from the campus, I found New Haven to be really nice - lots of cool coffeeshops, Thai restaurant, quaint boutiques. Then walk past this immediate area and it’s definitely more of an inner-city. I didn’t feel comfortable walking around at night alone, or near the New Haven green alone - a lot of times, there were homeless people/drug deals to be seen. </p>
<p>The good thing, however, is there is a considerable police force at night and there’s other students everywhere, so I felt safer than if I were, say, alone in a small town.</p>
<p>^ And not to sound un-PC in reference to the homeless - just saying, sometimes people would ask me for money or sort of follow me in a way that I felt uncomfortable.</p>
<p>I’m really attracted to Yale because of the architecture and the campus in general but I too am worried about how I would adjust if I ever got accepted. I spent a semester in New York City and I loved the fact that I was able to just go out and walk around to so many places and see so much whereas New Haven doesn’t really seem like that kind of place.</p>
<p>You’re not going there for New Haven though, you’re going there for Yale. </p>
<p>Let’s establish this: New Haven, like all cities, big and small, has its grimy parts, has its quaint parts. Anything you’d want to do anyhow is in the quaint part, and unless you’re a hermit you’re likely going to venture outside of the ivy covered hallow halls of Yale University with a friend so that if you do run into some unsavory characters you won’t be alone. Be smart like with every city, maybe carry a switchblade in your sock if you’re really that worried (no. don’t.), but don’t freak out about it. It’s not like you’re being thrown into the trenches of WWII…you’ll be fine as long as you’ve got common sense. </p>
<p>Got it? Good!</p>
<p>Now let’s establish one more thing: Yale is also smack dab in between Boston and New York, so anytime you’re feeling a little squished you can make your way to the big cities. I personally would pick Boston over NYC in a heartbeat, but either way they’re both exactly 2 hours from campus (1.5 on a good day, 1.25 if you speed on a good day ;)) and there you go. You’ve basically got everything you need. If you were to draw a flow chart it would look something like this:</p>
<p>And also, if we go to Yale, we get to live at a Hogwarts-esque castle, so who CARES if New Haven is gritty? Once you walk through Phelps Gate, you’re in a different world.</p>
<p>Yeah! And you can be sure that if it really was that dangerous Richard and Emily would have hired a personal body guard to follow her around…which they didn’t, so you can all rest assured that New Haven is fine ;)</p>
<p>Yes absolutely! Especially since HER Yale was nestled in the hills of Burbank, California. Burrrrr it’s cold there! (ily the episode in season 7 where they go to to Martha’s Vinyard for Valentine’s Day [my birthday gift from GG, my birthday’s on Feb. 14] and they have green shrubs and grass in their Connecticut lawn in the winter!) ;)</p>
<p>She will forever live the typical Yalie life in our hearts, minds, and television screens.</p>
<p>Please form a single file line as we all scramble to watch the later seasons of Gilmore Girls for any references to life at Yale. If I get a roommate like Paris, I will transfer to my local community college.</p>