<p>What’s good about Princeton?</p>
<ol>
<li>Fantastic professors who know they have to teach undergraduates or they wouldn’t join Princeton’s faculty.</li>
<li>A beautiful, serene, suburban campus.</li>
<li>A social life that both develops skills and provides visible fun. You can always find a party. You learn to present. Even if you don’t want either of the above, fun abounds.</li>
</ol>
<p>My child, a quiet person with wide interests from a middle middle-class family, has loved Princeton and has met very, very few people one could call snobby. I think that snobby notion is vestigial, left over from the days when eating clubs had a bigger role in school life. But, as with ANY college, there are imperfections. Two that come to mind: While eating clubs no longer dominate, the Street is indisputably where most mass gatherings happen (and any kid can participate, underage or not, club member or not) and the culture of those parties involves lots of drinking. Not sure how that’s terrifically different from any college, of course. The other is a weirder problem - many of the freshmen live in quaint quads in gorgeous buildings; the rooms I’ve seen aren’t on the long halls many of us remember from college days of yore. That seems minor, but the effect is that freshman don’t always have the serendipitous chance to meet people by wandering down the hall, seeing an open door, stopping in to say hi etc etc. The very charming quad set up can be isolating. PU’s college works on social events, but because it’s planned, arranged (fun, too) it doesn’t really tackle that loss of a casual way of meeting people. It took my child a while to find friends outside roommates. But it did happen, and said child now adores the school.
One perspective.</p>
<p>^So what would be the best way to meet new people casually, if one can’t just walk into an open door and say hi?</p>
<p>But what sets Princeton apart from other ivies? I am so confused (or excited) since everybody is praising his/her own. Is there a thread comparing all the ivies? I am in desperate need of one.</p>
<p>I don’t think quads are isolating. You still have to go into the hall/entryway to go to the bathroom, do laundry, etc, so there are plenty of times to say hi to people and chit chat. The first few weeks many freshman quads also leave their common doors open. If anything, it’s not the quads that are isolating, but entryways. Instead of entering through a door that opens into a dorm hall, it opens up to a stairwell with about 3 rooms on each floor. It’s kind of hard to explain, but it makes sense once you see it. Those on higher floors have less people just wandering into their room. However, those on the first floor have a lot more foot traffic, because everybody has to walk by to get to their room.</p>
<p>Not all dorms use entryways, but they are common in some of the older dorm buildings. I lived on the first floor last year and didn’t experience any problems (people always stopped by on their way upstairs). One of my new roommates this year lived on the third floor and did find it quieter up there since there was less foot traffic. She said it was nice on one hand because it was quiet and not distracting. She ended up spending her hangout time in our room and in another room on the first floor. She also met people on her club sports team, orchestra, dining hall</p>
<p>The first few weeks of college, there is a ton of just randomly sitting with people in the dining halls and casually meeting at parties and classes. If you make an effort to be friendly and say hi, I promise you will have learn more names than you can possibly remember.</p>
<p>I think it takes anyone a while to find REAL friends that are more than acquaintances. When you’re just meeting people and only known them a month, it’s not likely that you’ll think you’ve found your best friend in the whole world. Friendships are built with common experiences, and those only come with time.</p>
<p>Also, two of the residential colleges, namely Whitman and Forbes, along with significant portions of the other, older colleges, do, in fact, have hallways.</p>
<p>My hallmates from last year are my closest friends.</p>
<p>I’m an undergrad at Princeton, and while I know everyone on CC likes to plug their own schools, I’d just like to reiterate that the learning environment here is really incredible and that the campus is a really wonderful social community to be a part of.</p>
<p>If you’re all looking for more genuine sense of Princeton’s unique vibe than is evident on the school’s website, I recommend that you check out The Princeton University Press Club’s blog, The Ink. The blog has daily postings about campus goings-on, Princeton in the news, and all of the little idiosyncrasies that make Princeton such a great place. As an undergraduate, I use the site a lot, and I know that if I’d been aware of it during my application process, it really would have helped increase my interest in the school and vanquish all those pre-frosh fears I had about Princeton’s social scene.</p>