Why Princeton over other Ivies?

sherpa
Fri, 14 Nov 2014 19:43:00 +0000

My son was in a similar situation. We’re in the west, too, and we knew nearly nothing about elite private east coast schools. If you would have asked me to name the Ivy League schools, I would have guessed Harvard and Yale, and then drawn a blank.

Like you, he had strong academic credentials. By the end of his sophomore year, it became clear to us that he was becoming a promising athletic recruit in his sport. His sport, fencing, is a relatively minor NCAA sport, with less than 40 colleges fielding teams, with a disproportionate number of these schools being among the academically elite in the country.

So we needed to get up to speed quickly. His junior year he (and I) visited Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, Duke, Brown, Penn, and Haverford. His requirements were relatively simple. He wanted a school strong in the sciences, with a strong focus on undergraduates, and where he liked the fencing coaches.

He and I could go on forever about minor differences between these schools, but the key word is “minor”. With the exception of Haverford, an LAC, the other schools I listed have a lot more in common than things that differentiate them. Sure, Brown’s open curriculum is much different than Columbia’s common core but, for the most part, you could transplant a typical student from any of these schools to another and they’d get along just fine.

My son chose Princeton and never regretted it. Would he have been happy at any of the others? In my opinion, he would have fit in well at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or Duke, and possible slightly less so at Columbia, Brown, Penn, or Haverford. But that’s him. Feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions about comparisons between any of these schools. Good luck!

Edit to add: I just in your Harvard thread that you’re considering CMC. I’m an alumnus, so feel free to ask me about CMC.