If you look through other threads here, you’ll see Yale has, or at least is generally perceived as having, a very distinct personality: much smaller overall than Harvard, more focused on undergraduate education, tighter residential college communities, more arts/humanities-focused, and so on. The sciences have generally been weaker at Yale ,and the university is working to raise their status, so that may be behind some of MWolf’s impression. I would also note the specific focus of Yale’s premier professional schools, which tell you a lot about the ethos of the university: art, drama, music, forestry, law (historically small and focused on public service), as well as a business school that (not sure if this is still the case) was historically focused on non-profit management. None of this, to say the least, is copying Harvard–it’s fully distinct, and much more appealing to many. To my mind (as a graduate of both H and Y), Yale offers arguably the best undergraduate education in the country.
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