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Sounds like Yale would be perfect for you. If you don’t know what you want to do, you shouldn’t go to Wharton, because it is a professional program designed for people planning to go into business. That doesn’t mean you can’t do something else with a Wharton degree, but a Wharton education is not suited to exploring a variety of fields to find one that interests you.
Though Brown has an open curriculum, Yale’s distribution requirments also leaves you very free to choose classes as you want. As long as you take two science classes (chosen from all the science classes offered at Yale), two social science classes (again chosen from all the social-science classes at Yale), and two humanities classes (out of all the humanities classes at Yale), as well as fulfilling the language requirement (can be done in as little as one semester if you took a language in high school), a writing requirement (two writing-intensive classes, which can come from a wide variety of fields), and a quantitative reasoning requirement (two classes, again with a wide variety of fields to choose from). Someone who wants to explore is going to be taking all these types of classes anyway, so Brown’s open curriculum would provide you with little advantage.
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<li>Faculty at Yale are highly accessible and are generally very good teachers. All professors at Yale must teach undergrads, so you will have the opportunity to take classes from even the most famous of professors (the likes of the world’s most famous Shakespeare critic, Harold Bloom). Students are generally enthusiastic about learning, particularly if you avoid large introductory classes. I consider the workload and course difficulty quite high, but I’m also taking a rather difficult course load. In general, you can decide how hard a schedule you want to take, but most students at Yale work pretty hard.</li>
<li>Yale is extremely collaborative. People taking the same class share notes, go over problem sets together, and study for tests together. Yale is fairly liberal (probably around 2/3 Democrats, if not more) but there are certainly opportunities for conservatives as well (if you’re interested in politics, the Yale Political Union is actually much more balanced). </li>
<li>The food is perfectly decent by college standards. Sometimes (like tonight, probably because of Easter) it’s actually quite good, while other times it’s mediocre. As a freshman, you must eat all your meals in the dining hall, but later you can choose a meal plan with fewer meals.</li>
<li>One thing that many students visiting Yale that I’ve talked to have told me they liked about Yale is how friendly the students are, and that rings true to me. Yale students are enthusiastic, hard-working and super-involved in extracurriculars. You will, of course, encounter some pretentious jerks (what Ivy-league school lacks them?), but for the most part, Yale people are amazing.</li>
<li>To be frank, parts of New Haven are a little sketchy, but as long as you travel in a group if you’re leaving the center of campus after dark, you should probably be ok. There is a pretty decent selection of restaurants around campus, while most of the best artistic, musical, and cultural events are actually on campus. Yale has wonderful museums (the Art Gallery, the Peabody, and the British Art Museum spring to mind), great theater (both student and professional), and important and interesting speakers coming all the time. Trust me when I say that not having enough to do is never a problem.</li>
<li>Yale has no International Relations major, but it does have a major in International Studies (more info here: <a href=“The MacMillan Center |)%5B/url%5D”>The MacMillan Center |)</a>. Alternatively you can major in political science and focus on international relations. Also, in terms of stuff outside the classroom, the Yale International Relations Association is probably the richest student group on campus. It runs a Model United Nations team, two MUN conferences, and brings a variety of speakers of interest to IR people to campus.</li>
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