101 Reasons to go to Yale

<p>Sergio, what do you like about New Haven? I haven't had a chance to visit yet.</p>

<p>It has an airport for one...I can't tell you how useful this is! (especially after undergoing the drama of getting to Dartmouth, Princeton, and Stanford [mainly Dartmouth, although it is amazing once you get there]) </p>

<p>But seriously, the magnitude of restaurants, quaint little shops, and easy access to things you take for granted like movie theaters and Starbucks, not to mention Subway...it is insanely close to campus....ooh and Coldstone! Sorry, I am answering with my appetite. I think the feel of New Haven is ideal so long as you use your head when it comes to venturing off by yourself outside of the Yale bubble. It is truly a city...I can't stress that enough because that is a characteristic that is absent from the surroundings of many schools in the same tier as Yale. Hmm...I am probably neglecting a few more positive aspects, but the moral of the story is that I definitely enjoyed it substantially more than I thought I would based on stupid things I heard from stupid people.</p>

<p>You hear different things because the city has changed so much in recent years. It used to be a bit quiet, with many empty shops, just like any other city. Also, crime and abandonment used to be higher -- like nearby New York City, crime in NH has fallen by 50+% over the past decade or so and tens of thousands of immigrants have moved in from all over the world, so there are no longer hardly any empty buildings or storefronts. </p>

<p>Even in outlying areas far from the wealthy sections of the city, most of the storefronts have become filled with Guatemalan bakeries, Jamaican restaurants, organic urban farms, edgy art galleries, artist workshops, etc., gentrifying in a similar manner as the boroughs of NY City. </p>

<p>Anyways, Downtown New Haven has become filled with hundreds of restaurants, bars, jazz clubs, theaters, nightclubs and the place is bustling. Not everyone has realized this, but many now consider it to be one of the top four or five best college towns in the country, along with Ann Arbor and Madison (even though it's really a city, not a town). Compared to other Ivy immediate surroundings, downtown new haven is probably more vibrant than all the others combined. Unfortunately a lot of the new development is much too expensive for average college students. More geared towards the yuppies and young families who have invaded the area. Million dollar loft homes, restaurants charging $80 per person, $13.50 for martinis, tons of outdoor cafes everywhere, luxury toystores, etc., etc., but the good news is there is still a lot that fits within student budgets. There are 50,000 college students in the area (Yale isn't even the largest university in New Haven... Southern CT State, which has become much expanded and more selective in recent years, mostly due to UConn's enormous rise in popularity, actually has more students) and they focus their social life on the downtown area. Sometimes they even have to shut down the streets because there are so many people around. </p>

<p>Also, the city is still changing quickly because Yale, the main hospital/Cancer Center (one of the largest hospitals in the U.S. is getting even larger, with a $500 million new cancer treatment facility), and other institutions are expanding so rapidly, plus a bunch of startup companies have set up shop, and even a few hedge funds spilling out from Greenwich. Yale alone spends $400-500 million just every single year (!!!) on millions of square feet of new or renovated buildings, mostly because its endowment has skyrocketed to over $20B, and all that stuff needs new staff, high-paid professors, etc. Developers, many from NYC or Chicago, are chomping at the bit to build luxury condo towers there and the bidding war on land is hurting the city in some ways. Unfortunately in a decade or so it may be too expensive for most students and not as fun... like what happened to Harvard Square.</p>

<p>dude, it maybe something else, but yale's name is anything but sweet...it reminds me of stale hahahaha</p>

<p>It reminds me of "hell yeah""</p>

<p>I like what I read about Yale and science faculty as well as science research dollars, but what I really want to know is how many Yale grads attend graduate school within 10 years of graduating. Johns gives this data. My son is a shoe in Vandy, (Duke likely) and I wonder if it's worth applying to Yale as he could attend an Ivy for his Ph.D. As parents with graduate degrees knowing what we know about corporate America, we don't heavily weight undergraduate degrees. (Not to burst any bubbles, but we know many successful, public school attendees, some with Ph.D.s who are Sr. VPs at major companies.) Again, any info. on the number of Yale grads pursuing grad degrees?</p>

<p>In terms of getting into the top graduate schools for law, medicine or business, Yale and Harvard do better than any other college (university or LAC) in the United States, according to the WSJ's analysis. For Ph.D.s specifically, Yale also does very well. </p>

<p>And in terms of overall success rates, according to Loren Pope's analysis of leadership positions across hundreds of different fields, Yale graduates do better than graduates of any other college or university in the United States - about twice as good as the very top LACs and more than 5x better than Duke or Penn graduates. See <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=2951589&postcount=5%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=2951589&postcount=5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>seems to me like yalies are somewhat self-conscious and sour about how harvard is often considered better by laymen...</p>

<p>it seems to me like you're not very nice, firefox. you post mean stuff on almost every thread you comment on.</p>

<p>^^ self-conscious and sour anyone? </p>

<p>perhaps you didn't catch the "laymen" part of me sentence? looking at it with a positive light, you might actually discover that my comment was hinting that yalies should stop feeling down just because some idiot children think yale of so much worse than harvard...</p>

<p>but then of course, i overestimate people's perceptions of subtlety</p>

<p>why was my comment "self-conscious and sour"? I agree, it seems as though Yale students are always trying to prove that they're just as good as Harvard - or trying to prove that they shouldn't have to prove they're just as good. My comment was just an observation that you seem to like going around making unfriendly remarks on threads that don't require that kind of reaction.</p>

<p>clearly, though, i am ignorant of the nuances of internet subtlety. Thanks to you, I now see the error of my ways.</p>

<p>oh don't mind me. i'm a miserable pre-school dropout. they deemed me too stupid to serve in the army</p>