<p>You guys make me laugh :D We had a warm front out of nowhere around Dec. 29 which brought 60 degree whether to us for about 3 days and my friends and I were wearing shorts outside!</p>
<p>Can't imagine getting school cancelled because of 1in, we got 10 right before vacation with a solid coat of ice and still had school! We New Englanders are hearty ;)</p>
<p>I think you are underestimating the bitter arctic of central Florida.</p>
<p>I'm talking about a cold front next week with a nighttime low of 48. Thank god the highs are upper 70s/lower 80s until then!</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>Haha wow! I would be in jeans and a jacket in 60 degree weather. Perhaps a light scarf too. Now 40/50 degree weather...that requires MAJOR bundling up. Hats, scarfs, gloves, boots, slipper socks, leg warmers (well...around the house) and everythinnnggg necessary to keep warm. Even if it's just the walk from the car to the school..</p>
<p>Ohhhh if there's 1 whole inch of snow...I wouldn't even bother to check the weather reports to see if school is canceled...I know it definitely will be. Ice usually does the trick ...a couple drops of snow and a layer of ice on the ground (that usually melts by 10am) and we're out for a day! woohoo</p>
<p>I think I might have actually LOLed...no wait, I won't lie, I did :) </p>
<p>Here's some shock value for you: Today, it was 3 degrees, with -6 wind chill—yeah, that's right, I even went outside with NO gloves. OH NOEZ!</p>
<p>Hahaha woah! I would be in the house, next to the fireplace, with the heater on as high as possible complaining about how it's too cold to do anything outside. And how I can't even go to the movies/mall because who would drive in such cold weather (....well, it's not like the car heater heats up THAT fast) and then brave the cold from the car to the movie theater/mall. </p>
<p>And how it's hard to move around because I have so much clothes on.</p>
<p>For those of you worried about insects, Yale will be better than Duke, because in New Haven the insects will freeze to death sooner. Really, roaches depend more on how the students live (i.e. food and trash in the dorm) than anything else.
Yale has some cons; New Haven isn't great, and it's cold. But Durham, N.C. isn't all that great, either. Both Yale and Duke are great schools; I think Yale is better, though.</p>
<p>^I'm from Durham and I highly, highly resent that, Durham is the ***** and always will be. I prefer the actual city of Durham to New Haven, but I have family in New Haven so I've spent a good amount of time there. There are definitely rough, rough parts of New Haven as well as very nice parts. It's a city of 200,000 people, it's not going to be New York or Boston, but there's plenty of stuff to do.</p>
<p>I dunno. I didn't have anyone be anything but extremely positive about Yale to me as a pre-frosh, and they always chuckled off or downplayed any negative stuff, but it would have been nice to get a different perspective, so if this helps you, great. If not, well, alright. Come to Yale, regardless; even on my worst day here, I'd still rather be at Yale than anywhere else on earth.</p>
<p>I joined this site to post this because it's like you only ever get the positive stuff, and I feel it's just not the full picture for everyone. Feel free to look me up online for more information. I do the college blog network thing, I draw; it's an easy online search (I don't think we're allowed to post links directly). </p>
<p>So maybe I just have really bad luck or something, but I just wanted to let you know that Yale can get pretty depressing. To be fair, I'm pretty sure this is an extreme minority opinion among Yalies (although my dean says it's not a negligible population...). Don't get me wrong, Yale is still the highlight of my life, it's just not how I imagined it as a pre-frosh, or how I hear my vocal peers describe it. So here are some quick things off the top of my head:</p>
<p>On the residential college environment, I'm JE '10 and we just reopened this fall after a year of renovations, some of which is <em>still</em> going on. And we had roaches. The JE Master even sent an email to us addressing the outbreak. My room <em>still</em> has construction markings on the wall (more funny than problematic). My renovated room is tiny (THAT is problematic--I <em>literally</em> cannot stand in place and rotate my arms without hitting something). Most of JE '10 is annexed to Old Campus. All my suitemates are transfers into Yale or into JE...so am I really in the Yale/JE I joined as a freshman? I don't know. </p>
<p>As a freshman I lived in Farnam, hands down the best year of my life...but we had roaches there, too. The rooms in the Farnam basement (FB01, at least) were apparently wonderfully big; I lived in a double and visitors were always astounded at how spacious our room was, especially those from LW ("el-dub").</p>
<p>As for New Haven, I've always had an irrational fear of the city, so I obsessively keep in mind all the security stuff they tell you freshman year, knowing that in all likelihood I won't actually encounter any problems. But the asterisk here is that a few months ago there was gun fire right outside of where I live in JE (near the YDN building)! I was washing my hands in the bathroom when I heard the shots, just as I was getting ready to go to sleep, too. This kind of shook my it-couldn't-possibly-happen-to-me confidence (forget about the knifepoint mugging right outside Calhoun last year!). Funnily enough, the YDN just reported today that the murder rate is up in New Haven, but it is mainly between felons. </p>
<p>Social environment...I dunno. It seems fine for the average Yalie, but it's really, really rough being an introverted person around here. I don't drink, smoke, etc. so it's kind of tough to interact, you know? Extra-curriculars are alive and well around here, but it just gets uncomfortable when people start getting trashed and stuff. Yale is designed for social people. I just draw pictures for publications and stuff (hardcore, I know)...so you get plenty of outlets for your interests and stuff, no matter who you are, but unless you're social, it can get really, really not sunshiney. </p>
<p>There's of course far more than the above, but I don't want to dampen the mood.</p>
<p>So...you know...Yale isn't perfect and not everyone has roaringly positive experiences, but most do. So if you got into Yale you'll likely be fine.</p>
<p>Congratulations Yale 2013, and good luck with everything,</p>
<p>-R</p>
<p>PS. As a Californian, I love whenever it snows.</p>
<p>I had heard some of the same issues addressed by family friends attending Yale. Roaches, some violence issues -- all part of living in an urban area, I guess. Do all schools in cities have roach issues?</p>
<p>Virtually all multi-unit dwellings have roach problems, especially if somewhat untidy persons are dwelling there.</p>
<p>Um, don't come here (yet) to be a mechanical engineer.</p>
<p>Other than that, there's no better place to spend your undergrad years.</p>
<p>Back onto the discussion of the cold..</p>
<p>There is a low of 40 here Wednesday night.. Sooooooooooooooooooooooo cold.</p>
<p>For a minute I thought you meant a low of MINUS 40, which is indeed cold (but not entirely unheard of in the Midwest). Then I saw you were from Florida, and I was like... lawlz, that's not even freezing!</p>
<p>I repeat my former statement </p>
<p>NOT COLD. AT ALL. :)
It just snowed here last night, which at least means it was 32 degrees, but I happen to know it was lower...what would you do if you were in New Haven right now? Seriously..</p>
<p>Yale is an exciting and amazing school, BUT
Concerns I have heard, however, are that it can be too intense and of
course, New Haven, isn't totally safe (no city is)-it was there that I learned to lock my car doors when driving, use security to get from place to place-scan a neighborhood before entering it.</p>
<p>@milessmiles</p>
<p>I'm actually planning on going into mechanical engineering at Yale (although I'm considering double majoring in english or humanities). The woman who interviewed me said that all of her children (3) went to Yale for math/science/engineering, and loved it. She said that Yale is really expanding the sciences and engineering.</p>
<p>Why do you say that mechanical engineering would be a bad idea?</p>
<p>The HIGH today is -1 degree Fahrenheit, here in Minnesota... I can't wait for WARM, COZY NEW HAVEN!</p>
<p>Roaches are a real drag, but I read recently that the latest dorm room infestation is bedbugs. That is really gross.... Not only-- and maybe not at all-- at Yale, though.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I'm actually planning on going into mechanical engineering at Yale (although I'm considering double majoring in english or humanities). The woman who interviewed me said that all of her children (3) went to Yale for math/science/engineering, and loved it. She said that Yale is really expanding the sciences and engineering.</p>
<p>Why do you say that mechanical engineering would be a bad idea?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Don't let me influence your decision, I apologize. I was being overly blunt. I was faintly alluding to a perceived relative weakness for hard sciences as really the only possible negative about Yale. However, this weakness in rankings probably doesn't apply to undergrad. Your course of study looks like an awesome fit and you'll probably get a lot out of Yale.</p>
<p>The weather guy tonight:
"Well, a big cold front just went through and it sure is COLD out there! 54 degrees tonight!"</p>