Bad things I have heard about princeton

Colleges and Universities A-Z Princeton University
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<p>I need to make up my mind! Here are the very few bad things I have heard about princeton. Confirm, disagree, answer all one or some -- anything appreciated: )</p>

<p>Bad:</p>

<p>a) Princeton dorms aren't great. They are small and have very dim lighting.
b) Princeton has a distinct lack of music facilities - rehearsal rooms, performance spaces, etc.
c) Cost of living is high.</p>

<p>Questions:
a) How much research is an undergrad able to do beyond the junior and senior thesis requirements?
b) The Health Professions Advising site looks like it is really together and student-friendly - lots of links and good stats on its page...any student able to confirm this?
c) Will I lose much if I don't join an eating club?
d) Any difficulties or perks of pursuing pre-Med at Pton.
e) Do faculty give private lessons to amateur instrumentalists? (I'm pretty good, but not particularly - no interest in a future career in music, not good enough to make their orchestra, not going to major in Music.)
f) How tough is it to get onto the newspaper team?</p>

2

<p>1) I have an awesome dorm next year in Witherspoon. All dorms vary, but Princeton's gothic dorms in the Residential College are newly renovaed.</p>

<p>2) The dorm buildings themselves have music rehearsal rooms. Woolworth music building usually has free rooms for practice as well. Richardson Auditorium and the Frist theater are used 24/7, and McCarter hosts shows as well.</p>

<p>3) Yes, but you're not living off campus. CVS at Princeton is CVS anywhere else.</p>

<p>A) Depends on the professors you ask. I know some who are doing research here, but most prefer to do it over the summer at a lab back near home.
b) What it looks like is what it looks like.</p>

<p>c) Perhaps. It's really easy to eat at a friend's eating club (eg I've eaten at Terrace several times), but you do lose out of the membership community unless you know people. In that case, it's as easy as going with a friend to a members' night event.</p>

<p>d) Orgo is harder here than at other schools, apparently.</p>

<p>e) Dunno about faculty -- check the princeton music site, there is a full list of music teachers there. I'm not sure how many would be faculty. I take voice lessons myself here.</p>

<p>f) Obviously, being an editor of a daily requires time. If you just want to write, it's not too hard. I know a lot of frosh writing for the Prince.</p>

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<p>Cost of living is low compared to new york :p</p>

4

<p>Hi Mea. I'm a parent of a freshman at Princeton. It's very difficult to generalize about Princeton's dorms; they are so varied. They range from new or newly renovated, to gothic with grand dining halls, to 70's nondescript. But even the nondescript have their advantages, like prime central location and some of the best rooms for sophomores. </p>

<p>As to the lights, freshman are told to have plenty of lighting. Mine has a desk lamp and a floor lamp in addition to the room light(s), and these can be brought from home (no halogen torchieres though), or purchased at any number of places while at Princeton including the bookstore which carries just about everything you'd need. </p>

<p>If you took away all of the beautiful trees, there might be more light in many of the rooms, but it's easy to get a lamps. I wouldn't let little details deter you from the incredible academics or the rich arts and extracurricular offerings at Princeton. I've noticed that the biggest dilemmas for my Princeton '08er have been along the lines of "what to choose" from all of the offerings, or in needing a few more hours in each day. </p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

5

<p>Re: cost of living, as Mzhang said above, it would be expensive to live in town. A lot of the locals commute to NYC to work each day. It's a nice town though, some expensive shops yes, but also lots of little eateries, a good record store (new and used music), movie theatre, army and navy, etc... and you do not need much spending money at all, on campus.
There is a thread on this, about 8 pages back.</p>

6

<p>Rooms are great if you happen to be in Mathey or Rocky... but speaking from my Butlerite perspective - while dorms are not pretty from outside (but for Walker, which I unfortunately have to leave after this semester), rooms are well-lit and with some invention they can get really nice and cozy.</p>

7

<p>I have just skimmed the responses to this post so im sorry if im repeating anything. Im a current '08 and i hope this helps:</p>

<p>Bad:</p>

<p>a) Princeton dorms aren't great. They are small and have very dim lighting.
Mzhang is going to live in witherspoon which is amazing. However, as a student in Wilson college, I must say that we have pretty good living arrangments as well. Sure, our dorms dont look as nice on the outside but they're great on the inside. I'll be living in a huge suite with a really big common room next year. And your rooms only get better every year. </p>

<p>b) Princeton has a distinct lack of music facilities - rehearsal rooms, performance spaces, etc.
Princeton has two theaters near Forbes, one of which is Tony award winning (I think it was a Tony at least). The Orchestra is huge and there are tons of music groups. There are also lots of rehearsal rooms scattered across campus so I don't see that being a problem.</p>

<p>c) Cost of living is high.
Yes. Princeton, N.J. is not New Haven (hahaha)</p>

<p>Questions:
a) How much research is an undergrad able to do beyond the junior and senior thesis requirements?
Alot. Since Princeton doesnt have a huge grad school, there are lots of research opportunities that would be typically taken up by graduate students.</p>

<p>b) The Health Professions Advising site looks like it is really together and student-friendly - lots of links and good stats on its page...any student able to confirm this?
No idea, sorry. However, all my experience with advising here as been extremely positive.</p>

<p>c) Will I lose much if I don't join an eating club?
Nothing, the four year residential college system will be open when you enroll so you have the option of joining a club, staying in a college or going independent. You'll probably end up doing what most of your friends are though.</p>

<p>d) Any difficulties or perks of pursuing pre-Med at Pton.
I see no difficulties, Orgo is hard but thats a universal fact of life. Princeton has incredible medical school placement, if that helps your decision any. </p>

<p>e) Do faculty give private lessons to amateur instrumentalists? (I'm pretty good, but not particularly - no interest in a future career in music, not good enough to make their orchestra, not going to major in Music.)
I don't think so but they do have excellent instructors for private lessons. I doubt that a professor would take the time to privately instruct a student unless he/she is an excellent musician. However, this would be true anywhere.</p>

<p>f) How tough is it to get onto the newspaper team?
The Press Club is very hard to get into but all the papers and publications are very open.</p>

8

<p>Here is an article about the way orgo is taught at Princeton: <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/02/1118/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/02/1118/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Cool article. They have now changed the two orgo tracks though (used to be a lecture one and a problem solving). Now theres teh problem solving one and a Bioemphasis one which leads into Biochem.</p>

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<p>Ques. e)
The music dept. contracts teachers for private lessons; they are professional musicians. You can read their concert credits and their recordings and so on, under "People" then "Instrumental Teachers" on the Music Dept page of Princeton's website. </p>

<p>There is a range of instrumental music groups (same with dance, theatre, vocal music--in fact many of Princeton's performing groups are renowned as among the best anywhere), so no matter what your level of ability, if you are interested, there's a group. For instrumental music, there is the orchestra, the sinfonia, the wind ensemble, and the jazz ensemble(s). There are other groups around, too. There are conservatory-level musicians (many majoring in subjects other than music), and also a lot of music enthusiasts of various abilities who do it for fun. Some of the professors are even into the Princeton music scene; there is a faculty jazz group, and there is a band with an English prof as one of the musicians--and Prof. Paul Muldoon (who won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry) writes their lyrics! </p>

<p>Since you're into music, check out the a cappella arch sings (ah, tradition), or the concerts in Richardson Aud. (my favorite! it has character...lots of wood, winding staircases to the balcony, great acoustics) which is where the orchestra, jazz ensembles, and concert choir perform (among others) as well as lots of outside groups such as London's Nash Ensemble and the Duke Ellington Orchestra. </p>

<p>Even if you aren't participating in things such as musical theatre, or the myriad of dance groups, comedy, etc etc etc--you still get to enjoy all of the performances by talented and enthusiastic classmates!
There are also trips to NYC sponsored by the residential colleges. Great prices to Broadway and Metropolitan Opera performances, for example. Students catch the train (right at the edge of campus) to see things too, and there are ways to get discount tickets. </p>

<p>Ques a)
Might you be interested in the Integrated Science Series? It's intense, but with great teaching, and research opportunities. These are detailed nicely by poster ec1234 in the Engineering Sequence thread, 2009 sub forum, way at the top of the ccPrinceton page. Also, someone linked a photo of the class. (Cool classroom!)</p>

<p>Good questions. Any others?</p>

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<p>Back to the dorms. Not sure why you've heard they are bad. I will say that I have never seen at Princeton a dorm as bad as the one my s stayed at for a summer in a peer institution's unrenovated residential college, dingy, dirty, with no lighting at all, and no window screens.</p>

<p>At Princeton you will have access to a wide variety of rooms -- a double in a quad with a common room in either a collegiate Gothic or a red-brick post-war dorm; a single or double in a suite of 5 rooms with private bath; a quad with two doubles with a fireplace in the common room; a single on a hallway with other singles, sharing a bath; a suite for 9 or 11 with two bathrooms and a mixture of doubles and singles on two floors, with a huge common room. There is a mixture of hallways and entryways. As a sophomore you will be eligible for room draw, when you can join with friends to choose a room, a suite, or a bunch of singles on a hallway. </p>

<p>No matter where you are, you will have access to the residential college resources cricket describes above, as well as your own dining room, library, and other facilities including fitness rooms, theater, and dance studios. In the quads there are volleyball nets, greens where you can spread out a blanket and read, etc.</p>

12

<p>One more thing I forgot to mention about the dorms: they are located on a lovely pedestrian campus where you will not need to walk more than 10-15 minutes to get anywhere, you will not need to take a shuttle bus late at night, and you will find many EC groups and classes meeting right in the residential colleges. Not sure whether you have visited, but there is a lovely lake on campus and a beautiful garden beside Prospect House, and my d told me yesterday that the cherry blossoms, daffodils, and tulips are all in bloom all over campus. This setting is part of what makes Princeton special.</p>

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<p>aparent,cricket, pimpdaddy, mzhang, saccharaine and 5300+post-zante:</p>

<p>Just a quick note to let oyu know i'm reading all your incredibly thoughtful input and appreciating all of it. I'll write a more detailed reply when I have the time (crisis with school newspaper = current editing layouting frenzy).</p>

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<p>...oh and I'm leaning much more towards pton these days, in part thanks to you CCers : )!</p>

15

<p>you will like it better than Northwestern. Don't let dorms make your decision. Dorms in every college are yukky. But you could be lucky and next year you may get (future) Whitman and it will be like a 5 star hotel.</p>

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<p>I'll take simba's advice and not worry about the dorms anymore. As long as they have running water I'll live. heh.</p>

<p>All my previous concerns have been done away with, and all the answers to my questions have been, like, perfect. I've also gotten a better feel for the differences between Yale and Princeton (got back from both reception/dinners last night). </p>

<p>Here's what I'm weighing, basically. Yes, my old concerns are gone and the first thing I do is bring up new ones...such a positive person, I know. [It may sound like I don't like anything about princeton here, but be assured that they're concerns so they're bound to sound negative]:</p>

<p>Community Service: </p>

<p>There was a certain driven/intense passionate feel I felt Yale students had for helping others -- Dwight Hall, protests about this or that, helping out at the hospital, sketchy New Haven -- not that ptonians don't have that, but I get the feeling there are 'deeper' community service activities going on at Yale. The ptonians I met yesterday were such great, positive people, but they did admit that living in a 'country club' wasn't quite 'real'. I'm a person who <em>has</em> to be working with a retarded child/at the hospital ferrying materials to the Burn Unit once a week or I almost get cranky, because otherwise I feel like a part of me is missing; fundraising, non-contact, 'superficial' community service isn't going to be enough for me, I think. </p>

<p>Campus: </p>

<p>Princeton totally takes the cake here. Just a curious question - b/c my US geography sucks, I admit ;) - NJ and CT appear to be pretty close on the map, so how come in 'the Insider's Guide', Yalies list bad weather as the number one big negative? I would have thought they'd have the same weather...
Otherwise, a Yalie told me that the only 'culture' I would be exposed to at Princeton is high-end shopping,whereas Yale has pre-Broadway show, museums galore. Is that true?</p>

<p>Grad Med School: There are distinct advantages to Yale having a med school - they've got a hospital to intern/volunteer at, a medical (not just pre-Medical) community, etc. It's not something pton can help, but that's one of the factors working against it.</p>

<p>Rep:</p>

<p>Prestige/rankings dont' concern me, but despite the new financial aid policy, in the back of my head, princeton still has that aura of exclusivity, martinis, conservativeness, snobbery where the students aren't down-to-earth and are overly obsessed with labels. The Ptonians I met last night assure me that is solely a public image, but agree that it's pretty difficult to tell anyone that you go to Princeton because of the assumptions they make about you. </p>

<p>(quick q - may 1 is a <em>postmark</em> reply date, right?)</p>

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<p>mea: You should go where your heart says to go. You have to be happy for the next 4 years. Forget the public image. All private schools have rich kids - that is how they stay in business. Rich kids wear rich clothes. You won't find the answer you are looking for either on Princeton thread or Yale thread. Go with your gut. You can't go wrong - you are lucky. The difference between the two are at best marginal.</p>

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<p>Okay, first, you'll have plenty of opportunities to volunteer through the Student Volunteer Center (the largest student organization on campus) and the Community House. Service projects are going on every week, so if you're as passionate about service as you say you are (which I have no doubt that you are, juding from your post), you'll have plenty of opportunities to work. Many service projects are done in Trenton, but opportunities to work elsewhere are available too. </p>

<p>And just to reiterate what simba said, you really should not base what school you attend on public perception of a school. I have found that the public's perception of Princeton is rooted either in a) ignorance, or b) desire to cling to old stereotypes. Princeton, while it is exclusive just because it's a hard-to-get-into school, is not all about martinins, certainly not conservative (I mean, c'mon...this is the Mid-Atlantic...and the campus is widely known to still be pretty liberal, although closer to the center than its more-leftist peer institutions, which makes for more interest convo imo), and not snobby. When you tell people you're going to Princeton, they're much more likely to say, "Wow! Congratulations! You're going to one of the best schools in the nation!" than "Wow! You're going to a school filled with rich, spoiled conservative brats!"</p>

<p>Look at the CCers on this board. I've overhwelmingly found the '09ers to be an energetic, enthusiastic, down-to-earth bunch...and these are the people you'd be going to school with next year. That's exciting, no? :) So yeah, come. You'll have some of the most amazing years of your life, me thinks.</p>

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<p>Agreed, Princeton does have more students on financial aid than Yale does (or at least it did last i checked). And while Princeton doesnt have its own hospital, the Princeton Medical Center is really close and has lots of opportunities to volunteer (I plan on doing translating work there next term). I must admit, I am incredibly partial, namely because when I was applying I went through a huge Princeton ED/Yale EA/Harvard EA debate and after much research and a few visits, ending up hating Yale alot. However, when you are left with a choice like Yale or Princeton, you cant really go wrong. They are both incredible schools and while I am incredibly happy at Princeton, I'm sure there are tons of Yalies that would say the same about Yale. I'm sure either would offer a fantastic four years but Princeton is still awesomer so come here!</p>

<p>PS I apologize if parts of this dont quite make perfect sense because I just got back from a looooong night.</p>

20

<p>I also hear Princeton students say the place isn't "real." They jokingly call the place the "bubble." To me this is a sign that they appreciate and recognize that they live on a campus with extraordinary beauty and resources. However, if you listen to the way they spend their time, they are all busy reaching out to the community and to the wider world in various ways.</p>

<p>Many of the Princeton students I meet are very interested and deeply involved in hands-on service work, but they are also interested in something else: the big picture and the capacity they have to effect change in a broad sense. They understand their responsibility and power as future leaders. I don't think it's an accident that Teach for America was founded by a Princeton student as her senior thesis: <a href="http://www.teachforamerica.org/flash_movie.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.teachforamerica.org/flash_movie.html&lt;/a> </p>

<p>The Student Volunteer Council is just excellent. <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/%7Esvc/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.princeton.edu/~svc/&lt;/a> For students on financial aid who need year-round or summer jobs, they actually offer funding to financial aid students for hand-on community service work. This really prevents it from being some sort of la-de-dah activity, because everybody can participate, including the half of the campus that is on financial aid, and it's on a very serious level. And here is a Community House link: <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/%7Ehouse/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.princeton.edu/~house/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Many, many Princeton students apply for Class of 1969 and Project 55 community service internships, both summer and year-round after graduation. <a href="http://www.princeton1969.org/csf.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.princeton1969.org/csf.asp&lt;/a> <a href="http://www.project55.org/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.project55.org/&lt;/a> </p>

<p>All the various student organizations work together to bring in speakers and sponsor various endeavors. For example: <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S11/35/79E89/index.xml?section=announcements%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S11/35/79E89/index.xml?section=announcements&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I don't think you would find a lack of community service activities at Princeton. In fact, I think you would be challenged to move to another level there.</p>