<p>lol if the biggest drawback of Yale is Bluebook+, I’m not sure that any university can quell your fears </p>
<p>Thank you @gibby! Helpful information. However I’m not 100% decided on studying CS. Also @MikeNY5 – I never said the biggest drawback of Yale is Bluebook+. Please don’t put words in my mouth. I mentioned the BlueBook+ incident because I think it speaks to Yale’s administration.</p>
<p>Yale’s computer science faculty, may I add, is also known for being very traditional. This can be a good or bad thing, depending on what you are looking for. A student, Max Uhlenhuth, who graduated from Yale CS several years ago has written about the lack of innovation in the department quite well in the YDN. I thought very highly of Yale’s CS before I read his articles, and now I have mixed feelings.</p>
<p>Also @MikeNY5, I feel that I am very aware of Yale’s flaws. But as for Brown, I am still one-sided in my understanding of the university. Do you have anything bad to say about the school? Thanks again. Maybe I will see you at Yale if I decide to come? Enjoy the rest of your time at Andover.</p>
<p>Hah, not Andover, but close. Also, I love brown, as I said before. It’s a good decision to have to make.</p>
<p>@MikeNY5 I thought I read a comment that said you went to Andover? I guess not haha. Well one of the HADES schools then. I don’t go to boarding school myself but one of the college prep schools in NYC.</p>
<p>I just wanted to chime in with regards to the video that @NewYorkerGuy posted.</p>
<p>Every school has their parties and ragers that look a lot like the scenes from that video, but it definitely doesn’t look like that everyday. I don’t believe that there’s such a thing as a “party school” or “non-party school” (except maybe BYU) - just “party kids” and “non-party kids.” No matter where they go to school, the “party kids” will find places to get schwastey and the “non-party kids” will avoid the parties.</p>
<p>At Yale, Wednesday and Saturday are the big nights of the week because Toad’s is open for dancing (and Wednesday is Yale-only) and the saying here is that “all roads lead to Toad’s.” That being said, I’ve been to a few midweek (and non Wednesday) Greek ragers - they exist and they’re a blast.</p>
<p>Our two big events of the year are the Harvard-Yale football game in the fall and Spring Fling right before reading week. Those are weekends that most students set aside completely so that they can drink and party and so on and so forth. This year Harvard-Yale was basically just 40+ consecutive hours of drunkenness and the tailgates looked so much like the video (plus jackets and long pants because, you know, winter in the Northeast). I actually saw a bunch of Brown kids at the Harvard-Yale game (along with quite a few people from Princeton, Dartmouth and Penn and a couple from Columbia and Cornell - judging from the hats/scarves/sweatshirts they were wearing - it was basically the Ivy League Mecca for the weekend).</p>
<p>I know that you have already committed somewhere by now, but this is just a PSA for all the future seniors that the party scene really is what you make of it. I completely avoided all parties and all alcohol until November and since then I’ve been a Toad’s regular <3</p>
<p>^ I wonder how often DS went to Toad’s. Its location is literally next to the entrance of his RC. He did not dance, did not drink but might enjoy some concerts there. I believe the band he was a part of even performed during (actually, prior to) a Spring Fling in one year! At the Old Campus, not at Toad’s, of course.</p>
<p>Do they still have the holiday dinner at the Commons for the freshmen only?</p>
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Yes, they do, and it’s still pretty amazing.</p>
<p>@Bulldog2017 Thank you so much! Really informative. BTW I did commit to Yale…I found out my RC placement tomorrow!</p>
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<p>@MikeNY5 care to share any references for this, especially the “ungodly” part? Also, I think you got the wrong Cambridge school in that list, did you mean MIT?</p>
<p>Congrats @NewYorkerGuy</p>
<p>@ormdad </p>
<p>Yale recently allocated over $1 billion to their STEM programs, not including the $300 million they spent on a new engineering building. CS is definitely getting their fair share of that money. I don’t have an exact figure, but I have a bunch of friends who are doing paid CS research over the summer (right after their freshman year), which is all funded by the department (and one other program that was set up to provide a stipend to basically any freshman who wants to stay and do research over the summer).</p>
<p>Even though I recently turned down Yale for Stanford CS, I do know a couple kids who chose Yale CS over Stanford CS, mostly because they would get more attention and thought socially Yale was a better fit. </p>
<p>I mostly chose Stanford because I like the social scene better, but also because my friend currently a 2017 Yalie described Yale STEM this way: “Maybe in the future Yale STEM will get better, but if you want STEM, as of right now if I were you I would choose Stanford.” </p>
<p>But don’t get me wrong, Yale is incredible and I still often wonder if I made the right choice. </p>
<p>^^Yeah, bulldog2017 said it, @ormdad. Also, I talked with my regional rep, and we, the class of 2018, have <em>nearly</em> a 1:1 stem-non stem intended major ratio, which is the highest in yale’s history. this is no coincidence. </p>
<p>(so, basically, not everyone who’s a Yale 2018er plans for running for the Presidency one day… anymore)</p>