Dartmouth, Yale, Harvard, or Cornell?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I was lucky enough to get into 4 of my reaches....and now I'm overwhelmed by the choices. While I will visit all 4 to get a firm grasp for myself, I would like others to weigh in on the colleges.</p>

<p>I'm currently undecided as to my major, alternating between economics, computer science, or pre-med. Or I might do something else entirely. I want to be able to spend the initial part of college exploring the possibilities. Where would pre-major advising be good? Which college would be a good place to both discover one's passion and then pursue it?</p>

<p>These are the "imperfections" with the individual colleges that are stopping me from picking it outright:</p>

<p>Dartmouth: Too much drinking/Greek life, although I understand they are different from traditional frats. The isolation bothers me a little.</p>

<p>Harvard: I hear that there is a lot of negative competition, arrogance, impersonal instruction, TAs, and people who get depressed (but will never leave because its "HARVARD"). </p>

<p>Yale: Sort of like Harvard in that its greatest emphasis may be on grad work instead of undergraduates. I don't know much (yet) about how happy the students are.</p>

<p>Cornell: Immense size, also isolated. Right now, I think of Cornell as the embodiment of the traits I don't like at Dartmouth and Harvard, but I could be wrong.</p>

<p>Thank you for any advice, anecdotes, opinions, etc.</p>

2

<p>I would rule out Cornell easily based on what you’ve stated. My advice would be to go to “accepted students” days at the other three then make your choice.</p>

3

<p>Wow… congrats. What were your stats? -curious-</p>

4

<p>If engineering is a possible major for you, then Cornell. Otherwise, Harvard or Yale. “Happiness” is an elusive concept. College is hard work and hard work is stressful. Think long-term. Don’t believe a 2-sentence synopsis of a school. The experience is complex and difficult or impossible to distill. You can create and invent your life at these places to a large extent. If “personal” is important, a smaller school like Dartmouth might be worth considering. But, you can have personal relationships with faculty, especially as a junior or senior, if you take the initiave. Top faculty tend to be very busy people, especially if they have a research agenda and grad students to supervise. On the other hand, research experience is valuable and there are benefits to knowing grad students.</p>

<p>No easy answer.</p>

5

<p>They each have their pros and cons, you just have to pick your poison.</p>

<p>I know most about Cornell, since I went there.
As far as the experience there, the so-called “isolation” can be offset by the so-called “immense size”. I wasn’t terribly bored, and still managed to take some trips when I felt like it. But, you know, I was studying a lot. And actually I loved it there. It’s beautiful.</p>

<p>Comparatively, it’s quite possible that being in a metro area of 100,000, swelled by 27,000 fellow students doing what you’re doing, one might feel a little less isolated than than being in a town of 11,000 with 6,000 fellow students.</p>

<p>But the campus- college town experience must be different than the campus- cambridge experience, which may be different than the campus-New haven experience. There is no question that the latter two offer better access to a major city. Though the degree to which that will matter may not be as high as you think. I know of a case, elsewhere, where an urban location actually turned out to be huge negative, in terms of the nature and cohesiveness of the undergraduate college experience. Bu that was not one of these schools.</p>

<p>Cornell does have drinking, and about 1/3 of students do greek life. which means 2/3 don’t but its spirit is in evidence. There is great diversity at Cornell, opportunities to discover one’s passion have got to be greater because there is simply more there that can be learned. But on the other hand, that diversity means there is a diverse group of people on the campus. Only 1/3 of the undergrads are studying in the College of Arts and Sciences .The features of instruction you mentioned are not wrong. From what I hear, Harvard is pretty much like that too. And actually I’ve heard the same thing about Yale too, from a friend’s kid. Cornell is really strong in CS, I believe, econ not so sure about, pre med can be pretty tough. Some recent grads have been claiming everything’s different now, but I don’t believe them.</p>

<p>But all in all, the areas you’ve cited are not spectacularly special at Cornell compared to these others, except maybe CS, so if you crave diversity you might still be interested otherwise one of your other choices might be more appealing.</p>

6

<p>My gut reaction to the sum of your post is Yale… the key is that you mentioned you would like guidance in shaping your future goals… An LAC is actually best for that, but Yale is much smaller than H or C, so would be better than H or C for that. D maybe…</p>

7

<p>Well, from you initial post, I wish you had applied to Brown…</p>

<p>I would go with Dartmouth because I’m a firm believer that rather than expect I will take enough initiative to knock down doors in a department to speak to top faculty, I like an environment where there is an expectation of substantial interaction. It still takes effort, but having the built in expectation really changes the way you can forge relationships with faculty and the nature of those relationships.</p>

<p>However, you need to be sure that the social scene and isolation there won’t drive you away from having a healthy life while in college.</p>

<p>Happiness is not overrated, and while you can find and create a great space for yourself at any of these schools, again, do you want to be somewhere you have to work hard to find your niche or somewhere where falling into that is natural?</p>