<p>I think you also need to check out the environment. Yale is a real urban, I repeat, urban university. You are smack dab in the middle of New Haven, which is sorta nice around Yale, but gritty elsewhere. Shops, restaurants, and the like are all within easy walking distance and the campus, although nice, is closed in and not generally grassy and tree lined.</p>
<p>Princeton is very, very suburban. The campus is beautiful, wide open, tree-filled, and grassy with lots of nifty looking buildings. The surrounding town is, for the most part, very high rent and full of high end retailers and retailers catering to the college kids. The immediate surrounding area is suburban/rural. Lots of wide open spaces and a growing number of McMansion kinds of developements. </p>
<p>Can't say anything about Duke. Never been there.</p>