<p>Look at location and decide where to go. All the other differences you'll find ways to accommodate. Location is what you have to deal with for four straight years. Decide which one fits you.</p>
<p>[first paragraph edited out - Mod JEM]</p>
<p> I enjoyed reading laughlinks' article and appreciate his/her point of view. I have another point of view and since it's always best for both sides to be presented, I thought it worthwhile to write.</p>
<p>First of all, I WAS a princeton student. However, I decided to leave the university after my sophomore year. Part of the reason was the eating club system, particularly the selective club system.</p>
<p>The selective clubs have a tremendous impact at Princeton because, though they are just 5 of 13 clubs, usually about twice as many students try to get into them as can. So essentially a great number of students get 'rejected'. This came into play in different ways. First, even though the 'bicker' process officially starts late in the sophomore year, it starts earlier than that socially. Second, alot of students have serious self-esteem issues after getting rejected at clubs. I was trained as a peer-to-peer counselor during my sophomore year and this issue came up more than any other single issue in the meetings. Personally I decided to leave Princeton and spend some time abroad. But I heard of social splits and fights between members of my friends over the eating club issue. In fact, someone I knew (not so well) even killed himself, and I heard 'on the grapevine' that part of it had to do with being rejected by the selective clubs. Of course, you can't blame the clubs for that - I'm sure there were other much more serious issues, but I'm sure the selective 'bicker' process put a big additional strain on him.</p>
<p>For me, the club system at Princeton is a mistake - I felt it systematically split the class up (selective or non-selective) and that the selective clubs especially have a great price. It was one of the reasons I chose to leave the school; I just felt it was an unethical system. I don't oppose fraternities or sororities, by the way, which are really external organizations to universities. But the club system at Princeton is very tightly fused into the very fabric of the school and in my view damages as much as it helps, and an old medical motto is 'First do no harm.' I feel it fails in that regard, regardless of the benefits.</p>
<p>Best,
Another View</p>
<p> re: minorities, I just know that a good friend who was black didn't bicker and the rep was that most african americans didn't bicker, but I'm sure some do and I'm sure some do and get into the selective clubs. I remember examples.</p>
<p>re: why i didn't just go somewhere else to begin with, which someone brought up, when I applied to Princeton (Yes I did get into equally ranked or higher ranked schools believe it or not :-), I didn't realize how powerful and pervasive the eating club system was. it's something you don't feel until you are actually on campus.</p>
<p>In my social group, the guys with less self-esteem bickered. But in other social groups, almost everyone bickered. it depends on how you are situated. But it's a very dominant phenom on campus - are you going to try to get into a selective club and if so which? as I said, in my year about 2/3 tried and about half of those got rejected. In peer to peer counseling it just kept coming up again and again and again - and let me tell you - people were HURTING. They wouldn't show it on the 'street' but they were in serious pain inside. In my social group, the 'coolest' person was ethically against the selective clubs and in fact there was a fight between him and someone else about it. At the time, 3 of the selective clubs were 'all-guys' and he thought it was sexist besides being against the social selective process in general. I really admired that guy, he was supercool, smart, blah blah and could have gotten into Ivy and he thought it was all just a crock of ..., and he didn't want to hurt his friends or see them hurt by the process. A prince. Since then a woman bickered all 3 all-male clubs, got rejected, went to law school and SUED them to become co-ed, so now all clubs are co-ed. But she was roundly hated by the selective clubs during her tenure and after.</p>
<p>I'm actually socially CONSERVATIVE, by the way. I'm not a liberal. I like George W. Bush and Condee Rice. But I think the selective clubs are damaging emotionally to a substantial part of the student body. As a roommate of mine put it (who got into a selective club) - 'Its a DOG EAT DOG world out there - if I were born in Russia during the USSR, I'd be a card-carrying Communist'. Sure, in a sense he's right, it is survival of the fittest out there. I just hate to see 'survival of the socially fittest' as a social value at a leading institution like Princeton. Sort of defeats the higher purposes of this country.</p>
<p>Again, just my 2 cents, it's people's RIGHT to have these places, but it's not morally right (and I'm not sure it should be an embedded right at Princeton unless the majority support it, in which case, what can you do? Go to yale ...). Kind of like gossiping about your wife behind her back. Hey we all deserve freedom of speech, but when it hurts others (and they have the right to say BAD things about bickerees at some of the selective clubs, by the way, while their pictures are on the wall in front of the whole club) - when it hurts others, it ought to be seriously reconsidered. There are plenty of ways to have fun in this world without adding to the injury of our fellows. Again, first do no harm. If your parties suffer a little, it's worth it! Life isn't just about this world, but the next ...</p>
<p>BEST WISHES in your decisions,
Another view (an old ex-Princetonian)</p>
<p> response </p>
<hr>
<p>Glad to hear your post, good luck to your daughter!
yeh, the residential college system was in place, but half of my RA group was figuring out how to bicker by the 2nd half of freshman year... it was like a social-survival TV Show over there. I asked to transfer to another college where I had a group of friends who weren't so into the clubs, but the university rejected me, saying you had to have 'medical reasons' to transfer colleges. If they had said 'yes' and I had been able to transfer with these other friends, I may have felt more insulated from the 'social wars' and stayed. I don't know ...</p>
<p>I did go back to visit princeton once. It was during a conference when I was an upperclassman somewhere else. beautiful place, truly, but I still had negative feelings because of the clubs, and especially because of the suicide of the acquaintance I had. That really did it for me. When I heard about that (I was abroad at the time) I just couldn't go back. He was a nice guy and I met him during Cane Spree athletic competitions between freshman and sophomores. I didn't know him well, but I felt we had a connection because we'd competed, and I really really felt for him and for his family.</p>
<p>My best friend in the world finished princeton and the clubs didn't affect him either (like you). he was very involved in various causes and extracurrics that were important to him and managed to rise above it. I guess I am just more of a sensitive soul than he is about these types of things. He's sort of the 'invincible type'.</p>
<p>Again, best wishes to your daughter and hope she has a great time!
anotherview</p>
<p>[intro comment deleted- Mod JEM]</p>
<p>Harvard is ranked 28 out of 30 for student satisfaction - wow</p>
<p>or the grade inflation</p>
<p>or</p>
<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=79333%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=79333</a> </p>
<p>post # 1, post # 39 and post # 87</p>
<p><em>sigh</em></p>
<p>Why can we have a perfectly rational and information discussion of the merits of Princeton vs. Brown and any discussion of Princeton vs. Harvard turns into a bunch of people who are old enough to act better acting like jerks, insulting each other, and writing paragraph after paragraph of biased opinion characterized as fact?</p>
<p>I'd like to ask the moderators to go and systematically review these threads and get some statistics on how the majority of the forays into name-calling and proclamations of stereotypes as truths which allow for no shades of gray get started.</p>
<p>Because it sure didn't happen in the Brown thread. And I've never seen a Yale vs. Princeton discussion degenerate like this. So go figure.</p>
<p>There is a well-established tendency, I have observed, for those arguing, in threads such as this one, that some school is "better" than Harvard to resort to bashing Harvard rather than merely praising their favorite to the skies. </p>
<p>It is as if they fear that all the praise in the world won't put their favorite over the top, so that taking Harvard down a peg is also required. </p>
<p>Often such posters will rely on stereotypes to make their case, sniffing that attending Harvard is like "swimming with the sharks" etc etc., or that, according the the cousin of a friend of their father's, Harvard students "don't have as much fun in their off time". The cliche slurs include discerning "unattractive smugness at Harvard College." Of course the latter comment was balanced by an observation that the poster had discrened an equally "unattractive beligerent defensiveness at Yale."</p>
<p>the COHFE study is real. The students at Harvard did rank their own school at the bottom of their peer institutions (Harvard's own internal memo). Just for your convinience let me post the link again.</p>
<p>some of the exerpts:</p>
<p>''Harvard students are less satisfied with their undergraduate educations than the students at almost all of the other COFHE schools," according to the memo, dated Oct. 2004 and marked ''confidential." ''Harvard student satisfaction compares even less favorably to satisfaction at our closest peer institutions."</p>
<p>"''I think we have to concede that we are letting our students down," said Lawrence Buell, an English professor and former dean of undergraduate education. ''Our standard is that Harvard shoots to be the very best. If it shoots to be the very best in terms of research productivity and the stature of its faculty, why should it not shoot to be the very best in terms of the quality of the education that it delivers?"</p>
<p>"But right now, students can go through four years on campus with limited contact with professors. They often take large lecture classes, divided into sections headed by graduate student ''teaching fellows." Small classes are frequently taught by temporary instructors instead of regular, tenure-track professors. And in many cases, advisers are not professors, either, but graduate students, administrators, or full-time advisers."</p>
<p>"''I've definitely had great professors, but most of the time you have to chase them down and show initiative if you want to get to know them," said Kathy Lee, a junior majoring in psychology. ''I've had a lot of trouble getting to know enough faculty to get the recommendations I need for medical school."</p>
<p>"Harvard Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences William C. Kirby recently said that Harvard's ratio of students to tenured and tenure-track faculty is 11-to-1, compared to an 8-1 ratio at Princeton University"</p>
<p>"Some of the most popular -- and thus overburdened -- majors, such as economics or government, have fairly low ratings on internal student surveys"</p>
<p>"Many students are pessimistic that the curriculum review is going to change what some call ''a culture of mutual avoidance," where students and faculty often don't make an effort to meet. Professors and students alike also say there's a hurried and stressful atmosphere on campus that can get in the way of building mentor relationships."</p>
<p>This thread has required excessive moderation. Please confine all posts to aspects of these two fine schools. Cutting comments (either blatant or subtle) regarding other posters are inappropriate and may result in a loss of posting privileges. </p>
<p>Further, comments regarding moderation should be directed to the moderators, since commenting on moderation on a thread is a violation of the Terms of Service. (Please see TOS under FAQ for further information).</p>
<p>Hoping this works and that we do not need to lock this thread,
Mod JEM</p>
<p>ok, this is a little silly. if parents act this way . . .</p>
<p>i agree grateful parent, though i would say immature sooner than hilarious</p>
<p>Yes, Let's follow CC's modus operandi, and confine all posts to aspects of the school. Despite its relative academic weakness (too skimpy academic 1's) and social problem (i.e., eating clubs), Princeton is still a fine institution. Its wonderful finaid and legendary undergraduate support/opportunities is like no other. The other day they invited "David Eggers" to the campus !!! Good news is that Princeton knows this and working very hard to rid of these problem by recruiting more "green haired" students and marginalizing eating clubs by opening up 4 year residential colleges. Bad news is that there reamins a strong resistance force from some student/alumni body who objects this move. As a net result, the change is slow coming. Until then, H is more attractive than P for cross-admits.</p>
<p>Change may be slow, but the kids are happier at P than H. Their classes are taught by real professors, they have more access to them. Great professor advisors, who go out of their way to help you. They are guaranteed housing for 4 years. They live in a very pretty environment, the kids are great, they work hard and have fun, the winter snowstorms are few. The campus is safe. The food is good (if not great. The study break food (free) is always great). The out-of-pocket expenses are low. One can always find cheap flights either from NY, Newark or Phil. </p>
<p>And if you want to join those eating clubs - join. It is YOUR choice.</p>
<p>Anything wrong with the picture?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Despite its relative academic weakness (too skimpy academic 1's)
[/quote]
Judging the quality of a university based on the number of "academic 1's" that enroll is a misleading measure at best; in this case, it's an exceedingly poor metric. To be sure, the intellectual quality of the student body at Harvard is marginally higher. This distinction is again misleading, however, since probably 75% of Harvard students don't qualify as intellectually brilliant in the purest sense. At the very top ranks of scholars, moreover, both Harvard and Princeton have their fair share of equally first-rate minds. That said, President Tilghman has made it an institutional priority to admit more academic 1's, and indeed the number enrolling has been rising; this comes amidst a broader and more ambitious program of reform, furthermore, seeking to reduce the number of cross-admits matriculating at Harvard and other schools.</p>
<p>Judging the academic merits of the university based on such information, though, is ludicrous. Princeton has a number of very highly ranked departments, and is at or very close to the top of many academic fields, including [url=<a href="http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/overall.htm%5Dphilosophy%5B/url">http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/overall.htm]philosophy[/url</a>]. To be sure, Harvard is stronger in many areas. Yet Harvard focuses a great deal on graduate education, while Princeton really emphasizes undergraduate work. At Princeton, qualified students have ample opportunities to take graduate level classes, do research, and spend time with professors. In fact, the only reason a student wouldn't be able to do advanced work is if there's a very compelling reason not to permit it (too many grad students in a course, for instance). The sheer size and importance of Harvard's graduate programs make that type of program difficult at the least, and far from the norm to be sure.</p>
<p>That is true. My son might take a Sr. level class as a soph.</p>
<p>It is up to my son to decide if he WANTS to join the eating clubs.</p>
<p>Did I mention that bathrooms are clean and have soap and the laundry is FREE.</p>
<p>
[quote]
There is a well-established tendency, I have observed, for those arguing, in threads such as this one, that some school is "better" than Harvard to resort to bashing Harvard rather than merely praising their favorite to the skies.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Please. There is also a well-established trend for Harvard proponents to come to the forums for other universities and bash those universities. Let's define bashing. I say that bashing equals repeating sterotypes and/or outdated information in a biased fashion. </p>
<p>For example. The discussions of the eating clubs at Princeton should be balanced by the statistics showing highest Ivy student happiness, highest alumni return to Reunions, and highest alumni giving. A student population who on average exhibits this behavior is not made miserable by eating clubs.</p>
<p>Maybe we should just make a pact for this admissions season that proponents of universities only speak for their universities. I'm happy to sign up for the Princeton team and swear off any even mild true statements like - "My sister said it was like swimming with the sharks" if the Harvard team will sign up for similar rules.</p>
<p>Just couldn't resist another dig, huh? Repetition of your Harvard-bashing, unfounded stereotypes in the guise of "mild true statements" is not exactly the best way to propose a truce. What happened to restraint? ;)</p>
<p>Getting back to the question at hand, I actually think that there are some serious differences between Harvard and Princeton. Harvard is a significantly larger, more cosmopolitan place. It has a much more vibrant Gay scene, is in a larger city, and has a broader course selection. It is more competitive, and slightly colder, both socially and meteorologically. It has a much stronger grad program. Many more of its classes, for better or worse, are taught by TAs. Its Government and East Asian Studies departments are by far the best in the nation, as are its physical sciences, while economics are highly regarded. Princeton, on the other hand, is more intimate, and certainly more focused on undergraduates. It is more conservative, and has stronger math, romance languages, international relations and philosophy departments. Princeton has fantastic athletic facilities and great support for dancers. Princeton is a bit preppier and more elitist in general. Princeton has a significant undergraduate research component, and a much lower student:teacher ratio. </p>
<p>In short, both are fantastic institutions. I'd give the edge to Princeton for undergraduate experience for all but the radically liberal or artsy.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Its Government and East Asian Studies departments are by far the best in the nation, as are its physical sciences, while economics are highly regarded.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>While I concur that Harvard has pretty much the strongest political science department in the country, I don't see how you can say that it's "by far" the greatest. Columbia, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale all have very strong political science departments, and I wouldn't say Harvard is dominantly ahead at all. The best, surely, but not overwhelmingly to say the least.</p>
<p>I also fail to see how you can call its physical science departments "by far" the best in the United States. MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and others most assuredly match and in some areas even beat Harvard in strength. If Harvard's physical science programs are the best in the nation (which is a tenuous argument at best), they certainly aren't the best by much.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It is more conservative, and has stronger math, romance languages, international relations and philosophy departments
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Princeton is extremely strong in academic international relations, but</a> Harvard is the top dog here. In terms of undergraduate opportunities, however, I could definitely see any argument that Princeton IR (and political science in general) is superior to Harvard's program; in fact, I would make that argument myself. But that's based on the nature, character, and policies of the institutions, not on departmental strength.</p>
<p>While there are many ways to categorize and argue with school has the world best political science program (or physical science, or philosophy for that matter), most departments in Harvard certainly ranks as one of the worlds best. There are well established data that one can find easily by simply googling.</p>
<p>Best Medical School: Harvard, JHU
Best Law School (aka Trinity): Harvard Yale Stanford
Best Business School: Harvard, UPenn, Stanford, UChicago, Kellogg, Sloan
Best Engineering Schools (Up to PhD): MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech</p>
<p>As you can see, Harvard has its absolute domination over other fine institutions, except Hard Sciences and Engineering program. But then again, if you are a hardcore engineer, you do not want to go Harvard.</p>
<p>Worst undergraduate student satisfaction: Harvard
Worst decline in NIH funding: Harvard, Best: Hopkins</p>
<p>Item, Harvard, Princeton</p>
<p>Student Life, 4, 5
Campus, 4, 5
Professors, 4, 5
Curriculum, 3, 4
Athletics, 3, 4
Computer/Tech, 4, 5
Parking, 1, 2</p>
<p>It gets better</p>
<p>How the Professors are ranked</p>
<p>very knowledgeable, 94%, 96%
Interesting, 45%, 52%
keep me awake, 42%, 44%
Makes me space out, 6%, 0</p>
<p>Profs. outside of class</p>
<p>very friendly,33%, 56%
intimidating, 9%, 0
They ignore me, 6%, 0</p>
<p>How often the class is related to real world</p>
<p>All the time, 24%, 33%
some time, 18%, 33%
Not too often, 6%, 0
Not at all, 6%, 0</p>
<p>Best Medical School: Harvard, JHU
Best Law School (aka Trinity): Harvard Yale Stanford
Best Business School: Harvard, UPenn, Stanford, UChicago, Kellogg, Sloan
Best Engineering Schools (Up to PhD): MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech</p>
<p>Some may argue the data is for graduate or professional schools. But, look at the data carefully and think hard, all the schools listed above have their wonderful associated undergraduate program. For example, JHU has a wonderful undergraduate bio-science program that most pre-med want to get into. Wharton makes Upenns undergrad business program so appealing that some choose M&T over Harvard. My point is that there are indisputable relationships between grad and under programs. Another example is that Yale has a relatively strong humanity/history/social science programs due to the presence of its wonderful law school. Dont get me wrong: Princeton does a good job of maintaining its undergraduate focus despite the lack of professional school. However, all the benefit of having professional school and sharing resources/research (high graduate level) can not be discounted.</p>