Help! Waivering P and Y

Colleges and Universities A-Z Princeton University
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<p>It's down to the wire and my stomach is churning. I'm a tiger legacy (dad) and have grown up hearing about the wonders of Princeton (I've been to the P-rade many times, alumni family days, etc.). I really do love it and always assumed I would go, too, if my qualifications were good enough. </p>

<p>Problem is last year I attended a Model UN at Yale and fell totally head over heels crazy in love with Yale. I loved the campus, the grittyish urban environment and all it offered in off campus diversion and literally everyone I met and stayed with. This year I got deferred from Y SCEA (so I thought it was over) and then accepted this month; I also got into Princeton.</p>

<p>Parents are basically leaving it up to me ( we don't qualify for financial aid) but I can tell by Dad's face that he STRONGLY would prefer I follow in his footsteps. He has been scaring me with stories of New Havens "dangers", only half kidding.</p>

<p>I will probably be some sort of humanities major, so I think the schools offerings are about equal. I did both the P preview and bulldog days, and again, I just felt more at home at Yale. I think part of it is that I grew in the city, and love the city, and we moved to an affluent suburban town a couple of years. I really just don't like preppie suburbs very much.</p>

<p>Yale just seemed more diverse in terms of social circles, a little more liberal, a tad more intellectual, and maybe a little more off-beat, which I love.</p>

<p>Anyhow, if any of you were in the same sitch as me in the past, how did you finally decide to vote Tiger?</p>

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<p>I understand the stomach-churning part, but surely you realize in your heart that your stomach doesn’t need to churn at all about this decision. I think, in the history of the world, no one has ever chosen Princeton over Yale and regretted it later, and no one has ever chosen Yale over Princeton and regretted it later. (OK, maybe in the history of the world someone has, but you are not likely to meet him or her.) Whichever one you choose, you are likely to love it, and to look back on your decision in a year and say “Wow, am I ever glad I chose the way I did!”</p>

<p>Yale is more urban. It may be a little more diverse in terms of social circles, a little more liberal, a little more ostentatiously intellectual, a little artier. But the most important word there is “little”, because Princeton has scores of students that are just like the people you liked at Yale, and you would fit right in with them. My kids wouldn’t get out of the car at Princeton (figuratively – I made them get out of the car) because it looked so much like the preppie suburb where they already lived, but that was just reverse-snobbery. Princeton is gorgeous, its students and faculty are diverse and knock-your-socks-off impressive, and its senior thesis program guarantees serious intellectual engagement by everyone. You can’t really hate on it for being a beautiful institution in a beautiful community, and if you want to get your urban on you can choose between Philly and New York and still sleep in your own bed. No college has more fiercely loyal alumni than Princeton, certainly not Yale – so Princeton must be doing a whole bunch of things right.</p>

<p>On the other hand, I guarantee that your father will forgive you if you go to Yale. He’ll grouse about it to his college friends, and feel a little twang at the P-rade, but he’ll be plenty proud, too. (I’m sure he already is.) If you really want to go to Yale, go to Yale. </p>

<p>Yale and Princeton arguably offer the best two undergraduate experiences available. Only God knows which one is truly better, because no one gets to spend four years at both places. But it doesn’t even matter which one is better, because they’re both so good that you won’t believe you could possibly be missing something where you are.</p>

<p>You don’t need the reasons to pick one or the other. You already know the reasons. So pick one, and then give the reasons to support your choice. Flipping a coin is OK. Pleasing your father is OK. Being independent of your father is OK, too. In this case, everything is OK.</p>

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<p>It sounds like you like Yale better. It is certainly more liberal, but politically Princeton is a much more accepting and diverse place – that doesn’t seem to be a criterion for you, though.</p>

<p>The intellectualism is definitely going to be in isolated pockets at either school – neither is Chicago. </p>

<p>Your father’s expectations should weigh into your decision, but it sounds like you strongly prefer Yale. I can’t relate to your preferences in any way on any level, but you have them, so follow them.</p>

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<p>This is the rest of your life. Choose what makes you happy.
If nothing else, you’ll have an interesting rivalry in your house…it could actually be fun.</p>

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<p>Very true. I hope and expect that you (OP) recognize your incredible good fortune in having this choice in the first place! </p>

<p>Meanwhile, I wish to take exception to the notion that intellectualism exists only in pockets. I have found it widespread at both schools, probably more at Yale, and I mean intellectualism in the best sense: a spirited sense of inquiry. </p>

<p>Neither school is remotely anti-intellectual though. That’s a sometime saw against Stanford, for instance, but not P or Y.</p>

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<p>I don’t accost strangers on the street and start an intellectual conversation. It’s something I do with people I know, either in a formal setting or in a social setting – I’m sure that’s true to some degree at Y too. I’m not saying that you have to search for it, I’m just saying that there are particular contexts in which it manifests itself.</p>

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<p>Thanks to EVERYONE for your thoughtful responses. I officially became a Yalie about an hour ago, and it doesn’t feel so bad!! I may have to sit with dad on the Princeton side every November, though. I promised him I would do well enough in school to get into Princeton for grad school.</p>

<p>Thanks again for taking the time!</p>

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<p>It seems your heart is set on Yale. You’ve listed more positive things about Yale and said practically nothing about Princeton, except alumni days which probably won’t make Princeton as exciting for you as Yale. Besides, do you really want to follow daddy’s footsteps? Forge your own path.</p>

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<p>gedion, in the post above yours the OP stated he/she is going to Yale…</p>

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<p>That’s a great plan: one degree from each of the two best universities :)</p>

<p>Congrats again. Come back and see us sometime ;)</p>

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<p>Yale carries more prestige than Princeton !!</p>

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<p>Gmanman, you are on crack. As evidenced by your post in the other thread.</p>

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<p>Look at cross admit data. More people choose Yale over Princeton.</p>

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<p>I don’t believe you.</p>

<p>I want the complete cross-admit data. In other words, I want the ENTIRE sample from THIS YEAR. If you can’t provide that, you have no basis for your claim.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://wwwdev.nber.org/papers/w10803.pdf?new_window=1[/url]”>http://wwwdev.nber.org/papers/w10803.pdf?new_window=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Revealed Preference Ranking see page 26</p>

<p>rank College Name Elo pts
1 Harvard
2 Yale
3 Stanford
4 Cal Tech
5 MIT </p>

<p>6 Princeton</p>

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<p>Nope. Doesn’t work. Also does not include the entire sample.</p>

<p>Find me data that is from this year that includes everyone.</p>

<p>Oh! You can’t! Because it doesn’t exist! Which means you are speaking right out of your ***hole.</p>

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<p>It exists. Princeton Admissions has it. Why don’t you ask them?</p>

<p>That particular study is what it is. It is pretty problematic in inferring preferences where there were not a number of actual head-to-head contests in the data base (which was what the authors were really trying to do, from a methodological standpoint – they were not all that interested in college ranking). That would not have been a problem with Yale-Princeton. </p>

<p>The data are roughly 10 years old, so it is probably somewhat out of date, although the background information (overall yield somewhat higher at Yale) is still broadly consistent. Princeton almost certainly does better head-to-head against Yale now vs. 10 years ago, because 10 years ago it admitted half of every class ED, therefore ensuring that some of its biggest fans did not provide any head-to-head data. The same factor probably cuts against Yale a little now, since some portion of Yale EA admits aren’t going to bother applying elsewhere.</p>

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<p>So it appears that german_car and jomjom are now back under a new name gmanman. I assume that at some point, gmanman will also be asked to leave the board, but until then, maybe it’s best to just ignore him/her (and Baelor, I know that sometimes it’s hard when people are ■■■■■■ and only posting to disparage a school to leave them be.) </p>

<p>JHS, I don’t know if this data is fully available to Princeton, because I doubt that every person that turns down Princeton tells the school where they decided to go instead. I continue to believe that the Revealed Preference Study is based on very old data and was flawed to begin with and that the only thing it really shows is that Harvard is generally preferred over every other school (but you didn’t need a study to prove that).</p>

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<p>Yale Law School clearly prefers Yale College 5 times more than Princeton UG. </p>

<p>[Yale</a> University Bulletin | Yale Law School 2009?2010 | Law School Students](<a href=“Welcome | Office of the University Printer”>Welcome | Office of the University Printer)</p>

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<p>You may be right, midatlmom, and it doesn’t really matter anyway. Nothing in the universe turns on whether Yale beats Princeton or Princeton beats Yale 55-45 in head-to-head contests. </p>

<p>But Princeton admissions probably does know. Molliebatmit reported a few years ago that when she was working with the admissions office at MIT they were able to determine – and of course they DID determine – where all but about a dozen of the accepted students who turned MIT down went instead. Most of them had told MIT, and almost all of the rest posted it on their facebook pages or some other public-enough forum.</p>

<p>I don’t know whether it’s worth responding to Gmanman, but the Yale numbers don’t show at all that Yale Law School prefers Yale undergraduates to Princeton undergraduates. It probably does, of course, but not to that extent, and not as a judgment on the colleges’ comparative merits. There are at least five different other factors that enter into those numbers: (1) Applications per capita. Yale undergraduates almost certainly are more likely to apply to Yale Law School than Princeton undergraduates. (2) Yield. Yale undergraduates are probably much more likely than Princeton undergraduates to enroll at Yale Law School if accepted vs. other top law schools. (3) Starting population. Until a few years ago, Princeton’s undergraduate headcount was 25% less than Yale’s, and had been that way forever. In addition, Princeton had and has more engineers and hard-science or math majors, who are relatively less likely to apply to law school. (4) Other affiliations. I used to joke that for Yale Law School, the question wasn’t where you got your BA, it was which college at Oxbridge you got an MA from, and where you were writing your dissertation. Princeton’s history department is very strong in legal history, and sends a bunch of PhDs and ABDs to Yale Law School, by the way. (5) Connections. Yale undergraduates are more likely than anyone to have personal connections to important Yale Law School people, or to have someone with such personal connections as a recommender. That IS an advantage of going to Yale if you want to wind up at Yale Law School, although it’s hard to predict in advance.</p>