<p>There are several H vs Y vs P threads, but they are generally pretty bad. I'm going to do what I can to actually be helpful. </p>
<p>Harvard was my second choice. I would still choose Yale, but my second choice would be Princeton. I should've focused more on comparing Y and P instead of Y and H. </p>
<p>Undergrad focus:
I don't really buy the argument that university size has a lot to do with how much they care about undergrads. At least I don't buy that it's predictive. Yale's medical school, business school, divinity school, forestry school, etc are fairly autonomous and and have different faculty than the College. You won't be competing with grad students due to the existence of professional schools because your professors won't be teaching at those schools. They have their own faculties. All three schools have fairly similar ratios of undergrads to grad students in the departments where your professors will teach. The smaller size of the university is often cited as a reason why Yale is better for undergrads than Harvard is, but I don't buy it. Yale and Princeton have reputations for a strong undergrad focus while Harvard does not. From what I can tell, those reputations reflect reality. The relative sizes of the graduate and undergraduate population may contribute to that, but what actually matters is that, for whatever reason, Yale and Princeton grads tend to be more satisfied with the instruction they receive. </p>
<p>Endowments:</p>
<p>Last year Harvard's endowment contributed $1.5 to the university's ($4.2 billion) budget. At Yale it was just over $1 billion ($3.1 billion) and at Princeton about $700,000,000 ($1.5 billion). Endowment spending per student:
P: $88473
Y $82583
H: $71428</p>
<p>It is difficult to tell what this means for you as a prospective undergrad. Each school within each university receives different amounts from the endowment. At Yale the med school more or less pays for itself through tuition, research grants and patient services fees, meaning it doesn't draw much of its budget from the endowment. The med school accounts for a billion dollars of Yale's budget and ~860 students, but, I believe, takes a relatively small chunk of its funding from the endowment. Non-science PhDs cost universities a lot of money because they don't bring in much research funding. I suspect that it's going to be the college and the FAS, not the professional schools, that suck up most endowment money. Harvard appears to have much lower endowment spending per student, but that may be misleading due to a large number of professional school students who (perhaps) don't actually get much of that endowment money. </p>
<p>That being said, Harvard and Yale's endowments include the endowments of its various professional schools. A chunk of that money is going to be reserved for law students, not you. Most endowment money is restricted. It's not a giant bank account the university uses however it wants. How it affects you will depend on how that money is restricted. Even at Princeton, where that money is not tied to professional schools, it's still going to be restricted to certain things. </p>
<p>Bottom line: don't pay too much attention to the endowments. They're all fairly similar. Try to find out what actual services they get you. Find out what funding is like for student activities. I know Yale spends a lot on student art related projects. Find out about fellowships. </p>
<p>Location:
Cambridge is clearly a better location than either New Haven or Princeton. I love Cambridge. It's the center of the academic universe. </p>
<p>New Haven is better than people think. It has a high crime rate, but that won't affect you. There is violence, but it's locals on locals in low income minority neighborhoods. You're very safe at Yale. You will, though, be quite often reminded of your privileged position in society because you see the impacts of income inequality and racial segregation, but you won't be affected by it any more than you would anywhere else. I'm grateful for my time in New Haven because I've been able to live in a wonderful place while not being removed from the real world. There are plenty of problems with modern American society, and it won't be as hidden from you at Yale as it would be at Princeton. I suspect I'll live a lot of my adult life in a wealthy bubble, and I'm glad that at Yale I've been able to see outside the bubble, even though I'm still in an enormously privileged and safe environment. I'm going to be living in New Haven for the next year, and I'm looking forward to it. I'm going to see tons of great live theater, hear great music and eat great food. </p>
<p>You are going to get more of a college town feel in Princeton or New Haven. Harvard seems very integrated into the city with less of a defined campus. I get the impression that much more of your social life will take place off campus at Harvard than it would at Yale or Princeton. I was more interested in campus life than city life at this stage in my life, and I think I made a good choice. </p>
<p>Courses:
Harvard requires 32, Yale 36, and Princeton 31. I'm guessing the reason Yale requires more is not to make you work harder than you would elsewhere, but to encourage you to take a wider breadth of classes. You can take 4 classes Credit/D/Fail. You often hear people talk about looking for a fifth class, meaning one that's interesting but not a lot of work. </p>
<p>It's getting late, so I'm going to go now. I'll write more later. If anybody has any questions, please post them. I don't think I've said anything earth shattering here, but I think that a lot of the H v. Y v. P threads tend to regurgitate the same information that is not actually all that relevant to students, so I'm trying to help. </p>