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With lots more to come in the near future:</p>
<p>very impressive. good for penn</p>
<p>what about greenery</p>
<p>For me, a campus’ beauty comes down to a good mix of awe-inspiring buildings and, outside of that, generally pleasant architecture and spaces with eye-sore bldgs kept to an absolute minimum. </p>
<p>Big problem with Penn - and it’s likely to stay that way even after all the construction and renovation - is that it’s so hit or miss. There are some really beautiful spaces, like Fischer, the Law School main building, locust walk, houston hall, the Penn Museum is nice too, but then there are some truly awful looking buildings and spaces, such as the massive and ugly sansom grad towers, some of the high rises for undergrads, a few of the other dorms (Kings Court, and one right across from the law school on 34th and Chestnut). </p>
<p>Also for Penn, at least for the time being, Philly is a generally grungy city, and so you get areas right on campus (36th and Chestnut, 38th and Chestnut) that are pretty gritty. Come on, Penn’s the only top school I know that has a Chilis right on top of a strip club pretty much right on campus. That sorta detracts from a campus’ beauty. </p>
<p>On the other hand, aside from a few rare eye sores (Butler College, for example, doesn’t look great), Princeton has a great, cohesive mixture of beautiful spaces and awe-inspriing architecture. Nassau Hall, the main library, Rockefeller college, etc. are all really impressive (i love the twin tigers outside Nassau), and then colleges such as Forbers are just very traditional and pretty. </p>
<p>I think Yale also has a great mix of awe-inspiring architecture (Sterling library, etc.) and really nice, pleasant spaces (Davenport College, freshman dorm area, etc.). Unfortunately, New Haven also has kind of a gritty feel and detracts from Yale’s beauty.</p>
<p>Harvard, Brown, and Dartmouth are all kinda interchangeable for me - generally pretty new england-style architecture, but nothing truly awe-inspiring or impressive. All of Dartmouth’s bldgs are pretty, the setting is very picturesque, but ehh, nothing that really grabbed me. I really prefer the mix of impressive standouts amidst generally pretty surroundings (like what you get at Princeton when you see their chapel and then walk to an elegant residential college). Yale too mixes impressive gothic bldgs with nice new england style architecture. </p>
<p>So for me, I guess my list would go:</p>
<p>Princeton</p>
<p>(little gap)</p>
<p>Yale</p>
<p>(Gap)</p>
<p>Dartmouth/Brown (both pretty new england style places)</p>
<p>(little gap)</p>
<p>Harvard (a bit below because all the craziness of Cambridge and incessant parades of tourists detracts a bit from a serene feel)</p>
<p>(Gap)</p>
<p>Penn (some really pretty spaces, and then a disappointingly large number of really ugly spaces and areas either right on or half a block from the immediate campus - Sansom Grad Towers are massive and ugly, undergrad high rises are pretty bad, the Chilis/Strip Club combo didn’t do it for me, Kings Court English, David Rittenhouse Labs are all pretty bad). </p>
<p>(In terms of other top colleges and beauty, I loved Williams when I saw it - a nice mix of a bit of gothic [i.e. the Chapel] that Dartmouth just didn’t have, the heart of the Univ of Chicago’s campus is really pretty, although the periphery has some real questionable decisions in terms of architecture, and I thought Duke had a good mix of pretty/awe-inspring spaces.)</p>
<p>Note: I haven’t seen Columbia, or other top schools such as Stanford or Swarthmore.</p>
<p>I think you underestimate the positive impact that the current and upcoming construction will have. Penn will have a spectacular amount of greenspace, with areas like the Palestra decompressed and turned into greenspace.</p>
<p>As for the high-rises, they remain a disaster and eyesore, but I think it is entirely reasonable to presume the current renovation is the final one of their life-cycle (they simply don’t have the structural soundness to last longer than that without the sort of highly expensive rip-it-apart-and-rebuild-it investment that would be required, and only a a building like the Fisher Fine Arts library or 30th street station, would ever warrant such spending. My prediction is they are the next immediate target after the realization of the Penn Connects plan around 2030.</p>
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<p>IMO, there are not three more different settings.</p>
<p>Dartmouth…I don’t think any of the others are even close.</p>