<p>I'm a rising senior and I'm thinking about applying early to either Princeton or Harvard, except I can't decide to which school I should apply.</p>
<p>Can someone tell me his/her thoughts on this? I realize that this forum will be a bit biased towards Princeton, but I was just wondering if anyone else had a similar choice/dilemma and would be willing to share the pros/cons of Princeton ED and Harvard EA.</p>
<p>Also, financial aid is a factor for me.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Well, that depends on you. Would you be upset if you got accepted Princeton ED b/c you would never know if you could've gotten in Harvard? If you are unsure which one of the two schools you prefer over the other, you should go Harvard EA. Harvard has better fin aid, too. Then again, if you decide Princeton is your <em>absolute</em> top choice, do ED.</p>
<p>I don't know where you are getting the idea that Harvard has better financial aid. Princeton is named again and again as the most generous school in the country. </p>
<p>If you want to know what your financial aid would be at Princeton -- either ED or RD -- go to the Princeton Early Estimator: <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/main/admission-aid/aid/prospective/estimator/%5B/url%5D">http://www.princeton.edu/main/admission-aid/aid/prospective/estimator/</a> The adcoms say that aid is within $100-200 dollars of that result. If you have any further questions about aid, they encourage you to call the financial aid office directly.</p>
<p>Students who choose Princeton over Harvard love the beautiful campus, the undergraduate focus, the interaction with senior faculty, the happy and social students, and the proximity to NYC. If you can visit both, you will get a much better sense of which school suits you. Both have generous endowments that will offers lots of possibilities in terms of research and study abroad -- more than quite a few other prestigious schools. </p>
<p>Princeton's ED has a higher admission rate than Harvard's EA. Princeton's RD is very tough.</p>
<p>It's very important that you apply to one or the other not based on which you think you'll get into, but which one you like better. I'd highly recommend visiting and touring the campuses, but if that is not a possibility, read their descriptions in a few college books and try to get a feel for them. They are very different schools, and chances are that one will fit you better than the other.</p>
<p>koala and aparent are right. With these caliber of schools do not try to game the system. Apply early to the place you most want to attend.</p>
<p>Whatever you do, however APPLY EARLY .... someplace!</p>
<p>Regardless of what you hear elsewhere, you will double or triple your chances of admission with any given SAT score by applying early. The EA admit rate at Harvard and the ED admit rate at Princeton are each about 4 times higher than the RD admit rate at the respective schools.</p>
<p>Both fill half their class from the early pool - as do Yale, Stanford + Penn and others. Yale, indeed, fills 70% of its class with early pool applicants, counting those who are deferred and admitted later.</p>
<p>You should, of course, be aware of the difference between the SCEA appplication to Harvard (and Stanford and Yale) and the more restrictive ED application to Princeton (and Penn and Brown, etc.)</p>
<p>When it comes to financial aid, Harvard and Princeton are virtually identical trailing only CalTech when you take into account both the fraction of the student body receiving aid and the fraction of the total cost paid by the typical aid award. Here are the USNews top 10 "Best Values" - giving the percentage of undergrads receiving aid, and the percentage of total cost accounted for - typically - by the aid package.</p>
<ol>
<li> California Institute of Technology 58% 66%</li>
<li> Princeton University (NJ) 49% 60%</li>
<li> Harvard University (MA) 48% 60%</li>
<li> Yale University (CT) 40% 59%</li>
<li> Massachusetts Inst. of Technology 59% 54%</li>
<li> Stanford University (CA) 47% 56%</li>
<li> Columbia University (NY) 41% 58%</li>
<li> Duke University (NC) 38% 53%</li>
<li> Dartmouth College (NH) 47% 53%</li>
<li> University of Pennsylvania 42% 51%</li>
</ol>
<p>If you really don't know which school to apply to, then don't apply to Princeton ED. What if you end up liking Harvard more? Whereas if you applied to Harvard EA, then you could still apply to Princeton RD.</p>
<p>Well, think about it this way: every student who's applied to Princeton ED has had to face this decision, so you're not the only one--many have come before you. I wouldn't take EA/ED or admission rates into account, since they can be distorted by many factors and are often very misleading. Just go with the school you feel suits you better. If you end up choosing Princeton ED and getting in, trust me: you'll have no regrets. I was caught between HPY for a while... i think the name "Harvard" had me spellbound, but after learning more about all three schools Princeton emerged as the winner. If you want the smallest class sizes, the "community feel," the closest professor-student interaction, the most fun social atmosphere, and the most undergraduate-centered environment, Princeton is probably your choice.</p>
<p>"Undergraduate centered"? Harvard College is 100% "undergraduate centered."</p>
<p>Smallest class sizes? There is little to choose from when, for example, you consider the fraction of classes under 20 students: Yale, 75%; Penn, 74%; Harvard, 73%; Columbia, 73%; Tufts, 73%; Northwestern, 73%; WUStL, 72%; Duke, 72%; Princeton, 72%.</p>
<p>[source: USNews]</p>
<p>students attend universities as well as the "colleges" within them.</p>
<p>Well, it is true, as you may be suggesting, that students at true "universities" have the option of taking a wider range of courses, and have a wider range of research opportunities open to them. The lack of such options are the main drawbacks to "LACs", in my opinion, in addition to the fact that they are often located in the less stimulating environment of suburbia and small towns.</p>
<p>Byerly, according to US News, Harvard's student: faculty ratio is 8:1 while Princeton's is 5:1. </p>
<p>As for "university" versus "LAC," princeton combines the benefits of both. It is a leading research university, and yet is still small enough to focus on the individual undergraduate student. About 2/3 of Princetonians are undergraduates, as opposed to about 1/4 at Harvard. At Princeton, the undergraduates are the dominating influence on campus, and they are treated as such by the administration academically and financially. As for location, Princetono is in a very safe and quiet area, true, but remember: it is just a sub-1hr train ride from the greatest city in the world: New York, and it's a similar distance from Philadelphia.</p>
<p>That "faculty ratio" number is a relatively meaningless stat. </p>
<p>The question is, are most classes huge, or are they not? </p>
<p>There is little to choose from among most elites when it comes to class size.</p>
<p>And don't give me that train time to Philadelphia stuff. Most college students seldom take such trainrides, despite the fact that running times are (often unrealistically, w/o quoting fares) are often shown in recruiting propaganda.</p>
<p>Either you are in an urban setting or you are not. Swat, Bryn Mawr and Harverford are a helluva lot closer to Philly than Princeton, but they are suburban, somewhat isolated LACs nonetheless.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the helpful advice and thoughts! The thing is that I have actually visited both Princeton and Harvard, and I'm still torn between the two for my first choice.</p>
<p>I love the fact that Princeton is undergraduate-focused, has an amazing campus, and has world-class faculty. In fact, I loved Princeton when I visited it. However, I still have some concerns with Princeton:</p>
<p>1) Eating clubs: These sounds both really cool and really awful to me. It's cool that you get to go to a nice place to eat your meals, but the system seems to be so clique-oriented.
2) Most conservative Ivy: It was the last Ivy to accept blacks and women, and compared to the other Ivies, Princeton seems to be the most politically conservative. Now, I'm no hippie, nor would I ever want to go to a hippie school, but I would prefer a socially liberal environment...
3) Kind of rural, isolated: I mean, Princeton IS in New Jersey. Furthermore, it's in the middle of NJ and not really close to anything.</p>
<p>Anyway, I have plenty of concerns with Harvard, but I thought I'd share these concerns I have with Princeton on the Princeton message board.</p>
<p>Harvard is appealing to me because it is in Boston, has great academics, and, well, because its name is "Harvard." I know it sounds shallow, but Harvard still holds mystique for me (not that Princeton doesn't, but you know what I mean).</p>
<p>Which school has better residential life? I know Princeton is in the process of renovating all undergraduate dorms...</p>
<p>1) don't let the eating clubs scare you away. as i've said before, they're more like mini-residential colleges than they are like final clubs (harvard), secret societies (yale), or fraternities and sororities (most other schools). all of them are co-ed, half of them are non-selective, and on a given thursday or saturday, the vast majority will be open to anyone with a PUID.</p>
<p>2) princeton is neither the last ivy to accept women nor the most politically conservative ivy. although generally thought of as a conservative institution, it is, like all the ivies nowadays, quite a liberal place. in a poll by the daily princetonian a month before the last election, princeton students expressed their preference for kerry by a whopping 62-24 margin. the "prince" also found that more than 90% of donations from university employees that election cycle went to liberal causes. see:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2004/10/19/news/11141.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2004/10/19/news/11141.shtml</a>
<a href="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2004/09/13/news/10683.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2004/09/13/news/10683.shtml</a></p>
<p>you might be interested to read about the mock-filibuster that princeton students held this spring, that made national news from hardball to CNN:</p>
<p>3) princeton is soundly small-town/suburban, not rural. it is an upscale town of 30,000 residents, many of whom commute to new york via new jersey transit. there's a new jersey transit station literally right on campus, and many students avail themselves of the opportunity to visit new york relatively cheaply, at a little over an hour each way. you seem to have a false impression about new jersey. it happens to be both the second most urbanized and first most densely populated state in the entire country. if you look at a map, you'll see that princeton is located right in the middle of the state, an hour from both new york and philadelphia, a matter of miles from trenton, the state capital, and a matter of minutes from route 1, which has more shopping centers and shopping malls than you can comprehend. good luck with your decision.</p>
<p>No students attracted to bright lights and urban attractions are going to pick Princeton on that basis, or even Yale.</p>
<p>It is entirely possible that Harvard's perennially huge edge over both Yale and Princeton with respect to common admits is due to the attractions of Cambridge/Boston as a college town.</p>
<p>By the same token, yield rates at Penn, Brown and Columbia have been rising, and are not much lower than the Princeton yield rate now. On the other hand, yield rates have lagged at the more isolated Dartmouth and Cornell.</p>
<p>smaller the town, better the college experience. That was one of the huge + for us. S was turned off after we visited UPENN. All his applications were in college towns - no WASHU, UCHICAGO etc.</p>
<p>"No students attracted to bright lights and urban attractions are going to pick Princeton on that basis, or even Yale."</p>
<p>no question. i was just disputing one poster's notion that princeton is "Kind of rural, isolated" and "not really close to anything." it's none of those. still, you must concede that some might students want the best of both worlds, namely the charms and safety of a small-town setting with easy access to the attractions of our greatest cities. i can't think of a better place for such students than princeton.</p>