<p>
[quote]
princeton students expressed their preference for kerry by a whopping 62-24 margin.
[/quote]
I hate hearing conservatism/liberalism approximated by that one presidential battle. On college campuses, it wasnt about conservatism/liberalism mainly, it was about whether or not they thought Bush was unfit to make decisions for our country after the war in Iraq (college students who don't pay taxes, usually don't worry about the economic issues, as well).</p>
<p>About Princeton/Harvard, there is not a meaningful difference in terms of education, course choices, etc, unless you wish to be an engineer. Harvard's engineering department is a joke. Mainly, you've got two beautiful campuses, one wonderfully urban, and one wonderfully suburban. And then you've got the different attitudes of the student bodies. The choice between Princeton and Harvard comes down to mainly (if engineering is not in your foreseeable future) suburban/urban and the attitudes of the student body. The other differences are meaningless enough that you would cease to notice them once you got settled in. Financial aid is essentially identical.</p>
<p>Concerning EA/ED: Just don't try to game the system. The adcoms do this for a living, so when you try to play them, they'll sniff it out very quickly. Don't get scared away from applying RD. I applied RD Princeton, and got in. Didn't get into my early school, they sniffed out the game I was playing, I think.</p>
<p>Preguntas, I had some of your concerns before I applied ED last year. To add to what f.scottie said:</p>
<p>1) Not only are eating clubs far more welcoming than stereotypes make them appear to be, the addition of a new residential college with housing for juniors and seniors will make joining one less of a necessity for students beginning with my class. Even now, there are people who choose not to join a club; that number will probably increase. Although the eating clubs can produce "cliques," so can almost any club activity that brings a group of like-minded people together on aregular basis. </p>
<p>2) Being the least liberal Ivy is kind of like being the least conservative monastery, and even so, Dartmouth, Cornell, and possibly Penn are probably more conservative than Princeton. Princeton is not as much of an activist school as, say, Brown or Columbia, but, as fscottie said, its students and especially its teachers are overwhelimngly liberal. Additonally, politics and the Woodrow Wilson school of Public Policy are among Princeton's most popular majors.</p>
<p>3 - Clearly, if you are looking for life in the big city a la Columbia, Princeton doesn't have it. But, while it may be true that most students don't take advantage of Princeton's proximity to NYC and Philly, there is no reason why you couldn't. Like other non-city schools, much of Princeton's cultural life takes place on campus; I don't think you'll ever have to pine from lack of concerts, shows, or lectures. </p>
<p>Stanford is closer to San Francisco than Princeton is to either NYC or Philly.</p>
<p>Doesn't matter. </p>
<p>The overwhelming majority of students at Stanford or Princeton will seldom venture to these metropoli during their four years in residence.</p>
<p>If a kd wants NYC he or she picks Columbia - or NYU (the nagtion's #1 "dream school" according to the Princeton Review); if he or she thinks proximity to Philly is key, why Penn is right there. Ditto: Harvard (or BC or BU) and Boston, UTexas and Austin, UCLA and Los Angeles, and even (something of a stretch) "rapidly gentrifying" New Haven and Yale!</p>
<p>Princeton has many virtues; easy proximity to urban thrills is not among them.</p>
<p>"Stanford is closer to San Francisco than Princeton is to either NYC or Philly."</p>
<p>yeah, but you can catch a train from Princeton campus to either of the two. How accecible is boston from cambridge?</p>
<p>The virtues of a school are not dependent on accesibility to major metropolis. I wonder why Harvard is ranked 30th for getting the medical research $.</p>
<p>another thing to note is Princeton's undergraduate focus. Princeton ranks tops when it comes to regular faculty teaching undergraduate classes - compared to other schools where graduate students who may not even speak proper english teach.</p>
<p>"UP THE RANKS National Institutes of Health's top 10 grant recipients in 2003.</p>
<p>Rank '03 Rank '98 Institution Amount (millions) 1 1 Johns Hopkins* $556 2 3 Univ. of Washington 441 3 2 Univ. of Pennsylvania 434 4 4 UC San Francisco 421 5 33 Science Applications International Corp. 417 6 6 Washington University 383 7 5 Univ. of Michigan 362 8 12 Univ. of Pittsburgh 348 9 10 UCLA 347 10 13 Duke University 346 *Harvard University, which ranks No. 12, would be No. 1 if grants to Harvard-affiliated hospitals were included.</p>
<p>do graduate students teach undergraduates at H? I had read it somewhere that about 25% of the freshman classes at Harvard are taught by graduate students.</p>
<p>stop spinning and whinning Harvard ranks 30th in NIH grant money.</p>
<p>Yes Princeton is more undergraduate-focused than Harvard and you can feel it when you attend. Yes you can get to New York from Princeton. I spent a lot of time in New York as a senior at Princeton, when amongst my friends cars became reasonably available. It was the time when Baryshnikov first started dancing in the US. And he came to New York. It is important to remember that Boston is not New York. Nothing is New York, although I think Chicago and London and Paris and Shanghai come close.</p>
<p>These days the residential colleges take kids on trips to New York so you don't have to take the train or wait for a friend to score a car...</p>
<p>One final thing. Princeton seems to me to be remarkably diverse these days. And the campus culture reflects it. Go visit. See a dance show. Princeton has kept what I loved about it - incredible access to world-class professors and brilliant classmates, beautiful grounds - and evolved beyond its conservative, white, male self of yesteryear.</p>
<p>Alumother's fervid cheerleading notwithstanding, P'ton has a way to go before the much sought-after diversity goals are met. Rapelye's dedication to reversing the Freddie-era devotion to the "Princeton Type" may yet bear fruit - particularly if the marketing survey Princeton has commissioned supports her agenda: namely, more "green-haired people" and dumping the binding Early Decision program.</p>
<p>One other "reform" however, is needed: marginalizing the "eating clubs" - which serve as an unfortunate reminder of Princeton's upper-crust reputation. I think change is in the wind, and that the change will be positive.</p>
<p>and byerly, you're only interested in the truth? what about when you copied and pasted a paragraph of text from harvard's website verbatim, but changed around the numbers within the paragraph to suit some claim you were making, trying to pass it off as legitimate? that was very truthful.. your word doesn't carry much weight, even among the kids whom you so desperately try to proselytize... after all, they're the only ones who will listen</p>
<p>yeah, but look at what meeting the diversity goals did to Harvard, the quality, and amount of funding went down. It started producing too many binary zealots with useless soft degrees.</p>