<p>^ other people can’t delete your posts. I checked it out under Help yesterday.</p>
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<p>When I wrote this I was not being sarcastic.</p>
<p>SailorMoon- the moderators can delete any post they choose.</p>
<p>Wow! Top of her class at Phillips Academy? That’s truly an amazing feat. If that were me, it would be hard to NOT expect to get in.</p>
<p>Harvard WestLake sent EIGHT kids to Princeton in 2006. Phillips Academy>Harvard WestLake.</p>
<p>Wow. Incredible.</p>
<p>Anyway, sorry if I offended you with my earlier post. I wasn’t trying to be aggressive. (But seriously, that’s not very nice to insult someone after they asked one question and then offered some knowledge. Hopefully you can see where I was coming from.)</p>
<p>To the lay person, Harvard is definitely more prestigious but I would think in grad admissions and for most hiring managers, Harvard and Princeton are quite comparable. </p>
<p>Harvard has more “geniuses” i.e. people who have world-class academic qualifications (IMO, Westinghouse, etc.) but I would think the average student at each school is similar in class rank, test scores and ECs.</p>
<p>ya wait until you get accepted before you act like father king of choice</p>
<p>It is a really difficult process, finding the school you like the most. Harvard and Princeton both have qualities that appeal to you, I’m sure, but they are SO different in so many ways that to be considering the both equally is a bit absurd. Think about what you want from the college before what the college wants from you, and along the same lines: think about the college before the Ivy. I was stuck on Princeton for a long time, but now I’m really quite set on Bowdoin. They are both prestigious schools with many identical qualities, but Bowdoin is a lot less brand-name, which was my one complaint with Princeton. Why settle for something less than perfection when you can actually attain perfection more easily? You see, there is something for everybody, so find that something before you narrow down your list.</p>
<p>How am I acting like “father king of choice”? My post says “I’m not trying to be arrogant and act like I’m guaranteed to get in to both. I realize that I may not get into either school.” I just wanted more information.</p>
<p>I think it sounds arrogant that you put Princeton and Harvard in the same sentence. I don’t think everyone really noticed that you meant NOT to be arrogant in your question.</p>
<p>I see</p>
<p>Im just saying if you set your heart on a certain school (i.e. create your screename after that school) and you do dont get in, you might feel like shhhheeeeiiiiit.
So be aware of that</p>
<p>Sorry I’m not very creative, collegeboss. And anyone who considers themselves the “boss” of college (not even a specific college, but just college in general) seems pretty arrogant to me. I’m just sayin… </p>
<p>And that’s IF you can psychoanalyze someone based on their screename.</p>
<p>Just for the record, I have another screename. I created this one for the purpose of asking questions about Princeton. Get it boss-man?</p>
<p>It is getting HOT in here…</p>
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<p>I’m not sure this is true. I think Harvard gets more international olympiad participants – although MIT gets the overwhelming majority of them, and few enough are left over that any fluctuation in a given year could put Princeton over the top – but whether its top-end students are actually academically stronger than Princeton’s doesn’t seem to be easy to figure out to me. Princeton and Harvard had very comparable performances on 2008’s Putnam, which is the only objective measure of that kind of thing that I can think of.</p>
<p>“although MIT gets the overwhelming majority of them”</p>
<p>That may be true this year but this year is just a blip that occurs every now and then. If you look at the patterns over a decade or so (and also if you go back several decades), it becomes pretty apparent that Harvard is the indisputably dominant school. Whether Harvard is actually slipping now (for example, because it’s stopped admitting superstars early) is a legitimate question but I doubt that’s the case. MIT may do better than Harvard on the Putnam for the next 2-3 years but it will likely be a transient thing. It’s not like MIT has suddenly gotten sexier or anything.</p>
<p>Hi Princeton92, first, let me apologize for the unhelpful comments in this thread that did little to answer your original question. I have no idea why this thread garnered such a low helpfulness : comment number ratio. </p>
<p>Second, if you could post about your interests, possible major choices (though these are subject to change), must-haves, likes, dislikes, etc., we may be able to help you out more. For example, anyone whose priority is studying Chinese should choose Princeton, hands down. It has the best department in the country and the books compiled by our Princeton professor, Chou Laoshi, are used everywhere, from nearby Rutgers to far away UCI. His former students are the Chinese Heads of Departments at other Ivy Leagues. </p>
<p>So, what are you interested in? How do you envision your undergrad life unfolding? I’ll see if I can help from there.</p>
<p>^THANK YOU! Gosh! All I wanted was more information.</p>
<p>To tell you the truth, I’m really interested in learning Chinese. I switched high schools after 9th grade, and the school I go to now offers Chinese, but I had already been taking French for a while and there would be no point of switching. I’ve been trying to teach myself Mandarin since last year. I’m really good friends with a girl in my dorm who’s parents are from Taiwan, and she tries to help me out. But sadly, Chinese is one of those languages that’s virtually impossible to learn without some formal guidance (tonality, characters, etc. make it difficult).</p>
<p>I’m also really interested in learning Korean (does Princeton have Korean/does anyone else know of other schools that offer Korean classes) and perhaps Latin (I know a lot of schools have great Classics departments), and maybe continuing French. Like I said, I’ve been taking French for a while, but you can’t really exhaust a language.</p>
<p>My other interests include economics, political science, math (but not as a major), and a bit of history, . It would be awesome if I could study a combination of econ and poli sci though. </p>
<p>I also love music. I play the cello and the piano, but I really prefer cello.</p>
<p>If I had to choose a major right now, it would probably be Politics/PoliSci. If I had to choose a minor, it would be in one of the languages I listed above (Korean/Chinese/Latin).</p>
<p>And again, thanks for trying to answer my question. :P</p>
<p>Our Chinese department is pretty amazing. My friends, after taking the first year, speak to each other almost fluently (although they tell me they’re only using very basic words). Also, Princeton has a program called “Princeton in Beijing” where you go to China for 6 weeks (I think?) in the summer and are not allowed to speak any language but Mandarin! Pretty much guarantees that you’ll be fluent, or close to fluent, within just a year if you participate. </p>
<p>Korean is actually one of the highest peer-rated (although there are very few students to rate Korean) subjects at Princeton - average quality of Korean classes is a 4.9/5 according to SCORE (Student Course Online Registration Engine)! That’s insane! Physics here is like a 3.2! I would highly recommend you taking Korean at Princeton! </p>
<p>And it’s hilarious that you say your other interests are math, history, economics, and political science because those happen to be the four fields Princeton was ranked #1 in by USNews this year. Political science is the most popular major at Princeton, and another very popular department is our Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.</p>
<p>Definitely come to Princeton.</p>
<p>And I don’t know why my original question was so offensive. I’m genuinely trying to narrow my list down/figure things out because school starts in a month.</p>
<p>Sorry, my previous comment was not directed at you Randombetch (although it looks like it is because it comes right after yours).</p>
<p>OK, all you guys need to chill. When someone asks a question on this forum, just answer their question. I really get annoyed when I ask a question on this forum and no one answers the question but rather provides their own irrelevant opinions on why I’m asking and whatnot.</p>
<p>As a current Princeton student, and having done extensive research on both Harvard and Princeton prior to choosing my decision (I was admitted to both schools), I’ll answer your question. But this is solely on academics alone, and more biased toward math, since I’m a math major. </p>
<p>Here it goes.</p>
<p>Both schools obviously are at the top of world in academics. The average student (in terms of SAT’s, GPA’s, rank) at Harvard is equivalent to the average student at Princeton. Both schools are loaded with valedictorians and 2300+ SAT type students. On the other hand, if we look at the very undergraduate top students at the school (say Westinghouse, Math Olympiad winners), Harvard has slightly more of these because of a much better recruiting/marketing process (almost all students receive an envelope from Harvard in the mail inviting them to apply, but not all of them receive one from Princeton). Now although you will be facing tougher competition at Harvard because of this, Harvard also has grade inflation (50% A’s) which will offset some of the competition. Princeton, on the other hand, has grade deflation (35%) which will make competition even more tough. So the competition is equally fierce at both schools, and will probably hurt more at Princeton because of the grade deflation.</p>
<p>Now on to teaching quality. This is where I think Princeton beats out any other university in the world. Princeton is a pretty small school, but the faculty they have there is amazing. Nearly every one of them is at the top of their field. You get the VP of the Federal Reserve teaching your intro macroeconomics course, or John Conway lecturing about free will. The same is at Harvard no doubt, but much more spread out since it is such a large school and more of them will be teaching graduate students. If we talk about the density of academic superstars, Princeton is literally on steroids.</p>
<p>Harvard does better on the Putnam competition (Harvard is usually #1, Princeton #2), but the Princeton math department is much, much stronger. The faculty and graduate students are the strongest in the world, which is why Princeton has produced 9 Field Medallists and Harvard 6. The Fields Medal is the Nobel Prize equivalent in math. Princeton also has many more winners than Harvard in the number of Abel prize, Wolfe prize, and other top mathematics awards. If you look at the 7 Millenium Problems (the hardest, unsolved mathematics problems), nearly all of them were introduced by Princeton mathematicians, which also are loaded in the Clay Mathematics Research Institute. Also, Princeton has had 16 mathematicians on the National Academy of Sciences, while Harvard has around 7 or 8 (The NAS are the top people in the field who serve the US government). So if you look at the people at the very top of their field in mathematics, Princeton is loaded with the best graduate math students and the best faculty in the world. If you are looking at the undergraduate level and the Putnam competition, Harvard is better than Princeton, but MIT is much better than both these schools at the undergraduate level IN TERMS of quality of top students.</p>
<p>What made me choose Princeton, while a USAMO qualifier in HS, was that while Harvard has more top undergraduate math students, ultimately I learn math from the faculty and graduate students who teach the subject, more so than my peers, of course. Moreover, the Princeton mathematics department was the strongest of the three, which would enable me to do much better research toward the production of new knowledge. I felt like competitions were repetition and speed once you get to a certain level. So if you look at the university as a whole, Harvard has slightly better undergraduate math students than Princeton (given its #1 Putnam ranking, while Pton is ranked #2), but the Princeton math faculty and graduate students who teach the subject far surpasses Harvard’s and is indisputably the best math department in the world (given the # of Fields Medallists, Abel Prize, Wolfe Prize, and National Academy of Sciences winners). </p>
<p>Thank you guys for your time, I hope that cleared up all the most minute differences in academics between the two schools haha. Choose the one that best fits you, ultimately.</p>