princeton or yale - help me

Colleges and Universities A-Z Princeton University
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Heh, I love the neutrality. Not to mention the total lack of stereotypes.

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<p>Indeed. This thread seems to consist mostly of unsupported statements, true bashing of Princeton, interspersed with basically meaningless rankings. It seems to me the real issue here concerns which school is most likely to get you the best education possible. Sure, influencing this issue is the location of the school. But I think location is pretty much insignificant in the big scheme of things. If New Haven is dangerous, then you can easily take reasonable precautions to lower your risk to that of Princeton. If Princeton, NJ is boring you can easily use a reasonable degree of imagination to create a lot of fun for yourself on Princeton’s campus.</p>

<p>As far as I am concerned, what really matters is which school’s professors are most eager and able to spend their time working with young students so that the students go through the school successfully. Most rankings are just not gonna answer this question. Some will, but the stuff I have seen here just won’t.</p>

<p>I think the OP would do well to read survey’s of actual students and graduates of these schools to get a broad view of the experience they offer. You need as wide a sampling as you can get. Also read the schools daily publications. Read articles about the schools in the press. Basically, try to take a broad temperature of the schools from the people who attend and have attended them. I wouldn’t listen only to the folks on cc because, lets face it, many of them are here just to pump up their schools. Seek information from a BROAD array of people. And focus upon what goes on day-after-day in the classroom because what goes on there is why you are going to school in the first place. If after reading this information you come up with student-after-student complaining of the same things, and if you see that even the school’s daily newspapers complain bitterly about the same things, you can pretty much assume that the issue is likely to affect you too.</p>

<p>After reading all I can, I have concluded Princeton offers the best undergraduate education in the land. But I can easily see how someone would beg to differ when it comes to Yale.</p>

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<p>PtonGrad, I know all about MSAs, CMSAs, NECMAs, and PMSAs. New Haven is, broadly speaking, actually part of the New York City metropolitan area (CMSA), so obviously I'm not going that route. A good way to look at demographics is from the standpoint of a reasonable drive distance from some central location. This is how retail market analysts do their work. Honestly, I have more background in demographics than 99.99% of the population.</p>

<p>Scroll over "regional demographics" to see an analysis of the New Haven area. You'll see that within a very short driving distance of downtown New Haven, the average family income is much, much higher than that of the nation as a whole. Within a more immediate distance, incomes are still high, but not as high, reflecting the greater number of young people and college students living in the city center:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.christiewareck.com/demographics.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.christiewareck.com/demographics.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>You will find the same patterns in any other major city, such as New York, Boston or Austin, Texas.</p>

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<p>I continue to be baffled as to why the Princeton forum attracts Princeton bashers like posterx, who is also an extremely muddled thinker.</p>

<p>Posterx, either Princeton is wealthier than New Haven or it is not--you appear to be arguing both sides. Both cnn and the us census agree that Princeton is a wealthier area and when I looked up the underlying data on which the highway study you quote is based, there were MANY areas wealthier than New Haven and Princeton/Mercer County wasn't even listed. </p>

<p>As to your traffic accident claims, what in the blazes are you smoking? Do you have any evidence that Princeton students are involved in a high number of traffic accidents or even any accidents at all? I note that on the New Haven mayor's site, <a href="http://www.cityofnewhaven.com%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.cityofnewhaven.com&lt;/a>, his current message speaks of his "concern over the spate of fatal accidents that have occurred since January on Ella Grasso Boulevard." Maybe kids should reconsider Yale due to the traffic accident problems.</p>

<p>Bottom line is as many posters have said, Yale and Princeton are both great schools. Most students would be happy at either one. There are differences in location, differences in social life (parties at eating clubs versus private parties) and probably differences in certain departments, although the overall education at both schools is excellent. Go visit and go where you feel most comfortable.</p>

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<p>Sorry if you can't understand that wealth is more nuanced, and is not evenly distributed over some particular, artificially-defined region. Wealth is very specifically distributed and the way in which it is distributed takes different forms depending on who has it. A country club area like Princeton looks very different than an area of million dollar loft apartments, even if both may seem to have the same "wealth" on paper. One area may be 50 year old couples while the other might have 20-something entrepreneurs. A high concentration of college students, such as in Austin, Westwood or New Haven, is going to appear less wealthy than an area of crusty, rich old folks. If you define an area as a 10-minute walking radius or a 10-minute driving radius, you have a much more legitimate study than if you take two arbitrarily defined areas whose boundaries were drawn in the 1700s and try to compare them.</p>

<p>Also, anecdotes about traffic deaths aren't going to get you anywhere. I lived on the "Boulevard of Death" once, in New York City, where 72 pedestrians died in a short period of a few months, including several right in front of my building over a period of one week, but it doesn't make me recommend against living in New York City. All I'm saying is that overall, traffic related deaths are much higher in suburbs and rural areas than in cities, to the degree that city living is actually significantly safer than suburban or rural living. (The exception of course is if you're a drug dealer or involved in some kind of illegal activity, but even with that considered, you're still safer in a city!)</p>

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<p>PosterX, really, this is silly. I think your readers are finding it more than a little difficult to take you seriously with these strange claims. Your claim to know more about demographics than the vast majority (99.99%??) of the population seems quite bizarre when you cite as an authoritative source, a self-promoting private property development web site instead of official census data. The earlier site you referred to as a Census Bureau reference is actually the “Center For Neighborhood Development,” a non-profit. While the latter does make reference to census data, it clearly points out what I’ve already noted to you. The average income figure you are citing is for the New Haven MSA (a huge chunk of western Connecticut), not the city of New Haven or even the area immediately surrounding New Haven.</p>

<p>I don’t quite see the point of this. You don’t need grossly exaggerated (and sometimes just plain false) claims to justify your pride in Yale. Still, Yale’s strength is not its location and it’s going to be pretty difficult for you to convince anyone who has actually been there that your claims have any basis in reality. </p>

<p>If I were you, I would focus on the positives of which Yale can actually be proud, including the great student body, the attractive campus and the strong humanities programs. (Sorry, but you’re also going to have a hard time convincing too many that Yale is superior to Princeton in the sciences.)</p>

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<p>Yale's strength <em>used to</em> not be its location, in the same manner as NYU or many other urban schools. But unless you've been living in a hole, which I doubt you have Princeton alum, you know that in recent years urban schools have become much more popular because American cities have seen a huge wave of gentrification. Yale now receives significantly more applications per spot, and is more selective than, any other college or university in the United States. The only schools more selective than Yale by this measure are Yale's other schools such as law and the arts. NYU has seen an enormous increase in applications, to the tune that I believe it will be more selective than Princeton within the next few years.</p>

<p>The million dollar lofts being built throughout downtown New Haven (or Boston, or other cities) are also a reflection of this. So are the dozens of restaurants opening in these areas, almost all of them priced way too high for any college student. Regarding demographic information posted by that company, it can easily be confirmed with software such as Claritas. Unless you know everything about the U.S. Census and how to use its analytical tools, looking up numbers from their site at anything smaller than the MSA level is not going to give you an accurate picture of anything. Unfortunately, I think the amount of money flowing into cities like New Haven and New York are eroding those places' quality as college towns, since they are becoming so expensive.</p>

<p>As far as science goes, I think that the numbers speak for themselves. Or ask Yale students, many of whom are sure they're receiving the nation's best undergraduate education in the sciences. On a per undergraduate basis, Yale has more than three times more scientific research funding than Princeton. When you consider a per science major basis, the numbers are even more favorable towards Yale. If you look at admit rates into the nation's top medical schools and Ph.D. programs, you'll also see Yale does quite well - just as Caltech does, even though Caltech is smaller than and therefore not as well known in science as, say, Berkeley.</p>

<p>Federal research support, 2004—2005, in no particular order. Source: WUSTL*</p>

<p>Yale 415.4 million
Harvard 507.9 million<br>
Cornell 381.0 million
Stanford 484.6 million<br>
Northwestern 302.8 million
Duke 451.3 million<br>
Emory 261.2 million
Washington U. 433.0 million<br>
MIT 424.0 million<br>
Princeton 114.0 million
Rice 59.0 million</p>

<p>*Note: In the case of WUSTL, Duke, Northwestern, Harvard and especially Cornell, much of the research takes place away from the central campus area.</p>

<p>Here's another source: <a href="http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/022006t.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/022006t.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Federal NIH Funding</p>

<p>New Haven $338,600,914 (just below Cambridge, MA at $350 million, a city with significantly more college students than New Haven)</p>

<p>Princeton $46,336,603 (ranking 86th in the country, just above Hershey,Pennsylvania and San Juan, Puerto Rico)</p>

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<p>of course, you neglect to mention that almost all of those universities have money-hungry medical schools and thousands - if not tens of thousands - more grad students than princeton.</p>

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<p>Firstly, from the perspective of one of the 200 or 300 undergraduate science majors in each incoming class of students (at Princeton or at Yale), I think the concern would be the amount and quality of research overall. From an undergraduate perspective, graduate students are usually seen more as just a part of a lab - they are treated more as employees - than as students that the undergrads are somehow competing with.</p>

<p>Secondly, it is not true that these schools have significantly more graduate students than Princeton. Princeton's arts and sciences division is not three or four times smaller than Yale's in the number of grad students, as you would suggest given the enormous difference in funding between Yale (or Harvard) and Princeton.</p>

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<p>you are extremely and habitually disingenuous. as a result, this is my final post to you on this thread. you have cited numbers for national institute of <em>health</em> funding to compare schools that have medical schools and schools of health (HY) to one that has neither (P). of <em>course</em> the former are going to enjoy much more NIH funding. this is common sense, and says nothing about the quality of the undergrad science programs of the schools.</p>

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<p>I'm sorry if you are getting defensive. I am just trying to present the facts. You might not know this, but NIH funding is for much more than medical school research. Most scientific research regardless of its field is funded by the NIH. You can be a chemist and get NIH funding. (see a Chemistry ranking here: <a href="http://www.sciencewatch.com/nov-dec2002/sw_nov-dec2002_page2.htm#Chemistry)%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.sciencewatch.com/nov-dec2002/sw_nov-dec2002_page2.htm#Chemistry)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p>

<p>Anyways, if you look at the total amount of research, which I also posted from the WUSTL source, the numbers are very similar.</p>

<p>Sure, it doesn't reflect on the quality of undergrad - that's more subjective. In terms of research per undergrad, places like Caltech, Yale and MIT beat everyone else but it doesn't mean they are the best. Some students will do better studying science at a smaller program - Wellesley, Wesleyan and Claremont McKenna happen to be amazing in undergraduate sciences. You need to talk with students and professors to find that out. But I will say that historically, the best science students (e.g., Science Talent Search winners) seem to be more likely to choose Yale than Princeton.</p>

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But I will say that historically, the best science students (e.g., Science Talent Search winners) seem to be more likely to choose Yale than Princeton.

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<p>Sure, but you'd be among the few to say so.</p>

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<p>Talk to Science Service, the company that runs the STS, and you'll get the same opinion.</p>

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<p>Well, I'm not going to read through this entire thread to see if someone responded to Huda. (I'm sure someone did, but I'll add my two cents, anyway.)</p>

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But somehow I tend to be afraid that Princeton is cliquish. Do the International students fit in very naturally? How often do fun-events happen...concerts, formals and trips? I haven't visited the place, you see, for geographical constraints. And what is Princeton town like? Does it go to sleep early? Because I'm nocturnal. It pains me to see how vague I am, and I'm sure I'm sure whatever decision I'm gonna make is going to be an ill-informed one.

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<p>I can't really speak on behalf of International students in particular (except a few from England, but that's obviously not quite the same), but it seemed like everyone I talked to had no problem assimilating. And it didn't seem to me, when I visited, that ethnic cliques had formed. For the most part, people hung out primarily with those whom they lived with, but by no means exclusively. Still, someone who has actually spent at least a semester at Princeton will be able to answer this far better than I can.</p>

<p>In terms of fun events, there's basically something to do every night. Monday and Tuesday are a little lighter party nights, and Thursday and Saturday are considered the heaviest party/activity nights, but there's definitely something to do every night if that's what you're looking for. When I was there, there was literally <i>too</i> much to do, just because there are so many groups (theater, residential college counsels, other clubs, and so on) constantly looking to involve the rest of the student body. People seem to go into NYC or Philly on occasion (maybe a few times per semester), but typically find things to do on campus. There are also several semi-formal (or maybe completely formal) dances every year, as well as various concerts (I think they usually have one big one, and then some other smaller-scale ones).</p>

<p>As far as the town, it's no NYC, but it <i>is</i> a college town, and so, especially on the weekends, there's plenty of people walking around the streets, and the town actually has more depth than I would have initially thought. And the campus, itself, certainly doesn't die at 10 pm. I was up at 3 am on my last night there and still saw people walking around outside. This, I would assume, is similar to Yale.</p>

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<p>posterx=Byerly on psylocybin?</p>

<p>hehe</p>

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<p>I think posterx works in the bush administration- the uncanny ability to bs and to make up things to support his claims.</p>

<p>mmm. I happen to have heard from a load of unreliable heresay too that only gay parents produce gay children :rolleyes: and hence gay marriage is bad?</p>

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I continue to be baffled as to why the Princeton forum attracts Princeton bashers

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With Dartmouth and Brown, Princeton is one of the smallest Ivies. Yet, unlike Dartmouth and Brown, and unlike Harvard, and unlike Yale, and unlike Columbia, UPenn, and Cornell, the small Princeton has no professional school to add to the luster of its name. </p>

<p>Yet year-after-year Princeton has stood toe-to-toe against all of these schools, either ranking with, near or above them. Even in the public’s mind Princeton is associated with excellence. And it doesn’t get anywhere near the public play as its giant competitors. You got this little school holding its own against huge schools. In one Princeton forum here I saw a pro-Harvard guy literally imploring readers to consider Harvard, though Harvard is over three times the size of Princeton. Look at the huge differences here. This kind of thing just shouldn’t be happening. But it is happening - year after year.</p>

<p>Princeton is hitting the big guys hard with its undergraduate program. Which tells me that its program is amazing. I think it tells everybody else the same thing. That’s why a lot of them are here trying to convince people they’ll be run over by cars if they attend Princeton. LOL.</p>

<p>--</p>

<p>Another suggestion to the OP and to other students applying to schools. This worked for my D, may work for you. When you talk with students of your prospective schools, don’t just go in willy-nilly to see what may happen. My D made up about five penetrating questions that are designed to bring forth the student’s views of the school. I forget the questions, but I know they were good enough to do the job. Just use some imagination and choose your questions wisely. Ask, and then REALLY listen when the answers come.</p>

<p>Do the same in your college interviews. D found that REALLY surprising. Best responses came from Yale and Princeton. But the Princeton guy was just all over it. D says the guy is this big shot now, and yet in responding to her questions he suddenly just went back in time, showing genuine and infectious warmth toward his school. If you see that in your interviewers, you might want to run - don’t walk - to that school. After all, we are talking about someone who spent four tough years at a place and yet is still crazy about it.</p>

<p>Read alumni responses anywhere you can get ‘em. Do they just talk about how grand their school’s name is, or do they get really excited about how great a time THEY had at the school? If only the former, then there is nothing impressive there. But if you are hearing from them time and time again how amazing their time was, well, you have something really impressive.</p>

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<p>"Yet year-after-year Princeton has stood toe-to-toe against all of these schools"</p>

<p>Actually, it seems to have been slipping, in terms of acceptance rate, applicants per spot, and selectivity (as measured by the revealed preference study).</p>

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<p>Yes- like every retard would say- what happens if yale goes back to 1st place on the USNews?- well you stupid <strong><em>s - you've been saying that for the past 10 years? Everytime Harvard and Princeton is ranked above you- you say next year will change but it never does. "there's no way Princeton can keep up with yale"... Well Princeton is still better no matter how much *</em></strong> you trolls can manufacture so shut up and *** off. If you want to **** yourself go do it somewhere else.</p>

<p>Maybe your life is a meaningless statistic perfectly defined by your own dodgy preferences spreadsheet posterx but most of us tend to think for ourselves and decide what we want. Are you the sort that dreamt about H and P but wasn't good enough for either? Either way- your just a princeton hater and a sore loser.</p>

<p>Notice how Princeton doesn't need to employ cyber-trolls to confuse the minds and to cloud the facts to 17 year olds who have no idea what to believe?</p>

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<p>kjoodles- is it your belief that, rather than writing on his own behalf, the relentless hyperactive fanatical posterx is being employed on these boards to represent Yale ? I would sooner believe he is being paid by Princeton considering his effect, similar to Byerly's, is to cast into a curious greenish light a college that needs no defenders,..on second thought, in the interest of ivy comaraderie, you too might well tone down your own edgy rhetoric.</p>

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<p>dear friend drosselmeier, I wouldn't want you to get too carried away with the David and Goliath sentiments,.. Princeton isn't exactly struggling to make the car payments. Though, as a Yaledad, I also tend to sympathize with the under(bull)dog,..</p>