Posting for my daughter, so these are her pros and cons. She loves Princeton’s academic structure and resources but prefers Yale’s social structure. It’s a hard one!
Yale Pros:
Reputation for collaborative culture
A real humanities culture
Four-year residential college system
More interesting city setting
Feeds into amazing law school (if DD goes to law school)
Great theater scene
Yale Cons:
Some kids feel a need to do a lot of extracurricular activities (daughter prefers doing a few well)
36 requires courses versus 32 with research (she prefers the latter)
Good undergraduate focus but maybe not quite as good as Princeton’s
Shopping period
Princeton Pros:
Incredible creative writing department (this is a big one)
32 with research versus 36 courses
Total undergraduate focus
Boring location = kids really bond (hence alumni ties and loyalty)
Interesting…we picked up on the 36 courses too. This is the kind of detail everyone should explore.
From your lists, it would seem that Yale is your clear pick. I think the Yale house system is a big plus. No need to give in to the pressure to do a lot of EC’s, which may or may not actually exist.
The Yale senior essay is about 25 pages. The infamous Princeton senior thesis is 75-100. Perhaps that is what you were referring to in terms of higher academic stress at Princeton.
With respect to your daughter’s intended major, she probably shouldn’t favor one of her choices over the other, particularly if she might want to write creatively herself:
In other respects, your list of pros and cons appears to represent these schools accurately, and it seems that a good decision could be made with further introspection regarding their general atmospheres.
Your daughter could comfortably choose Princeton as long as it doesn’t represent the extreme of everything socially she doesn’t want. If she thinks she would hate it socially, however, that would suffice, by itself, as a reason to choose Yale.
There is a meaningful overlap between the campus cultures of the two schools, and none of the distinctions you noted have to materially affect the lived experience of any given student.
Also, while it is true that Y does like it’s own undergrads for the law school, 1) that is still only 12% of the class, 2) they are clear that they like “name-brands” and P has that in spades and 3) it is a terrible reason to turn down a program that is an especially strong fit for your actual interests for something that might someday be an interest!
It sounds as if her polarizing them into each being all-good in different things is indeed about having to actually say no to one. That is legitimately hard (and scary)- and is part of the maturing that the college process demands. The great part is that irl there is no ‘wrong’ choice here- both places will delight and disappoint her at different points (b/c that is the nature of both college & real life). Time for her to stand up and say “this is my choice” and order the t shirt!
Yale claims that one of its courses is equivalent to 4 semester hours ( https://studyabroad.yale.edu/get-credit ), so 36 courses = 144 semester hours at colleges that use semester hour credit systems. Since 120 semester hours is the bachelor’s degree minimum, and most colleges require 120-128 semester hours or equivalent, that means that Yale (at least in theory) requires a higher volume of credit or academic work than most colleges.
Of course, since all Yale courses are the same credit (one course = one credit), the actual workload per credit may vary more than at colleges where courses vary in amount of credit in theoretical proportion to workload.
Just to be clear, was referring to the OP’s mention of academic stress, not expressing a personal opinion. I know a Princeton grad who found the thesis stressful and another who found it to be one of the best academic experiences of his life.
Thank you all for your thoughts! She’s planning on doing a lot more research - calling students, doing the online events - which should hopefully help crystallize a decision. Stanford is also an outside contender.
@ucbalumnus Great math but not entirely correct. Foreign language courses are equivalent of 1.5 courses and intensive options can be 2x. Also Yale allows courses to be taken on P/F basis. There is no need or claim to fame for taking 5 fully graded courses any semester at Yale.
Shopping period is over, and frankly was a great way to check out teachers before committing to a full semester.
Yale’s student body and community culture are quite different from Princeton’s but both are academically fairly indistinguishable for undergrad. I would pick on feel and culture.
Seriously though, it does tell you the place does not take itself too seriously and strives to. E humane. I will never forget the look my parents got from the receptionist at the admissions office at Princeton when she heard them speaking to each other in Spanish, a bit loudly as we Latins often do, not realizing I was their child… honestly, the memory of that look was the tie breaker for me at the time.