Princeton vs. Yale: Prestige

Colleges and Universities A-Z Princeton University
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<p>OK so like most of us, I'm pretty obsessed with prestige and "name" value. The top three name value schools in America are probably HYP. SM probably should be there too, but HYP are usually the ones most often referenced. </p>

<p>I think we can all admit H is easily the most prestigious university in America. It's the college that people always reference when referencing what many consider the best college in America. (Whether this is warranted is contentious.) But my question is: Which has more prestige, Princeton or Yale? Now I'm not specifically interested in rankings or yield rate or ugrad vs. grad. The question is only about prestige.</p>

<p>So Princeton or Yale? </p>

<p>For me, I always thought Harvard and Princeton were the best colleges in America (up until about 8th grade). I hadn't really heard of any other ones until I was around 12. So even though I'm biased b/c I'm going to Princeton next year, I'd say Princeton.</p>

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<p>It's Yale, but I think a big part of that is because Princeton doesn't have a medical/law/business school, which have a lot to do with a school's prestige (I think?). </p>

<p>But seriously, undergrad, Princeton is by far the best. In my biased opinion, Princeton's way better than even Harvard for undergrad.</p>

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<p>about equal.</p>

<p>what difference does it make?</p>

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<p>I'd say that yale is probably more prestigious.</p>

<p>Randombetch had a point when they said that med/law school plays a big part in a university's prestige and princeton doesn't have that.</p>

<p>Also, a lot of my cousin's in England reference "Harvard and Yale" as the best in America... they often forget about others, save Stanford.... now obviously my cousins don't represent all of england, but I think it's relevant.</p>

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<p>^Yes, I think it's always been Harvard and Yale who are the big guys.</p>

<p>Colonial</a> Colleges - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>

<p>Just look, Yale had a 40 year head start. Most of the time, age of the college correlates to its prestige. I don't know how Princeton got ahead of UPenn...</p>

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<p>It depends on who you ask. In popular culture, Harvard and Yale are usually grouped together as the best universities in America. People who are educated usually don't make a distinction between Yale and Princeton. In terms of career and grad school opportunities that the prestige of the school affords, there is no difference. Both are top 5 target schools of investment banks and consulting firms.</p>

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<p>Dontno, I certainly wouldn’t say it is more ‘prestigious’ than any of its peers and it’s probably less frequently mentioned in popular culture references than Harvard. Against all other schools, including Yale, it certainly holds its own. Of course there are rankings aplenty to which you could refer but I think you are asking more about general public perceptions.</p>

<p>Prestige is a concept that is difficult to define and highly subjective and it isn’t really something students obsess about once they are enrolled. Perhaps a better way of thinking about it is simply how well known or how frequently referenced an institution is found to be. Just for fun, I’ll offer the following analysis. </p>

<p>Here’s one way of assessing the impact of the name.</p>

<p>Use a search engine and see how many hits on the web you get with each of the following searches. This will give you some idea of how prominent the ‘name’ is and how much attention it receives. Performing the searches today results in the following numbers:</p>

<p>“Harvard University” = 14,500,000
"Harvard</a> University" - Google Search</p>

<p>“Stanford University” = 11,500,000
"Stanford</a> University" - Google Search</p>

<p>“Princeton University” = 11,100,000<br>
"Princeton</a> University" - Google Search</p>

<p>“Yale University” = 10,700,000
"Yale</a> University" - Google Search</p>

<p>You’ll see that Harvard is well ahead and the other three are about equal. Much of the name recognition for some of Princeton’s peers does come from their well-known and highly regarded professional schools of law, business and medicine. If we take those web references out of the equation, you’ll see a comparison based more on the prominence of the colleges and graduate schools of the arts and sciences.</p>

<p>“Harvard University –law –medical –business –medicine” = 4,480,000
Harvard</a> university -law -medical -business -medicine - Google Search</p>

<p>“Stanford University –law –medical –business –medicine” = 3,620,000
Stanford</a> university -law -medical -business -medicine - Google Search</p>

<p>“Princeton University –law –medical –business –medicine” = 3,170,000
princeton</a> university -law -medical -business -medicine - Google Search</p>

<p>“Yale University –law –medical –business –medicine” = 1,550,000
Yale</a> university -law -medical -business -medicine - Google Search</p>

<p>In this analysis you’ll see that Princeton generally does a little better. The first time I ran the query, Princeton was ahead of Stanford. The second time, Stanford had pulled ahead of Princeton. </p>

<p>Another interesting comparison would be to see how frequently the same website or news story mentions two of the schools together. Here are those numbers:</p>

<p>“Harvard Yale University –law -medical –business –medicine” = 531,000
Harvard</a> Yale university -law -medical -business -medicine - Google Search</p>

<p>“Harvard Princeton University –law -medical –business –medicine” = 523,000
Harvard</a> Princeton university -law -medical -business -medicine - Google Search</p>

<p>“Princeton Yale University –law -medical –business –medicine” = 454,000
Princeton</a> Yale university -law -medical -business -medicine - Google Search</p>

<p>“Harvard Stanford University –law -medical –business –medicine” = 440,000
Harvard</a> Stanford university -law -medical -business -medicine - Google Search</p>

<p>“Princeton Stanford University –law -medical –business –medicine” = 398,000
Princeton</a> Stanford university -law -medical -business -medicine - Google Search</p>

<p>“Yale Stanford University –law -medical –business –medicine” = 338,000
Yale</a> Stanford university -law -medical -business -medicine - Google Search</p>

<p>So, if the appearance of web references means anything (and remember, these numbers are constantly in flux as the web changes) then, among these four, the most commonly mentioned schools are:</p>

<p>Harvard = 14,500,000
Stanford = 11,500,000
Princeton = 11,100,000
Yale = 10,700,000</p>

<p>If we remove references to the professional schools of law, business and medicine the number are:</p>

<p>Harvard = 4,480,000
Princeton = 3,170,000
Stanford = 3,620,000
Yale = 1,550,000</p>

<p>If we look for the most common pairings (again, leaving out the professional schools) the numbers are:</p>

<p>Harvard and Yale = 531,000
Harvard and Princeton = 523,000
Princeton and Yale = 454,000
Harvard and Stanford = 440,000
Princeton and Stanford = 398,000
Stanford and Yale = 338,000</p>

<p>Thus, in their web footprint (including references to professional schools which clearly biases the analysis against Princeton) Harvard leads easily but Stanford, Princeton and Yale are all roughly equal to each other. Excluding references to professional schools Princeton looks better. In pairings, (again leaving out professional schools) Harvard and Yale are paired most frequently but that pairing is in a virtual tie with Harvard and Princeton and both are ahead of the other pairings.</p>

<p>Make of it what you will and remember that each time you run these searches the numbers will change, sometimes significantly. If you repeatedly run the query you can have your own horse race!</p>

<p>By the way, other large peer institutions also have significant web footprints, some even greater than Harvard. For example, when I ran the following queries I got:</p>

<p>“Columbia University” = 18,600,000
“University of Pennsylvania = 10,400,000
“Cornell University” = 10,300,000</p>

<p>I’m sure that some of the larger public universities have even greater web citations but the searching patterns are a little more difficult.</p>

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<p>Search for the thread "battle of the cross admits". There is a link in there that says most cross admits prefer Yale to Princeton.</p>

<p>The thing is, it doesn't matter. I consider both schools to be on equal footing, and I think they offer a similiar experience. Prestige at this level is like splitting hairs- it's very close.</p>

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<p>Dream schools:
Princeton #1 for parents (yale was #8 or so). for students: Princeton was #3 yale was #5.</p>

<p>oh here's an interesting thing: I spelled "yale" lowercased and my Mozilla spell checker doesn't even recognize it. when i did the same for "princeton" it recognized it (same w/ stanford and harvard). that's weird. </p>

<p>but i have to agree that Princeton and Yale are as equal as you can get in terms of prestige. and of course, the type of academic environment they both provide is pretty darn good too.</p>

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<p>go Princeton! it's ridiculous to try to find a difference in prestige between Yale and Princeton - you can't. Think more about fit and about whether you like the campus and culture, because your happiness for the next 4 years is at stake here and is definitely much more important than any non-existent difference in prestige.</p>

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<p>They're absolute equals when it comes to prestige!</p>

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<p>Ihavehope13, I can tell you this. Not long ago I was part of a small group that was meeting privately with a high level administrator at Princeton. An alumna in attendance asked about those cross-admit statistics. Universities generally keep this information very confidential but this administrator (it was not the Dean of Admissions but was someone in a position to know) gave us some hard facts and did tell us that Princeton currently splits evenly with, or beats, all of its peers with the exception of Harvard, the only school that takes more from Princeton than it loses to Princeton. Princeton splits evenly with Yale and has a very slight advantage against Stanford. The individual who told us this asked that we not share the exact numbers but it is quite reliable. The study you are probably finding is the “Revealed Preference” study that was from data gathered nearly a decade ago. Much has changed in admissions and financial aid since then and it’s hard to know what the picture will look like this year, particularly with the improving financial aid at Princeton’s peers and the fact that Yale has retained its early admission program while both Princeton and Harvard have dropped theirs.</p>

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<p>just to play devil,</p>

<p>search brown on google and it has 481,000,000...
Brown</a> - Google Search</p>

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<p>Haha. Yeah but "brown" can be related to a lot of things..</p>

<p>"Brown University" yields 12,300,000
brown</a> university - Google Search</p>

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<p>The finaid at Yale is certainly better than at Princeton this year. That will help Yale in fighting for cross admits.</p>

<p>One again, the prestige difference between these two fine schools is a moot point.</p>

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<p>I'd say that in my experiences of telling people I've been accepted to both Princeton and Yale, most (and by that I mean 90%) have reacted with exclamations of "Oh my God, Yale is so prestigious! You're set for life!" to which I roll my eyes...</p>

<p>...But anyway, I think that Yale is generally perceived as the more "prestigious" in terms of the stereotypical image of what embodies prestige - the wealthy, snobby, and well-connected white male. Princeton, on the other hand, is generally considered the academically stronger and more economically diverse of the two (once again, only my experiences with others).</p>

<p>I personally disagree with both depictions, but yeah, Yale seems to carry more weight in the "prestige" factor for the general pop.</p>

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<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060142034-post20.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060142034-post20.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>There’s nothing shocking here, but…you had earlier posted about having had an interview for Princeton (or perhaps some other college) “a few years ago”:</p>

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<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1059723058-post8.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1059723058-post8.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The above statement certainly doesn’t make it sound as though you a student applying this year. Are you quite certain you’re being honest with us? This doesn’t add up but I’m open to hearing an explanation…</p>

<p>Just label me "confused."</p>

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<p>As a Yale student, I hope anyone here deciding on the basis of prestige alone goes to Princeton - we have enough of your type already, go make Princeton a little more elitist, and us a little less.</p>

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<p>Maybe the question should be posted in the college search or college admissions areas (if it isn't already). In both the Princeton and Yale forums you are likely to get some biased opinions.</p>

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<p>svalbardlutefisk, even on this thread on the Princeton board, there are few of us clamoring to claim Princeton more prestigious than Yale. So please, was your comment really necessary?</p>