<p>Can someone tell me how is Princeton is different from Yale? Any pros and cons when comparing these two great universities?</p>
<p>I visited both campuses and my first impression was damn, Yale is a lot bigger. There is a lot more walking between dorms and buildings (though they try to keep the freshmen together) and you will walk right into New Haven if you go a block too far. Another con is weather. Yale will get a lot more snow than Princeton in a given year. The pro is that they have underground tunnels so you can get to the dining hall even with 3 feet on the ground. One thing that Yale boasts is their ‘shopping period’ where you sign up for a zillion classes and go to them for two weeks, then drop all but those you are truly interested in. Not for everyone. Princeton offers extensive academic advising so you pick the right classes, and you can drop and switch in to another class for up to 2 weeks in, just like Yale. Yale also focuses less on undergrad than Princeton. Yale has ~5000 undergrads and ~6000 postgrads, compared to ~5000 undergrads and ~2000 postgrads at Princeton. When comparing two such amazing universities, it really comes down to personal preferences. How close knit do of a community do you want? What majors are you interested in? Visit if you can and you will know the one that is right for you.</p>
<p>loomis: there are multiple threads on this subject here and on the Yale forum. And Vanamo’s saying "Yale also focuses less on undergrad than Princeton. " is just his/her opinion.</p>
<p>I felt tons of focus on me and my classmates at Yale. How I could turn around and declare with any semblance of certainty that it was less or more than fellow students at Princeton is beyond me. Perhaps vanamo has some special “insider” knowledge. I suspect it’s only speculation or passing along some urban myth not unlike X school’s girls are “hotter” or Y school has “cute” guys.</p>
<p>T26E4, did you feel that Yale was more geared towards humanities rather than the math and sciences such as chemistry, biology, physics, etc? I’ve heard that Princeton specializes in the STEM majors and Yale for humanities. Would one feel out of place majoring in science at Yale?</p>
<p>"Would one feel out of place majoring in science at Yale? " No. It graduates many, many science majors each year – I’m amazed at the # of people I knew who eventually went on to Med Schools. I think about a third graduate with a STEM degree – don’t quote me on that.</p>
<p>However, that being said, I am also aware the PTon has some departments with world renown stature – and I’ve seen kids turn down Yale to be engage what P has to offer.</p>
<p>Again to your question however: "Would one feel out of place majoring in science at Yale? " Absolutely not.</p>
<p>Princeton % degrees awarded in
STEM 36.6%
Arts & Humanities 16.0%
Social Sciences 38.6 </p>
<p>Yale % degrees awarded in
STEM 19.8%
Arts & Humanities 20.4%
Social Sciences 50.6%</p>
<p>Princeton 5,220 undergraduates 2,582 grad students
Yale 5,310 undergraduates 6,391 grad students</p>
<p>If you want to talk university culture, at a very generalized level, Yale may have more “artsy” sorts, Princeton more “finance & technology” sorts. That said, Princeton has a thriving artsy subculture, witness Terrace Club. Yale may have a thriving finance & technology subculture - but I don’t know Yale except via kids in my kids’ high school classes.</p>
<p>Otherwise, they are in my opinion the two best universities in the country for undergraduates, Yale’s residential college system compensates for the larger size and number of grad students. So, unless you want to be an engineer, pick an environment, both physical and social.</p>
<p>If you do want to be an engineer, or in comp sci for that matter, then there is a clear reason to choose Princeton.</p>
<p>Yale Law and Med account for 1000 of those grad students. As an undergrad, you really didn’t feel their presence on campus.</p>
<p>Agree that they are the two top universities in the country for undergraduate education and experience, having attended or had a child at both. Cons Yale-New Haven, despite improving a lot compared to the 1970s/1980s, is really a pit and safety is an issue, Cons Pton-it is a suburb with little to offer besides the campus itself (however pretty and well-equipped), Pros for both-New York City is only 90 minutes away if you really need to get non-campus culture.<br>
Given how very difficult it is to get into either of them, and the fact that both have non-binding single choice early action, choose whichever feels slightly better fit in November, and apply to the other regular decision, if you happen to get into both, then go back and stay with a friend or go to preview and decide then, but not too many people really end up having that pleasant decision to make!</p>
<p>I shop classes all the time at Princeton. Many people do it. It’s just not an “official” thing. Yale admins like to advertise features of the school that aren’t even unique such as residential colleges and some sort of shopping period. They’re good at their job but it misleads students.</p>
<p>And there is a lot of stuff regarding STEM majors feeling out of place at Yale, T26E4. I have friends going there who say this…there’s also the YDN which has many articles regarding anti-STEM culture at Yale.</p>
<p>Additionally, at Yale grade inflation means that humanities/SS majors have much higher GPAs than natural sciences and engineering majors. This is not apparent at Princeton because of “grade equality.” At Princeton, the average GPA of humanities majors is around the same average GPA as that of engineering/natural sciences majors. </p>
<p>At Yale, you’re going to get beat out of Latin honors (unless it’s departmental) and PBK and other honor societies because humanities/social sciences majors have much higher GPAs than science majors do.</p>
<p>The fact that Yale has YESweek demonstrates that Yale knows it’s bad at science and engineering. It reeks of desperation and frankly I wouldn’t want to attend Yale until it gets its STEM departments back on track.</p>
<p>Tell us what you really think biologymaster. </p>
<p>Why would you want to place such a judgment (“reeks of desperation”) upon the institution that clearly is putting its money where its mouth is with its recruitment (faculty and students) and capital outlays and infrastructure improvements (spending $1.4B in the last 20 years – more than 90% of most colleges’ entire endowments) is curious. I guess these actions are simply a sign of failure, right?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t call it a “sign of failure”. I’d go with “addressing an acknowledged institutional weakness”.</p>
<p>^ I certainly agree with that</p>
<p>Exactly…STEM is weak at Yale right now. Which is why I would not and did not choose to attend. It’s kind of embarrassing: Yale is the third oldest American university and the first to grant a master’s degree in engineering. Yet its undergraduate engineering is ranked 40th or worse in several indexes. I mean, we all know that year to year rankings between say 4th and 7th don’t mean crap. But 40TH! Even behind noted stoner school UC Santa Barbara. They’re throwing boatloads of money at the problem but its not going away anytime soon.</p>
<p>There’s a reason Princeton and MIT hackathons are well represented by students from a variety of schools and Yale hackathons have like 10 people.</p>
<p>It’s not really that STEM is weak at Yale, it’s more that engineering at Yale is still coming back from near-death. Engineering was practically invisible at Yale when I was there, and I even had a couple of friends who were engineering majors. (They, by the way, have had perfectly good engineering careers, although one has spent most of his career on a series of start-ups that never quite hit it big.) Princeton has been consistently strong in engineering fields for a long time. If anything, it was more clear 30 or 40 years ago that Princeton attracted more potential engineers than Yale.</p>
<p>Yale and Princeton are more or less equivalent in Biology and Chemistry. Princeton is ranked higher in Physics and Math, but Yale is perfectly respectable – good faculty and good graduate students. It’s not like the difference between a top 5 program and a top 10 program in these very popular areas would really matter to any individual undergraduate. My college friends who wanted a serious career in medical research have had very serious careers in medical research. Yale certainly didn’t hold them back.</p>
<p>Princeton’s much more well-rounded academically than Yale, places more relative emphasis in terms of resources on its undergraduates than Yale does, and produces alumni who make the most money after ten years than any other university in the country does.</p>
<p>But Yale is cool, too.</p>
<p>My cousin, who got a PhD in Biology from Stanford and did some post-doc at Princeton (now teaches at Cornell) says that in the “wet sciences”, biology, chemistry, environmental, etc. Yale is actually generally perceived as stronger as a whole than Princeton, though in the “dry sciences” - physics, math, engineering, etc. it lags a bit (and probably a lot in engineering). Yale is also a prominent center for medical research.</p>
<p>It is interesting, to note that both Yale and Harvard at some point in the 20th let their engineering faculties decline to near-extinction, as JHS noted, and are now trying to claw their way back. I think it had something to do with educational philosophy about pure vs applied science. Though Yale is certainly trying, I think Harvard is doing a better job of pushing its programs up the ranking ladder.</p>
<p>I think JHS has it about right in his comments and Yale is certainly respectable in STEM fields though most would give Princeton the edge, even in the “wet sciences” to which natsherman refers in his comment above.</p>
<p>However, dont take my word for it. If you are looking for independent judgments from the academic community, they can be found in the recently released National Research Council rankings which have generally been considered the “gold standard” of such academic rankings. Those rankings were reported in a non-ordinal way through the use of ranges, but the ranges can still be averaged to provide a clearer picture. The results are analyzed here:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/1006939-princeton-2010-national-research-council-nrc-rankings-news-item.html?highlight=national+research+council[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/1006939-princeton-2010-national-research-council-nrc-rankings-news-item.html?highlight=national+research+council</a></p>
<p>In the biological sciences and chemistry, this is how the NRC saw it in terms of academic reputation as measured by an averaging of their “R” and “S” rankings. Since the time that the data on which these rankings were compiled, Princetons Chemistry department has taken a huge leap forward and is now thought to be one of the top five programs in the country. Many of the top chemists at other leading institutions have now joined the Princeton faculty.</p>
<p>BIOLOGY</p>
<p>1—Cal Tech
2—UC San Diego
3—UC San Diego (different department)
4—Princeton
5—Rockefeller U.
6—Stanford
7—UCSF
8—Yale
9—Yale (different department)
10–Columbia</p>
<p>ECOLOGY & EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY</p>
<p>1—WUSTL
2—Princeton
3—Duke
4—Harvard
5—UC Davis
6—Indiana U.
7—U. of Chicago
8—Berkeley
9—UC Davis (different department)
10–Berkeley (different department)</p>
<p>CHEMICAL ENGINEERING</p>
<p>1—Cal Tech
2—MIT
3—Berkeley
4—UC Santa Barbara
5—UT Austin
6—Princeton
7—U. of Minnesota
8—Stanford
9—U. of Michigan
10–U. of Wisconsin</p>
<p>CHEMISTRY</p>
<p>1—Harvard
2—Berkeley
3—Cal Tech
4—Harvard (different department)
5—Northwestern
6—U. of Illinois
7—Stanford
8—MIT
9—Yale
10–Columbia</p>
<hr>
<p>Here are the subject-specific NRC quality rankings combining the ‘R’ and ‘S’ scores for the remaining STEM fields. I’m listing only the top ten in each category.</p>
<p>ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING</p>
<p>1—Stanford
2—Princeton
3—Harvard
4—UC Santa Barbara
5—U. of Illinois Urbana
6—Cal Tech
7—Georgia Tech
8—UCLA
9—U. of Michigan
10–MIT</p>
<p>MECHANICAL ENGINEERING</p>
<p>1—MIT
2—Stanford
3—Berkeley
4—U. of Michigan
5—Brown
6—Northwestern
7—UC Santa Barbara
8—Georgia Tech
9—Princeton
10–U. of Maryland</p>
<p>CIVIL ENGINEERING</p>
<p>1—Berkeley
2—UT Austin
3—MIT
4—Princeton
5—Yale
6—Stanford
7—U. of Illinois Urbana
8—Georgia Tech
9—Purdue
10–Northwestern</p>
<p>BIOCHEMISTRY</p>
<p>1—MIT
2—Stanford
3—Berkeley
4—UCSF
5—Harvard
6—UCSF (different department)
7—Yale
8—Cal Tech
9—Harvard
10–Berkeley (different department)</p>
<p>GENETICS</p>
<p>1—MIT
2—Stanford
3—Berkeley
4—Columbia
5—Baylor
6—U. of Michigan
7—UNC Chapel Hill
8—Yale
9—JHU
10–U. of Washington</p>
<p>NEUROSCIENCE</p>
<p>1—Harvard
2—MIT
3—Stanford
4—UC San Diego
5—UC San Diego (different department)
6—JHU
7—UCSF
8—Yale
9—Berkeley
10–Columbia</p>
<p>APPLIED MATHEMATICS</p>
<p>1—Princeton
2—Brown
3—UCLA
4—U. of Washington
5—Cornell
6—MIT
7—Northwestern
8—NYU
9—U. of Arizona
10–UC Davis</p>
<p>PURE MATHEMATICS</p>
<p>1—Princeton
2—Harvard
3—NYU
4—Berkeley
5—Stanford
6—MIT
7—Yale
8—Penn State
9—U. of Michigan
10–U. of Wisconsin</p>
<p>ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS</p>
<p>1—Princeton
2—Cal Tech
3—Berkeley
4—MIT
5—Penn State
6—Harvard
7—U. of Chicago
8—JHU
9—U. of Washington
10–U. of Arizona</p>
<p>COMPUTER SCIENCE</p>
<p>1—Stanford
2—Princeton
3—MIT
4—Berkeley
5—Carnegie Mellon
6—Cornell
7—Harvard
8—UC Santa Barbara
9—Penn
10–UCLA</p>
<p>GEOLOGY & GEOSCIENCES</p>
<p>1—Columbia
2—Cal Tech
3—Harvard
4—Berkeley
5—Cal Tech
6—Cal Tech (different department)
7—Cal Tech (different department)
8—Stanford
9—Stanford (different department)
10–UC Irvine</p>
<p>PHYSICS</p>
<p>1—Harvard
2—Berkeley
3—MIT
4—Princeton
5—UC Santa Barbara
6—Cal Tech
7—U. of Chicago
8—Harvard (different department)
9—Cornell
10–U. of Illinois Urbana</p>
<p>In summary, across the STEM fields analyzed by the National Research Council, Princeton was thought to be in the top ten in 11 out of 16 fields and averaged 3rd place nationally in those fields. Harvard was thought to be in the top ten in 10 out of 16 fields and averaged (like Princeton) 3rd place nationally in those fields. Yale was in the top ten of less than half of the fields and averaged 7th place nationally among those.</p>
<p>@Ptongrad2000 : There’s also the fact that Yale actively participates in all 16 fields but fails to place in the top 10 in more than half of them…whereas I don’t believe Princeton has a genetics “grouping” (e.g. department, division, sub department) at all. Nor does it have a specific biochemistry grouping.</p>
<p>Not having been a student there I can’t say what it is like as an undergrad, but the train station in New Haven is pretty sketchy. As are parts of New Haven in general, like yikes. When I visited Princeton it was the opposite and seemed really safe and sheltered. Just my impression. All the buildings on both campuses are really impressive. I am applying to both so this thread and all the other information is really interesting to me.</p>