<p>I wouldn't be so sure. New Haven is much more walkable than Princeton - it has the scale of walkable, pleasant tree-lined streets and plazas combined with the excitement, 24/7 stores, hundreds upon hundreds of diverse restaurants from around the world, diverse neighborhoods, thousands of small businesses, numerous concert, movieplexes, theaters, museums and endless rows of bars and nightclubs that you can only find in a larger city. New Haven was recently voted among the top 20 walkable cities in the United States (out of the 500 largest cities and towns) -- it beat out places like Burlington, Austin, Seattle, Portland and others (similar-sized nearby cities like Hartford CT and Providence, R.I. didn't even make the top 100). Everyone I have ever talked to, including graduates of Princeton, thinks that the village of Princeton is incredibly boring by comparison. Sure, both are nice places to study as an undergraduate, but there is definitely a difference in terms of one being a great college town. I just wouldn't even begin to compare New Haven to Manhattan in terms of crowds, haze, asphalt or traffic. Also, fun fact, Charles Dickens visited New Haven and wrote that it was the best compromise between town and country he had ever seen.</p>
<p>Hi Remi My son visited Yale once. He will be attending Princeton. I did not visit Yale with him, his Dad did. So this is 2nd hand information. He did not apply to Yale as he said that the campus buildings were locked and it gave him a feeling of not being safe. Whereas the 'common' buildings at Princeton were open to him. These visits were both during the day.</p>
<p>He also reported that the buildings at Yale were right in the city/town and not set aside on a separate campus like Harvard or Princeton. </p>
<p>I only visited Harvard (where he spent 8 weeks) and Princeton and I felt safe and comfortable at both of them. My preference was Harvard, but thats another story.</p>
<p>Good luck to you whatever you decide.</p>
<p>PosterX--Many of us have commented on your rather ridiculous statements, but I just want to comment on your last post. I went to Princeton, my brother went to Yale. We both loved our schools and I think both of them are wonderful and special. However, New Haven was not then and is still not a particularly pleasant city, in spite of recent improvements. I prefer the town of Princeton over New Haven-- I do not find it more boring than New Haven. Yale is doing its best to buy up the surrounding areas and make them better, but New Haven is not a great city, nor even a particularly good college town, especially compared to places such as Ann Arbor, Chapel Hill.</p>
<p>As to Lamassu, the social scene at Princeton is great. On a street adjacent to campus, there are a number of Eating Clubs, which give tons of parties. Many of the parties are open to all, and on any given night, there are groups of students travelling from party to party having a great time. The student body is extremely diverse--it is approximately 61% white, which is the same or similar to Yale--and the class of 2011 consisted of 11% international students. The students are friendly, fun, smart and generally very kind. There is also a thriving theater scene, with a highly respected regional theater, McCarter Theater, located on campus, as well as many other performance spaces (and Princeton is committed to building an "Arts Neighborhood" to bring even more performing arts to campus).</p>
<p>Because of its size and because of the undergraduate focus of the school, relations between students and faculty is extremely close. Many of the professors live in town or even on campus and students and faculty and students have constant interaction. Students at Princeton are required to do junior papers and a senior thesis and there are numerous research opportunities. The only area that I would say is not as strong is study abroad--not because it's not available, but because most students (my daughter included) do not want to leave campus.</p>
<p>Don't get me wrong--I think that Yale is terrific and has wonderful professors, great students and that most students will be happy at both schools. I just wanted to give you my views on Princeton.</p>
<p>New Haven is far more interesting than Ann Arbor or Chapel Hill (or Athens, Boulder, Charlottesville, and the other "quintessential" college towns I have been to). For one thing, A2 and UNC are incredibly isolated from any other major cities. New Haven is a short train ride from NYC, and there are 80 trains running back and forth each day, virtually around the clock, plus just a couple hours from Boston and other major cities on the BosWash corridor. Plus New Haven itself is much, much larger and more interesting city than A2 or Chapel Hill.</p>
<p>New Haven is very different than it was just a couple years ago, so I would hold off on judgement unless you actually live there and can see how the place is burgeoning a la the Avenida de Hercules, Bastille or Williamsburg districts in other cities, or how the city's apartments have a <1% vacancy rate, a la Manhattan. Young people are flocking to New Haven, even if they have to commute an hour to get to work somewhere else in Connecticut. Meanwhile, Princeton is, has been, and will always be pretty much the same place it has always been: a small village of about 20,000. New Haven has more than 10x the population of 18-34 year olds as Princeton does, with 50,000 college students in the area (almost all of whom descend on the blocks around Yale every weekend). Yale isn't even the largest college in New Haven anymore - it's now the third largest. For most young people, diversity and endless numbers of things to do within a couple blocks of where you live is a big plus. Princeton is fine, but it will never have that.</p>
<p>Thank you! Keep posting please, your information is really helpful.</p>
<p>I lived at Yale for 5 weeks over the summer of 2006, and I'm currently a freshman at Princeton, so I feel qualified to offer a few thoughts on the difference between New Haven and Princeton:</p>
<p>Princeton is a quintessential upper-middle class suburban town. It is relatively quiet and extremely safe. The campus is adjacent to but separate from the storefront (Nassau Street), and it is highly self-contained. In general, it comprises greenery and campus buildings overlaid by spacious paths and open fields. The town itself has outstanding (but expensive) restaurants and upscale stores.</p>
<p>New Haven is a highly urban area. It is not quite as dense as New York City, but it is much more active and bustling than Princeton. The crime rate is not substantial, but it is higher than at Princeton. The difference, I'd say, is that where I'd feel completely relaxed walking around Princeton at any hour, I'd be rather more cautious around New Haven at night. However, do note that there are quite a few panhandlers at Yale who constantly (at least during the summer) accost students for money, often right outside of the residential colleges. It gets unpleasant and annoying very quickly. The campus itself is strongly integrated into the city, so it lacks a self-contained feel, especially as you move away from the very core area. In general, it will feel like living in a city except that many of the buildings near you will be owned by Yale. As for food, while there is one very good restaurant of note, the fine dining is much worse than in Princeton. The pizza in New Haven (Sally's or Pepe's), however, has a good claim on the best in the country. The stores range from upscale to down market, depending on where you are in the campus.</p>
<p>Both have their pluses and minuses; I think which you prefer really depends on what your personality and interests are. I know people who really like both Princeton and New Haven. Personally, I loathed New Haven and decided to place Yale much below Princeton and Harvard on my prospective college ranking. But your mileage may vary, depending on what type of environment you would prefer to live in.</p>
<p>Which one restaurant "of note" do you speak of? New Haven has by far the largest concentration of top Zagat-rated restaurants in Connecticut, according to the Zagat Survey, and several of the best in the Northeast. One of New Haven's Spanish restaurants (there are several) was ranked by the New York Times, Wine Spectator and Esquire Magazine -- all separately -- as the best Spanish restaurant in the United States. It is run by a chef from El Bulli, a place near Barcelona that is widely considered the world's best restaurant. One of New Haven's Indian restaurants was also rated the best in the USA. Of course, there is the pizza too, but there are also nationally-regarded Ethiopian, Turkish, French and other restaurants serving every type of world cuisine. The concentration of New York Times-rated "five star" restaurants in New Haven is also stunning -- no other city or town in the NYC area except NYC itself comes anywhere near that.</p>
<p>One of the New York Times' recent reviews of one of New Haven's newly-opened restaurants, for example:
- "mobbed with 20- and 30-somethings on weekends."
- "Open past midnight, 116 Crown is yet more evidence of New Haven’s burgeoning late-night scene."
- "I think of it as a modern 1960s coffeehouse, where Arlo Guthrie might have sat."
- "They have compiled four pages of cocktails, categorized by taste experience, and selected a short, smart list of wines on the basis of what you won’t find elsewhere. Their D.J.s have graduate degrees in music. The d</p>
<p>Honestly, the only things I care about, and those that differentiate the two schools for me, are academics and social life. Having visited both schools, I have come to view their environments about equally, in an ambivalent sort of way. When I first got into the town of Princeton and the University, I was kind of bothered by it being in the middle of nowhere in my mind, feeling it to be a bit dead on campus (but maybe that was because spring break had just ended). But the class I sat in on and later experience throughout the day quelled those initial misgivings and put Princeton on equal footing with Yale, a spot it had never occupied before for me. On the other hand, the Yale environment was great and I perceived it as socially amazing, but the class i sat in on marred the whole visit (due mainly to the technicality of its math terminology that I have never come into contact with). Since then, the visit has matured as I have read up on it a bit. In terms of safety, I don't really care. I trust humanity, for better or for worse, and my ability to avoid fear. Also, Manhattan truly does have a "haze" of its own, one that New Haven does not have. I was just pointing out that I will not be going to NYC specifically over the course of my college years that much. Thanks for the discussion thus far and I encourage anyone else who has new or insightful information.</p>
<p>I'm all for you choosing Princeton, but I wouldn't base your decision on how well you liked the classes you attended. You could just as easily have lucked up with your Yale class and struck out at Princeton. Both schools have amazing programs in the subjects your interested in, so I would choose based on which environment you like better.</p>
<p>I'll tell you what I believe about college decisions in general: I'm a pretty happy camper here at Princeton, and I think most people would be, but I'm not silly enough to think that it's the only place where you can find happiness. So I'm not going to tell you which college you should pick, but rather ask you to consider what you want of your four years at college.</p>
<p>Academics: look, try hard as you want to, you're not going to find much of a difference here. The kids at both places are smart and the professors plenty famous. Like Weasel said, I think it's great that you enjoyed your class here at Princeton, and that it gave you a taste of why people enjoy academic life at Princeton so much, but if you think about it rationally, you picked one random class at Princeton and one at Yale. It's not smart to make sweeping decisions on these two experiences alone. The point to note is that that Princeton has a great academic environment, but that doesn't mean Yale does not. If you're going to try to make distinctions based on academics, good luck, but you're splitting hairs.</p>
<p>Social scene: Unlike with academics, I think there are meaningful distinctions to be made here. The Yale social scene, as I understand it, revolves around residential colleges and room parties.</p>
<p>With Princeton, I think the once easy answer would have been the eating clubs, but that's not necessarily the case any more. While certainly a big part of Princeton social life, eating clubs now share the spotlight with the residential colleges, performing arts groups, room parties, and movies/attractions around town. And as others have stated, alcohol is as big a part of college life as you want it to be (from my experiences, an equal amount of booze flows at Princeton and Yale).</p>
<p>Also, speaking of eating clubs, be careful to make distinctions between reality here at Princeton and perceptions outside it. Sure, the New York Post or whatever may have a nasty thing or two to say about them, but come on, it's the New York Post. Few things sell better than taking grand old Princeton and "revealing" it's dirty, elitist, inner workings to the masses who see it through the lens of stereotypes and rumors. I spent a good deal of time looking into the clubs (since I'm a sophomore), and even the supposedly pretentious ones struck me as remarkably down-to-earth (and I'm an asian math/science/engineering nerd).</p>
<p>In any event, just keep in mind that if you come here, you'll probably not be the first set of Princetonians who've come in somewhat nervous about the Street, and who've left either pretty satisfied with it or have had no issues living a life outside it.</p>