Repost: Why I chose Yale over Harvard

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

<p>Why I chose Yale over Harvard </p>

<p>This is a post from the Yale admit board (2005), written by a Yale student, to convince us to choose Yale.</p>

<p>He/she cannot respond because I copied it and it would be unfair to attack him/her when he/she cannot defend his/her position! Comments are welcome.</p>

<p>Part 1</p>

<p>Just a preface: read the whole thing – I’m not organized enough to manage to fit in all the ‘bigger’ reasons at the top of the essay, and the insignificant ones at the end Also, I’ll try not to make this sound like a bashing thread, but I might focus on why not to choose Harvard over why to choose Yale, just ‘cause the “why Yale” topic has been covered pretty extensively on these boards. Finally, most of the reasons Yale rocks Harvard are just totally not quantifiable… you’ve really just got to be here (and talk to students at Harvard who have visited friends at Yale) to see it. </p>

<p>REPUTATION
So, Harvard has the bigger name. Sort of. Well, at least among people who don’t matter. Any grad school/professional school admissions committee, or potential employer is knows that the academic caliber of Harvard and Yale (and several other schools) as institutions and as student bodies are identical.
The better point to make in the reputation section is “so what?” I already avoid telling people where I go to school (the answer is always “back East” or “Ezra Stiles College”). I always feel like I’m boasting when I say I go to Yale, especially when talking to people who didn’t go to college, or know nothing about Yale other than the fact that it’s an Ivy. I’m not trying to impress anyone, and I hate the “Wow, Yale! You must be smart!” reaction. With Harvard, it would just be worse, if we’re sticking with the Harvard-has-the-bigger-name point of view. Plus, I feel like many people choose Harvard over other schools because it’s Harvard. How could you resist, right? (Oh, the naïve masses). I didn’t want to be with those whom I not-so-affectionately term ‘prestige-whores,’ or with people whose parents/family pressured them into going to Harvard. We’re big kids now; we can make our own decision.</p>

<p>SCHEDULING
Yale’s academic calendar rocks. I think this fall classes are starting September 6, and this year I’m done with finals on May 2. That’s over four months of summer break (Harvard gets something very similar, just pushed back one month). Plus, we got 9 days for Thanksgiving (Harvard gets a Thursday/Friday long weekend), 23 days minimum for Winter Break (Harvard got 13 days this year), and two weeks off for Spring Break (Harvard got one). I say 23 days minimum for Winter Break because most people’s finals end before the last day of finals week. Many people have up to a week more of break. Plus, when you come back, it’s shopping period, so it’s not the biggest deal if you miss the first couple of days.
This brings me to the more important point – academic scheduling. Finals here are before break. ?. That means break is break is stress-free break. I can’t imagine Winter “Break” with finals over my head. That’s reason in itself to come to Yale. It matters so much more than you think it does.</p>

<p>ACADEMIC REQUIREMENTS
For me, the distributional requirement system here is a lot better for me than Harvard’s core curriculum. I like structure and all, but with only 32 courses (at Harvard) and 36 courses (here) to take, I didn’t want to have to waste time taking classes I didn’t like. On the other hand, having no requirements (Brown) tends to allow already single minded students to stick to their comfort zone, and not achieve a liberal arts education (think science nerds ?). Yale’s distributional requirement system allows you ridiculous amounts of freedom in designing your curriculum – in general, people fulfill their distributional requirements unintentionally. The requirement system + major does a good job of fulfilling the whole broad based education with an area of focus philosophy. Plus, if gives you lots of room to explore. After fulfilling distributional and major requirements, I’ll have half of my courses at Yale left over just for fun!
Speaking of majors, people seem to interpret the inability to minor at Yale as a negative. The mentality is that electives should be devoted to exploration, not to a ‘minor’ (which really doesn’t mean much in terms of academic accomplishment). If you are interested in minoring in music, why not just take the music courses you’re interested in? You’ll avoid red tape and perhaps classes you don’t want to take, and will thus have the freedom to take other courses if you so desire. If you are so committed to a second discipline that you want to commit to studying it, you can double major. But really, most advisors here will tell you just to take classes in the department that interest you. Who cares what it says on your diploma?
I guess this is the place to talk about strength of academic deparments. I’ve reveived tons of questions about the quality of departments here vs. those at Harvard, and basically the point is that on an undergraduate level, departments at all schools of this caliber are equal. Perhaps the grad school pumps out more history research here, and more mechanical engineering research at MIT, etc., but as an undergrad, you’re not going to outsmart any of the profs. It really shouldn’t be a consideration at all – all the departments here are incredibly strong. I really don’t know how to emphasize the point any more, but if you’re comparing the qualities of, say, the economics departments at Harvard and Yale, just stop that… stop that right now. You’re wasting your time, and giving weight to things that don’t matter at all, since you can’t distinguish between grad and undergrad departments (p.s. Yale undergrads have access to all of the grad schools).</p>

<p>part 2
ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT
Coming from an inner city public school in the West, I already had reservations about Ivy Leagues and a stuffy, snotty environment where everyone has grown up playing field hockey, polo, or rowing crew. I was actually dead-set against Yale because of it. Then my visit showed me a laid back, we’re-smart-but-we-like-to-have-fun-too student body. Here, nobody ever talks about grades, test scores, etc., and as cliché as it sounds, people work together, not against each other (even us pre-meds!). We’re are here to enjoy Yale and each other, not to endure these next four years just for an Ivy league diploma. Nobody here has to convince themselves of their happiness; it’s genuine. Giving credit where credit is due, I didn’t find Harvard as bad as Princeton with the whole pretentious atmosphere thing, but at least kids I know at Princeton accept and embrace their conceit, and live in a sort of bliss of arrogance. Harvard students just seems to be miserable and lonely because the environment is so competitive, and because self-image is so intimately tied with ‘being the best,’ i.e. getting better grades than the guy next to you. It’s weird because many of these same kids wouldn’t be that way at other schools, but it’s just hard to come in as a freshman and single-handedly change the established attitude of the place.
Speaking of misery and loneliness, my residential college dean used to be an advisor in one of the houses at Harvard. She has a lot to say about the differences between the two schools, but in an effort not to sounds redundant, she usually tells an illustrative anecdote; she was in charge of a block of 20 students, and only 6 students were not seeing mental health professionals. And that was normal. When I brought this up to a friend of mine at Harvard, she got really defensive and proudly asserted that the vast majority of students were happy – out of her block of 24, 20 were thrilled to be there. First of all, the criteria for ‘thrilled to be there’ was ‘not in therapy’ (that she knew about, at least), and secondly, 20/24? Those are stats to brag about? We at Yale hear that and are just like, what? Mental health help is available and all, but if you’re feeling down or stressed, usually your friends and/or family help you snap out of it, or you go out to lunch with your advisor or something. My dean’s response? How is your family supposed to help you if they are the ones pressuring you? How are your friends supposed to help you out when you’re stressed/depressed when the reason you’re feeling that way is because you’re trying to beat them? Surely many students at Harvard are doing just fine there, but many are ‘happy’ because being unhappy is a failure – it would mean their institution isn’t the best. That’s kind of a hard admission to make. Alright – next topic… I hate talking about this sort of stuff. </p>

<p>ADVISING and UNDERGRADUATE FOCUS
In addition to the whole Yale/Harvard decision, I was debating whether to go to a liberal arts college or to a university. In the end, I couldn’t get past how small a liberal arts college actually is, and knew I’d end up feeling claustrophobic, especially after studying abroad. But I still wasn’t ready to give up small classes, close interaction with professors, and a solid web of advisors. Yale was the perfect balance for me. 5200 kids is a great number – enough to not feel anonymous on campus, bit also to walk around and not recognize every face. You’ll be meeting people up through senior year. Yet, the residential college system gives you the whole family/ tight community thing, with great advising. The deans, masters, and fellows eat with you in the dining hall. More than that though, masters treat us like family here. Just an example - a friend of mine wasn’t feeling too hot after a night of partying, and he ran into his master (Master G, for anyone familiar with Pierson). Master G was just like ‘Hey, you’re one of my kids here – come inside and drink some Gatorade.”
More on the undergraduate focus – Harvard is a bigger school, with bigger classes (that was a big negative for me), a bigger campus, and a bigger focus on graduate school. Here, TA’s won’t be teaching your classes (all professors, in fact, are required to teach two undergraduate courses… that includes all the Nobel laureates and such). Professor accessibility is ridiculous – I have lunch with my advisor all the time, and have been asked to house-sit and/or babysit for other professors. Access to research is equally ridiculous. I don’t know anyone who has wants to work in a lab, and isn’t, and research grants flow like water when it comes to summer plans (especially abroad). Yale actually has more endowment $$ allocated per undergrad student than Harvard, despite its smaller overall fund.
Just in general, Yale is Yale College before it is Yale University – more than a research institution, Yale draws its pride from a vibrant and happy undergraduate student body. The university realizes that its students (not its professors, facilities, history, endowment, etc.) are its biggest asset. Even the layout of the campus clues you in to Yale’s focus – Old Campus is the center of campus, surrounded more or less by the residential colleges, with the grad schools surrounding the college on the periphery.</p>

<p>HOUSING
Mmmmmm… Yale housing. Call me shallow, but it’s one of the main reasons I decided to come here. Then again, you’ve got to consider you’re spending 4 years of your life here, so where you live is important. The housing here is awesome – we basically live in apartments. Common rooms are generally big, as are the bedrooms. Check out Sweet Suites – that’s actually a pretty accurate cross section of freshman/sophomore housing (typically the worst two years). Stiles is supposed to be the worst by a long shot, and that suite is a sophomore double (again, the worst possible situation), so that’s basically as bad as housing gets here. My point is, housing here is palatial for undergrads – it only gets better than what you see on Sweet Suites, though not all suites are decorated as well as Eric’s (Berkeley). At Harvard, for admissions weekend, I stayed in Gray’s, which was apparently the “Harvard Hilton.” Admittedly, the suite was pretty big, but the bedrooms were tiny – so tiny, in fact, that beds had to be bunked, and the desks had to be put in the common room – ugh.
Plus, if you end up wanting to move off campus for whatever reason, apartments and houses near/on campus are abundant and affordable. It’s great to have some friends off campus as far as social life goes, or just for a change of pace. Housing in Cambridge is so expensive, so none but the upper echelons can move off.
More than suite layouts, the housing system at Harvard doesn’t lend itself to forming tight communities. The residential houses are sort of split into two groups, both far from classes, and really far from friends in colleges on the opposite side of campus. Neither are close to Harvard Yard (which I found ugly, and not nearly as cohesive as Old Campus). Plus, the housing draw lends itself to drama – you’re not assigned a college when you first get to school. At the end of the year, you have to block off with your friends, and enter the housing draw… Well, in college you’re more than likely not going to have a single group of friends, you’ll have many, as will everyone else. This makes blocking a nearly impossible conquest, with someone always ending up hurt. People’s feelings aside, not having a college your first year sort of makes the colleges not as tight as they are here, and people don’t have much college (house) pride… I guess that’s a theme, though, at Harvard. Pride comes from showing people your diploma, right? Ugh.</p>

<p>SOCIAL LIFE
Harvard hired a ‘fun czar’ to look out for the social lives of its students. He called a friend of mine on the Yale College Council to find out where the parties were on Harvard-Yale weekend, so he could tell Harvard students where the ‘happening parties’ were. Ummm… ok. Whatever.
A lot of social life stuff has been covered on the boards here. I haven’t read through all of it, but hopefully it’s pretty accurate. Basically, you can find whatever scene you’re looking for. Pulling pranks, movie nights, comedy/theater/a cappella/cultural shows, Toad’s (‘all roads lead to Toad’s), Viva’s/Rudy’s/Richter’s/Bar/Sullivan’s/other bars with excellent pizza, suite parties or parties in old ‘secret’ (ha!) stone buildings, parties outside, goat roasts, naked parties, pickup soccer in a courtyard, just chilling out, capture the flag on old campus, wine and cheese, dancing of all sorts, spontaneous mud-slip-and-sliding during a rainstorm, marshmallow roasting with hookah and guitar, whatever floats your boat. Hopefully you’ll get a taste at Bulldog Days, although keep in mind that it’s at the beginning of the week right before finals, and this year everyone’s spread throughout the residential colleges, so it’s not gonna be as active as Wednesday-Saturday.
At Harvard, on the other hand, Yalies couldn’t find anything to do, so we threw our own parties. Either they were staying in (my admits weekend host and friend of hers drank alone in their rooms on a Saturday night), or they were out in the city, but either way, social life isn’t really campus oriented, and I was looking for a tight campus community. But nothing to do on Harvard-Yale weekend? Are you serious?</p>

<p>part 3
STUDENT HAPPINESS
So housing and classes are great and all, but ask any Yalie – this is why they came here. People here are happy. For me, it’s a sense of humor thing. A lot of people don’t really take themselves too seriously here. Thank God. I don’t really know what else to say about this, not that you – I guess it goes back to what I wrote in the academic environment section. </p>

<p>ELITISIM
Refer to academic environment section, advising section, or anyone I know at Harvard. Send me a message for names.
Belated note to my Harvard hosts: I still don’t care about your SAT scores, or whom your father knows.</p>

<p>STUDENT FREEDOM
Yale’s big thing is that the administration trusts its students. One huge advantage of that trust? No RAs… woo hoo! We don’t have any authority figures living with us – freshman year or any other year – from whom we have to hide. If you want to drink in your room, not a problem. If you want to through a party, go ahead. What we have instead are freshman counselors – seniors in your college who live nearby and provide study breaks (food), advice, and an ear when you need someone to listen. Froco’s (FROsh COunselors) tend to be some of the coolest and most active kids in the college. They also have an unlimited supply of free condoms. Yale just wants you to be safe – if you get a little out of control at a party, health services is open 24/7, and you can get treated for alcohol poisoning or whatever anonymously. They also have free STD testing… basically the result of Yale trusting us is that we have a lot fewer problems than other schools. I can’t imagine living with RAs, or having to hide a party (at Harvard’s admit weekend, my hosts sat alone in their suite and took shots out of a Nalgene), or not being allowed to walk around campus with open cups. Life would be so much more complicated. There’s a lot more to say about how much life would suck without the freedoms afforded to us here, but I’m having a mental block and can’t spit it out right now (sorry).</p>

<p>ELITISM II</p>

<p>Harvard’s finals clubs aren’t like societies are here. At Yale, society tap night is like a big, school-wide prank. People are dressed up in outrageous costumes, doing outrageous things that other people tell them to do… it’s a ton of fun – you’re just laughing so hard whenever you step outside your dorm, it’s miracle I didn’t **** my pants. It’s a lot of fun, and really not elitist at all. In fact, most societies strive to tap a wide diversity of kids, so you’re forced to meet people you wouldn’t otherwise meet. From what I understand of finals clubs, they’re more like Princeton’s eating clubs; exclusive, whitewashed, wealthy, etc. Not my scene, to say the least.
More on elitism – professor elitism. This is really a person thing, but I know several professors at Harvard just ‘cause my dad’s Ph.D. advisor is up there, and he used to teach at another school in Cambridge, so you know how it goes. Just hearing conversations between them is sort of sickening, with the whole ‘I’m not going to waste my time on undergrads’ attitude. I’m not gonna go too deep into the whole condescending, snotty professor subject just ‘cause it’s personal and thus inappropriate, but suffice it to say I haven’t come across any problems like that here.</p>

<p>This is getting entirely to long.., I’m going to have to start bullet-pointing:
- Intramurals and club sports aren’t as popular at Harvard as they are here (probably due to the college pride thing), and though I wasn’t going to play varsity sports here, I didn’t want to give up athletics entirely
- The administration at Harvard is hard to work within – they’re very much about maintaining the status quo
- I found Harvard admissions weekend boring, and that I was surrounded by a bunch of smart individuals, not a community.
- Because of the types of people who choose to attend Harvard, competition between students is unbearable – I wouldn’t be able to handle it. I’d just get annoyed – I find competitive people at least as obnoxious as self-centered people
- Yale likes food – we have barbecues and themed banquets all the time
- Master’s teas… we’ve got ‘em, they don’t
- Friends of mine from Harvard (who think they’re happy there) have described it as not a real ‘rah rah’ type of place… well, I wanted a rah rah type of place, where the whole student body is proud to call themselves Yalies.
- There are lots of things that I don’t even realize we have here, that Harvard students don’t have, that visiting friends point out all the time. I don’t know anyone who has chosen Harvard over Yale, visited friends at Yale, and not admitted to making the wrong decision. Read that last sentence again – I’m not kidding. </p>

<p>I sort of ran out of steam midway through this thing, even before I started bulletpointing – sorry, but if you want to know more about anything, I’m better with personal messages than with board postings.</p>

<p>The basic point is that I found Harvard hard to turn down because of pressure from people who I don’t care about. Even if it was from people who I did care about, this is about my school, my fit, my happiness… I don’t think I could be happier.</p>

2

<p>Wow. It's perfectly reasonable to choose Y over H, but if the author then feels obliged to write 5,000 words of justification about it, it appears that he may be dealing with some self-doubts.</p>

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<p>Yes, this definitely looks like a case of he "doth protest too much." He's not trying to convince us; he's trying to convince himself.</p>

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<p>^ Regardless of his motives, I still find many of his reasons quite compelling.</p>

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<p>Very poorly written for a Harvard/Yale admittee. Doesn't offer much regarding depth of analysis, either. Not expecting a dissertation worthy of publication, but clear, concise sentences would be more convincing.</p>

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<p>I found this essay posted by toomuchtime (but not by him, right?) interesting, and will keep it handy to show my D if she ends up having to make this choice. It's somewhat lacking in balance, and I'll bet that if the writer had ended up at Harvard or Princeton through whatever circumstances (perhaps, by not being admitted to Yale) he would still have ended up having a mostly great college experience, and would possibly have had a lot more insight into advantages Harvard may have over it's competitors. </p>

<p>So, I find the essay a good example of the merits of 'loving the one your with' - something valuable for all our kids to keep in mind as they make their choices over the next few months.</p>

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<p>ColdWind, it was an internet forum post that was probably extemporaneously typed. I'm sure he didn't edit it much. It seems much more like a stream of consciousness thing, and a decently helpful one, nonetheless.</p>

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<p>I merely reposted this and agree with hookem's last post.</p>

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<p>

Ditto. I suspect Harvard and Yale are far more alike than they are different, however much posters nitpick them. :rolleyes:</p>

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<p>Who even cares? Why do you have to justify choosing Yale over Harvard? Oh, golly, out of the thousands of schools in the world I made a brave decision to go to the second best university instead of the first. Give me a break.</p>

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<p>I thought it was an excellent summary. Aside form a few jabs at H, he/she really stuck to the point of an objective comparison. I didn't get the "doth protest to much" vibe out of it. Having been on both campuses, i think he or she could possibly have addressed some of the often-discussed downsides of Y vs H (like the bad neighborhoods that border one side of Yale; the have/have-not thing at Y & P that some claim does not occur at H) but it wasn't a "compare and contrast assignment' :-) and besides at 5000 words I suspect the OP was, as he/she said, out of gas by the time anyt thoughts of such came to mind, and deserves a huge handshake for what they did post..</p>

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<p>IB: How did you get that emoticon?? lol I like it.</p>

<p>I think this post was very helpful. Although, I don't understand why people who go to places like Yale or Harvard say something like "I went to school somewhere in Boston" when they are asked where they went to college. I mean why not just say, "Harvard" or "Yale?" I mean...they asked, so you're just telling them. Lol I just don't understand why people feel like they're boasting. One just answers them and I don't think there'd be any sense of entitlement behind the response.</p>

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<p>^^ I avoid telling strangers that I go to Yale (I usually lie and say either the University of Michigan, or I say the name of my residential college). This is because I usually don't have the energy to deal with all the questions (ZOMG what did you get on the SAT?!?!), the judgments (you must be really rich and obnoxious!), and the awkward silences (I better not say anything stupid to this guy...). It just makes life easier, trust me. </p>

<p>Also, I don't understand why the OP felt the need to post this in the Harvard forum. It should have remained in the Yale forum.</p>

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<p>To get comments from Harvard alum/students?</p>

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<p>Pretty interesting post - Life is always involved a lot of choices, most (if not all) of them are very personal, though. Try to speak for others beyond one's own limited experience is a risky business.</p>

<p>Faced the choice between Y (SCEA) and H a year ago - A very difficult decision, which was only made through several overnight visits to both campuses and lots of talking, reading, thinking... No regret and truly happy, so far.</p>

<p>Those who may face the same choice and who may just be curious would probably be interested in and benefited by reading the following two books:</p>

<ul>
<li>My Harvard, My Yale. Diana Dubois (Ed.). Random House, 1982.</li>
<li>The Chosen. Jerome Karabel. Houghton Mifflin Co., 2005.</li>
</ul>

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<p>
[quote]
Yes, this definitely looks like a case of he "doth protest too much." He's not trying to convince us; he's trying to convince himself.

[/quote]

Why would he need to convince himself? It's not like he got rejected and is embittered and feels the need to attack the school. He is showing a non-prejudiced view with good logic.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
I don't understand why the OP felt the need to post this in the Harvard forum. It should have remained in the Yale forum.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>cuz it brings light on some things you should expect at harvard when you get there.</p>

<p>I would just like to point out that once you're in the school, there's a 99% chance you'll love it anyway despite its faults. I mean, just compare it to your own high school. If someone asked you whether you or your rival school (even if the rival school was better socially, academically, etc.), there's still a high chance that you would recommend your own since you know it so well and have become comfortable with it.</p>

<p>Imho, I don't really despise any of the schools I've applied to, but I don't LOVE any of them either simply because I know what people tell me about the schools aren't going to happen verbatim and may be based on personal opinion. Imagination and assumption are two beautiful things...and at times those things can throw some posters, like the OP here, off into deceiving themselves that one choice is better than the other.</p>

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<p>Whenever you see someone go to elaborate lengths to explain to others, especially to others who weren't even asking in the first place, why he made the choice he did, it strongly suggests a case of Buyer's Remorse. He likely has a sneaking suspicion that he made the wrong choice and so will tell and retell to anyone who will listen all the reasons why he chose as he did - trying to make those uncomfortable doubts in his own mind go away and convince himself that he didn't blow it.</p>

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<p>^lol, your just in disbelief that someone would choose <em>gasp</em> that lowly yale over your precious HARVARD!</p>

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<p>^^Not at all. Every year about 35% of the people who actually have that choice choose Yale over Harvard (and 65% of those who have that choice choose Harvard). Yale is a perfectly legitimate choice. It's a fine school - among the best in the country. I hope my daughter, who is applying, gets accepted by Yale. I'd be thrilled.</p>

<p>What I'm having trouble believing is that someone who was confident in his choices would spontaneously decide to write a piece that is ten times longer than most admissions essays vigorously defending his choice to people who weren't asking.</p>