<p>What is the difference between the two? Perhaps I am mistaken, but I have heard that several prefer Yale to Harvard because of its residential college system.</p>
<p>Same concept, same features, same donor of the buildings (Harkness), same inspiration (Oxford) built at roughly the same time (Harvard a couple of years earlier) in the late 20's/early 30's. </p>
<p>The only difference of any substance: the architecture of the original Harvard "houses" is neo-colonial red brick, while at Yale the original "colleges" are faux-gothic grey stone.</p>
<p>There are probably no two colleges in the world where the living arrangements are as nearly identical.</p>
<p>Anyone playing up the "differences" rather than the "similarities" is fooling you with irrelevancies.</p>
<p>Do all the houses at Harvard have libraries? For those that do, what are their hours of operation? Thanks.</p>
<p>Yes, they all do. Not sure of the hours of operation at all of them, but at Eliot House its Noon-1 AM Sunday through Thursday, and Noon to 6 PM on Fri and Saturday.</p>
<p>Thanks, as usual.</p>
<p>The other difference is that you're assigned a house before matriculating at Yale and mid-freshman year at Harvard. In both cases, you still live with other freshmen in your first year, but at Harvard you get to choose a "blocking group" of up to 7 other freshmen who will be in the same house as you. They've also just recently come up with some sort of new "neighborhood" system where blocking groups can pick each other as groups they'd like to be in the same "neighborhood" (cluster of 3-4 houses that are near each other geographically) as, a handy thing if you have a main group of friends with more than 8 people in it. The freshman-year assignment also means that since for part of the year, freshman at Harvard aren't part of the house networks, there's a separate first-year bureaucracy to deal with all their issues. A lot of people consider that bureaucracy inferior to the house bureacuracy.</p>
<p>Yale Daily News columnist arguing for the Harvard system of housing:
<a href="http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?aid=31659&refer=1&type=1%5B/url%5D">http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?aid=31659&refer=1&type=1</a></p>
<p>Byerly, were you in Eliot house? What was the house assignment system when you were an undergrad?</p>
<p>Are you working on your "blocking" yet?</p>
<p>Byerly--You've forgotten one minor detail ;) Cambridge was just as much the inspiration for the residential college system as Oxford was. The system at both universities is pretty much the same.</p>
<p>True to a degree, but at Oxford the "colleges" were - and still are - much more pieces of the whole than separate little kingdoms with their own endowment, etc.</p>
<p>Haha, I like how the article used the shortened term Cantab. I think I'll use that term quite often from now on.</p>
<p>Byerly,</p>
<p>if you want to say "faux-gothic" you have got to add the "faux colonial." Yale's has historically been and remains the campus with the most and most elaborate collegiate gothic architecture. For some reason, Yale got the architecture bug in the late 19th century and has been obsessed with its buildings ever since.
And, by the way, four of the colleges at Yale are partially if not completely in the colonial style and two are hideous abominations... ahem, I mean renowned works of art... designed by Sarinen to resemble a "tuscan village" (ha). </p>
<p>Yes, the same donor gave the houses and the colleges (he, consequently, went to Yale); however, the most architectually elaborate of the gothic colleges-- Branford and Saybrook, were built before the resdiential colleges were actually established. Branford's main courtyard was described by Robert Frost as the "prettiest college courtyard in America." </p>
<p>Living arrangements at both schools are pretty similar, except the residential college loyalty at Yale is taken to an extreme that is foreign to many Harvard students. Allegience to one's college even transcends commencement: each college has its own endowment and can fundraise independent of the University. Yalies are often fully decked out in residential college praphanalia and participate with fervor in inter-college sports and even the occasional prank. I am reminded of a prank that Trumbull College students pulled on Berkeley-- they hung a portrait of the Trumbull master above the mantle in the Berkeley dining hall, turned all of the other portraits upside-down, and took apart the tables and spelled out "TC" with the parts.</p>
<p>Uh, yeah, lots of that is true of Harvard as well. You can buy house clothing and play in intramural sports against other houses, houses have rivalries and pull pranks on each other (Adams-Phofo; Adams-Mather), and some houses have their own endowments.</p>
<p>There was a time when Harvard houses each had their traditional rival at Yale (ie, Eliot House at Harvard vs Jonathan Edwards at Yale) and there would be seasonal athletic contests, including a series of tackle football games on the Friday before the Harvard-Yale football game.</p>
<p>Changing demographics (ie, fewer male undergrads at each school) eventually doomed these elaborate faceoffs.</p>
<p>that sounds cool. the idea of the sister house/college is still in play today; they host each other during The Game.</p>
<p>I actually dislike the system. I think dorm buildings should be strictly residential; you really don't meet other people on campus when you hardly leave your dorm.</p>
<p>do you go to harvard or yale, crimsondreams? because if you did, you would be singing a different tune. its not like your only friends are in your house/college. and the added convenience of having a small, familiar dining hall, a library, a gym, and other amenities at your fingertips, plus the feeling of unity and familiarity sharing all of these things with 400 people engenders makes living in a large university a very personal experience. no one i have ever talked to who goes to or has gone to either school would agree with you.</p>
<p>Oh, 400 people? For some reason I was thinking it was a lot smaller number, around 50 or so. Hah, my mistake.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>if you want to say "faux-gothic" you have got to add the "faux colonial." <<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Not really. Several of Harvard's red brick buildings date to the colonial period making them true colonial. E.g. Massachusetts Hall --> 1720. the later ones simply continued the established architectural trend. No buildings at Yale date to anywhere near the medieval gothic period. They are copies. (Not to say that this is bad; I think Yale's campus is strikingly beautiful, copies or no.)</p>
<p>an argument could be made that the collegiate gothic trend grew out of the victorian gothic trend of the late 19th century, which was part and parcel of a larger gothic revival movement that had been taking place in the US and Britain since the mid 18th century. More gothic architecture was built during this period than during the middle ages! (astounding, isnt it?). Most of the Palace of Westminster in London, among other famous gothic structures, was built during the revival period.</p>
<p>Ornateness and intricacy aside, my favorite Yale buildings are the Old Campus victorian, revival style gothic structures (which are as legitimately original to their period as any colonial building) like Durfee, Lawrence, Farnam and Battell (although Linsly-Chit, Bingham, Vanderbilt, and Welch are also tremendously cool.)</p>
<p>And then there are the gargoyles...students, criminals being chased by police officers, shakespeare and bach, bulldogs, alexander the great, even the occasional potty (yes, thats right, potty). So cool.</p>
<p>The Yard is pretty awesome too, I just dont know as much about it. Harvard as a whole isnt as ornate and intricate, but it has a lot of character.</p>