<p>Okay. There are plenty of students who already know what they themselves are like and know what their own preferences are, and it is these students to whom finding a school that “fits” is most important. If a student thinks that he or she doesn’t know what he or she prefers or just has broad, general interests, then they can go ahead and do what you all are doing and applying to all of HYPSM + equivalents and then bank on getting lucky and ending up at a college that he or she will be happy at. Sure, there are students who apply to HYPSM + equivalents and end up happy at one of these schools, but there are also students like this that end up being unhappy with the environment that they assumed they would be happy at, and they either grin and bear it or transfer.</p>
<p>And I’m sure there are grammatical mistakes in my paragraph that I just don’t care about.</p>
<p>^ I don’t think there were, and you sum up my opinion perfectly. Too bad the only Ivy I applied to had to pwn the financial aid I got from Hamilton and Haverford :/</p>
<p>There are small but significant differences.</p>
<p>Princeton doesn’t have an environmental anything major. Yale’s student body is arguably more liberal than the other two schools’ student bodies. I’ve heard the atmospheres at Harvard and Princeton are more serious and less about unstructured parties, but I’m not too sure about that.</p>
<p>^^Really? I actually never felt that way (responding to the Yale part).</p>
<p>Anyway, it’s good that you know your own preferences and each of the schools so well :). A lot of people who are admitted to two of these schools have trouble picking one over the other.</p>
<p>No, they’re not “merely rumors”. Firstly, the political viewpoints of the majority of the students won’t bother me and won’t be a factor in determining how well a student would fit in at a place. Secondly, how is a campus’s organizations, professors, students, and campus events “rumors”? Apparently, college students are merely rumors and do not exist. Plus, there are plenty of concrete characteristics of a school that I didn’t mention that contribute to how well a student would fit in there.</p>
<p>@ the OP and other users: Does anyone have an opinion about Yale, specifically campus wise? I’m too far away to ever consider visiting the campus, and I’d love to hear some input. I’m mainly interested in Yale because of the main focus on humanities/liberal arts. Plus, I love the (perceived) atmosphere/weather, and of course; the architecture! Not to mention the poli sci program. My test scores however are not up to caliber. XD
I agree with the other posters about Harvard- there is something about it that I just cannot fathom, it just seems awkward. </p>
<p>If one were interested in schools much like Yale, what other colleges would you guys recommend?</p>
<p>I tend to be somewhat conflicted on this topic. While I am one of CC’s most outspoken advocates for less-prestigious schools (esp. those w/financial benefits to attendance), I’m also deeply skeptical of the importance of “fit”. Human beings tend to be fairly adaptable creatures. I certainly wasn’t crazy about Harvard when I was there (the buildings were old and some smelled funny), but at the end of the day I could probably get used to the place and thrive. There may be a few exceptions - devout city-dwellers considering Dartmouth, straight guys looking at tech schools with ratio concerns, etc. - but I think most people could do well at any school.</p>
<p>If one is fortunate enough to gain admission to multiple schools, it may not be easy to make one’s choice based on legitimate factors. Future financiers would do well to attend a more prestigious institution, and if there is a significant financial difference that makes the decision simple. However, for many the choice will ultimately be made on a somewhat arbitrary basis. That isn’t a bad thing, but such decisions should be made after admissions, not before.</p>
<p>^^I certainly think so. I made huge protestations to try to avoid going to Harvard, but, in all honesty, within a few weeks of arriving, I’d probably be perfectly happy there.</p>
<p>
Cambridge (or Oxford), since Yale copycatted the housing system? Interesting: Copycatted is a word.</p>
<p>I thought “do well” meant excel academically, which wouldn’t have too much to do with how happy the student is outside of class. A student could be getting straight A’s but still be unhappy and isolated due to interests that do not correlate at all with the school he or she attends.</p>
<p>^^ How could one’s “interests” not “correlate” with a school? I could see it in the examples I offered - or with something very self-selecting ie BYU - but probably not for most.</p>
<p>I liked Yales engineering, really did, best out of all the HYPSM to me but maybe it’s because all the people in the department were so funny and chill. But then Yale itself wasn’t a place I could see myself at so I didn’t bother. The campus is just beautiful though.</p>
<p>I don’t know, maybe my visit at cornell was just terrible but I hated that place. The area seemed so isolated and cold and my host was some annoying sorority type that just…gah. Everyone was like “how cool are we for being at cornell?” and I was like “…seriously?”.</p>
<p>But when I look back my only regret was not looking at Stanford more, it just never came up on my radar, but then I wasn’t looking at anything in California at all, like I’m just realizing how good the UC schools are when I didn’t even know they existed much. I guess Cali is just too close to TX for me, heh.</p>
<p>Here, on this site, I do think people are just blindly going at the ivies and such without really looking at other schools that will match their specific interests and goals.</p>
<p>You stated that 1 out of the 7 reasons I listed was a “rumor”, and then said “so many of these factors that contribute to students’ feelings of “fit” are merely rumors.” 1/7 = 14% = not so many.</p>
<p>And I just realized I overlooked this:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t think it would be impossible for a student to apply to a list of schools that he or she would love to attend in order of “WANT-est” to “I like this but not as much as that-est”. This is especially doable for a student who has been vigilant about researching different schools in-depth. Everybody uses the “students change between December and April” argument, but that is more applicable to students who just apply haphazardly to the top schools without trying to figure out what characteristics they would most want their school to have.</p>
<p>EDIT:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>A gay student would probably feel uncomfortable and ostracized at a school like Notre Dame, which is considered a top school. A student who is into engineering would be better off not attending Williams (which has no engineering program) or Dartmouth (which has a very small program with far fewer resources than a place like Stanford) unless they know that they want to go to grad school for engineering. There are more examples but I’m just going to click the “Save edit” button</p>
<p>EDIT 2: I just realized I gave an academic reason, which probably isn’t what you wanted, but I’m not typing another example unless I have to</p>
Eh, there’s a difference between prioritizing within a list of applications and actually NOT APPLYING somewhere. Look, some people will have spent enough time in urban areas to know that they would not be happy at MIT. There’s nothing wrong with that. However, many students know that an elite school will help them achieve their goals and are flexible enough on big-picture issues like urbanity to consider all of HYPSM. If that’s the case and a good safety is available, why not apply to all of them?</p>
<p>I did not restrict myself to what you have stated; that is, the demonstrative adjective in the phrase these factors was not used in a strictly referential sense but was used in the colloquial cataphoric sense in that it signaled the presence of an upcoming relative clause. I apologize if my informality led to ambiguity. :)</p>
<p>In any case, I can’t think of any objective (i.e., non-rumor, non-anecdotal) factors that would cause me to feel that I fit in better at any one of HYP over either of the other two. However, rumors about the schools’ undergraduate focus, personality of the student bodies, and political leanings (among other factors) abound.</p>