The Cult of Yale

Colleges and Universities A-Z Yale University
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<p>So I was searching online for articles about Yale and its social life and found the above article. It's pretty old, written in 2003, but anyway... After reading it, I could not believe that Harvard Crimson actually wrote it. It seems as if Harvard students are conceding that Yale students would have better experiences and more happiness during their undergrad years. Sure there were jabs at New Haven and Yale's leniency on alcohol, but on the whole, the article was like a Harvard student's cry for help and for change. I would suggest everyone who has not read it to google it and read it. Yale even came out with a response article named "Yale is better than Harvard, says Harvard."</p>

<p>Pretty interesting articles... I am just glad that I was waitlisted at Harvard and accepted at Yale, and not vice versa.</p>

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<p>I've spent weeks at both schools, and have dozens of friends who attended each, but speak as a somewhat impartial observer. I know what article you refer to and I can say, based on people who know the writer, that it was written in part to try to goad the Harvard administration into doing more for its undergraduates -- Harvard has notoriously ignored its undergraduates in the past and is trying to make changes. First, they had to recognize that students were unhappy especially when they compared their situation to their peer schools.</p>

<p>Bottom line is that both are great places to go to college. They each offer incredible opportunities that only what the London Times calls "the two greatest universities in the world" can offer - no other universities in the world, not even Oxbridge, can compare to Harvard-Yale. However, there are important differences. Don't take my word for it, visit each for 2-3 days and decide for yourself. </p>

<p>First, it is pretty clear from everything I have seen or heard that Yale's social life is much more vibrant than Harvard's. Yale is buzzing with activity 24/7, the extracurricular art/music/drama/everything scene is explosive, and New Haven is now a significantly better college town than Cambridge or virtually anywhere else on the East Coast (a major change over the past 10 years). </p>

<p>Also Yale's undergraduate academics are somewhat stronger, which I think has an effect on social life, since students are generally happier and the smaller class sizes also allow much more diverse friendships to be formed, as opposed to the cliques you see at larger places. </p>

<p>Plus, of course, the residential colleges, which are vastly superior to Harvard's houses in almost any quantifiable way. The residential systems may sound the same on paper or on this forum, but trust me, they couldn't be more different - and they are "systems", not dorms.</p>

<p>Although Harvard and Yale are both incredible, the two institutions have very different philosophies overall when it comes to how they think an institution should be run. Those differences are difficult to see until you have a really good understanding of what makes each place "tick" and exactly who is involved in calling the shots.</p>

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<p>Here are the links to both articles if anyone cares to read it.</p>

<p>The</a> Harvard Crimson :: Magazine :: The Cult of Yale</p>

<p>The</a> Yale Herald - December 5, 2003 - Yale is better than Harvard, says Harvard</p>

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<p>At an alumni event in Chgo years ago, I was chatting w/a member of then President Schmidt's staff. He happened to mention that he had gone to H for college and Y for grad school. I smiled and said to him: "As much as Yalies would like to deny it, we do wonder about how is it at Harvard. What's your take on it?"</p>

<p>He paused and then said this: "Graduating from Harvard, I felt that there was nothing in the world that I couldn't accomplish" I thought:"Wow! Some praise!"</p>

<p>Then he said: "But I LOVE Yale".</p>

<p>This pretty much encapsulates it for me. I adore Y and my H alumni friends do seem envious of we legions of rabid Yalies.</p>

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<p>T26E4 - that is a great story and confirms my impression of how the schools (and the population) differ. The best part is that somehow those Yalies also seem to know how to accomplish anything the world throws at them.</p>

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<p>Couldn't resist responding to this from the Harvard perspective. This article never seems to die, it keeps cropping up every year despite how wrong it is. Anyway...</p>

<p>Obviously I am biased toward Harvard, but I know tons of people at Yale and have spent a lot of time there. Truthfully, I much prefer our social scene. One weekend when I was there, there was literally nothing to do except go to bars and clubs--and being under 21, that leaves you with nowhere to go. I'm sure Yale's social life is awesome once you're a junior, but before then, you're sort of left without options. Of course this was just my personal experience, but I have more fun at Harvard than my Yale friends do at Yale based on what they've told me--and I've never really had a good Yale experience. Yalies also take the rivalry very seriously--when I'm introduced as a Harvard student, they act obnoxiously to me (and this was multiple instances in multiple groups of people) whereas Harvard students don't hate Yale students for no reason. </p>

<p>posterX, no matter what anyone wants to say, New Haven does not even begin to compare to Cambridge/Boston. You want to talk vibrant atmospheres, come visit Harvard. I also don't think you can compare academics, because I know hundreds of Harvard students who would tell you we have the better academic experience--unless you somehow attend both schools, you'll never really know.</p>

<p>I also prefer our house system to Yale's. We get sorted at the end of freshman year, so we meet lots of people in our freshman dorms, and then get the chance to meet tons more when we enter our houses, whereas at Yale, you're with the same people for four years. Other than that difference, house life at Harvard and Yale is very similar.</p>

<p>Please don't attack me--yes, I'm a Harvard student posting on a Yale thread, but I figured I'd just play devil's advocate and throw the opposing viewpoint out there, since this article always seems to come up and it's so completely untrue.</p>

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<p>


</p>

<p>LOL!!! And if you believe that . . .</p>

<p>P.S. to T26E4, I also went to Harvard undergrad and Yale grad and I love both.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
New Haven is now a significantly better college town than Cambridge or virtually anywhere else on the East Coast

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<p>Jaw-dropper, defined</p>

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<p>"New Haven does not even begin to compare to Cambridge/Boston."</p>

<p>I agree. Not only has Downtown New Haven become a significantly better college town than Cambridge/Boston, why would anyone choose to go to school in the Boston Metro when they could go to school in the New York City Metro? Compared to NYC, Boston is a sleepy cowtown.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
I also prefer our house system to Yale's. We get sorted at the end of freshman year, so we meet lots of people in our freshman dorms, and then get the chance to meet tons more when we enter our houses, whereas at Yale, you're with the same people for four years. Other than that difference, house life at Harvard and Yale is very similar.

[/quote]
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<p>I'd just like to point out that this is false. Yale freshmen DO get sorted out at the beginning, but the freshman still live together on Old Campus for the first year, unless you were in TD/Sullivan. Yalies of the same house DO live together on the same section of Old Campus, but from what I experienced at BDD, just about everyone knows everyone. So in that respect, house life at Yale and Harvard are almost exactly the same.</p>

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<p>There are a few misconceptions in your post, 1636. </p>

<p>There's lots to do other than clubs/bars! I would argue that colleges in smaller cities (particularly yale) tend to have a reinforced campus scene, whereas colleges in larger cities (i don't know if this applies to harvard, i get the impression that harvard students don't make it out to boston as much as you might expect for a college near a big city) tend to diffuse more into the city culture. In any case, yale's campus scene is great... there are always college sponsored parties, off campus parties, and suite parties going on somewhere. And clubbing is available, and lots of people take advantage of it/make it the focus of their social life. But it's hardly the only option. I'm under 21 and i get out to parties all the time. Alcohol is plentiful and usually free, if that's what you're looking for. </p>

<p>And i honestly have a hard time imagining any housing system being more wonderful than the residential college system. Having done a good bit of research into harvard life (i was ultimately choosing between there and yale), i didn't meet a single person who identified as wholly with their house as the least enthusiastic yalies do with their college. Not to say that house pride doesn't exist, but i think to even put the house system in the same galaxy as the residential college system is an overstatement. The residential colleges basically make it impossible not to make friends in your freshman year. Even the most bizarre, antisocial people i know make friends in their college by virtue of the fact that we live together, often eat together, participate in a lot of freshman/college oriented events together, etc. While it would be nice to be able to pick a few good friends to be in my housing unit after freshman year, as harvard does, that comes at the expense of identifying with your college as soon as you get to campus, and having it be an integral part of your whole college experience. What you're left with is a housing unit, not an identity. I've definitely made some presumptions of my own, and i'm sure exceptions exist, but i'm confident that this is a reasonable generalization given the number of cantabs i've talked w. about the housing system, the time i spent at harvard, and the first hand experience i've had w. yale's system. They're simply incomparable.</p>

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<p>Halcykon, I understand that distinction..the point I'm making is that you're already divided into your houses when you're in your freshman dorm, and since you tend to meet the most people in your dorm by virtue of seeing them all the time, it just happens that you meet mainly people who will be in your future college, while at Harvard, I know and have good friends in pretty much every house, including my own, so it feels like you get to know more people.</p>

<p>To address kwijiborjt, like I said about the party scene, those were merely my own experiences. I'm sure that there are suite parties/college parties, as opposed to just clubs, but I personally have never seen it, which is weird because I visit very social people at Yale. And talking to other Yalies (including when I was deciding between H/Y), they've always told me that it's much more focused on bars and needing a fake. You're correct that Harvard, despite being right next to Boston and in Cambridge, still has that "smaller city"/reinforced campus scene feel of Yale, since you've also correctly stated that Harvard students tend to stick around on campus and direct a huge majority of their activities here as opposed to out in the city (whereas at a school like GWU, where a close friend of mine goes, every night is a club night in DC and no one has on-campus parties). </p>

<p>I find the house and residential college systems to be almost identical, despite the fact that we get sorted toward the end of freshman year. This is one misconception I've found that Yalies have. The only difference is that we find out our identities about 7 months after you do, giving us time to diversify and meet tons of people in other houses. There is an immense amount of house pride here--maybe it's not as obvious as Yale's college pride is, but that is the rule of thumb about pride at Harvard in general from what I've found--we're a lot more understated, but no less enthusiastic. A freshman dorm functions in the same way as college's freshman dorm does, except you're not necessarily going to be living together next year...but there are still tons of dorm-related activities (we have these things called entryways that break down freshman dorms into smaller groups to be less intimidating), entryways and dorms often eat together (and it's impossible not to meet people in our freshman dining hall), etc. Same deal as you guys. I would argue that your house is still an integral part of your whole college experience here, we just have 7 less months of identifying with it..which I don't think makes a huge difference. Houses here are your identities and sources of great pride--just go to housing day at Annenberg (our freshman dining hall) and there's no way to dispute that fact when you get swallowed into a crowd of people from your future house wearing facepaint, tshirts, throwing confetti at you, etc. It's just that Harvard as a whole is generally more subtle about its pride, from what I've found being at both schools. Again, just my personal experiences...</p>

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<p>1636--I understand that you're just speaking from your experience and have every right to do so, but I think your experience with the Yale social scene has been an unusual one. For me, Yale had an AMAZING on-campus social scene. There were always tons of suite parties every weekend and they were non-exclusive. If you heard the music and the noise as you walked by a college window and wanted to check the party out, it was open to you. That's one of the great things about Yale, how welcoming and open everyone is. </p>

<p>In any event, my typical weekend night was hitting an on-campus movie or a friend's play, concert or other performance around 8:00. After that, around 10:30, I'd go to a couple of suite parties until 1:00 or so and then my core group of friends would make it back to our residential college and hang out until around 2:00. This seemed like the standard weekend for most people, although some would be more like to go to a fraternity party (especially freshman) and the dynamic would be different if one of the residential colleges were having its signature party that weekend (therefore suite parties would be more confined to that particular college instead of happening campus-wide). Seniors tend to spend more time in bars. For my group, we were not into drinking as hard as in our younger days and just wanted to enjoy each other's company.</p>

<p>There is a subset of the student body, frequently Greek, that is more inclined to live off campus and whose social life revolves more around bars and clubs. Perhaps your friends fall into this category. The only point of my rambling post is that the on-campus social scene at Yale ROCKS and I want that message out there for people reading this thread.</p>

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<p>I would agree with AA^. Yale has by far the most vibrant, 24/7 campus social scene I have ever seen at any university, even the largest state schools. I think the vibrancy has a lot to do with how happy the students are in general.</p>

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<p>LOL: AA, your group of friends sounds exactly like mine! Movie, play, recital, suite parties, occasional greek events -- less "hard" partying as Juniors and Seniors.</p>

<p>You wouldn't have been in JE would you? Hahaha</p>

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<p>Honestly, I was so excited when I visited Yale that I had to run from event to event- I didn't want to miss anything! There is always something going on.</p>

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<p>1636,
From BDD I can say that Yalies make close friends from all across campus. The host and the suitemates whom he lived with all had best friends from different colleges.</p>

<p>All I can say is that it's always hard to compare two schools because we experience a lot of one and not much of the other. It really comes down to the visitation days that one can make the best judgment (or sometimes on non-visitation days). After all, any alumni of any college would confess that their college is the best.</p>

<p>And as for the article, I agree that it is definitely a misconception.
What ultimately cinched the deal was that Yale had a larger undergrad focus. I won't deny that Harvard probably has a better Grad experience, though.</p>

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<p>The colleges don't inhibit your ability to meet people in other colleges... they just define a unit of people with whom you'll be living for the next four years. You'll meet lots of people in different colleges through classes, clubs, events, etc. And you'll get to know almost everyone in your college pretty well by the end of your freshman year.</p>

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<p>LOL: You tend NOT to date people in your college in my experience -- kinda incestuous. Everyone knows your business -- and if it doesn't work out....</p>

<p>So it pays dividends to keep your social circles not solely college centered. That being said, I'll still shed blood for JE</p>

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<p>Idk... there's been a few BK '11 relationships... I can think of 4</p>