<p>For example, if an interviewer asked: Why H/Y/P over H/Y/P? what would be one outstanding aspect of each of these schools that could serve as a good answer to that question? </p>
<p>It seems like most people draw differences among HYP in their locations, but are there any unique characteristics within the college that may separate each of them apart? (e.g. Yale: Residential life)</p>
<p>Well I an only speak for Yale and for myself</p>
<p>Yale: Residential College system, YPU, unique location, best history department, not a competitive student body, Greek life is not too big and very diverse</p>
<p>For Princeton, you could say that it consists purely of undergraduates and the more personal feel that you would get from the school.</p>
<p>Granted, I don’t go to HYP so I’m not the best source of information. However, I do suggest you do a thorough research of each school. Check the school websites, not just the admissions site but their class offerings, student activities, residential options, special programs and opportunities etc etc.</p>
<p>“For Princeton, you could say that it consists purely of undergraduates and the more personal feel that you would get from the school.”</p>
<p>Except it doesn’t. It has some extremely fine graduate programs, though no law, medical, or business schools, and I suspect the ratio of undergrads to graduate PH.D students at Princeton, outside the sciences, is quite similar to that at Yale.</p>
<p>Thanks for the responses - mini, wouldn’t you agree, though, that Princeton gives more focus to undergrad, than Yale or Harvard?</p>
<p>I have heard, on many occasions, that Princeton is very undergrad-focused. Don’t know if it’s true or not…</p>
<p>Also, what is YPU? </p>
<p>
Many people say New Haven is “ghetto” - is this true?</p>
<p>EDIT: Looked up YPU - interesting. Thanks!</p>
<p>^That is kind of true. New Haven is not a very desirable neighborhood.</p>
<p>^ In what way? Would it be unrealistic to say that Yale’s campus and its residential college system could compensate the “undesirability” of New Haven?</p>
<p>^In a ghetto way. I’ve only passed through New Haven a few times, but each time I could just sense that uncomfortable feeling of insecurity, and this is coming from a person who frequently is in NYC.</p>
<p>Actually, this just reminded me; a kid from my HS who went to Yale was shot in the leg by a stray bullet while in New Haven. Not that you should expect this kind of event to occur often, but it’s definitely not your typical warm college town.</p>
<p>But of course, Yale’s campus probably more than compensates for New Haven’s lack of desirability. If it didn’t, thousands students wouldn’t turn down other top schools for a Yale education.</p>
<p>New Haven “ghetto”? You don’t know the meaning of “ghetto”. People have completely destroyed this word.</p>
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<p>That stopped me in my tracks too. Not sure I’d mention that as it is uniquely badly located among this group.</p>
<p>“mini, wouldn’t you agree, though, that Princeton gives more focus to undergrad, than Yale or Harvard?”</p>
<p>I don’t know whether that is true or not. It is true that there are fewer professional schools, and fewer overall graduate programs. My older d. is a preceptor and fellow at Princeton. The lecture class she works with has 285 students. It meets for 1 1/2 hours a week. Then she leads discussions, around 25 students in each, for two hours a week. She grades all the papers and all the tests. Whether that experience is common at Princeton, I don’t know. How it differs from H or Y, I don’t know. Percentagewise, I doubt there are fewer graduate Ph.D. students per undergraduate at Princeton in the areas in which they have graduate studies.</p>
<p>Speaking with only second-hand experience, but based upon family experience, and knowing how difficult it is to compare, I’d say my d’s undergraduate educational quality at Smith was higher than at any of the three. And back in the very dark ages when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, my friends at H. were very jealous of academic quality of the education I was receiving at Williams.</p>