<p>"Also, please be aware that the construction WILL go away next year!"</p>
<p>As long as I have lived in New Haven, Yale has never stopped construction. Don't get your hopes up. They will keep on building new stuff, if they stop the New Haven economy would probably go into the ****ter.</p>
<p>Even though building is an eyesore, every campus has it. In fact, it's probably worse news if you visit a college that isn't building, because that means they're not constantly updating and improving. That would throw up a red flag for me.</p>
<p>Dank, I was referring to the large construction projects in Silliman and Cross Campus, which have effectively changed the layout of the campus this past year. Yes, there might be construction projects in the future, but nothing, I imagine, to this extent.</p>
<p>Interesting - It is too easy to judge an entire university by one tour guide. I toured HYPS with my now sr. HS daughter-only Y attracted her enough to apply. I went to Y and P myself (one undergrad/one grad) so I don't know which one is "better" just there are ways in which both (both prestige universities) are different from each other.</p>
<p>nycmom22, in what ways have you noticed that they are different?</p>
<p>Well, I'll have to disagree with some of the posters here. I found Princeton to be a very warm and welcoming place (note: I visited at a non-typical time, in the fall, before midterms/theses/other stress had really hit for the year). I found students to be helpful, friendly, and most importantly for me, willing to engage in conversation about anything! Incidentally, I've never been to the east coast before, and I immediately felt comfortable and could see myself at Princeton for the next four years.</p>
<p>Though I was basically sold on Princeton at such an early point, I decided to visit Harvard and Yale anyway in the spring. During the visits, I felt there was too much of the surrounding town and touristy/random people bleeding into and interfering with the campuses. And the people seemed a bit more rushed and aiming to get to places (while at Princeton, there seemed to be people just walking around enjoying the campus - and were willing to help a lost prefrosh like me). These visits more or less confirmed my decision to attend Princeton.</p>
<p>I'm going to have to agree with the general consensus here that Yale is a warmer place, but the fact that this is in the Yale Forum probably means that most of the people here are more pro-Yale. </p>
<p>I've visited overnight at both Yale and Princeton, and my biggest issue about Princeton was that the entire social scene was centered on the eating clubs. I don't really mind the eating clubs per se, but I couldn't find anything else to do there. I think this will change a bit with the new residential college that is being built, but the fact that a lot of students are complaning about the university trying to draw students away from the eating clubs says something. I found that Yale, on the other hand, had much friendlier and happier, and the party scene was much more diverse than it was at Princeton. </p>
<p>So, if you can, visit both for a weekend (preferably not during the revisit days - I know at least at Princeton alcohol is banned for the weekend, which completely changes the culture) and see where you fit in better. That's what made the difference for me.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I've visited overnight at both Yale and Princeton, and my biggest issue about Princeton was that the entire social scene was centered on the eating clubs...I found that Yale, on the other hand, had much friendlier and happier, and the party scene was much more diverse than it was at Princeton.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This was my D's view as well. I'm a Princeton alum, and loved my time there, but that was in the late 70s when the club scene was at its nadir. My D has been to many Princeton reunions with me and also visited the campus by herself. While it's a lovely place, she felt more at home at Yale, where she's now a very happy freshman. Having grown up in suburbia, she wanted a more urban school (while I grew up in NYC and thought Princeton was in the deep countryside. New Jersey - the back of beyond. :))</p>
<p>Both are wonderful institutions, and both nurture their undergraduates, but the campuses have different feels; as others have said, a visit is the best way to find out which one is the best fit for you.</p>
<p>Maybe Yale just chooses better tour guides than Princeton does.</p>
<p>We recently visited both. Yale was infinitely superior: the tour guide was the best we encountered, the info session was better, the residential colleges are better, no eating club nonsense, the campus was livelier. And so on.</p>
<p>I actually got the opposite impression when I visted both schools, and at the time I was trying to decide between Princeton and Yale. It's probably because I visited Princeton right before move-in weekend in September and everyone there at the time was still in summer-mode, while I visited Yale during move-in weekend and I guess everyone was so busy that they didn't have time to smile and say hi to anyone.</p>
<p>I really don't understand how you can be so polarized toward/from a school. The students are really pretty much demographically the same, went to the same kinds of schools, like the same things... you expect them to suddenly become "warm and alive" or "cold and cutthroat" just by landing in different schools (which aren't really so different themselves)? If you saw groups of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton students sans college gear in nondescript respective campus locations, you probably couldn't tell the difference. You just happen to have strong feelings about the schools -- the differences are there, but far more subtle than you make them. But that's okay, because without developing strong feelings toward/against one school or the other, you'll never be able to decide among them.</p>
<p>Another important thing is, life on campus is nothing like the tour. You never get the same magical feeling of being there again, because life will set in, and you'll start to see "that gorgeous towering gothic building" as just "home," (or, "just the gym") and "all those lively students" not as yourself, but as "some random upperclassmen," etc. Not to say that colleges aren't that great once you get there -- they're better. Just different from what you imagine.</p>
<p>Oh, and txhorn, Princeton just finished training new tour guides. If you take tours around now, some of the guides have only been working for about a month. Forgive them for being new at it, because every tour guide started somewhere.</p>
<p>Admittedly, the individual strengths of the tour guide that particular day shouldn't hold that much sway. Like others have said, a lengthy visit can allow one to develop some more founded opinions. </p>
<p>Now...</p>
<p>Let's say it's a given that HYP have beautiful campuses, excellent academic features and great and stimulating students.</p>
<p>What I feel stands out about Yale 1) you talk to any alum and they'll tell you that the residential college system was the largest "systematic" feature of Yale College that affected them. How? By creating an extremely efficient, functional and captivating residential identity for everyone, there's less of the gravitating to the cliques that is sometimes forced upon students at schools where there's no social life outside of the clubs, Greek system or teams. The cohesion of the residential colleges is immediately felt and draws everyone in. This also allows you to truly have a diverse set of intimate friends as the residential colleges are mostly randomly selected. I still count my many roommates among my closest relationships today. At my wedding six years after graduation, 13 Yalies showed up. I've been to a good dozen of their weddings too. Our spouses are constantly amazed at our cohesion these many years out of New Haven. 2) Amazing schedule, Reading Period: The school schedule is fantastic in that you have a full ten days off after the Yale Harvard game, you come back for one week of classes, then you're in Reading Period: a catch up time for studying before exams w/no classes. U are finished with Finals before XMas break (about 12/22 -- I don't know about Princeton but Harvard has Finals in January -- yeech!). You return after mid-January and crank until April (another 10 days for Sp Break) and then Reading Period and finals are done by mid May. You get a pretty early start to your summers. 3) Shopping Period: you get pretty good flexibility to design your curriculum during your eight semesters at Yale. Besides the requirements in your Major, you have a lot of room outside to really take classes you want and interest you (Liberal Arts in action!). Upwards of 2/3 to 1/2 of your classes CAN be outside your Major concentration if you were to so choose. To encourage experimentation and afford flexibility, the beginning of every semester is Shopping Period. Basically, you don't submit your final class registration form for about a week. In this time, many Yalies are really sampling many classes to find a particularly interesting lecturer, or topic, or sometimes -- an easier course (aka "gut" classes). This was an exciting feature and allowed me to have a fantastically interesting schedule (I almost unexpected double majored in History due to the no. of classes I took). 3) Physical lay out of Campus: the proximity of everything was something we took for granted -- until I interned at Standford one summer. Its campus was monstrously large (by comparison) and the housing was scattered everywhere. Yale's physical surroundings seemed just to foster much more socializing and was everything was pretty convenient. SOmetimes Yale's relative isolation could be a good thing: most students stayed on campus for weekend events but we were still close enough to many other venues and schools if we wanted to venture.</p>
<p>These are just my anecdotes. If you find yourself in the enviable position to choose btn Yale and Princeton, then check them both out. The Tigers have a lot going on too!</p>
<p>princeton prof anthony grafton examines the cultural differences between the two institutions in the daily princetonian:</p>
<p>which prompted this, rather more biased response from a yale dean in the YDN:</p>
<p>also from the YDN, articles on the two schools' social scenes, part of a series that included harvard's final clubs:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/17212%5B/url%5D">http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/17212</a>
<a href="http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/17253%5B/url%5D">http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/17253</a></p>