<p>I saw a thread about this for another University, and would appreciate the perspective of existing students and parents about Princeton.
Most of the posts focus on "How can I get in?" assuming it is the best possible place to attend. What are the things about Yale that students don't like? When is Yale not the right choice for a student who gets accepted?</p>
<p>1) People like to complain about the walk from central campus up to science hill – but then they can’t compare it to other, more sprawling campuses. If they did, then they’ll know that they have little to complain about.
2) the weather in Jan-February can be very dreary (indeed this is the basis of Feb Club – a nightly party/event all of Feb.)
3) some people complain about the urban grittiness of some areas of nearby New Haven. I grew up in a large urban city so it was nothing to me.
4) My biggest complaint: I had to graduate after only 4 years… I had to give up my bed!</p>
<p>When is it not the right choice? I can think of two reasons: 1) if they want MIT or Caltech or UChicago – they’ll find Yale isn’t those. 2) if they have a wonderful full ride scholarship at another great program, can they justify having their family pay upwards of $220,000.00 – almost a quarter million dollars? I dunno. That’s up to them and their families to discuss.</p>
<p>It could get difficult to fly in and out if you do not live within driving distances. One had to go through Harford or New York City (although there is an airport in New Haven). </p>
<p>Although New Haven is not a gritty as some claim it is, it is still isolated and with limited things to do. </p>
<p>The science hill could be a problem if you have to do your senior thesis there and need after hour access. It is not pleasant to walk up the hill alone at night.</p>
<p>I am confused why T26E4 thinks the University of Chicago is meaningfully different than Yale. My wife and I both went to Yale, and both were in Directed Studies; our children both went to Chicago. Their experience there was very, very similar to ours at Yale. The residential college system at Yale was nicer than the (older, actually, but not as effective) house system at Chicago, there was more of a sense of privilege, and there was more of a pipeline into Washington and Wall St. Also more people going to law school. And a lot more music, drama (although the University Theater at Chicago is the biggest student organization), and football. But all of that is mainly trappings – the central intellectual experience, in and out of the classroom, was much the same (and wonderful both places).</p>
<p>New Haven isn’t New York or Boston, but it certainly has its charms, and Yale itself generates plenty enough excitement, supplemented by a couple of trips into NYC per semester. I certainly never wished I were anywhere else when I was there! The airport thing is a pain, but a pretty limited one; it’s not hard to get limos to Hartford or LaGuardia or Kennedy, probably Providence, too.</p>
<p>The main reasons not to go to Yale: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>You got into Harvard, and your ego isn’t strong enough to stand not being able to say you go to Harvard. </p></li>
<li><p>You got into Stanford and you can’t survive in a climate where the temperature falls below 45 degrees Farenheit.</p></li>
<li><p>You got into Princeton, hearing about “eating clubs” and “bicker” curls your toes, and seeing people of color with sub-1800 SATs walking the streets freely makes you want to curl up in Mommy’s lap for protection.</p></li>
<li><p>You are a STEM person who fears you will get humanities cooties if you have to talk to English or History majors on a regular basis.</p></li>
<li><p>You grew up in a Maoist collective and sitting next to someone whose parents are wealthy gives you hives.</p></li>
<li><p>Deep down, you are seriously anti-intellectual, and you hate the arts. All you want is a job at a hedge fund, a huge TV, and some reality shows and stock market news to watch. You could care less about learning from other people, and wish they would leave you alone.</p></li>
<li><p>Someone is giving you a boatload of money to go somewhere else that’s almost as nice. (There are a number of those places.)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Why not go to a state school and save money? If your into ivies, and your at the “Yale standard”, I’d try applying to Princeton, Harvard, MIT ( you get the idea), and going there. Lol, I don’t know, but its just something about Yale that doesn’t quite appeal to me! anyways, would you please chance me on some of the colleges I’m applying to? Thanks! <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1252829-what-my-chances-following.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1252829-what-my-chances-following.html</a></p>
<p>As you see, you’re not going to get a lot of negatives about Yale here. Honestly, that’s because there aren’t that many. I will name two things I don’t like, both of which are changes from when I was there:
- More frats.
- No more film societies.</p>
<p>IPRODD: You ask “Why don’t you go to a state school and save money?”</p>
<p>Well, if that’s what you are thinking, I have to wonder about your choices. I went to your “chance-me” thread. NYU, Cornell and Rutgers are large schools with small endowments and consequently need to spread the money around. NYU topped the list with students graduating with the most college debt (see: [The</a> Top Ten Universities for Student Debt](<a href=“http://gawker.com/5615933/]The”>http://gawker.com/5615933/). BTW: Rutgers is ranked 10th in college debt) and Cornell is losing athletes to other Ivies because of non-competitive aid (See: [Financial</a> Aid Packages Threaten Cornell Athletics | The Cornell Daily Sun](<a href=“http://cornellsun.com/node/27969]Financial”>http://cornellsun.com/node/27969)).</p>
<p>On the other hand – depending on your family’s finances – Yale, Harvard or Princeton might actually cost you LESS than your state school – it does for my kids (daughter at H; son at Y).</p>
<p>Gibby is soo right. Having a low income and going to a private school such as the ivies will actually cost less because they’ll give you more money. State Schools want to give everyone a little bit of money like maybe 1/3 of the tuition and then you have to make up the rest on your own.</p>
<p>Due to their very generous FA, Y had the lowest COA of all the schools my D2 was accepted by last year. It cost was less than her IS public with it’s top merit scholarship, less than an OOS public with very generous merit aid and less than the other selective LACs she got into.</p>
<p>D1 would agree about the hassle flying from the other coast, a minor complaint overall. She actually liked the grittiness, but she is turned off by pristine little towns like Princeton.</p>
<p>My daughter once said if she could change one thing about Yale it would be the tapping for secret societies and the societies themselves. She just found the whole thing to be pretty ridiculous and tried to ignore all the stuff that went on around that. That’s a very minor complaint. She was in a smaller residential college prior to renovations and the dining hall was open for limited hours during the day. If she had a class during lunchtime, she was out of luck. Food was a bit of an issue due to health reasons and the dining hall was not as accommodating as it should have been. My kids who attended other schools had more access to food for more hours of the day and better options. You can eat at other dining halls, but people want to socialize with friends in their RC. Flying in and out is a hassle. I’m not going to go on about all the wonderful things because that’s not what the OP requested and I’m sure there are lots of threads here that can answer that. One concern about Yale is the surrounding area which seems to be having a lot of crime this year. When DD was there I worried even though I knew she had a lot of street smarts and was careful. Her roommate was held up at gunpoint. It’s an urban area and there are crimes in the surrounding area that involve gunfire. You hear a lot of sirens in New Haven. I’d say that’s the biggest negative and one the school constantly has to deal with.</p>
<p>The dump known as New Haven.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Science Hill is a pain. I’m dreading having to go there next semester in the snow for a 9AM class. I lived on a college campus before where I had to make a similarly lengthy trek, but Science Hill is definitely more brutal since it’s pretty steep for much of the way. There have been a few times this semester where I overslept a bit for orgo but lost all motivation to go because it would take up so much more time and effort to get to Science Hill.</p></li>
<li><p>Biking is also a pain. Both the pedestrians and the drivers are a**holes. But the whole reason I got a bike was because of Science Hill, so that kind of adds onto #1. </p></li>
<li><p>The limited dining hall hours during brunch/lunchtime used to be a complaint of mine, but now that they’ve extended Durfees’ hours and started those $7 combos, it’s less of an issue for me.</p></li>
<li><p>I wish we collaborated with kids from local colleges more. Yalies pretty much look down upon the schools near New Haven, whereas folks in Boston, for example, interact all the time. There are definitely differences in the caliber of students we have available to interact with (Harvard and MIT are pretty much on equal footing; Yale and QPac, probably not as much), so that has a lot to do with it.</p></li>
<li><p>Your language study abroad options are limited if you don’t take any language classes at Yale or place into at least L3. I already took 4 semesters of college Spanish during dual-enrollment and was hoping to just study abroad in a Spanish-speaking country over the summer without having to take any further classes during the fall or spring terms, but that turned out to be impossible since I only placed into L2. And the Spanish placement test is only offered once at the beginning of the year, so no retakes. Yale does offer some study abroad programs for intro language courses, but none for Spanish. So now I have to take L2 Spanish next semester, relearn stuff I already know, and take up 1.5 credits that could’ve been used towards classes that I would be learning new things in. During Bulldog Days and everything they made it seem like it’s sooo easy to study abroad here, but in reality there are a lot of restrictions.</p></li>
<li><p>There’s a large AP bias for placing out of courses, so you’ll probably be out-of-luck if your school didn’t offer APs or if you took dual-enrollment classes instead. I got a perfect score on my biology subject test but still have to waste my time taking one of the intro bio courses just because I didn’t take the AP bio test (I took an actual college bio course instead).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Ditto those who mentioned the travel to/from Yale if you live on the West Coast, but I think this is more of a negative for the parents than the students. The students don’t seem to think it is that big of a deal.</p>
<p>Re New Haven: I started out thinking it was a negative, but have converted to thinking it is a positive. It creates a tighter-knit campus, it exposes the sheltered upper-middle-class suburban kids to the realities of life, and it contains some really great restaurants and a couple of good hotels.</p>
<p>One negative according to my D is the limited clothes shopping - there is a J. Crew, Urban Outfitters and a few boutiques - but she is spoiled because we live near a great shopping mall.</p>
<p>^^ That’s actually a plus for our family; with limited shopping in New Haven, my son doesn’t spend nearly as much on clothes as he does when he’s home.</p>
<p>I totally agree, gibby!</p>
<p>
You don’t mention that you were able to place out of the first intro Bio course (120) by your subject level score. You just weren’t able to test out of the second one (122). Also, there is no guarantee you would have scored the necessary 5 to test out of that course anyway. Lastly, was there anything stopping you from taking the AP test if you felt confident in scoring so well based on taking the college Bio course?</p>
<p>As far as Spanish study abroad requirements there may be a reason you need a certain proficiency. My daughter is completing a study abroad term in Argentina and her classes were taught entirely in Spanish (i.e. there is no English spoken at all). I think it would be difficult for someone who did not place into at least L3 to succeed in that environment.</p>
<p>I didn’t feel the need to specify which intro bio course I had to take. I also don’t see the point in letting someone place only out of MCDB 120. The two exams cover the same topics, and if someone gets a perfect score on the Bio subject test they must have a pretty firm grasp on general biology. I don’t know where you’re getting this idea of me believing that I definitely would have gotten a 5 on the AP exam, but I didn’t take it because they cost a lot, and because a class has to teach not only the subject of the AP exam, but also its format and what the graders are looking for. I’m just using my personal experiences as examples of the larger issue, so it’s pointless to nitpick at the specifics of my situation (same goes for the language thing). I know people who have experienced other problems due to the AP bias, like having to retake intro microeconomics (which I hear is a very boring class here. Just makes relearning the stuff worse.) or being forced to take an L5 language class just because they got a 5 on the AP exam, even though they don’t feel like their language abilities are at all at that level. I just think that APs shouldn’t be treated like they’re the be-all and end-all.</p>
<p>There are plenty of study abroad programs out there that have English instruction. There are also plenty out there that teach the equivalent of L1 and L2, but Yale no likey that unless you’re doing one of their programs, which are limited. Then there’s the whole issue with the petitioning process and transferring credits and yadda yadda yadda.</p>
<p>Basically, people here should have a bit more freedom to challenge themselves and explore if they want. My time here is limited, and I hate having to use some of it on stuff I already know rather than getting to try more of the great classes that Yale has to offer.</p>
<p>The things is, though, that it does matter.</p>
<p>You took the SAT II, which also costs money, not to mention AP fees can get waived…
Also, from personal experience, which is admittedly limited, the AP tests generally are more thorough/cover more complex material than the SAT II’s</p>
<p>As for placing out of classes, I know my AP course didn’t cover half the stuff that intro micro and macro did, maybe someone else’s did, but one would also assume they got the 5 in that case. (Side note, Yale also accepts IB’s, but transferring credit from other universities is usually too complicated bc of dif levels of rigor/curriculum/etc)</p>
<p>It is entirely possible to drop lower than what your AP score might indicate, ESPECIALLY if it’s language. Just go talk to the DUS/your adviser, shop both classes, and pick the one you want. There’s no reason to take an L5 class if you don’t want to, and NO ONE makes you.</p>
<p>As for your specific problem with Spanish, Yale Summer Session definitely offers L1/L2 Spanish, but it’s on campus. Having taken four semesters of college level language is moot point if you didn’t learn enough from them. </p>
<p>You are also welcome to go on an outside program, petitioning for credit is filling out a relatively simple form and sending in a syllabus/course accomplishments. Even if you don’t feel like doing it/program isn’t rigorous enough to meet Yale requirements/whatever, you can still go on it and retake placement test when you come back next year instead of taking L2.</p>
<p>Our student is very happy at Yale…</p>
<p>The two things I can think of are:</p>
<p>Travel–as many have stated. No non stop flts from where we are–so flying into either Hartford or newark or LaGuardia to get there</p>
<p>APs. AP scores do not get you credit–they place you up…so you can move into advanced material faster… So all students take 36 credits. That is fine. Just know those 10-12 APs you take will not get you credit like they would at other Us. Its not a bad thing–just be aware…</p>
<p>Otherwise–it is fabulous. Classes, freshman dorms, res colleg system, food, all the other students etc. Our student is very very happy.</p>
<p>Actually, you can use some of those AP credits in order to graduate in fewer than 8 semesters. Very few Yale students want to do that, though.</p>
<p>What you can’t do is use them to take fewer than 36 credits over 8 semesters, or to get out of distributional requirements. The only modest exception is that you can reduce (but not eliminate) the number of semesters of foreign language you have to take with a good AP score.</p>