<p>That's pretty sad, tkm256. WhiteSox05, I agree with you, that person's words struck me as trite. Why should you be forced to face the reality of the world and why is it that you perceive this as the role of the homeless on the sidewalk. They're not there to make you a better person. They're trying to survive. I just feel like you're missing the point.</p>
<p>I disagree. While certainly it is not the homeless person's role in life to serve as a wakeup call, I don't think that's what he/she was saying. It's just that it's very easy to forget that there are very real, very physical problems when it comes to economics in this country when you spend all day in classrooms with fairly priveliged people (and even though many aren't when they arrive, they are when they leave) discussing theoretical problems. What I got from this person was that New Haven is what helps prevent Yale students from becoming pure ivy tower intellectuals.</p>
<p>You began with a rebuttal and you ended by reaffirming my statement. Why is it New Haven (or New Haven's economically depressed residents') role to enlighten Yale students? Any person who needs this kind of reality to slap him or herself in the face is a person who, as I said earlier, has simply been missing the point.</p>
<p>Girls, girls. You're both pretty.</p>
<p>I'm sure WhiteSox didn't mean to affront the good residents of New Haven. On the contrary, he meant to point out that they are human beings and shouldn't be shunned as "something bad about Yale." The intent was to give them credit, not demean them, and I think everyone gets the point. We are applying to a top institution in the country, after all.</p>
<p>To address a few points...</p>
<p>WhiteSox05 - the "Harvard Sucks" thread might be due to interscholastic rivalry as much as insecurity (for instance, the UofM-Michigan rivalry is also intense). Also, a facebook group might not be the best way to go about this. Which Yale Student WOULDN'T join a "Harvard Sucks" blogring if given the chance?</p>
<p>bongoboy - poverty can serve as a wakeup call. It's true. New Haven might keep Yale students worldly, but it's not the city's only purpose. EVERYONE needs this reality check. Too many kids are exiting top universities with an ivory tower mentality (I agree w/ rhapsody on this point)</p>
<p>come on, people.
"harvard sucks" group is more for school spirit booster. don't you have that at your high school? It's called RIVALRY? it's just another way to boost school spirit. ppl should stop interpreting this as "insecurity." </p>
<p>also, about poverty and people begging. ***? i don't think anyone runs into people begging everyday unless you live in real ghetto. and there's something called car which precludes poeple from walking and meeting random people on the street...?!</p>
<p>I visited the school and I interacted with the student body for three days.
The "Harvard Sucks" referance wasn't my reasoning.</p>
<p>As I said, I am not trying to badmouth the school in any way, because I loved it. I stayed over night twice, and I found that there it seemed that the kids HAD to prove to me that they were very intelligent and their school was the best in the world. This is completely objective reasoning, the thread started told me to say what was "bad" about yale, and I saw this potential insecurity as a weakness.</p>
<p>Every kid at every school seemed different, and I hate to actually relate them to their cliches, but the kids really did match, for the most part, what was said about them. At Princeton everyone was super competetive and goal oriented, my host actually working long into the night (for some of them, especially the engineering students, this included the weekends.) At Dartmouth all the kids were very carefree and laid back, and at Harvard they just watched movies when I was there.</p>
<p>WhiteSox- if you're from Chicago, i love you.</p>
<p>anyways, we Yalies are pretty laid back, but when the time rolls around, we get our stuff done. I guess our love of Yale and hate of Harvard is just a response to Harvard constantly shoving its Number One status in everyone's face. The last ranking placed us low (3rd) because our awesome professors are retiring because they've been here too long and Yale doesn't stress the sciences as much as Harvard does (we love the humanities). So just because we're ranked third behind a Harvard-Princeton tie means we're that much lower/inferior? Will an employer see "Yale" instead of "Harvard", and look down on me?
Thanks a lot you elitist pricks.
The rivalry is supposed to be fun.</p>
<p>Lay off New Haven. It builds character.</p>
<p>"What I got from this person was that New Haven is what helps prevent Yale students from becoming pure ivy tower intellectuals."</p>
<p>Wrong. It doesn't do that at all. Yalies don't embrace New Haven, they hate it. They'd trade for Harvard/Princeton's location and the "ivy towers" any day.</p>
<p>I'm actually more indignant about how Yalies treat New Haven than how Yale applicants do. Sure, you get a lot of crap from applicants but that's because they're ignorant. That's excusable. Yet distressingly enough, the majority of Yale students arrive on campus and end up holing themselves within its ivy gates and not daring to venture more than a few blocks from campus, like the rest of New Haven is some swirling blackhole of indigence and decomposition or something from which there's no dream of return. There are a lot more Yalies like tkm256 than would admit, even those who've been there for a couple years, and that's really kind of disappointing. Sure, there are some who volunteer in the community, sure, even some who do it without the shelter and protection of a big organization/group, but there is still the general sentiment on campus that one would become a mere chalk outline and smear on the side of the road if one ventures too far out into the fray.</p>
<p>Inferiority complexes are dangerous.</p>
<p>not really. napoleon, for instance, was a pacifist.</p>
<p>New Haven has rapidly gentrified. Homes there are now selling for over a million dollars, and there are literally over 250 restaurants within a few blocks of Yale. It now looks like a hip neighborhood of Brooklyn, etc. In addition to being a real city (with a diversity, international population and income mix equivalent to that of New York, except with an open government/business arena that any student can immediately get involved in at a meaningful level), I would say New Haven is also one of the best college towns I have ever seen, along the lines of Austin or Chapel Hill. Most of the bars, clubs, shops, etc., are right near Yale, but are used by college students from the surrounding area (there are tens of thousands of other college students in New Haven and the immediate area, at Quinnipiac, Southern Connecticut State, Albertus, Wesleyan, etc.)</p>
<p>Also, New Haven is much safer than either Harvard or Penn (see <a href="http://www.stalcommpol.org/data.html)%5B/url%5D">http://www.stalcommpol.org/data.html)</a>. Several Harvard and Penn students have been murdered right on campus over the past decade, whereas no Yale students have. Plus, I would argue it's even safer than the crime numbers show because with the smaller amount of vehicular traffic, students are less likely to become involved in a motor vehicle or pedestrian accident. This is also borne out by evidence in the sense that Harvard and Penn students walking around the campus have recently been run over and killed by cars (due pretty much to the high volumes of traffic around the campus), whereas no Yale students have ever been killed on campus by a car.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I wouldn't go that far.</p>
<p>As a Yale frosh with a paper due tomorrow that I REALLY don't want to write, I'm going to throw in my 2 cents. posterX, you sound like a Yale admissions brochure; if New Haven is one of the best college towns you've ever seen, you must not have seen very many. It's true that there's a fair amount of stuff to do in the vicinity of Yale (specifically, delicious restaurants and bars/clubs all within 10 minutes walking distance), but that is all there because of Yale. By no stretch of the imagination is New Haven a true 'college town,' because that would imply that the entire city is geared toward college kids and that, without those college students, there would be no city. This really isn't true.</p>
<p>As for safety, the fact that New Haven is a city means that yes, there are homeless people, and yes, Yalies do get mugged. It's not the most frequent occurence (it's front-page above the fold in the YDN each time it happens), but choosing a school in a city over someplace like Princeton or Dartmouth means that you will not be as safe as you are in your suburban home with your 2.5 kids and 1.2 dogs. You have to decide which is more important to you: the safety, spaciousness, and isolation that you get in a suburb or in the boonies, or the higher crime rate, culture, and closer connection with real-world issues that you get in a city. It's a personal choice; both are good options. Obviously, most Yalies will happily take a slightly higher chance that you will get mugged in exchange for the many opportunities that New Haven provides.</p>
<p>It is true that many Yalies do not venture far out of the Yale bubble. While no doubt part of this is the reputation that New Haven has, another part is the fact that, without a car, there is no way to get around unless you learn to navigate the city buses. Unlike many other schools, Yale has no shuttle system for going far off-campus (at least, as far as I know). It's simply impractical to explore New Haven -- and chances are that you won't have the time.</p>
<p>That's a lot of writing, but my point here is that you shouldn't let New Haven deter you from Yale. You're not as safe as you are in Princeton, NJ, but on the other hand, you are in a city that has a life outside of the college in it. There are so many opportunities in New Haven that simply do not exist in a rural or suburban college, and it is up to you to decide which you prefer.</p>
<p>One of my friends goes to Yale and I visited her a couple of months ago. Yale itself is great! The buildings and the students are incredible. Ok, now onto New Haven...
Before visiting I heard that New Haven was horrible but the area surrounding the campus is not bad at all. Sure, it's not Cambridge, but it is also not the ghetto that people assume it is. It may not add to the schools appeal but I feel that if people give it a chance they will find that it does not take away from the schools appeal either.</p>
<p>Actually, I've seen hundreds of college towns. And by college town, I'm not talking about the entire city - I'm talking about the area in the immediate vicinity of the college. Southern CT State is actually the largest university in New Haven, but I wouldn't say it's in the best college town because it's on the edge of New Haven. Yale is different, because it's in the center of New Haven (across from the City Hall, in the financial district, and surrounded by tony restaurants, shops, bars plus tons of places where college students from other area colleges hang out). Similar thing with NY City - Columbia or Yeshiva University isn't in the best college town, but NYU is in a pretty good one (Greenwich Village).</p>
<p>Also, I still disagree on the safety issue. There may be a greater number of high profile muggings at urban schools like Brown, Penn, Harvard, Yale, Northwestern, etc. (e.g., when someone asks a student for their wallet and it makes the front page, which happens several times per year - to a few students out of tens of thousands at the campus - at any urban school) than at rural schools, but in overall safety, life-wise, urban schools are actually safer in many cases. One reason is there is more pedestrian activity and density, making it harder for a very serious crime to occur. But the more important reason is that students interact less frequently with automobiles when they are in urban centers - driving much less, crossing busy streets less often (which is less true at Harvard or Penn since they aren't at the center of their cities, they are in more suburban areas away from the exact city center and therefore have a very high level of vehicular traffic through their campuses). In fact, studies have shown that, unless of course you are a drug dealer or prostitute or involved in some other kind of shady activity, living in cities (even in dangerous sections of cities or housing projects) is actually significantly safer than living in suburban or rural areas once you adjust for the danger caused by automobile use.</p>
<p>I hate hearing about how 'bad' New Haven is. True, it isn't the safest city, but it isn't a death trap either. Personally, I have never seen a homeless person there begging for money (but I'm not saying that isn't possible). I think New Haven has a lot of potential. Sure the houses are rundown, but you can tell that these were once beautiful homes that have deteriorated. New Haven has been neglected. I've seen some beautiful homes among some wretched houses. Trust me, I've seen a whole lot of New Haven and I don't even live there. If they had the money, they could fix up the place. I imagine it must have been a beautiful city w/ an amazing past back in the day.</p>
<p>Oh no poor middle-class suburban kids are going to have to DEAL with poverty and homeless people. They're people, just like you and me, and they don't have to be DEALT with. My sister went to Yale and people there aren't scared to take an active part in the community. She actually taught in the high schools there as an undergraduate. New Haven is an opportunity to do great work, if anything else.</p>
<p>I'm a senior, preparing to graduate, and I love it! The kids here are first-rate, both as students and as friends. If you were to describe the Yale student body in one word, "stressed" is definitely not it. We're a bunch of people that really really do know how to have fun. Whitesox: Maybe when you came, the group of people that you hung out with were just in the middle of studying for tests and what not. Also... I don't know about the "quasi-honors" program that you talk about at all. We really are, for the most part, pretty down to earth and cool kids. </p>
<p>New Haven itself is a pretty decent city. Just don't do anything that you wouldn't do in any other city (walk at 3am, alone) and nothing will happen to you at all. I also came to Yale being scared of New Haven's bad reputation, but really, I don't think it's all that bad. </p>
<p>Finally, as an MB&B major, I must say that the sciences at Yale are really phenomenal. Especially in encouraging undergraduates to participate in resesarch at Yale. I would pit the science education that I have gotten at Yale
against most any other school around (yes, even MIT/Caltech, the like). But that's a whole 'nother story :)</p>
<p>Come to Yale. You'll love it. I guarantee.</p>
<p>I've walked at 3am alone in several cities and felt safe (but none of them were in the US...)
anyway, not having visited yale I can't really say, but as a RD applicant I can say that my 2 biggest concerns are:</p>
<p>1) yes, the location
and
2) all the negative sentiment I get when I ask a Yalie about Harvard. I never really experienced this in reverse and wonder why.</p>
<p>other than that, Yale seemed pretty perfect, so I applied! =D</p>