<p>...between the Residential College system at Yale and the House system at Harvard? Or are they the same thing? They at least seem very similar, like microcosms of the school.</p>
<p>They are very similar but one difference is that at Yale, you are placed in a residential college as a freshman, while at Harvard you are not placed into a house until your sophomore year. </p>
<p>Yale ftw! :]</p>
<p>…eh, the House system at Harvard is sort of like Residential College Lite. H students aren’t as attached to their House as Yalies are to their colleges–partly because they’re assigned sophomore year. And while the Yale sorting system is random, meaning you’ll end up with a great cross-section of the whole student body, at Harvard, freshman block into groups of 8 and enter the House lottery together… which means that H kids don’t branch out as much in their houses, and they can be less diverse interest-wise (i.e., if all the Crimson kids block together).</p>
<p>ALSO, the Houses are MUCH more removed from each other and the center of campus than the residential colleges are (good luck if you’re in the Quad)–but that is more related to Harvard’s overall flaws than to the House system in itself. :P</p>
<p>What this means exactly is that you live with the kids from your college in freshman year. Your roommates are in your college and so is everyone else in your entryway. So if Wright bites and Durfee sucks, it’s because they’re full of kids from the other colleges. You also eat more often in your residential college as a freshman. That is - I’m inarticulate today - when you’re not eating at Commons, you’ll mostly be eating in your college.</p>