<p>Penn's campus was absolutely beautiful- very Revolutionary, Boston feel to it.</p>
<p>If you want to get out of the northeast, the University of Southern Mississippi has one of the most beautiful campuses I have ever seen. I will say that Yale is the most awe inspiring. Wellesley is the interesting (on campus only). </p>
<p>Momsdream, we must have been at Harvard the same day last spring. What a storm!</p>
<p>Columbia.</p>
<p>The dignified, majestic structures of McKim, Mead, and White surrounded by immaculate lawns. Very academic. An enclosed campus on an island in the greatest city in the world. Not too noisy or too close to the busy areas. Not too quiet or distant from the action--you can feel the life and vibrance feeding you energy.</p>
<p>Stanford is another basically beautiful place where someone should be shot for allowing what was built in the last 50 years.</p>
<p>Interesting:</p>
<p>many of those who want to be awed like Yale
many of those who like friendly/fairytale like Dartmouth</p>
<p>We live near Columbia and I wanted to like it because of that. When we first visited I found it majestic, but as I spent more time there it began to feel like some sort of quiet necropolis standing just outside the livelier parts of the city: awesome, cold, gray and silent.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Of all the campuses that we looked at, when we toured Yale I had the strongest desire to be young again and have to opportunity to go back to school.
[/quote]
This reminds me of the musical "Avenue Q," when the character called Princeton sings: I wish I could go back to college./In college you know who you are./ You sit in the quad, and think, "Oh my God!/I am totally gonna go far!"</p>
<p>Co-creator Robert Lopez went to Yale.</p>
<p>ok to stray?</p>
<p>I just felt at home at Yale... it fit my image of the "perfect" college campus to T, and it reminded me so much of Oxford. I also liked that it was integrated into the town itself moreso than other campuses. I also loved Williams... interestingly, there was a notable lack of distinguished architecture on campus.. yet it all fit together with the profoundly beautiful natural setting somehow. I expected to like Stanford, but I actually found it too sprawling and spread out. Going to see Smith and Wellesley this weekend.</p>
<p>there is no equal.</p>
<p>Cornell is the best. </p>
<p>I went there as a kid with my pop who went there. When I got to the college touring stage, I went on the obligatory tours of Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. I came away thinking, is that all there is? Where are the waterfalls and bridges, the great views of the lake? Cornell was my minds eye of what a campus should look like. Hence I chose to spend my undergrad years there and loved it.</p>
<p>Recently on tour with our D, we saw 15 schools. We loved Boston College and Dartmouth. Thought Princeton (her mom's alma mater) was too much like the trendy suburb where we live. Perhaps I influenced her too much, but at the end of the process she selected Cornell as well.</p>
<p>The size of the student population gives it a little more scale then some of the others. (I probably have still only been in a third of the buildings).</p>
<p>Yes, as someone said, its sort of in the middle of nowhere, but that makes the campus even more vibrant. Never a dull moment, because all 13,000 students are always there.</p>
<p>If city life is really your thing, then Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Penn, or even Brown are going to maybe be more appealing, but like I said, when it comes to natural beauty, there's nothing quite like being...</p>
<p>FAR ABOVE CAYUGA's WATERS
WITH ITS WAVES OF BLUE
STANDS OUR NOBLE ALMA MATER
GLORIOUS TO VIEW</p>
<p>I'd give the nod to Cornell for its natural beauty; I like its architecture more than Frank Lloyd Wright did; he supposedly said, "The best thing about Cornell's architecture is the trees." He may have been motivated by wounded pride, after Cornell's then-president rejected Wright's design for the president's house.</p>
<p>Cornell - love the natural beauty of its location but too isolated for me</p>
<p>Yale - dislike New Haven but the campus is beautiful</p>
<p>Columbia - love New York city but dont want to live in it - was my second choice though</p>
<p>Princeton - love the gothic architecture - the campus has a distinguished and scholarly feel about it - love the easy access to NY city - definitely my first choice</p>
<p>Penn - I didnt like what I saw of Philly that much </p>
<p>Off topic: Wellesley campus is breathtakingly beautiful</p>
<p>I just realized that I didn't answer your question. It would be Princeton ,see the reason above.</p>
<p>Wharfrat, there is an alternate set of lyrics to that ditty.</p>
<p>Far above Cayugs's waters
There's an awful smell.
Some say it Cayuga's waters,
Some say its Cornell!</p>
<p>I am an alum so I should be given some poetic license for this.</p>
<p>Regarding the Cornell campus, when I was there the Olin Library had been recently completed and created a bit of a ruckus architecturally. Many referred to it as the Giant IBM Punchcard!</p>
<p>There seems to be a lot of talk here on "campus beauty". On one level it(CB) is very superficial. The important thing is what is going on inside. In another sense it is important insofar as it congers up what we visualize as the "ideal".</p>
<p>Generally speaking the 1960's was the nadir of campus architecture. Very few building of lasting beauty were built during this era. Walk down Washington Road in Princeton and your senses are assaulted by the hideous Robertson Hall with its lincolcenteresque "style". I'm not certain when Robertson was build, but it hadda be in that 60's era and should be torn down yesterday or as soon as possible. Actually Olin has stood the test of time better than most.</p>
<p>And more to the point, I prefer P'ton. And the reason has probably as much to do with the area surrounding the campus as the campus itself. Gentile Nassau Street, the shrine on Mercer Street, Princeton Theological, the Institute and the ever so slightly seedy off campus grad student housing with its uneven slate sidewalks.</p>
<p>Just visited Wellesley and Harvard this week... Wellesley, with the peaceful lake and lawns and ivied brick and stone, was just idyllic... definitely tied with Yale, in my mind, for most appealing campus. Harvard was nice, but not my favorite... I like a bit more seclusion and more stone (don't ask me why, but I just tend to prefer the Gothic style).</p>
<p>I haven't been to Dartmouth yet, but I expect to be very impressed. I just wanted to comment on two colleges:</p>
<p>Washington & Lee is, really, the most beautiful place I've seen. The weather was perfect on the day I visited, and it was fantastic. Green grass, red bricks, white columns, nice layout, awesome environment and town. I was just really, really impressed. I get to see it in slightly less favorable weather next week-- hopefully it snows.</p>
<p>Swarthmore was nice, too, but in a different way. The ville is more industrial (though not nearly as industrial as the word itself suggests) than Lexington, and the campus has a different feel too. The campus focuses more on the plants than the buildings, which is also the other way around from W&L. Quick anecdote: This fall, on the way to morning classes with my host, we passed under a yellow tree (near the alumni building and observatory) we had passed under the night before. It was different in the morning because the leaves had suddenly started to fall out-- they were mostly all there, but there were just so many in the air on the way down, so I assume it had just started. Two classes later, on the way back, the tree was completely bare and there was a layer of yellow leaves underneath. It was really odd to see!</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>The ville is more industrial (though not nearly as industrial as the word itself suggests) than Lexington, and the campus has a different feel too. </p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>I don't think "industrial" is the word you are looking for. There isn't any industry in the Village of Swarthmore! I'm not even positive they allow gasoline-powered lawnmowers. (just kidding).</p>
<p>I can't really think of the right word either. There is a much different style in an old rural Southern town and small semi-urban upscale northeast city neighborhood.</p>
<p>Originaool,</p>
<p>I was at Cornell not too long after the Johnson Art Museum was built, and it was known as the "giant sewing machine."</p>