Why apply to Yale for engineeringn (EECS)?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>As indicated before that my D's first choice has been Yale for long until we visited the campus in August. We were really disappointed with the town 'New Heaven' which was not even close to be 'human' than to be Heaven. Campus also was deserted compared to Columbia/Brown/Harvard during the same week.
Now she is really confused as both my wife and I are pressing her to rethink her early application. Can someone enumerate why Yale for engineering (EECS)? We would like our daughter to apply to her first choice EA but we are not comfortable with Yale.</p>

2

<p>The town is “New Haven”…</p>

3

<p>New Haven isn’t the greatest town but generations of Yalies loved their Yale experience. Hopefully you and your family have visited enough colleges and your daughter knows which ones feel right for her. With all of my children, their final choice was a surprise to us! Not maybe what we would have chosen for them but they have all loved their choice.</p>

4

<p>phade: I know but we always thought of it as heaven as it has Yale University. For us cambridge (MA), Princeton (NJ), and Stanford(CA) all are heavenly places. But the experience at Yale was not the best in terms of its surroundings.</p>

5

<p>It’s SCEA right, so it’s not binding. Why? Because she has better chance of getting admitted to Yale than at other school in CA which is known for engineering/cs. Plus Yale usually defers you to next round unlike Stanford. Does she have other schools that she like to apply EA?</p>

6

<p>hmom5: We visited CHYMPS, Columbia, U. Penn, Brown, UCB, UC LA, USC, UCSD.
We wanted to visit Northwestern, Duke, JHU and Rice but couldn’t work out a schedule.
Somehow New Haven was the biggest disappointment. It might be we never expected it to be so. We had lower expectation of Philadelphia, Los Angeles so U. Penn and USC was what we expected.</p>

7

<p>I’m all for MIT/Caltech as in my opinion she will fit in just right with her passion for research and engineering. But she is somewhat influenced by her mother too who is an English major and always supported Ivies because of their liberal art focus.</p>

8

<p>I think she should apply EA to MIT & Wellesley if she likes liberal arts and engineering. For MIT, you can take classes at Wellesley and Harvard and the full liberal art education. At Wellesley, you can take classes at MIT and take advantage of the excellent engineering program at MIT.
You must not read a lot of guide books while searching for colleges, because the area around Yale is well known to a lot of people. I’m surprised you are surprised.</p>

9

<p>For one, you may have been at Yale at a time when there weren’t many people around. . . if the summer sessions were over and it was before the new semester began, you’re not going to get a good idea of what the college is like when class is in session. </p>

<p>For another, obviously thousands of parents send their children off to Yale every year and they’re fine. Yeah, New Haven is not the best city, but if Yale wasn’t a safe place where a student can have a great experience and get a great education, it would not be as popular as it is. </p>

<p>As far as liberal arts goes, MIT has far more options than a lot of non-“tech” schools.</p>

10

<p>Parent, is Dartmouth on your list? For my son and many others they found their ivy heaven in Hanover. My son actually visited by accident, he accompanied me on a trip when I was recruiting because my next stop was Harvard which he was at the time very interested in. One look at Dartmouth and Harvard was out of the picture.</p>

11

<p>hmom5: According to D’s College Counselor Dartmouth is not a good fit, that is why we never visited.</p>

12

<p>The ONLY Ivy on USNews top 10 list of Engineering Schools where doctorate is highest degree is Cornell. Ithaca and the Cornell campus are both beautiful. It is worth a look.</p>

13

<p>Yale ranks 38 in US News. </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/555743-us-news-2009-undergraduate-engineering-rankings-2.html”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/555743-us-news-2009-undergraduate-engineering-rankings-2.html&lt;/a&gt;

</p>

14

<p>“I think she should apply EA to MIT & Wellesley if she likes liberal arts and engineering. For MIT, you can take classes at Wellesley and Harvard and the full liberal art education. At Wellesley, you can take classes at MIT and take advantage of the excellent engineering program at MIT.
You must not read a lot of guide books while searching for colleges, because the area around Yale is well known to a lot of people. I’m surprised you are surprised.”</p>

<p>wait what</p>

15

<p>I mean you need to do research about each school, not because it’s an Ivy and everything is wonderful.</p>

<p>[Yale</a> Daily News - New Haven crime climbs for second year, campus crime down](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/12615]Yale”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/12615)</p>

16

<p>lol. The username is ParentofIvyHope. I personally can’t think of a CC user name that screams more “prestige lover” than that.</p>

17

<p>Cornell and Princeton are the best for engineering. Harvard and Yale are not strong in engineering. I don’t know why anyone would choose Yale or Harvard for engineering unless they didn’t really want to go into engineering.</p>

18

<p>You might also want to look into some of the top ranked tech schools if she’s set on EECS. Most of my friends at CMU were really into non-technical subjects as well (one got a dual degree in french horn, many got double majors/minors in non-technical fields, most all of us had hobbies outside of typical nerd things) and it makes for a nice diversity. I’ve found it a lot easier to talk music/literature/art with technical students than science with music/literature/art students. Liberal arts schools always talk about how well rounded their students are, but often enough I find a lot of those students dislike their science/math classes more than the engineers dislike their breadth requirements. And often they only dislike the classes because they’re a requirement. For example, I hated world history, but I can talk with you all day about American History.</p>

19

<p>I don’t quite understand the Harvard and Yale applications myself. There are many universities that have excellent EECS departments and excellent English departments. Schools where even Engineers are given the opportunity to double major in Engineering and a Humanity or Social Science in order to get a well-rounded, liberal arts education. Yes, it would take an additional year, but it is well worth it. Schools that come to mind are:</p>

<p>Carnegie Mellon University
Cornell University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Northwestern University
Princeton University
Rice University
Stanford University
University of California-Berkeley
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor</p>