<p>Why did you apply to Yale? For instance, was it because you wanted to become a lawyer eventually?</p>
<p>Oh my god i'm tired of people citing that reason to go to yale... Yale law school is amazing, and there are some great undergrad law classes, but there's no reason to go to yale for law over comparable schools. They don't have a pre-law major! </p>
<p>Ok, rant exhausted. I applied because out of the top colleges i visited yale had the most friendly and sociable environment. It's kind of hard to find a university that's both academically excellent and encourages a good sense of fun, and not all universities <em>coughharvardprincetoncough</em> know how to strike a balance between the two. You've probably heard this dozens of times already, but the residential college system is a real asset. I can think of a few colleges that have very similar systems, but for some reason students aren't nearly as enthusiastic about them as they are at yale. They create a good community for you as soon as you get to college. The downside is you're limited in terms of who you can and can't live with. A sense of spirit was also a factor for me. I think that the amount of pride students have for their school says something about the quality of life on campus and the chance you have of being happy at the school. Suffice it to say that Yalies ooze spirit and bleed eli blue.</p>
<p>When we started doing colleges visits after D's sophomore year, she really was open to any possibility. We had visited a number of campuses, did the tours, etc., and then we visited Yale. She was smitten. She loved the campus, the vibe of New Haven, the Residential College system. I will say that she paid close attention to the competitiveness of the selection process and applied to ten other colleges. Some people may have thought that was extreme, but some of the others were equally competitive. </p>
<p>The College system seems like the best way to have a small community within a larger university.</p>
<p>"They don't have a pre-law major!" </p>
<p>No "pre law" major there, or at any other Ivy, but I think they do have a major in "ethics, politics and economics" which is heavily based in legal studies and includes some coursework by Yale Law School professors. Also, the law school is literally right in the center of campus, across a very narrow "Oxford-style" street from a few of the dormitories, and has dozens of activities every day that undergrads can participate in. Even if there were a "pre law" major, you wouldn't want to do it. People majoring in chemistry, music, philosophy and other fields have much higher rates of acceptance into law school than people majoring in "pre law."</p>
<p>The reason most people cite for choosing Yale, I think, is the residential college system. Other universities claim to have similar systems, but the "on the ground" reality is that none of them really have the same 4-year residential system with so many resources available. Some of Yale's competitors set them up very recently, probably as marketing ploys - for example, Princeton created one in 1986. And it isn't even close to being comprehensive. The value of Yale's system has been explained over and over on this forum, and there is also a description of it on Yale's web site, so I won't repeat.</p>
<p>The other reason I often hear is the quality and breadth of undergraduate academics. In terms of undergraduate teaching quality, no university in the world is on the level of Yale. The university is also the only one in the USA with four major art schools - art, architecture, drama and music, all of them ranked tops in their field. Undergraduates can take coursework at these places, an opportunity that no other university in the world can provide. David Brooks, a UChicago alumnus and famous columnist, agrees, writing in the Washington Monthly that Yale offers "the best undergraduate education in America."</p>
<p>The real reason, though, I think, is the quality of campus social life. If you visit Yale, it is buzzing with activity 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's not cited as often as a reason but I think it is a very big one. The reason it is so vibrant, besides that it has so many activities going on with the motivated students, music, drama, and everything else, is probably because the campus is so dense. All of the undergraduate dormitories are within a 2-3 minute walk of each other -- in terms of everyday undergrad life, it's much denser than any other top university by a wide margin. In fact it's denser than Hong Kong. So without even going out of their way by a foot, students can stop at 3 or 4 parties on their way home from a concert or hanging out with a friend, and they are constantly running into their friends at all hours of day or night. Yale even has a tradition called the "Yale fence" where students sit out on a fence (it has wide, round horizontal pegs). There is a huge sculpture plaque depicting the fence on the outside of one of Yale's dorms. It's not that fun in and of itself but then you realize that while they're sitting on the fence, hundreds of people they know are passing by, and often stopping to talk with them. The students can sit out on that fence until 4 in the morning, in just about any weather, and never be bored. The fence runs around the entire Old Campus. Yale is the only Ivy in the downtown of a major city, too, so there are hundreds of restaurants, theaters, cafes, bars and shops within a few blocks but you don't have to jump on a subway to get to them. The downtown there is the center of life for all the 50,000 college students in the area. Of course there are good schools in somewhat larger cities, but the fact that students leave campus to travel around them totally kills all sense of campus life at them. At Yale, campus and immediate area really has a social atmosphere above and beyond any of the other top schools.</p>
<p>Great faculty in my field.</p>
<p><em>dork</em></p>
<p>I heard it was a good school. I have finally gotten over getting rejected from Harvard (my or my parents' dream school) and I look forward to being in New Haven.</p>
<p>Go Bulldogs!!</p>
<p>to be honest, I applied to Yale because it was basically the same application as Princeton, which I applied to ED, and got deferred. So it was essentially zero extra work for me.</p>
<p>Ironically, I did end up getting into Princeton RD, but I turned it down for Yale. I still don't know why I did that...but we'll see next year how that decision pans out =)</p>
<p>It was on the common app with no extra work. </p>
<p>Why am I going? Its the best school ever!!! (for reasons already cited above)</p>