Why I chose Yale over Harvard (by a current student)

Colleges and Universities A-Z Yale University
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<p>This is a post from the Yale admit board, written by a current yale student, to convince us to choose Yale, I am hoping it will convince some of you as well!!</p>

<p>This post is not meant to start an argument or discussion, so PLEASE respect the writers opinions and don't turn it into one, he/she cannot respond because I copied it and it would be unfair to write things when he/she cannot defend his/her position! </p>

<p>thanks and I hope you enjoy reading it</p>

<p>Part 1</p>

<p>Just a preface: read the whole thing – I’m not organized enough to manage to fit in all the ‘bigger’ reasons at the top of the essay, and the insignificant ones at the end Also, I’ll try to make this sound like a bashing thread, but I might focus on why not to choose Harvard over why to choose Yale, just ‘cause the “why Yale” topic has been covered pretty extensively on these boards. Finally, most of the reasons Yale rocks Harvard are just totally not quantifiable… you’ve really just got to be here (and talk to students at Harvard who have visited friends at Yale) to see it. </p>

<p>REPUTATION
So, Harvard has the bigger name. Sort of. Well, at least among people who don’t matter. Any grad school/professional school admissions committee, or potential employer is knows that the academic caliber of Harvard and Yale (and several other schools) as institutions and as student bodies are identical.
The better point to make in the reputation section is “so what?” I already avoid telling people where I go to school (the answer is always “back East” or “Ezra Stiles College”). I always feel like I’m boasting when I say I go to Yale, especially when talking to people who didn’t go to college, or know nothing about Yale other than the fact that it’s an Ivy. I’m not trying to impress anyone, and I hate the “Wow, Yale! You must be smart!” reaction. With Harvard, it would just be worse, if we’re sticking with the Harvard-has-the-bigger-name point of view. Plus, I feel like many people choose Harvard over other schools because it’s Harvard. How could you resist, right? (Oh, the naïve masses). I didn’t want to be with those whom I not-so-affectionately term ‘prestige-whores,’ or with people whose parents/family pressured them into going to Harvard. We’re big kids now; we can make our own decision.</p>

<p>SCHEDULING
Yale’s academic calendar rocks. I think this fall classes are starting September 6, and this year I’m done with finals on May 2. That’s over four months of summer break (Harvard gets something very similar, just pushed back one month). Plus, we got 9 days for Thanksgiving (Harvard gets a Thursday/Friday long weekend), 23 days minimum for Winter Break (Harvard got 13 days this year), and two weeks off for Spring Break (Harvard got one). I say 23 days minimum for Winter Break because most people’s finals end before the last day of finals week. Many people have up to a week more of break. Plus, when you come back, it’s shopping period, so it’s not the biggest deal if you miss the first couple of days.
This brings me to the more important point – academic scheduling. Finals here are before break. ?. That means break is break is stress-free break. I can’t imagine Winter “Break” with finals over my head. That’s reason in itself to come to Yale. It matters so much more than you think it does.</p>

<p>ACADEMIC REQUIREMENTS
For me, the distributional requirement system here is a lot better for me than Harvard’s core curriculum. I like structure and all, but with only 32 courses (at Harvard) and 36 courses (here) to take, I didn’t want to have to waste time taking classes I didn’t like. On the other hand, having no requirements (Brown) tends to allow already single minded students to stick to their comfort zone, and not achieve a liberal arts education (think science nerds ?). Yale’s distributional requirement system allows you ridiculous amounts of freedom in designing your curriculum – in general, people fulfill their distributional requirements unintentionally. The requirement system + major does a good job of fulfilling the whole broad based education with an area of focus philosophy. Plus, if gives you lots of room to explore. After fulfilling distributional and major requirements, I’ll have half of my courses at Yale left over just for fun!
Speaking of majors, people seem to interpret the inability to minor at Yale as a negative. The mentality is that electives should be devoted to exploration, not to a ‘minor’ (which really doesn’t mean much in terms of academic accomplishment). If you are interested in minoring in music, why not just take the music courses you’re interested in? You’ll avoid red tape and perhaps classes you don’t want to take, and will thus have the freedom to take other courses if you so desire. If you are so committed to a second discipline that you want to commit to studying it, you can double major. But really, most advisors here will tell you just to take classes in the department that interest you. Who cares what it says on your diploma?
I guess this is the place to talk about strength of academic deparments. I’ve reveived tons of questions about the quality of departments here vs. those at Harvard, and basically the point is that on an undergraduate level, departments at all schools of this caliber are equal. Perhaps the grad school pumps out more history research here, and more mechanical engineering research at MIT, etc., but as an undergrad, you’re not going to outsmart any of the profs. It really shouldn’t be a consideration at all – all the departments here are incredibly strong. I really don’t know how to emphasize the point any more, but if you’re comparing the qualities of, say, the economics departments at Harvard and Yale, just stop that… stop that right now. You’re wasting your time, and giving weight to things that don’t matter at all, since you can’t distinguish between grad and undergrad departments (p.s. Yale undergrads have access to all of the grad schools).</p>

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<p>ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT
Coming from an inner city public school in the West, I already had reservations about Ivy Leagues and a stuffy, snotty environment where everyone has grown up playing field hockey, polo, or rowing crew. I was actually dead-set against Yale because of it. Then my visit showed me a laid back, we’re-smart-but-we-like-to-have-fun-too student body. Here, nobody ever talks about grades, test scores, etc., and as cliché as it sounds, people work together, not against each other (even us pre-meds!). We’re are here to enjoy Yale and each other, not to endure these next four years just for an Ivy league diploma. Nobody here has to convince themselves of their happiness; it’s genuine. Giving credit where credit is due, I didn’t find Harvard as bad as Princeton with the whole pretentious atmosphere thing, but at least kids I know at Princeton accept and embrace their conceit, and live in a sort of bliss of arrogance. Harvard students just seems to be miserable and lonely because the environment is so competitive, and because self-image is so intimately tied with ‘being the best,’ i.e. getting better grades than the guy next to you. It’s weird because many of these same kids wouldn’t be that way at other schools, but it’s just hard to come in as a freshman and single-handedly change the established attitude of the place.
Speaking of misery and loneliness, my residential college dean used to be an advisor in one of the houses at Harvard. She has a lot to say about the differences between the two schools, but in an effort not to sounds redundant, she usually tells an illustrative anecdote; she was in charge of a block of 20 students, and only 6 students were not seeing mental health professionals. And that was normal. When I brought this up to a friend of mine at Harvard, she got really defensive and proudly asserted that the vast majority of students were happy – out of her block of 24, 20 were thrilled to be there. First of all, the criteria for ‘thrilled to be there’ was ‘not in therapy’ (that she knew about, at least), and secondly, 20/24? Those are stats to brag about? We at Yale hear that and are just like, what? Mental health help is available and all, but if you’re feeling down or stressed, usually your friends and/or family help you snap out of it, or you go out to lunch with your advisor or something. My dean’s response? How is your family supposed to help you if they are the ones pressuring you? How are your friends supposed to help you out when you’re stressed/depressed when the reason you’re feeling that way is because you’re trying to beat them? Surely many students at Harvard are doing just fine there, but many are ‘happy’ because being unhappy is a failure – it would mean their institution isn’t the best. That’s kind of a hard admission to make. Alright – next topic… I hate talking about this sort of stuff. </p>

<p>ADVISING and UNDERGRADUATE FOCUS
In addition to the whole Yale/Harvard decision, I was debating whether to go to a liberal arts college or to a university. In the end, I couldn’t get past how small a liberal arts college actually is, and knew I’d end up feeling claustrophobic, especially after studying abroad. But I still wasn’t ready to give up small classes, close interaction with professors, and a solid web of advisors. Yale was the perfect balance for me. 5200 kids is a great number – enough to not feel anonymous on campus, bit also to walk around and not recognize every face. You’ll be meeting people up through senior year. Yet, the residential college system gives you the whole family/ tight community thing, with great advising. The deans, masters, and fellows eat with you in the dining hall. More than that though, masters treat us like family here. Just an example - a friend of mine wasn’t feeling too hot after a night of partying, and he ran into his master (Master G, for anyone familiar with Pierson). Master G was just like ‘Hey, you’re one of my kids here – come inside and drink some Gatorade.”
More on the undergraduate focus – Harvard is a bigger school, with bigger classes (that was a big negative for me), a bigger campus, and a bigger focus on graduate school. Here, TA’s won’t be teaching your classes (all professors, in fact, are required to teach two undergraduate courses… that includes all the Nobel laureates and such). Professor accessibility is ridiculous – I have lunch with my advisor all the time, and have been asked to house-sit and/or babysit for other professors. Access to research is equally ridiculous. I don’t know anyone who has wants to work in a lab, and isn’t, and research grants flow like water when it comes to summer plans (especially abroad). Yale actually has more endowment $$ allocated per undergrad student than Harvard, despite its smaller overall fund.
Just in general, Yale is Yale College before it is Yale University – more than a research institution, Yale draws its pride from a vibrant and happy undergraduate student body. The university realizes that its students (not its professors, facilities, history, endowment, etc.) are its biggest asset. Even the layout of the campus clues you in to Yale’s focus – Old Campus is the center of campus, surrounded more or less by the residential colleges, with the grad schools surrounding the college on the periphery.</p>

<p>HOUSING
Mmmmmm… Yale housing. Call me shallow, but it’s one of the main reasons I decided to come here. Then again, you’ve got to consider you’re spending 4 years of your life here, so where you live is important. The housing here is awesome – we basically live in apartments. Common rooms are generally big, as are the bedrooms. Check out Sweet Suites – that’s actually a pretty accurate cross section of freshman/sophomore housing (typically the worst two years). Stiles is supposed to be the worst by a long shot, and that suite is a sophomore double (again, the worst possible situation), so that’s basically as bad as housing gets here. My point is, housing here is palatial for undergrads – it only gets better than what you see on Sweet Suites, though not all suites are decorated as well as Eric’s (Berkeley). At Harvard, for admissions weekend, I stayed in Gray’s, which was apparently the “Harvard Hilton.” Admittedly, the suite was pretty big, but the bedrooms were tiny – so tiny, in fact, that beds had to be bunked, and the desks had to be put in the common room – ugh.
Plus, if you end up wanting to move off campus for whatever reason, apartments and houses near/on campus are abundant and affordable. It’s great to have some friends off campus as far as social life goes, or just for a change of pace. Housing in Cambridge is so expensive, so none but the upper echelons can move off.
More than suite layouts, the housing system at Harvard doesn’t lend itself to forming tight communities. The residential houses are sort of split into two groups, both far from classes, and really far from friends in colleges on the opposite side of campus. Neither are close to Harvard Yard (which I found ugly, and not nearly as cohesive as Old Campus). Plus, the housing draw lends itself to drama – you’re not assigned a college when you first get to school. At the end of the year, you have to block off with your friends, and enter the housing draw… Well, in college you’re more than likely not going to have a single group of friends, you’ll have many, as will everyone else. This makes blocking a nearly impossible conquest, with someone always ending up hurt. People’s feelings aside, not having a college your first year sort of makes the colleges not as tight as they are here, and people don’t have much college (house) pride… I guess that’s a theme, though, at Harvard. Pride comes from showing people your diploma, right? Ugh.</p>

<p>SOCIAL LIFE
Harvard hired a ‘fun czar’ to look out for the social lives of its students. He called a friend of mine on the Yale College Council to find out where the parties were on Harvard-Yale weekend, so he could tell Harvard students where the ‘happening parties’ were. Ummm… ok. Whatever.
A lot of social life stuff has been covered on the boards here. I haven’t read through all of it, but hopefully it’s pretty accurate. Basically, you can find whatever scene you’re looking for. Pulling pranks, movie nights, comedy/theater/a cappella/cultural shows, Toad’s (‘all roads lead to Toad’s), Viva’s/Rudy’s/Richter’s/Bar/Sullivan’s/other bars with excellent pizza, suite parties or parties in old ‘secret’ (ha!) stone buildings, parties outside, goat roasts, naked parties, pickup soccer in a courtyard, just chilling out, capture the flag on old campus, wine and cheese, dancing of all sorts, spontaneous mud-slip-and-sliding during a rainstorm, marshmallow roasting with hookah and guitar, whatever floats your boat. Hopefully you’ll get a taste at Bulldog Days, although keep in mind that it’s at the beginning of the week right before finals, and this year everyone’s spread throughout the residential colleges, so it’s not gonna be as active as Wednesday-Saturday.
At Harvard, on the other hand, Yalies couldn’t find anything to do, so we threw our own parties. Either they were staying in (my admits weekend host and friend of hers drank alone in their rooms on a Saturday night), or they were out in the city, but either way, social life isn’t really campus oriented, and I was looking for a tight campus community. But nothing to do on Harvard-Yale weekend? Are you serious?</p>

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<p>STUDENT HAPPINESS
So housing and classes are great and all, but ask any Yalie – this is why they came here. People here are happy. For me, it’s a sense of humor thing. A lot of people don’t really take themselves too seriously here. Thank God. I don’t really know what else to say about this, not that you – I guess it goes back to what I wrote in the academic environment section. </p>

<p>ELITISIM
Refer to academic environment section, advising section, or anyone I know at Harvard. Send me a message for names.
Belated note to my Harvard hosts: I still don’t care about your SAT scores, or whom your father knows.</p>

<p>STUDENT FREEDOM
Yale’s big thing is that the administration trusts its students. One huge advantage of that trust? No RAs… woo hoo! We don’t have any authority figures living with us – freshman year or any other year – from whom we have to hide. If you want to drink in your room, not a problem. If you want to through a party, go ahead. What we have instead are freshman counselors – seniors in your college who live nearby and provide study breaks (food), advice, and an ear when you need someone to listen. Froco’s (FROsh COunselors) tend to be some of the coolest and most active kids in the college. They also have an unlimited supply of free condoms. Yale just wants you to be safe – if you get a little out of control at a party, health services is open 24/7, and you can get treated for alcohol poisoning or whatever anonymously. They also have free STD testing… basically the result of Yale trusting us is that we have a lot fewer problems than other schools. I can’t imagine living with RAs, or having to hide a party (at Harvard’s admit weekend, my hosts sat alone in their suite and took shots out of a Nalgene), or not being allowed to walk around campus with open cups. Life would be so much more complicated. There’s a lot more to say about how much life would suck without the freedoms afforded to us here, but I’m having a mental block and can’t spit it out right now (sorry).</p>

<p>ELITISM II</p>

<p>Harvard’s finals clubs aren’t like societies are here. At Yale, society tap night is like a big, school-wide prank. People are dressed up in outrageous costumes, doing outrageous things that other people tell them to do… it’s a ton of fun – you’re just laughing so hard whenever you step outside your dorm, it’s miracle I didn’t **** my pants. It’s a lot of fun, and really not elitist at all. In fact, most societies strive to tap a wide diversity of kids, so you’re forced to meet people you wouldn’t otherwise meet. From what I understand of finals clubs, they’re more like Princeton’s eating clubs; exclusive, whitewashed, wealthy, etc. Not my scene, to say the least.
More on elitism – professor elitism. This is really a person thing, but I know several professors at Harvard just ‘cause my dad’s Ph.D. advisor is up there, and he used to teach at another school in Cambridge, so you know how it goes. Just hearing conversations between them is sort of sickening, with the whole ‘I’m not going to waste my time on undergrads’ attitude. I’m not gonna go too deep into the whole condescending, snotty professor subject just ‘cause it’s personal and thus inappropriate, but suffice it to say I haven’t come across any problems like that here.</p>

<p>This is getting entirely to long.., I’m going to have to start bullet-pointing:
- Intramurals and club sports aren’t as popular at Harvard as they are here (probably due to the college pride thing), and though I wasn’t going to play varsity sports here, I didn’t want to give up athletics entirely
- The administration at Harvard is hard to work within – they’re very much about maintaining the status quo
- I found Harvard admissions weekend boring, and that I was surrounded by a bunch of smart individuals, not a community.
- Because of the types of people who choose to attend Harvard, competition between students is unbearable – I wouldn’t be able to handle it. I’d just get annoyed – I find competitive people at least as obnoxious as self-centered people
- Yale likes food – we have barbecues and themed banquets all the time
- Master’s teas… we’ve got ‘em, they don’t
- Friends of mine from Harvard (who think they’re happy there) have described it as not a real ‘rah rah’ type of place… well, I wanted a rah rah type of place, where the whole student body is proud to call themselves Yalies.
- There are lots of things that I don’t even realize we have here, that Harvard students don’t have, that visiting friends point out all the time. I don’t know anyone who has chosen Harvard over Yale, visited friends at Yale, and not admitted to making the wrong decision. Read that last sentence again – I’m not kidding. </p>

<p>I sort of ran out of steam midway through this thing, even before I started bulletpointing – sorry, but if you want to know more about anything, I’m better with personal messages than with board postings.</p>

<p>The basic point is that I found Harvard hard to turn down because of pressure from people who I don’t care about. Even if it was from people who I did care about, this is about my school, my fit, my happiness… I don’t think I could be happier.</p>

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<p>absolutely great post!</p>

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<p>This thread should be stickied.</p>

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<p>great idea...cross admits who chose harvard will be biting their nails now =)</p>

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<p>wrathofgod64,</p>

<p>How do we do that? Do we contact the admins?</p>

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<p>yup, someone should do that!</p>

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<p>The thing you mentioned about Harvard being spread out while Yale is compact is the most important difference, I think. Based on my impartial observations, Yale's campus social life is at least 10 times more vibrant than Harvard's, because of that. And much of it is informal, as students just run into all of their friends & everyone they know at Yale, since all the dorms are very close to each other. At Harvard, students are spread out all across the area, it's kind of like they are living with moats separating them. The weather (somewhat colder in Boston, significantly higher snowfall totals) also exacerbates what is already a bad situation. </p>

<p>Also, you're right that most people who actually visit and spend a significant amount of time comparing the two schools choose Yale. Those who, say, apply from the West Coast and don't make much of an effort to get to know the social environment at the two are slightly more likely to choose Harvard because of the name.</p>

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<p>"Based on my impartial observations"</p>

<p>lol.</p>

<p>also, yale's campus is not at all "compact," especially when compared to the campuses of the seven other ivy league schools. from yale's own "framework for campus planning" doc:</p>

<p>"the main area of the university, encompassing the central campus and the medical center, is two-miles long and only one-half-mile wide. therefore, physically connecting the entire length of the campus is an important design challenge and integrating the five miles of permiter with surrounding neighborhoods is an important strategic goal."</p>

<p><a href="http://www.yale.edu/about/YALEFRMW.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.yale.edu/about/YALEFRMW.pdf&lt;/a>
(see pages 8-9 for visual comparison of the ivies' campus sizes)</p>

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<p>F.scottie, the Divinity School and southern tip of the med school don't have much significance to undergraduate life, if any. Also, for comparison, Harvard and Cornell have medical schools that are much farther away than that (actually, they are in totally different cities from the undergrad campus!). Those maps are highly misleading as a result.</p>

<p>The comparison we were making - which is based on actual experience, of course, not looking at some brochure that has misleading maps - is that the undergraduate portion of the campus is far more compact at Yale. On the map you showed, it's a tiny area of a couple blocks right at the center. All of the undergraduate dormitories are within a two or three minute walk of each other, not to mention virtually all of the cultural facilities, libraries, major lecture halls and other areas that have an impact on campus social life. No other Ivy League School can make that claim.</p>

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<p>OK STOP</p>

<p>I said NO discussions, those will only take the attention away from this great post!!!!!!</p>

<p>PLEASE</p>

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<p>I agree with flower. Some admin should close the thread and make a big stickie...and Important too!=)</p>

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<p>This is, and was intended to be, a recycled flame thread, and as such is not "important". There is nothing wrong with closing it under the circumstances, but to deem recycled flame material as "important" is laughable.</p>

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<p>I beg to differ- I wasn't convinced- plus most of the qualities the postmaker made about yale have also been attributed to harvard by harvard students as well so I think there's a fundamental bias, which is inevitable and understandable- My advice to everyone will be to go where ur heart leads u- It's unfortunate that most people's hearts lead them to harvard- but that's the way the world is- some things/people/institutions are just made to be the preferred best even if the difference between them and second best is barely indistiuinguishable-</p>

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<p>"It used to be the case that of students who were admitted to Harvard and Princeton or Harvard and Yale, seven of 10 would choose to go to Harvard," ... "It may be more now. There is a tendency for the academically best to skew even more to Harvard. We just get our socks beat off in those cases."</p>

<p><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/money/2005-06-06-harvard-usat_x.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.usatoday.com/money/2005-06-06-harvard-usat_x.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Hey,</p>

<p>Leave the Yale kids alone, you two. I don't see why your opinions should matter on this particular topic. "Recyled flame thread"? If you would care to look, flowertje emphasized "NO discussions" two posts before yours, Byerly. Also, bumpitybump, how are the prefrosh deciding between Harvard and Yale supposed to know which school is the right one for them if they are not allowed to read the Yale perspective? If the current and future Yalies want to post reasons for why they think their school is the best, then who are you to interfere--especially when this board is their territory?</p>

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<p>Please everybody stop debating this thread. It was clearly written by a Yale student for admiited Yale students and posted in the admit site and now has been posted here. It most certainly was not a "recycled flame thread". When I read it on the Yale admitted student site, I was struck by how well the author captured some very essential components of her Yale experience. Her points made it very clear to me that my daughter has made the right decision to attend Yale. I also thought that if I had seen this post earlier in the process, I would probably have supported her decision more enthusiastically earlier on. Yale is clearly a better fit for her. That's all. It's not right or wrong. D has some friends who have chosen Harvard over Yale and they also have made absolutely the right decision. I really think it's silly to argue over maps and yield rates etc. Visit the schools. Go to classes. Eat in the dining halls. Hang with the students. You will know when it is right.</p>

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<p>in no way do i believe that the intent of this thread was to 'bash' harvard. despite what byerly may think, many people actually prefer the environment of yale. not a big deal- i strongly prefer to coke to pepsi, and thats an opinion, not pepsi bashing.
i for one thought this post was very thoughtful and informative, even though i am not a prospective, current, or past student of either institution. it would be nice if every school got long thought out descriptions as this one.</p>

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<p>"So, Harvard has the bigger name. Sort of. Well, at least among people who don’t matter."</p>

<hr>

<p>"I didn’t find Harvard as bad as Princeton with the whole pretentious atmosphere thing, but at least kids I know at Princeton accept and embrace their conceit, and live in a sort of bliss of arrogance. Harvard students just seems to be miserable and lonely..."</p>

<hr>

<p>"I’ve reveived tons of questions about the quality of departments here vs. those at Harvard, and basically the point is that on an undergraduate level, departments at all schools of this caliber are equal."</p>

<hr>

<p>"I found Harvard admissions weekend boring, and that I was surrounded by a bunch of smart individuals, not a community.
- Because of the types of people who choose to attend Harvard, competition between students is unbearable – I wouldn’t be able to handle it."</p>

<hr>

<p>"Speaking of misery and loneliness, my residential college dean used to be an advisor in one of the houses at Harvard. She has a lot to say about the differences between the two schools, but in an effort not to sounds redundant, she usually tells an illustrative anecdote; she was in charge of a block of 20 students, and only 6 students were not seeing mental health professionals."</p>

<hr>

<p>" ...Harvard Yard (which I found ugly, and not nearly as cohesive as Old Campus) ..."</p>

<p>... it goes on in this fashion at great length, stringing the usual Harvard-bashing cliches togther one after the other. </p>

<p>You simply don't find the counterpart to such posts on the Harvard page, where (as hard as it may be to believe!) admits and current students are enthusiastic about their choice and are able to convey that enthusiasm without the necessity of "bashing" another school in order to make theirs seem better by comparison.</p>