<p>FDR! Although Yale Law has both of my Clintons. :( But...Kennedys!</p>
<p>TR > Everyone ever.</p>
<p>Really, what you should value about either college, or any other college, is the mix of people with whom you can associate. Case in point: the legendary Skull & Bones lineage that had George H.W. Bush tapping William Sloane Coffin, who in turn tapped William F. Buckley. (For those who have never heard of him, Coffin was a long-time left-wing Protestant clergyman and anti-war leader. As of, say, 1970, he was probably the best-known and most accomplished of that trio.)</p>
<p>For most people lucky enough to have the choice, there is no huge reason to choose one over the other--visiting might help, but even then it's partly luck of the draw whether one campus or the other seems more "open" or "friendly" on the day you visit. Unless there is a particular program that you think is better at one or the other, the real bottom lime is that Yale's residential college system is better, and Cambridge/Boston is better than New Haven.
One additional point on the "glitteryness" of an academic department. I was an English major at Yale about 30 years ago when it was pretty much top dog in English. I have to say that some of those famous professors were terrible teachers. I guess they drew good subordinates and students, but they themselves were not always so great. So even this factor may not be that useful in making a close call.</p>
<p>Hmmmm. Hunt and I may have to take it offline as regards specifics, but my experience was diametrically opposite: I thought professors with a lot to say were almost invariably valuable teachers, even if they were sometimes difficult teachers. And, yes, the quality of the grad students and junior faculty was superb. My TAs included future department heads at Harvard, Yale, and Michigan.</p>
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the real bottom lime is that Yale's residential college system is better
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<p>I don't understand why people think this. According to my D who looked at both and chose H, she thinks Harvard's residential college system is better because students get to choose up to 8 of their friends to block with for soph-senior years, and up to 16 friends to link with (be housed in the same area). At Yale, it is totally random who you will be in the same house with.</p>
<p>Which of the two schools would you recommend for an athlete who's bright (2300 SAT's) and accomplished enough to get in (albeit with the sports hook), but definitely not a genius or passionate intellectual? My D doesn't really fit the jock stereotype or the studious/nerd stereotype either. Harvard definitely has the better program and facilities for her sport, but I'm wondering if the laid-back culture of Yale might be more of a fit? On the other hand, when I worry about whether the academic rigor and intensity at Harvard might be too much, I remember the old saying about Harvard being the hardest to get in but the easiest to get out.</p>
<p>In my opinion (for what it's worth), the random assignment to residential colleges at Yale is preferable because (a) it creates more residential college identity and solidarity and (b) creates a broader cross-section of students in each of the colleges. </p>
<p>Why does nobody ever ask me to explain why Cambridge/Boston is better than New Haven?</p>
<p>I disagree, Hunt. I could see where randomly assigning people to residential colleges freshman year would create more solidarity, but possibly to the detriment of overall class unity. With people already assigned to a house and limited to that group in terms of rooming, where's the incentive to get to know the rest of your classmates who are in other houses? To address your second point, blocking groups are randomly assigned to houses at Harvard, so there's just as broad a cross-section in each one as there is at Yale. </p>
<p>I was personally very happy with Harvard's system. I loved my house community (Dunster!!) and the majority of my friends in other houses loved theirs. I think the Harvard system gives you maximum choice AND community - the best of both worlds. </p>
<p>At the end of the day though, I know the systems aren't wildly different enough to really make a huge difference in quality of life. Just sharing my thoughts. :)</p>
<p>Hunt:</p>
<p>You mean there could be an argument in favor of New Haven being better than Boston/Cambridge? </p>
<p>S, by the way, feels the same about the Harvard housing system as caramelkisses. He has kept in touch with friends from his freshman entryway who are dispersed among the various houses, has been able to select his blockmates and has made friends with students from his current House. Apart from the fact that his rooms were tiny, he has been happy with the housing system.</p>
<p>The Yale system used to be much better than Harvard's when people had to bid into the Harvard houses, so that the houses had very distinct characters, but there was a lot of anxiety and deck-reshuffling at the end of freshman year. Harvard works much better now, but Yale still has some minor advantages. (1) By the time you graduate, you have a four-year daily relationship, not with 6-7 people, but with 50-60 people (or more). Your close friends are your close friends, but what I really valued was the ability to walk into the dining hall and sit down with some people who I DIDN'T talk to all the time, but who I felt I really knew, and they knew me. Obviously, you do get that at Harvard to some extent, but with one year less of depth. (2) Having freshmen assigned to a college immediately gives them a network of upperclassmen to plug into. Seniors don't pay that much attention to freshmen (unless they're really cute), but sophomores and juniors do, because they know that they are going to be living together later. And things like intramural teams and college-specific clubs help the freshmen into the mix. Then, as you advance, there are even more people in your college that you feel close to because you've known them a long time -- juniors have known lots of the seniors as long as they've known their own classmates, and they didn't just meet the sophomores. (3) Freshman advising happens through the college, so there is advising continuity for four years. By the time we were second-semester sophomores, our college Dean (who was in charge of advising) really knew us, and we really knew him (and his wife and children). (4) There has been somewhat less overcrowding at Yale, so upperclassmen are still pretty much guaranteed cool rooms. (5) [Apologizing in advance for over-partisanship] While Yale is hardly free of <em>**holes and anxiety-ridden tools, Harvard's brand has always been a bigger magnet for those types of people. So there are just that many fewer *</em>*holes and anxiety-ridden tools to contend with at Yale, and all the social things seem to work a little better. I'm not talking night-and-day here, but differences in degree can matter.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Yale's Old Campus arrangement and Commons for freshmen encourage cross-college friendships within your class, and of course so do all the academics and college-wide extracurriculars. I never lacked for affinity-type friends in other colleges. Basic human biology also ensures a fair degree of cross-pollenization, too. Your college functions as a safe home-base, not the limit of your horizon.</p>
<p>I think Harvard has the world's second-best system. It delivers lots of the same benefits as Yale's, but not quite as much of them. As other colleges try to adopt a similar system (e.g., Princeton, Rice, Penn, Chicago), they tend to choose Yale's four-year model, not Harvard's three-year one.</p>
<p>Cambridge: clean(ish), friendly hobos, numerous museums in vicinity, excellent public transportation system, great restaurants, mild winter conditions, you'll live within walking distance of most places.
New Haven: one of my friends visited Yale's campus and was held up at gunpoint. He came here instead.
Yep, that about wraps it up.</p>
<p>I think that access to upperclassmen is a distinct advantage of the Yale system. As for sitting with people one does not know, S does that in his House dining hall. But he also has good friends all over campus from his freshman year.</p>
<p>And, that love letter to Yale's residential colleges out of my system, let me make clear -- if I haven't already -- that Harvard is terrific in just about every respect. Someone who has the good fortune to have to choose between Harvard and Yale can't make a bad choice. One could agonize over the differences until the cows come home (or until some more appropriately modern thing happens), but any advantages either has over the other are basically trivial compared to the wealth of opportunities both offer. Princeton, too.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the differences between those three and a whole bunch of other universities (not just Stanford) are pretty trivial, too. Most of you aren't going to be choosing between Harvard and Yale, or even between either of them and anywhere else, but, really really really, your lives aren't going to be the least bit poorer for that unless you inflict that fate on yourselves.</p>
<p>"So there are just that many fewer ***holes and anxiety-ridden tools to contend with at Yale"</p>
<p>So, is that the answer to my question about whether an averagish kid would be happier at Yale?</p>
<p>GFG: Not really, it depends on what kind of averagish kid (or above-averagish kid) he is. If he's really going to be oppressed by people like that, he won't be happy either place. If he's good at tuning them out, whether Harvard has 5% more of them won't matter.</p>
<p>I think it's something of a cliche, which is to say, probably true, that the average Yalie registers somewhat higher on the happyometer than the average Harvardian. But hardly any kid is average, and I suspect each kid's happiness level has a lot more to do with the kid than with the environment, at least if you are talking about Harvard vs. Yale. And if marginally higher levels of happiness REALLY matter to him, there are probably a dozen colleges he could choose that would beat any of the single-initial ones.</p>
<p>JHS:</p>
<p>I told my S I thought he would be happy at HYPSM. I would have been happy if he'd also considered Chicago.</p>
<p>I guess what I'm getting at is that my D is smart, though IMO doesn't give off that air of confidence, competence, intelligence, or sophistication like the kids I've known who have gone on to Ivies, including my son. Quite frankly, she mystifies us as to how intelligent she really is. Some days we think, "She's clearly not Harvard material, is she?" and then others...well, like the day she got her SAT results we were shocked (as, apparently, were some of her classmates!) So would she looked upon with contempt at a place like Harvard if she seems intellectually average?</p>
<p>I don't think the issue is whether she would be looked upon with contempt. If there's an issue, it would be because she felt that she might be looked upon with contempt, and that could happen either place, although, personally, I think it's a little more likely to happen at Harvard, where students spend more time looking in the mirror and thinking, "I'm at Harvard! Am I living up to it?"</p>
<p>At Yale, needless to say, no one ever looks in the mirror thinking, "I'm at Harvard! Am I living up to it?" </p>
<p>I heard a story last year that made me really sad. A kid applied to Harvard because the coach of his sport really wanted him. Otherwise, he was mainly applying to second- and third-tier LACs. (He was a Princeton legacy many times over, and didn't even apply to Princeton.) When April 1 came around, he was waitlisted at Harvard, and accepted at his real first choice, an up-and-coming but not elite LAC not far from home. He was very happy. Then, within days (well before April 15), he was offered a spot at Harvard. Who could turn it down? He was a perfectly good student, top 20% of his class at a good school, respectable board scores, etc., hard worker. Not a likely Harvard admit without the sport, but no one thought he would have trouble there. A year later, he was completely miserable. He couldn't get used to struggling to keep up in some courses, to not feeling like one of the smart kids. Objectively, he knew that lots of classmates had those issues, but emotionally he felt that he was uniquely ill-prepared, and that others would sneer at him if they knew how hard things were. So he didn't talk to any classmates about what he was feeling, and he was lonely on top of everything else. Last I heard, he was applying to transfer to his old first-choice LAC.</p>
<p>I don't want to put that out as a Harvard vs. Yale story. The same kid would probably have had the same response at Yale. I had a childhood friend there who had a similar experience. (He hadn't been waitlisted, though. In addition to being a recruited athlete, his grandfather was a member of the Yale Corporation. And in his case some serious drug and alchohol abuse -- with a related decline in athletic performance -- didn't help things, either.) That was the bad old days, though; he wouldn't have made it into Yale today even as the super-legacy developmental candidate he was.</p>
<p>I also think this kid's response was unusual, for Harvard or for Yale. My point it that maybe TheGFG is not crazy to worry a little about her daughter, but if she's really worried she might have that kind of response, Yale may be a little different, but not different enough to make her breathe easy.</p>
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At Yale, needless to say, no one ever looks in the mirror thinking, "I'm at Harvard! Am I living up to it?"
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<p>Well duh.</p>