<p>Its more LAC-like in terms of undergraduate focus not class sizes. </p>
<p>W/E lets let this thread die. Lets agree that both of these schools are better than Harvard in providing a liberal arts education.</p>
<p>Yale has the smallest classes, and among those regarded as "experts" about colleges (e.g., David Brooks, a world-famous UChicago alumnus who has taught at many universities, as well as Fiske, Pope, and many others), Yale is generally regarded to have the strongest undergraduate focus of any university in the country. In their writing, they argue that the only places that can possibly come close to comparing with Yale in terms of the overall quality of undergraduate education are Caltech, a handful of the top LACs, and possibly Dartmouth. </p>
<p>But don't take my word or their words for it - visit for yourself for a few days and decide. Keep in mind that educational quality and intellectual focus is about more than just the statistics on class sizes. Class sizes overall, for example, would be less important to consider than class sizes & student-faculty advisor ratios among the most popular majors. Most students take between 30 and 40 classes -- out of, to use Yale as an example, about 2,000 or 3,000 that are offered -- and most choose to major in one of the 5 or 10 most popular majors. Students majoring in history, biology or English may have many classes with 10 or 15 students in them, while those majoring in art history, chemistry or Italian might have many with just 5 or 6 students as well as two or three individual tutorials. Also, only about 10% or so of a student's time is spent in the classroom -- the interaction and education that takes place at a university (or a small college) extends far beyond those few hours per day. You have to ask yourself what you will be doing between the time your classes get out at 2pm and the time you go to sleep at 2am.</p>
<p>However, more importantly than any of that, Yale also offers a much more close-knit social environment due to its residential colleges, which only have a few hundred students living in them, as well as the fact that, geographically speaking, the undergraduate college is more compact than even most small LACs. All the undergrad dorms at Yale are within a 2-3 minute walk of each other, as opposed to about 15 minutes at other top universities like Harvard. As a result, the campus is dense and buzzing with activity 24/7. If you visit, it seems that the students are running into people that they know just about every five seconds. Quite honestly, having visited hundreds of colleges including Yale myself, I would observe that you don't get anything like this feeling anywhere else in the country.</p>
<p>To answer the question, it is most likely for the reasons above that Yale students have more crossover applications to LACs than students at any other university.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>"Untangling the Ivies" (2008)- Gives Princeton its highest academic rating. One full notch above Yale and Harvard and certainly above all others in the Ivy League.</p></li>
<li><p>The Princeton Review (unaffiliated with Princeton University) - In its "College Campus Visit Guide" (7th edition) it refers to Princeton as, "truly gorgeous, offering the best undergraduate education in the country".</p></li>
<li><p>"Insider's Guide to the Colleges" (2008) - (An annual college guide publication written by Yale's Daily News Staff Editors). The publication lists Princeton as the top school for undergraduate education. Left out of the running was Yale itself.</p></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li>"All American Colleges" (2008) - In ranking "Top Schools for Conservatives, Old-Fashioned Liberals, and People of Faith" the college guide book named Princeton as its choice school among the Ivies as well as other schools.</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li>College ******* (2008) - College Powler publishes individual college guides for each of the country's more well known schools. College ******* gives Princeton the highest academic rating in the Ivy League and nation, Both Harvard and Yale are ranked below. The ranking is based largely on the opinions of those attending the schools being ranked.</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li>"Choosing the Right College" 2008 - 2009 edition (an ISI Guide)</li>
</ol>
<p>Subtitle: The Whole Truth about America's Top Schools</p>
<p>This newest college guide, touted as the nation' most comprehensive, promotes Princeton as the nation's best undergraduate university and "most exclusive club" among universities. Further referring to Princeton as "the undergraduate's Ivy" being "almost always rated the number one school in America".</p>
<p>Princeton is described as being "as close to the intellectual ideal for undergraduates as one can find in a top research university".</p>
<p>taken from DMD11</p>
<p>Those are mostly commercial guides -- not exactly the expert opinions I was referring to, and containing so many quotes packed into their thousands of pages that one could easily pull ones just like the ones you pulled on behalf of Harvard, Yale, Caltech, Amherst or one of several other top undergrad programs. "As close as one can find" doesn't mean four or five other places aren't just as close. The other thing is that the rankings in those rags change every year -- one year, Yale was "voted" #1 "Best Overall Undergraduate Academic Experience" in the Princeton Review, while the next year, Amherst College was and Yale was #4. Harvard was #3 one year and not in the top 10 the next. During that year, I doubt that the undergraduate programs of harvard, Yale and Amherst really changed all that much!! Maybe in the opinion of the ten or twenty 18-year-olds who "voted" and who presumably were intimately familiar with the undergraduate programs of every other college in the country.</p>
<p>Of course Princeton is a great school -- by several in-depth statistical measures I have seen, its alumni are more successful than alumni of any other colleges in the country except perhaps Harvard, Yale, Amherst and Caltech -- and many of the undergraduates there will be quoted in a $15.99, 400-page commercial guide-book as saying it has the "best" undergraduate program -- but that is completely missing anyone's point. Visit each school for 2-3 days and you'll have a more informed opinion than you'll get by reading all eight of those profiteer pamphlets.</p>
<p>Also, I don't think you are supposed to attempt to subvert the CC filtering systems.</p>
<p>ok they are both great schools. I concede.</p>
<p>BTW how would you describe your experience of Yale? I am deciding between whether to tank Yale or Stanford as my number 1 for QB?</p>
<p>Id like to study neuroscience which I know Yale excels at.</p>
<p>yes, and so does princeton :)</p>
<p>collegehopeful78: having attended Y but summered at Stanford (beautiful weather!!!!), I much more enjoyed the intimate feel of Y, both physically and student body. My Stanford girlfriend at the time marvelled at my Yale social circles -- a product of the already discussed Residential Colleges.</p>
<p>All I can say is try to visit both. The feel of both is significantly different (of course, I'm extremely biased)</p>