<p>I have been following the Yale Daily News and the Crimson religiously via RSS feeds (IDK why, don't ask) and I have been finally motivated to write this post. YDN stories too often try to take a jab at Harvard or write about some obscure Harvard event that should only be covered by the Crimson. Yale matriculants on CC passionately fight about why they chose Yale over Harvard, or why they are happy they have been rejected by Harvard. I went to a Yale event for SCEA admits and the current students kept bringing up why Yale is better than Harvard in some snide remark. </p>
<p>I get that there is a historic rivalry between Harvard and Yale, but IDK, I haven't even gotten out of high school and I am getting sick of the impression I'm getting that Yale students tend to have this inferiority complex toward Harvard. If I go to Yale, I want to feel like I'm at YALE, not at #2butreallyshouldbe#1.</p>
<p>What do current students at either school have to say about this? </p>
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<p>PS: This is not a hate-on-Yale thread, nor am I implying that I don't want to go to Yale. Yale's been my dream school for years. I'm actually really serious about this thread.</p>
<p>Not a current student, but know students at both places.
There is definitely a fierce and somewhat humorous rivalry between the schools. This goes both ways though. Harvard media makes a lot of comedy putting Yale down, and Yale fires back as well.</p>
<p>I think students at both colleges feel they’re at the better institution, but Harvard is usually perceived by the general public as “better” because of rankings etc. so Yale maybe has to compensate a bit more.</p>
<p>Most students don’t spend their time at Yale thinking of Harvard. For the most part they are just too busy having an absolutely great time at Yale. It is probably true that Yale students love Yale with a greater passion than Harvard students love Harvard. Perhaps it is because Yale really does focus (more than Harvard does) on keeping its undergraduates happy. The residential college system is a huge part of this. </p>
<p>My daughter didn’t think about Harvard until she went to Cambridge for the football game. She stayed overnight with her friend in a Harvard dorm and got to chat with several Harvard students. That was when she truly realized how much less happy she would have been at Harvard than she is at Yale. She came away more feeling sorry for her Harvard friends than feeling superior to Harvard in any way. </p>
<p>By the way, not everyone at Yale was rejected by Harvard and not everyone at Harvard also got into Yale. My daughter has at least one friend currently at Harvard who is still bitter he was rejected by Yale, his dream school. And Yale would have been a great fit for him too. At the level of Harvard and Yale, which one you get in and which one you don’t often just boils down to luck.</p>
<p>^ My daughter was the lucky one. She did not get into Harvard. She was waitlisted. Her friend got into Harvard but was rejected from Yale.</p>
<p>When she was an applicant she liked Harvard and Yale both the same. They are both great schools. There are lots of threads and posts discussing the relative merits of H and Y. You can look them up. </p>
<p>Looking back, the huge negative of Harvard for my D would have been that there are many fewer opportunities for musicians, especially singers, at Harvard. Harvard does not have a convenient mechanism for undergraduate non-music-majors to take private lessons with faculty. To my knowledge Harvard doesn’t have a program for freshmen like directed studies. These are big reasons why my daughter is convinced that Yale is a far better place for her than Harvard could have ever been.</p>
<p>Yale is No. 2 in the eyes of the world. I think a lot of the tongue-in-cheek trash talk you see in the YDN and among Yale students in general reflects that. Like Avis, Yalies “try harder.” In reality, do Yale students view themselves as inferior to their peers at Harvard? No, they don’t.</p>
<p>My son chose Yale over Harvard. It was not an easy decision (happened at 11:30 PM on May 1) but he has never once regretted it. It’s not just the obvious stuff – the residential college system, the happiness factor, the killer academics and opportunities (which Harvard obviously has, too.) It’s the gestalt of his peers: crazy smart people who wear the mantle of their own achievements fairly lightly. In his opinion, students who have historically relied on institutions to validate their efforts choose Harvard, when offered the choice. Although some such students are at Yale, they’re not the majority. </p>
<p>He also loves the skew towards humanities/social sciences types at Yale – even though he is a pretty quant-y guy. In comparison to several of its peer schools, including Harvard, Yale has a larger percentage of undergrads who are humanities/social science majors rather than math/science majors. My son sees that as a plus: Being on a campus that is more heavily weighted towards the humanities side just makes for a more stimulating general experience. As he puts it, organic chemistry, while wonderful if you love it, doesn’t naturally generate interesting breakfast table conversation. Philosophy and economics and history do.</p>
<p>My scenario is like vicariousparent’s daughter. I didn’t apply Harvard (almost didn’t apply to Yale, either! Yikes!). But I had a blast a Yale and never envied the cantabs when I visited nor when they visited us. But is there a curiosity about our rumored great time at Yale compared with the greatness of Harvard? Sure.</p>
<p>But this might encapsulate it for you: I was at a large alumni event in Chicago when then-Yale President Benno Schmidt was visiting. I ended up chatting with one of his entourage – I forget what position this gentlemen held – but he was up there. He happened to mention that he had gone to Harvard for undergrad and then Yale for grad and now, worked for Yale’s administration. I said to him: “C’mon, tell me the real deal. What’s the difference between the two schools.”</p>
<p>He replied: “Well, after graduating from Harvard College, I felt I was prepared for anything in the world.” I thought to myself: “That’s great a compliment!”</p>
<p>Then he continued: “But I loved Yale.” And I knew exactly what he meant.</p>
<p>From my perspective as a parent of both a Harvard student and a Yale student, I would say, yes, Yale does have a bit of an inferiority complex towards Harvard in the same sense that a little brother looks up to and tries to compete with his big brother. Yalies seem to be constantly comparing themselves to Harvard. As you did, I have noticed this in the YDN (vs. HCrimson where there is nary a mention of Yale), and in Yale info sessions, etc.</p>
<p>Harvard doesn’t seem to be much concerned about anything that Yale does. However, my sense is that there is tremendous mutual respect between the schools - they are happy to have each other as rivals, and Harvard students do seem to be envious of the happier, closer, more carefree nature of the Yale community. My Yale D says, “Everything at Harvard is intense.”</p>
<p>The rivalry definitely goes both ways, and it really is all in good fun. It really isn’t serious at all. Yalies know that Harvard is a fantastic school, and vice versa. It’s just fun to jokingly poke fun at Harvard, in part because our predecessors have been doing it for a century. I mean, come on, we have a Harvard-Yale blood drive in which we compete to see which school can get more blood donations. It’s ridiculous and we all know it, but it’s fun. </p>
<p>The real third wheel here is Princeton, which THINKS it has a rivalry with Yale and Harvard, but really doesn’t. </p>
<p>Harvard sucks and Princeton doesn’t matter ;-)</p>
<p>Princeton students and alumni are pretty secure in knowing that they attend/attended the best undergraduate program in the country…</p>
<p>Once having graduated, Yale, Harvard and Princeton alumni work and socialize side-by-side and become close friends many a time - having mutual respect for each other and their respective institutions.</p>
<p>YDN, tour guides, sometimes even admission info sessions, these do tend to focus on the rivalry. My daughter was indeed annoyed by this apparent ‘inferiority complex’ before arrival on campus. From what I can tell she doesn’t experience it in her day to day life at Yale. Faculty and students don’t go around trying to prove that they are better than Harvard. </p>
<p>The important thing for a prospective student (like the OP), if and when faced with a choice, is to base it on his or her own specific priorities and preferences- academic and non-academic. There are subtle differences that could significantly impact the experience for the individual student. </p>
<p>The rivalry seems like a big factor looking in from the outside, but it is insignificant in real life. Realize that many people end up attending the other institution for grad school or postdoctoral work, some become faculty at the other institution, some have siblings or spouses from the other institution. Loyalties get a bit diluted with time. onecircuit is absolutely right- alumni often work and socialize together. These colleges are a lot more similar to each other than they are different.</p>
<p>Actually, all the students at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and several other schools probably need a little dose of inferiority complex…
But, yes, the idea that Yale is considered second to Harvard is a “thing” at Yale–but it’s a fun thing, not a serious thing.
Here’s how I might put it:
Yale students think that Harvard students think they are better than Yale students.
Harvard students think that Yale students think they are as good as Harvard students.</p>
<p>Well, I’m a total outsider to this question, but being a Cambridge alumni who studies at Oxford, I think I can understand the game between Harvard and Yale. (The diff is, that while Oxford’s name is sounder, and Oxford is older, Cambridge is ranked higher in every world rankings, and clearly a stronger university -well, not on my field, but in science, maths, etc, it rules. And of course, for undergrad studies, no one can apply to Oxford and Cambridge at the same time, so there is no such thing that "Cam rejected goes to Ox " or vica versa.</p>
<p>But what is really important, and has been mentioned in this thread, is the mutual respect towards each other, and it seems that’s working between Harvard and Yale (and Princeton) alumni is well. Despite the centuries old rivalry between universities approximately 900 years, and 802 years old respectively, there is a certain idea that “we are equal, and we are far above others”. The tribal rivalry, which is quite hilarious and sometimes nearly like a parody, not excludes the strong cooperation, like all Cambridge colleges have Oxford sister colleges, etc. I know it heavily differs in the case of Harvard and Yale, still, I think there are certain similar elements.</p>
<p>I agree with most of the other alumni and student posters here that there are lots better things to do at Yale than sit around and snipe at Harvard, and Yale students spend the vast majority of their time (if not all if it) doing them. Still, I understand why it’s possible to pick up a whiff of inferiority complex at Yale, and I think there is more dogging Harvard at Yale than vice versa. But the equivalent at Harvard can be just as unpleasant, if not more so – a constant barrage of statements that include the explicit or implicit premise that Harvard is The Greatest Educational Institution In The Universe and that the world revolves around the people there.</p>
<p>Sure, that’s confidence, which is generally more attractive than resentfulness. But it’s also myopic, smug, sort of provincial, and often insensitive.</p>
<p>To paint with a very broad brush, I also think the Yale personality type tends to be a little more rah-rah than the Harvard type and therefore enjoys playing up the rivalry more as a matter of spirit, not inferiority.</p>