Yale or Princeton for English Major

<p>Thank you – writing is actually my first love . . .</p>

<p>bugs,
I spoke with my D1 today, an English major and recently accepted to the Writing concentration. She’s really enjoyed the writing courses she’s taken (beg. fiction, intermed. fiction, Daily Themes and now an independent study), but she found out recently that while Y offers one section a writing workshop, P offers four. She happened to be looking at the P schedule as her teacher from Intermed. is teaching there this semester. Although she was fortunate enough to make it into the writing courses she wanted each semester, she said that it might be something she’d consider if she were doing it again. </p>

<p>Not trying to discourage you from Y at all, D1 has been very happy (and she did not particularly like other things about P when she visited), but I think that a person should have all possible relevant information available when making a decision. Best of luck, you truly can’t go wrong either way.</p>

<p>Thank you so much . . . Princeton is a beautiful campus with so much to offer. I still have not made my decision and am weighing a full ride from a non-Ivy college as well. Difficult decision to be made soon . . . Everything that everyone is saying is extremely helpful to me – thank you!</p>

<p>depending how you do it, the dept. is either vanilla as hell or all 31 flavors.</p>

<p>1st off - - great thing lawrence manley is not the DUS anymore. he literally told me and some other people i know that we ought not to be english majors. for no good reason, really. BOO. amy hungerford, the new DUS, is awesome, and also yale’s first tenure in american lit (!). you can watch her class on openyale. </p>

<p>there are a lot of requirements if you dont do the traditional engl125 – major english poets track –> 2 semesters (chaucer, spenser, milton) and 2 semesters (romantic/modern poetry/poets from those periods). however, these can also count for your other distro reqs, i.e.
3 pre 1800s, 1 pre 1900. so you can kind of double-dip. now there are some american lit requirements, i think, but that’s good IMHO. </p>

<p>AND there are even specialists on the faculty who work in things like digital literature and new media theory, so it’s not like everything is in the dark ages. (although there ARE classes in old english, or i should say, olde englische. speaking it. for real.) </p>

<p>yale english has great classes, good funding, lots of prizes, cool people, GREAT admin staff and GREAT faculty. could not recommend it more. also, you can take grad classes. yeah, get that engl974 on your transcript :slight_smile: (defenses of poetry w/paul fry, btw).</p>

<p>for the moment, you can only be a writing concentrator if you’re an english major. this = best part of yale. tiny classes (sometimes just 2-5 students) with AMAZING writers like john crowley, louise gluck, donald marguiles, etc. michael cunningham is there now for a year or two and jonathan safran foer taught a seminar a year ago. it’s a freaking hit factory. </p>

<p>princeton’s got toni morrison (NOT my fav), but also joyce carol oates (definitely a fav). if there’s an author you want to work with specifically, that could be a reason to choose between one school or the other. you might want to check with the admin staff at the dept. to make sure that the writer you like will be teaching while you’re there (sabatticals, leave, etc).</p>

<p>ALSO –> Harold Bloom = such a reason for going to yale. i hope, for everyone, that he gets to teach for another year or two. sitting in seminar with him is surpassed in sheer intellectual pleasure only by having tea at his house. i would that everyone were so passionate about life and literature. anyone who thinks that he’s ‘this’ or ‘that’ because of some deconstructionist entry they’ve read on wikipedia is just plain wrong. just don’t say anything longer than a few words ins ection, because he will cut you off with a reminiscence of this one time, when he was having a drink with wallace stevens…</p>

<p>bugsliberty, hope you’ve read the article by a Yale Daily News columnist that’s part of the Still trying to decide about Yale? thread.</p>

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<p>This is a little misleading. Yes, you must be a declared English major to then apply for the Writing concentration, however, anyone at Y can take writing workshops and DT, you don’t have to be an English major or in the Writing concentration:</p>

<p>[Department</a> of English | Yale University](<a href=“Welcome | English”>Welcome | English)</p>

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<p>Today’s column in the YDN by Matthew Shaffer is exemplary of the excellence of writing at Yale and the passion for the word shared by so many students there:</p>

<p>[Yale</a> Daily News - Shaffer: Paradise lost](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/opinion/staff-columns/2010/04/29/shaffer-paradise-lost/]Yale”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/opinion/staff-columns/2010/04/29/shaffer-paradise-lost/)</p>

<p>Going to Yale! Thanks, everyone! Bulldogs, Bulldogs, Bow-Wow-Wow!</p>

<p>Yipee. Boola boola.</p>