And freshman can eat dinner together, regardless of residential college. I think the only exception to this may be Sunday night “Family dinners” where members of the residential college eat together and occasional special events.
^modulo Silliman and Timothy Dwight, where students live in their college all four years, and eat in their colleges (mostly) all four years.
@donnaleighg They live there all 4 years but can eat at any college they want same as the rest of the students. Any student can eat at any RC except for Sunday dinner where it is called Family Dinner. That day the RC’s eat dinner together. My daughter eats breakfast at Silliman 3 times a week because its on her way to class.
As for the homeless situation, I don’t feel that cleaning up campus areas is pushing homeless aside. Its making a safer environment for young and impressionable students. They didn’t force them out of the town, just focused on cleaning up and making secure the college campus which they should do. Loitering is loitering whether you are homeless or not.
I actually happened to be on campus last night to see a performance. I was walking back alone at 10:30pm and there was nothing but clear streets and lots of security. I made a point to even watch the park as I left Welch gate. The only obvious thing were police stationed all around it, new bright lights lit and nothing to make a mother concerned. However EVERY time we visited Harvard whether it was during the day or night there were clusters of homeless pandering right outside of the CO-OP. They are rude and imply that we are snobs if we don’t fork over cash. It is not that I am above helping nor is my daughter. She participates weekly at BREAD which delivers food to the homeless shelter. It is just not something that I want my daughter to deal with every day while attending what could be inferred as a pretentious school. She comes from a humble beginning and is not always going to have spare change to give. I just don’t want her to have to deal with that daily while trying to focus on class.
^my point was only that students in TD and Silliman may tend to eat in their college rather than with other freshman. Just the nature of the colleges.
It’s much better to be assigned to the Old Campus dorms, unless you are assigned to TD or Silliman, in which case it’s much better to be assigned there. 
I will admit that I am biased, but as a graduate and a current Yale mom, I think that all that has been said about the Yale 'vibe" is true. My sophomore D has friends at Harvard and they visit back and forth often. Quiet as it is kept, though her Harvard friends love their school, they do see a big difference in how the students bond with their school, especially from day one freshman year. You talk about New Haven. But due to the fact that Yalies tend to stay on campus or close to it for all their extra curricular activities, there is a sense of closeness with the student body at Yale that is not felt at Harvard where there is more to draw students off campus. But, if you read my posts, you will see that fit is most important. So, if you have the option, go to both Veritas and Bull Dog Days, and then follow your gut. You can’t go wrong with either one academically, but you may have a better social experience at one over the other. You want your college years to be more than a competitive grind. Good luck in your choice and welcome to Yale!!
@IxnayBob - I knew you were going to respond to @proudparent26 since I know your son is a sophomore at Yale in CS and we have had many conversations about his program. While we all know that my experience with STEM at Yale is non-existent, I was a Psychology major and my D is a Lit major now, I know that they commitment they are making is paying off in spades. Also, saying that Yale’s STEM programs were somehow subpar before this expansion is somewhat myopic. It just shows that a liberal arts giant sees the trend toward STEM, and while they will not stray from their world class liberal arts roots, they can play very well in the STEM pond. It is Yale you know.
So, if you want good, current info about STEM and CS, I would suggest that some of you PM @IxnayBob and he will give you some good insights. (Sorry IB for throwing you out there like that but I think you are the perfect parent advocate).
@Multiverse7 and others - why do people think that New Haven is such a pit? First of all, except for going back and forth home and maybe time spent volunteering in town doing community service, most students have no reason to be in “actual” New Haven. If a child is so sheltered that they don’t want to see the real world, e.g. people of color, low income people, areas where you need to be mindful of crime, areas where homeless people live (dang, sounds like any large urban city in the USA), then maybe the better 'fit" for them would be somewhere that is not in a urban environment. So many times students apply to schools like Yale, UPENN, U Chicago and then realize they are located in less than desirable areas. My kid knew from the beginning that she could never apply to a school in New York City so Columbia and NYU were out. I can remember when my mom flew me to New Haven from DC when I was 18 (1978) some mom from some small Midwest town was having a cow about the city, the traffic, the noise, the undesirables she saw all around. My mom and I just looked at each other since it was so tame compared to DC. To each his own but one needs to actually go to New Haven and feel the vibe there and not just go on other people’s subjective and sometimes outdated, opinions.
Go to both school admitted students Day. My kid had your same choice. It was all about fit. Did not like the vibes at H, loved the vibes at Yale. No parent intervention. Your GUT is an awesome thing…don’t leave home without it. 
^This. Both my kids loved New Haven (as opposed to more “bubbly” campuses like Princeton’s or Dartmouth’s) because it was in integrated into a real city. I’d say the same about Harvard actually; I grew up close to Cambridge and still love it wit and for its grittiness. I well remember how appalled my small town children were when we first visited–I was glad they had the experience and that they made me see a problem I’d become complacent about with fresh eyes. At any rate, do we really want to argue about which city/campus is better at hiding its homeless people? Ugh…
I have a good friend’s son who was just accepted to Yale and will attend. He showed me the Yale admission musical video, which I originally saw when it came out, and the Harvard spoof of it, which was new to me. The conversation about reminds me of this Harvard spoof of Yale’s video and this crimson article:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RYRF5-zdY8Q
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/11/23/yale-video-yales-harvard/
And here’s the Yale video, for those who haven’t seen it:
Meant to write conversation above…hard to edit on phone. Although I have the edit wheel, when I tap, I just get a copy option.
FWIW: My son was raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan several blocks from Columbia’s campus. The public schools he attended allowed him and his classmates to go out to lunch on the streets of NYC beginning in 5th grade. He rode the subways by himself to and from school beginning in 6th grade and stayed out to 1:00am in high school on Friday and Saturday nights going to parties in Brooklyn and Queens. And yet, even though he had a wonderful time at Yale, he found parts of downtown New Haven to be a lot more crime ridden than his hometown – especially the areas around Columbia and NYU. So, I find your daughter’s fears to be a bit overblown.
@gibby, I was thinking the same. Columbia’s and NYU’s neighborhoods, in particular, are wonderful. My oldest son graduated from brown in May and now works at Columbia as a lab researcher until he attends grad school. Feels just as safe in NYC as he did in providence, and brown is located in providence’s most upscale neighborhood. NYC is a lot nicer and safer now than it was when I moved here in 1985.
… and quite possibly safer than 1978, when Tperry1982 was considering colleges.
@gibby - clarification - she was not afraid of New York City. We spent and continue to spend many weekends there (my best friend from Yale lives there). She just did not like the congestion, the number of people, the hugeness of it all. I love New York too. But I could never live there. I know New Yorkers who would never leave. To each his own. So my comment was not about the crime or anything negative, it was just about our preference. She didn’t want to go to school out in the country either so a Princeton or a Dartmouth was out of consideration too. New Haven was a lot like DC, except for the tourist parts downtown. So I guess it just felt more like home to her. That and her familiarity with the campus and town since she had been going there regularly since she was 1 years old.
^Yes, true for sure. But by the time her daughter was looking, NYC safety wasn’t much of an issue, particularly around Columbia and NYU. But I appreciate that kids, particularly those not brought up in a city, would prefer to take baby steps by first going to college in a smaller city. I felt that way myself. And I’ve known plenty of kids who grew up in NYC or its suburbs (but were in the city a lot to socialize, work and take classes during high school) who wanted the reverse. Most also thought that they’d end up in a city later, so it was their chance to live in a different environment.
One thing that’s true about a college in a city like NYC or Boston is that the city does become part of the campus. There are obvious pros and cons to that; pros: lots of interesting fun things to do and great internship possibilities; con: campus community may not be as cohesive. I’ve always had the impression, though, that Harvard, uchicago and tufts have the best of all worlds…a distinct, cohesive campus only a short skip away from a major city.
Sorry @Tperry1982, we cross posted and I was responding to ixnaybob.
@RenaissanceMom - I understand. My kid grew up in DC- went to school in Georgetown. Both her parents work in law enforcement. Scary she is not. I used to live in Arlington, right outside of Cambridge while my best friend went to Harvard Law School. I had just gotten my graduate degree in Criminal Justice and was working in one of the prisons up there. So I know the Harvard campus and Boston pretty well - though it has grown quite a bit since my time there. I always preach fit. One of my D’s friends went to UPENN. She grew up in the heart of DC so she is a city kid through and through. She does not particularly like UPENN or the city, not because of the surrounding environment, but because she does not like the impersonal environment (her words) of the campus.
Well, for what it’s worth, Yale is one of the happiest schools in the country, and the happiest Ivy, according to the Princeton Review: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/colleges-with-the-happiest-students_us_55bfe207e4b06f8bedb5b584