<p>Wrong, posterX, just wrong.</p>
<p>Yale is hardly the top undergraduate political science program. Those same rankings put Minnesota, Wisconsin and Cornell in front of Princeton! What a joke. That ranking has no credibility.</p>
<p>Those rankings may be wholly inaccurate and absolutely terrible. I don't know. But your reasoning, zephyr, sounds awfully specious. It, in effect, sounds like "because the schools that I expect to be on top are not on top, the ranking system must be flawed." What is the point of ranking if you only wish to use it to confirm what you intuitively know?</p>
<p>It reminds me of what this journalist had to say (<a href="http://www.slate.com/id/34027/):%5B/url%5D">http://www.slate.com/id/34027/):</a></p>
<p>"Mel Elfin, the retired U.S. News editor who more or less created the current college rankings, explained to Lingua Franca: "We've come up with a list that underscores intuitive judgments. We did not set out to underscore [those] judgments; we set out with a methodology. That it wound up this way is to me both a justification and a discovery that we're on the right track." This is a masterpiece of circular logic. Elfin is saying: 1) We trust our methodology because it confirms our intuition; and 2) we are confirmed in our intuition because it is supported by our methodology." </p>
<p>Again, you may be right, zephyr. The rankings could be worthless. But just because they don't affirm what we might guess on our own doesn't guarantee that they are.</p>
<p>Respectfully,
DMW</p>
<p>NRC rankings for history, classics, philosophy, political science:</p>
<p>harvard 4 1 3 1</p>
<p>princeton 3 4 1 7</p>
<p>yale 1 5 58(!) 3</p>
<p>You'll do fine at any of them. Pick the one that has the best environment in your eyes.</p>
<p>Yale also ranks No. 1 on the NBER Revealed Preference Survey for the Humanities.</p>
<p>Notice how defensive Harvard and Yale get when they start arguing about who's best? Well, Princeton has nothing to be defensive about. Remember, you're looking for an undergraduate education. You may like the Harvard and Yale names, but remember that these prestigious names rest largely on graduate and especially professional programs (Yale law, Harvard business and med) that are, admittedly, out of this world. The name is no guarantee that the undergraduate experience is the very best. And, in fact, it isn't.</p>
<p>The Princeton name is just as good as any other (Princeton has been #1 in US News for the last six years, I believe). And since Princeton has no professional schools and little in the way of graduate programs, it can truly concentrate its energies on undergraduate education. Harvard may be the world's greatest research university (ok, byerly) but that is part of the very reason that it is not the best undergraduate choice. People who don't already fit into Harvard's hyper-specialized, hyper-pre-professional atmosphere do not have a great experience at Harvard. More than one Harvard memoir chronicles this disappointment; I'd urge you to check the literature. Incredibly smart students are warehoused together, which is pretty cool, but if you can choose, why not pick a school with a commitment to undergraduate teaching? </p>
<p>Students rank undergraduate academics at Princeton, along with MIT and Stanford, as being the best in the nation. (Check out College *******.) Yale is a very good second choice if you are not admitted to Princeton. But there are things about Yale not to like--the dangerous city of New Haven, for one. And don't be too impressed by the US presidency--Clinton went to Yale for law school, not undergraduate work, and the Bushes don't exactly reflect well on Yale as an institution of learning (higher or otherwise) do they? </p>
<p>Princeton has consistently been the home of the world's great intellectuals--Einstein, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Cornel West, Peter Singer, Elaine Pagels, Paul Starr. Furthermore, these intellectuals actually teach undergraduates. Princeton also has the best special programs in the nation--its freshman seminars, independent junior and senior work, and study abroad (dozens of approved programs in France alone) blow other schools out of the water. Princeton engineering is awesome, and Princeton dance also rocks. Princeton is an upscale and safe if sleepy suburb, and for excitement, New York City and Philadelphia are each an hour away. (And for whatever it's worth, although Harvard's total endowment is the biggest, Princeton has by far the largest per capita endowment of any university in the world.) Go to Harvard or Yale for graduate or professional school, but don't miss out on Princeton, the finest undergraduate program in the nation. </p>
<p>(And if all that didn't convince you, here's a special plea: If you're looking at mathematics, philosophy, or creative writing, go to Princeton. These are the top programs in their fields, and you'll regret making any other choice.)</p>
<p>"but remember that these prestigious names rest largely on graduate and especially professional programs" </p>
<p>Um, I don't think so. Yale and Harvard are the most selective undergraduate institutions in the world, and have the highest admissions rates to the nation's top graduate and professional schools. David Brooks, a UChicago graduate and one of the world's most famous columnists, doesn't think so either - he has written in the Weekly Standard that Yale is far and away the best place for undergraduate education in the United States. Even the Princeton Review's own rankings have placed Yale as the #1 school in the United States for "best overall undergraduate academic experience" - with Princeton close behind.</p>
<p>Also, downtown New Haven and Harvard Square are both some of the best college towns in the world - neither are "dangerous", both are immediately adjacent to beautiful coastline areas, both have hundreds of restaurants, music venues, theaters and shops open around the clock, and both are 100,000 times more exciting than the dreary, inland suburb of Princeton, which located in the nation's #1 state for toxic waste.</p>
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<p>David Brooks, a UChicago graduate and one of the world's most famous columnists, doesn't think so either - he has written in the Weekly Standard that Yale is far and away the best place for undergraduate education in the United States.</p>
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<p>yet, curiously, brooks chose princeton for his "organization kid" study on the attitudes of the country's next generation of leaders.</p>
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<p>the princeton review and princeton university are not affiliated. in this year's PR rankings, though (you're still hanging on to the one a couple years back), princeton makes top 20 lists for happiest students and for best quality of life (as well as most politically active, most beautiful campus, etc). yale makes neither list.</p>
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<p>Also, downtown New Haven and Harvard Square are both some of the best college towns in the world</p>
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<p>ah, now you LIKE cambridge, when it serves your purpose? do i need to dredge up some of your past statements about it?</p>
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<p>neither are "dangerous"</p>
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<p>just the facts: new haven is the 234th richest city/town in connecticut, out of 244 total. according to money magazine, its personal crime index, where 100 is the average and lower is better, is 309. princeton's (which the magazine recently ranked as one of the top 15 places to live), by way of comparison, is 6! as you well know, an unsavory urban location has long been yale's biggest obstacle in attracting top students and faculty, and i'm afraid all your "big lie" trolling won't change that fact.</p>
<p>Did a Google search. Here:</p>
<p>
[quote]
I've long regarded Yale as the best school in America, on the basis of conversations with adult friends who went there. It seems to have the best combination of small classes, a curious intellectual atmosphere, and a fun social scene.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>not quite "far and away the best place for undergraduate education in the United States." par for the course with posterX.</p>
<p>Have you read "Organization Kid"? It isn't exactly positive. "Organization Kid Revisited", an article written after 9/11 that focuses on Yale, instead, is far more positive. And the Brooks article cited above, which is different, is also much more positive if you haven't read it, either.</p>
<p>Harvard Square is not a perfect town, and it closes far too early, but I have always thought that on the whole, it is one of the best.</p>
<p>Just like Harvard Square, in fact, which used to be considered very shabby, New Haven is now much different from when it was an obstacle to attracting top students. This is clearly reflected in the yield and acceptance rates of all of Yale's undergraduate and graduate programs, which are now all among the selective, if not the most selective, of any universities in the world. Just as an example, Yale College has been the most selective university in the U.S. for 2 of the past 3 years, and the admissions rates of places like Yale Drama and Yale Law School are all far below their competitors. According to the New York Times last month, the Yale Music School now even has a lower acceptance rate than Juilliard Academy, which is located in the middle of Manhattan. New Haven is now easily one of the best college towns in the country. </p>
<p>As I've said before, the camparisons of per capita income are useless because they are all based on where you draw the city boundary - if you take the boundary set in the 1700s before the city was much more than a village, which the website you quoted does, you will get a totally different figure than if you just, say, take a 15-minute driving radius or a 2-mile distance radius around the city center. The only valid comparisons are between Census-defined "metro areas", and in those metrics, New Haven and San Francisco are the two wealthiest cities in the United States, by a very, very wide margin. If the thousands of luxury apartments and million-dollar condominiums being built all over downtown New Haven (and frequently 100% occupied within a couple weeks of opening) are any indication, the downtown areas is incredibly wealthy.</p>
<p>Nice stuff Plover.</p>
<p>The overwhelming majority of common admits choose Harvard over either Yale or Princeton, and have for eons. The Nation's most talented and sought-after high schoolers vote with their feet as to which school "provides the best undergraduate education."</p>
<p>Thanks to posterx for taking me to task on that first quote. Of course Harvard and Yale are prestigious undergraduate institutions--I meant to suggest nothing different. I merely meant to say that there may be a gap between the perceived quality of their undergraduate programs and the actual quality of those programs, a gap due to the notoriety of affiliated but undergrad-irrelevant schools like Harvard Business, Harvard Medical, or Yale Law. Of course the students who attend Harvard and Yale--like the students who attend Princeton--are among the best of the best.</p>
<p>of course, students pick colleges for many reasons other than quality of undergrad education. like, e.g., perceived prestige.</p>
<p>Hmm, I had another point--sorry for the sloppy posting. Byerly, did it ever occur to you that common admits choose Harvard over Yale and Princeton because students who prefer Yale and Princeton (and there are plenty) don't apply to Harvard? Many students want to attend Harvard because it is stereotypically the nation's most "prestigious" school. Yet they prepare for the eventuality of not getting in by applying to other "prestigious" schools like Yale, Princeton, and Stanford. By contrast, my diehard Yale friends never applied to Harvard because they really weren't interested in prestige at the expense of the kind of environment they wanted. In Princeton's case, students whose first choice is Old Nassau will apply Early Decision. If they're accepted, they can't join the category of "common admits." They prefer Princeton, but their feet don't vote in the stats you use.</p>
<p>That's not entirely true. </p>
<p>Harvard does the best with students who don't know where they want to go when they apply--which is the case with most top students, most of whom don't apply ED, and therefore refuse to commit to a school early, if they apply early at all. </p>
<p>Harvard does a particularly good job of stealing kids admitted early elsewhere, in the case of Yale and Stanford. It's safe to say that when Yale and Stanford lose SCEA kids, 10-12% of them each year, the vast majority are going to Harvard. </p>
<p>Harvard is the only school, really, that once students get into, they immediately forget that they applied elsewhere, early, to their "top choice." I know several kids to which this has happened.</p>
<p>you guys are like monks and this is your rosary, a string of beads that repeat their shapes between your fingers and through this droning activity you touch the divine pattern. I really admire your fortitude.</p>
<p>As a student who chose Yale over Princeton and Stanford (SCEA admit at Stanford, didn't apply to Harvard), I think I have experience with some of the issues being discussed. Though I agree that, when looking purely at the quality of undergraduate academic programs, Princeton may be better than Yale, for me, student life at Yale was the deciding factor. When I visited Princeton, the students I stayed with seemed over-stressed and somewhat disengaged with the school. There was not nearly as much going on at campus as there was at Yale, and the social life seemed entirely centered around eating clubs. While I admit that I may have gotten an unrepresentative view of Princeton (bad luck with hosts, an unusually slow evening), my experience made me certain after my visit to Princeton that I did not want to go there. That said, Yale, Princeton, and Harvard are all excellent schools, and all the arguing about which is better seems silly. None of the three is clearly better than the others, and, in the end, your personality determines which one would be a better fit for you.</p>
<p>svalbardlutefisk, now that is a lovely bunch of sounds. Willing to deconstruct?</p>