The OP sounds like an enterprising young person. I’m sure that with 400 residents to choose from they will find their peep.
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The top 3 schools I mentioned (as well as Columbia) offered the best aid. Only reason why Brown is not a top choice right now
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You’re absolutely right! That’s why Stanford is very very high on my list.
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I totally agree. I don’t believe I’d be ancient. From the interactions I’ve had so far in the past year with high school seniors, I think I’ll fit in just fine. Of course I will be more mature, but specifically schools like Yale (res colleges) will enable me to get to know upperclassmen much easier than places like Princeton (has a greater social divide between underclassmen and upperclassmen).
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I am focusing a bit on your age. Having known kids who were held back then did PG year for sports, this CAN put you in a somewhat different frame of mind.
There are a lot of graduate students at Stanford, so an older student will have peers. This may not matter in your first year quite as much, but I am guessing it will matter over time.
Lots of spirit. Great weather. Good LGBTQ community on campus, very strong in SF if, as time goes on, you want to do more off campus.
That’d be my choice.
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You can ask Brown to make your offer more competitive. Do it today, put in a call to the FA office. Explain the other schools and what you’ve said here, but you would also need to tell them that Brown is your top choice and if they can make it more affordable, you will attend. Show them your other offers. I almost guarantee they will increase theirs. You’re playing with big boys that have huge endowments.
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@Lindagaf is correct. You can just email them and show them the offer you got from the highest (I’m guessing Princeton) and they will match it. You don’t need to tell them you will attend yet just that you like the school but their FA isn’t good enough to beat out school X. My D did this for her other Ivy offers and got matching FA. I believe they have to do this due to Athletics (or at least had to do it in the old NCAA environment).
Also I agree with your point about the class level divide at Princeton.
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Regarding the class divide at Princeton, there’s been a recent announcement of major changes to the University’s residential college system. Beginning in fall 2022, the University will transition to a fully-integrated four-year residential college system. With the old residential system, students in a two-year college (First, Forbes, and Rockefeller) had to switch their affiliation to a four-year college (Butler, Mathey, or Whitman) in their junior year if they wanted to continue living in a residential college. That’s no longer.
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Unless a specific department or professor is making one of these choices superior (and I really don’t think that is the case with Poli Sci), weather/location and school vibe is what you should be focused on. Are you doing admitted students’ day(s)? Those will give you an idea of the type of people who will be classmates and upperclassmen. FWIW, my own observations of each based on personal experience and visits with my kids:
Brown: nice isolated campus with an easy walk down the hill to the city; students seemed to be pretty relaxed. I think the open curriculum and grading system creates an easier atmosphere to explore varied interests.
Columbia: can’t beat NYC as a place to explore. By the same token, I think there may be less school spirit if that is something you care about since many if not most students chose Columbia because of NYC. The Core Curriculum is the opposite of Brown’s open curriculum.
Princeton: great if you like suburbia. Maybe it was just my kids, but they felt the school was a bit “preppy” for them. Don’t know if it is still true, but the Eating Clubs contributed to greater social stratification, but that could be an unjustified stereotype. It could be that the push for residential colleges is Princeton’s attempt to address this issue, but if residential colleges are appealing to you, Yale’s and Harvard’s are much more established than any in the Ivies (or elsewhere in the US).
Stanford: can’t beat the weather in Cali. Has great D1 teams in a variety of sports if that is something you enjoy. Decent access to SF, but you really need a car to get outside of Palo Alto on a regular basis. I went to law school at UCB and loved being able to hike, play golf during the weekday and ski at Tahoe on the weekends (2L and 3L). Easy trips to the Monterey peninsula, Yosemite and other beautiful areas. Palo Alto (where I worked for several years) is another sanitized suburbia, and Stanford is its own world.
Yale: New Haven is not great, but the flipside is that campus life is pretty vibrant/active. The times my kid wanted the big city, it was easy and cheap enough to jump on Metro North and go to NYC. Does not have the open curriculum that Brown has, but the distributional requirements are easy to hit. My kid was able to explore a lot of subjects completely unrelated to his major. Even though he was shooting for finance/consulting after freshmen year, he felt people were collaborative and he had good access to prof’s and instructors (including a Nobel laureate).
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That is just a fantastic succinct description of Stanford, Palo Alto, the Bay Area, and stuff nearby. Totally agree that it helps if you have a car. And as noted above, it’s SUPER-EXPENSIVE.
But it’s great.
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Problem is what happens when someone needs to live off-campus? The surrounding neighborhoods are very different.
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Plenty of off campus options in New Haven by the University. My son lived off campus senior year because there were less Covid restrictions. Still had to test twice a week.
Pre Covid 16% (2019) of undergrads lived off campus. In 2020 the figure was 42%, most likely driven by Covid. You do need to pick your neighborhoods carefully.
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This may be useful in this context:
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Wait. Wasn’t half the campus remote in 2020?
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Excellent guide, @ucbalumnus.
I wish the BART linked the entire Bay Area. I know that’s in the works, but it will be years. I’ve looked at a combination of taking the BART and CalTrans together to get around here, but it’s still a bit cumbersome.
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The percentages are from this Yale link and for 2020 exclude remote students. Yale Facts | Yale University.
Yale was fully remote after Spring break in 2020 for the remainder of that semester. For 2020-2021, first years, junior and seniors were permitted to live on campus the Fall semester and sophomores, juniors and seniors the Spring semester. 2020-2021 was an odd year with many students choosing to take a gap year/semester (approx 4,700 enrolled vs normal year of about 6,100), so it was an odd year percentagewise. Using the 2019 figures, close to a thousand undergrad students lived off campus.
No longer true. As of late there is a huge commitment to access for URM/FGLI and diversity overall. It shows if you walk around campus. The stereotype doesn’t hold anymore. Also, the majority of eating clubs is not selective (I don’t think people realize this) and anyone can join.
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Yea! There are five selective (“bicker”) clubs, and six sign-in clubs. But there could still be some racial/socio-economic disparity between them.
Thank you!
I think I might just do that.
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Tbh from your description, Yale and Brown sound the most appealing - followed by Stanford.