Yale vs Princeton vs Stanford

[jonri]

<p>Oh, one more thing. Factor ECs into the equation. </p>

<p>My kid’s EC WAS the college experience. It was THE most important part of college. </p>

<p>That’s true for lots of people. So, if there’s an EC you’d like to do in college, check it out. I imagine that being in the marching band at Stanford and Yale would be very different experiences, for example! So, check out the ECs you’re interested in.</p>

[jonri]

<p>japanako,</p>

<p>I know someone who went to Princeton and was thoroughly miserable and unhappy because kid didn’t get into the desired eating club. So, please don’t say it doesn’t happen, because it does. </p>

<p>According to students I know who attended P’ron, most of the kids in particular ECs tend to join the same eating club. So, the newspaper staff gravitates to one; the basketball team to another, etc. </p>

<p>Well, this kid was heavily “into” a particular EC. Everyone in the EC who wanted to join an eating club applied to the same one. It was one of the ones that is selective, but not one of the really elite ones. Kid didn’t get in. </p>

<p>It was horrible. The kid had made a good group of friends through the EC. That’s who the kid ate dinner with every night after the first few months of freshman year. And then, suddenly, there they all were joining the same club–which kid was rejected from. </p>

<p>Now, they frequently asked kid to join them. But the fact was, the kid didn’t really like spending time at the club after being rejected. It just felt awkward. And my understanding is that there is some sort of cost involved with having a guest for a meal–I don’t know if that’s the case now, but it was then. So, kid didn’t feel like paying to eat in the club all the time. So, kid would eat dinner elsewhere. But then when it came time for meetings to decide whether the EC should do x,y, or Z, kid discovered that the others had discussed options over dinner or lunch and the decisions were more or less made. </p>

<p>Kid was really unhappy and tried to transfer–unsuccessfully. Mom and Dad weren’t willing to pay more for kid to go to a less prestigious college and H,Y and S all turned kid down as a transfer. </p>

<p>BTW, from what I’ve heard, the non-joiners at Princeton include a disproportionate percentage of non-drinkers who really don’t want to subsidize the alcohol consumption of their classmates. That was one of the reasons the residential colleges for upperclass students were begun.</p>

<p>Now, please understand that I’m not trying to knock Princeton. It is a fantastic school and if my kid was a math genius I’d recommend it over Y or S in a heart beat. However, you’re just being silly when you try to argue that nobody ever ends up unhappy because (s)he didn’t get into the eating club (s)he wanted.</p>

[japanoko]

<p>jonri, thanks for the info</p>

<p>now</p>

<p>shouldn’t we also consider all the sports teams that a school has to offer?</p>

<p>after all, many many kids that don’t make the football, basketball, hockey, lacrosse ant other teams after having played almost a decade in sports teams up through high school, are completely and totally hurt by not making the team.</p>

<p>then there are the top choirs and orchestras of colleges - you do know, don’t you, that these are typically very selective and reject many many kids?</p>

<p>so do parents of kids that don’t make the sports teams, choirs and orchestras at Yale, Princeton and Stanford attempt to transfer the kids out?</p>

<p>then there are those very selective frats and sororities at Stanford, which make up about 15% of the student body - are we going to transfer the kid out also because he/she might not get selected to the favorite frats or sororities?</p>

<p>and how about Yale’s Secret Societies?..should parents tell their kids not to apply to Yale for fear that their child might become friends with a future Skull and Bones member and their child might not?..of course not…</p>

<p>and finally, there is the very selective college admissions process. Should parents tell their kids not to apply to Stanford, Yale and Princeton because of fear of getting regected from the most selective schools in the country?..of course not…</p>

[Hanna]

<p>There is a world of difference between being rejected as a point guard and being rejected as a dining companion.</p>

<p>When the first happens to your kid, you tell him, “Don’t worry, it’s nothing personal.”</p>

<p>The second IS personal.</p>

<p>I personally wouldn’t let this discourage me from going to Princeton. But there’s a huge difference.</p>

[japanoko]

<p>

There is a world of difference between being rejected as a point guard and being rejected as a dining companion.</p>

<p>When the first happens to your kid, you tell him, “Don’t worry, it’s nothing personal.”</p>

<p>The second IS personal.</p>

<p>I personally wouldn’t let this discourage me from going to Princeton. But there’s a huge difference.

</p>

<p>Hanna, if you have ever played serious organized sports and one of your dreams in life is to play on a Varsity team in college, of course there is a difference, the rejection from the making the team is much much worse than not getting into the favorite eating club and being admitted to another selective eating club or one of the non-selective ones.</p>

[japanoko]

<p>high school student: Mom I would like to apply to HYPSM for college, since my grades, SAT’s and EC’s are fantastic. I just love love love those schools and always dreamed of one day attending one of them.</p>

<p>mom: Son, sorry but you can’t apply to those schools because you might get rejected and it would be devasting. They are very very selective. In addition, if you do get lucky and get in, you might get rejected from the Varsity Football team , the choir, the orchestra - or the frats at Stanford and MIT, the eating clubs at Princeton, the secret societies at Yale and the final clubs at Harvard. So therefore, son, you can’t apply to those schools. I would hate to see you suffer from these rejections. And besides, even if you do get in to the schools and get accepted by several of these selective programs, you could very well get rejected from your favorite graduate school or job opportuny thereafter and I really don’t want to see you suffer from all these potential rejections…</p>

[texaspg]

<p>What qualifications does one need to become a member of a stupid eating place that some of them need to be rejected?</p>

[Hanna]

<p>“much much worse”</p>

<p>I’m saying there’s a qualitative difference. Whether there’s a quantitative difference, and in which direction, depends entirely on the individual. Some would find the social rejection infinitely more painful; others would not. But regardless, being judged inferior as a soprano vocalist is a different animal from being judged inferior as a friend. It’s false to say that because I accept one, I must be comfortable with the other.</p>

[japanoko]

<p>

being judged inferior as a soprano vocalist is a different animal from being judged inferior as a friend.

</p>

<p>hanna, wrong yet again</p>

<p>what if the soprano vocalist has done this for 4 hours a day for ten years in hope of wanting to be in the college singing group and this has been their complete and total dream all their life. In addition, what if their best friends during freshman year were also vocalists that got admitted to the singing group?</p>

<p>and you do understand, don’t you, that the Eating Club admission decisions are made by the Junior and Senior members and not your Sophomore classmates, which would be the ones that you are closest to. Just like when you apply to college, it is the college that rejects you, not your high school classmates that you want to attend the same college with.</p>

[japanoko]

<p>

What qualifications does one need to become a member of a stupid eating place that some of them need to be rejected?

</p>

<p>I believe, just like college admissions, there is the physical space limitation. You can’t admit 300 students to an Eating Club that only has room for 150 students, for instance.</p>

[texaspg]

<p>Space limitation for an eatery - do they spend the entire evening there like it is a club? sounds more like a country club than a college eating place.</p>

[phantasmagoric]

<p>Not surprised this has turned into a multi-page debate. Oh when will it end? :rolleyes:</p>

<p>I just wanted to add a few things. The OP said:</p>

<p>

1 million = Funding for undergraduate science research fellowships in the most recent year.

</p>

<p>honeybee12k, just for comparison, Stanford allocates more funding for undergraduate research than any school in the country: $4-5 million each year. (At least, this is what Stanford’s UAR has claimed, and I don’t think they’d claim that unless they were sure it was true.)</p>

<p>I don’t know of any undergraduate research statistics at Stanford, comparable to the ones you posted for Yale. I have a feeling that since it’s so easy to do research at Stanford, it feels no need to state a bunch of pointless statistics, whereas Yale is trying to prove to the world that yes, its students do do science research. Either way, there’s nothing that will stop you from doing whatever science research you want at Stanford. In fact, there’s a lot to make sure that you do.</p>

<p>@jonri</p>

<p>

At Stanford, there are ethnic dorms. Officially, people of any race or ethnicity can live in them, but there are still dorms which are populated by people who want to live primarily with people who belong to the same minority group.

</p>

<p>There are 80 residences at Stanford, and only 4 ethnic-themed dorms. Each of these dorms is not just “officially” multiracial, but necessarily–half the students of each dorm are not of the theme ethnicity.</p>

<p>

At Stanford, they aren’t. That means, from what I’ve been told, though I may be out of date, that teams tend to break down along racial lines.

</p>

<p>Actually intramural sports are based on your residence.</p>

<p>But it’s ludicrous to suggest “if not by residence, then by race.” Honestly…</p>

<p>

At Stanford, you move into a frat or sorority your sophomore year. Your social life then revolves around the frat or sorority.

</p>

<p>It can, of course, but every time there’s a party elsewhere, students will go to that party. Students have no choice but to interact with students outside their residence (because of clubs, classes, sports, etc.), so everyone’s social lives are kind of necessarily diverse.</p>

<p>You’re right that Greek life is not a big deal at Stanford: only 13% of the student body is in a Greek organization, and an even smaller percent lives in a Greek house.</p>

<p>

Yale is a small, compact campus. Stanford isn’t.

</p>

<p>Stanford is a large, but mostly compact campus. To the OP: I recommend looking at a map of both Stanford and Yale, and you’ll find that they are comparably dense. Stanford is larger because it is top in virtually every discipline, so to maintain the “breadth and depth” of study, of course there will be more buildings. If Yale were top in every discipline like Stanford, it would also have a comparably large campus. Stanford could make its campus smaller if its buildings were made much taller; but the buildings are already pretty tall, and the only way that Stanford can maintain its dominance in so many disciplines is by having a larger campus. Either way, it’s pretty dense.</p>

<p>

Anyone at Stanford would laugh at that because the campus is just more spread out.

</p>

<p>Spread out, in the sense that it’s larger, but again, not in the sense that it’s sparse.</p>

<p>@japanoko</p>

<p>

Ivybear, according to Princeton administration, the admissions to medical and law school have not changed much since the new grading policy was implemented.

</p>

<p>Then I guess all the students are lying when they say that they’ve faced more difficulty in post-graduation opportunities (seriously, Princeton students seem to complain about this a lot in their newspaper). I had a feeling they were just being drama queens about the grade deflation policy, and it turns out I was right.</p>

<p>By the way, Stanford has typically not been involved with the Putnam like the others have, and more recently has become more competitive. Not that this is even relevant to the OP.</p>

<p>

for total students, Yale is significantly larger than Princeton and Stanford is about double Yale’s size and 3 times Princeton’s size:</p>

<p>Total Enrollment
7,592 – Princeton
11,593 - Yale
18,498 - Stanford

</p>

<p>2 * 11,593 = ~23,000. That’s almost 5,000 off from what Stanford is, more than 25% off. That’s not “about.”</p>

<p>3 * 7,592 = ~23,000. Again, almost 5,000 off.</p>

<p>Way to put a spin on the numbers.</p>

<p>By the way, that 18,500 at Stanford includes the part-time, non-degree-seeking graduate students–e.g. Silicon Valley execs who are taking a class at Stanford. So the # actual students at Stanford is about 15,000, or 2x Princeton’s size and less than 1.5x Yale’s.</p>

<p>

then there are those very selective frats and sororities at Stanford,

</p>

<p>Uh, they aren’t very selective. I don’t know of anyone who didn’get get a bid from at least one fraternity. And every person who rushes a sorority gets a bid from one. And again, Greeks are a minority on the campus: 13%. That’s all completely different from the eating club situation at Princeton. Stop trying to make up for Princeton’s eliteness and inadequacy by pretending similar problems exist at schools that don’t have those problems. Not even Harvard’s final clubs are as bad as Princeton’s eating clubs.</p>

<p>We can all see that Princeton’s eating clubs are a different beast from what you’ve tried to compare them to.</p>

<p>And again, why does this even matter? That OP has said that it’s down to Yale and Stanford.</p>

<p>Sorry to say, japanoko, but no matter the amount of cheerleading for Princeton that you do all over these forums, its yield is still going to be well below 60%. Stanford will take 2/3 of the cross-admits with Princeton as it has been doing, and Harvard, Yale, and MIT will likely take the majority of cross-admits from Princeton as well. Deal with it.</p>

[japanoko]

<p>

But regardless, being judged inferior as a soprano vocalist is a different animal from being judged inferior as a friend.

</p>

<p>hanna, seriously - it is not the student’s friends that reject the Eating Club applicant. It is the Eating Club made up of Juniors and Seniors. The classmate friends have no say in the matter.</p>

[japanoko]

<p>

[/quote]
Space limitation for an eatery - do they spend the entire evening there like it is a club? sounds more like a country club than a college eating place.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>texaspg, The Princeton Eating Clubs as country clubs?</p>

<p>nah…</p>

<p>take a look:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.connollyarchitecturellc.com/images/proj_colonial001.jpg[/url]”>http://www.connollyarchitecturellc.com/images/proj_colonial001.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://blog.nj.com/ledgerupdates_impact/2007/10/medium_cloisterM.jpg[/url]”>http://blog.nj.com/ledgerupdates_impact/2007/10/medium_cloisterM.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/~tango/festival/images/300px-Ptoncharterclub.jpg[/url]”>http://www.princeton.edu/~tango/festival/images/300px-Ptoncharterclub.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://www.princetontourcompany.com/userfiles/image/ivy%20club.jpg[/url]”>http://www.princetontourcompany.com/userfiles/image/ivy%20club.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://blog.nj.com/ledgerupdates_impact/2007/10/large_cottageL.jpg[/url]”>http://blog.nj.com/ledgerupdates_impact/2007/10/large_cottageL.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[texaspg]

<p>Japanoko - I know at least one parent of a cross admit among HPS, Penn, Columbia who told me he did nt want his son going to Princeton because of the eating clubs there. He considered it a form of racism/elitism or whatever you want to call it.</p>

<p>Btw - the pictures of buildings dont mean much, it is what goes in inside the buildings that is part of the discussion.</p>

[japanoko]

<p>

Btw - the pictures of buildings dont mean much, it is what goes in inside the buildings that is part of the discussion.

</p>

<p>texaspg, so why don’t you tell us what goes on inside these Princeton Eating Clubs where 2/3rds of the Juniors and Seniors belong to?</p>

[japanoko]

<p>

Japanoko - I know at least one parent of a cross admit among HPS, Penn, Columbia who told me he did nt want his son going to Princeton because of the eating clubs there. He considered it a form of racism/elitism or whatever you want to call it.

</p>

<p>Texas, so let me see if I can understand this. You know of a parent that will not let his kid apply to Princeton because Princeton has the Eating Clubs in which only 5 of the 10 are selective, accepting 50% or more of the applicants, with the others guranteeing a membersehip to anyone that wants to be in an Eating Club because this is “elitist”, yet he is allowing his son to apply to Harvard, the most selective college in the country, which accepts only 6% of the applicants and has the super super selective “Finals Clubs”?..oh…ok, I understand…makes a lot of sense…</p>

[phantasmagoric]

<p>

He considered it a form of racism/elitism or whatever you want to call it.

</p>

<p>True that. See this:</p>

<p>

The Bicker process favors certain demographic groups over others, according to an October 2009 evaluation of the Committee on Background and Opportunity (COMBO) survey results by the USG’s Analysis of Princetonian Attitudes Committee (APAC). Students who are white and are from high-income backgrounds are more likely to bicker successfully, as are members of Greek organizations and athletic teams, according to the COMBO data. In 2007, more than half of all black students at Princeton were not members of eating clubs, and more than half of all Asian students were members of sign-in clubs. Almost no non-white students who reported family incomes less than $150,000 per year also reported that they were members of Ivy, Cottage or TI.

</p>

<p>Elitist. Like we all said.</p>

<p>[Should</a> we end Bicker? - The Daily Princetonian](<a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/12/18/24808/]Should”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/12/18/24808/)</p>

<p>(Oh but who cares if the buildings they’re in are pretty? :rolleyes:)</p>

[japanoko]

<p>

In 2007, more than half of all black students at Princeton were not members of eating clubs, and more than half of all Asian students were members of sign-in clubs.

</p>

<p>phanta, brilliant, thanks for the info…do you have any idea how ridiculous this is to prove your point?</p>

<p>THE FACT IS THAT, AS WITH BLACK STUDENTS, MORE THAN HALF OF** ALL STUDENTS **AT PRINCETON WERE ALSO NOT MEMBERS OF EATING CLUBS.</p>

<p>since this is a Princeton v. Yale v. Stanford thread, shall we also find out what percent of the blacks and asians at Yale and Stanford are not members of the Yale Secret Societies or the Stanford Frats and Sororities? My guess is something like more than 95%. You cannot get more elitist than this.</p>

[Hanna]

<p>“what if the soprano vocalist has done this for 4 hours a day for ten years”</p>

<p>Yeah, having joined the Chicago Children’s Choir at age 7 and being in the Veritones and Collegium Musicum at Harvard, I wouldn’t know anything about that. Surely you’ll offer to educate me next.</p>

<p>It’s also interesting to learn that social evaluation/rejection does not carry emotional consequences when it comes from people a year older than you, because by definition you’re not friends with them. Even though older members choosing younger members is a universal trait of all selective social organizations, and even though the bicker clubs are strongly associated with 4-class groups like athletic teams and Greek organizations. Do you realize how ridiculous this sounds? Can’t you argue that the eating club system is a net positive for Princeton upperclassmen without making absurd claims?</p>