<p>Ok, I have to deliberate between these two amazing universities.</p>
<p>Major: Journalism or Undecided
Background: So Cal since birth</p>
<p>Can anyone on this board give a candid explanation of their experience at Yale? I would like to know of all the good and all the bad. What you expected and what actually happened.</p>
<p>May you also talk about some of the campus culture? Thank you so much!</p>
<p>Edit: Yes, I haven't been accepted to Yale. This is all preemptive</p>
<p>It’s less than a week, wait until April 1.</p>
<p>I would go to Yale, but Stanford’s weather is better. Journalism would definitely suit you better at Yale. And just to warn you, I’m biased. I’m a Stanford reject while the dirty 3.0 party goers at my school got accepted cause of legacy.</p>
<p>I’d go Stanford. I’ve visited both and liked the atmosphere much better at Stanford. I didn’t like Yale at all. </p>
<p>Didn’t apply to Yale and just got into Stanford yesterday</p>
<p>I found the social fabric at Yale to be MUCH more stronger than at Stanford (I dated a Stanford student off & on through both of our first 3 years in college). The residential college system encompasses so much of the Yalie’s life – there’s nothing comparable to that at Stanford besides joining a frat/sorority. I had dozens of close-close diverse friends at Yale. My g/f had few close friends at Stanford – and they were all like her. The compactness of Yale is much better than the sprawling Stanford campus, IMHO.</p>
<p>Yalies are rabidly loyal and boisterous about their alma mater. Stanford grads seem much more subtle about theirs – again, the residential college system is the cause of this, I posit.</p>
<p>Weather-wise, Palo Alto is a slam dunk. But since you’re from Cally to begin with, the changing seasons and beautiful New England might really draw you.</p>
<p>Just an input on the weather. I lived in Pennsylvania for four years, and I’ve also lived in Utah for four years, so I’ve had the chance to (very often) visit California and experience New England weather. Just putting this out there: you shouldn’t automatically assume that you’ll love Cali weather. I like sunshine and beach as much as the next person, but after day after day of the same weather, I personally got really sick of it. And I still prefer the weather (as nasty as it can be!) back east.</p>
<p>I have 30-year-old experience at both (Yale undergraduate, Stanford Law School while my sister was an undergraduate there). Through my kids and friends, I know recent students both places, so I have some sense of how my experience relates to the present.</p>
<p>One thing that’s worth noting is that you don’t study “journalism” at Yale. While there will be some journalism-oriented nonfiction writing courses, journalism is an extracurricular pursuit . . . at a much higher quality level than at Stanford. The Yale Daily News is an intense organization, and a great launching pad into the world of journalism (assuming there still is such a world). Stanford does (or did) have a Communications major that encompassed journalism.</p>
<p>I agree with what T26E4 said. (I think we are about 20 years apart in age, and different ethnicities, but our experience of Yale as undergraduates was completely similar.) I would add, too, that Yale feels a lot more intense than Stanford. People act more excited by what they are doing, in or out of class, there is a sense that people are on fire with ideas. Stanford has the California “chill” thing going, where people often are not out about what they are doing academically, what their interests are. I don’t think, if you go to a party with the football team at Stanford, they are all talking about their senior essays, but that does happen at Yale.</p>
<p>That also makes Yale somewhat more competitive an environment than Stanford, although neither feels competitive at all. When I was at Stanford, any undergraduate who raised her hand could get all the faculty contact and attention she wanted – because so few students actually did that. I think that’s something that has changed a good deal, but I also think that Stanford still has more people than Yale who are not bent on “achieving” things while they are undergraduates.</p>
<p>Some people will like the Stanford style more, and find Yale pretentious and oppressive. Others will like the Yale style, and find Stanford too laid-back. The students themselves are mostly the same people, and most of the students at one would be perfectly fine at the other.</p>
<p>Stanford is a lot more engineering-oriented than Yale. Engineering at Yale is still in the early stages of returning from a near-death experience. Stanford is perhaps a little less engineering-centric than it was. But Stanford is a place where engineers rule. The equivalent at Yale is writers.</p>
<p>Yale, in general, has much, much more arts participation by students. More drama, more instrumental music, more singing (much more singing), more visual art, more writing. (Yale has more arts participation than any of its peers.)</p>
<p>Sports teams at Stanford tend to be world-class, or near that. At Yale, they’re not always Ivy League-class.</p>
<p>And then there’s Stanford’s set-apart campus in a cushy, insanely rich suburb, vs. Yale’s campus that’s interwoven with the downtown of a depressed city. Stanford is about 45 minutes by train from San Francisco; Yale a little longer by train from New York City. Stanford has weather that’s practically perfect; Yale doesn’t. (It’s not true that the weather is always the same in Palo Alto, or that there aren’t any seasons.)</p>
<p>JHS brings up a good point. I found Stanford students very intent on portraying an exterior that was cool and relaxed, even if they weren’t inside. At Yale, it seemed there was no pressure to hide the fact how one was feeling: stressed, happy, excited or bored, etc.</p>
<p>I also agree about the super cultural scene, (mostly provided by students themselves) at Yale versus Stanford.</p>
<p>But in the end, it’s a personal preference scenario</p>
<p>“I found Stanford students very intent on portraying an exterior that was cool and relaxed, even if they weren’t inside”</p>
<p>Dubbed the infamous Duck Syndrome – a duck may look calm while it’s floating in the water, but its feet are rapidly kicking and thrusting beneath the surface</p>
<p>If the YDN is any indication of Yale journalism or writing quality, it isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement.</p>
<p>Additionally, anyone who calls New England beautiful, or at least the area surrounding New Haven beautiful, needs a lesson in visual perception.</p>
<p>With that said, Yale is better.</p>
<p>I’m in a similar boat as Electricninjasex, got into Stanford, and waiting for Yale (deferred SCEA)</p>
<p>I want to study Political Science and International Relations, but I’m also considering Econ and Public Policy, perhaps as minors.
Stanford probably does get labeled as more of a science-oriented school, but is this true?</p>
<p>amciw: I call New England beautiful. Maybe you should get around more.</p>
<p>the YDN is better than the crimson, at any rate…i attended a lecture given by a new york times writer and he said the YDN was among the top 3 in the ivy league.</p>
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<p>The New England exemplified by the greater New Haven area is extremely unappealing. I’m sorry I don’t have the means to visit New Hampshire or somewhere supposedly beautiful. What I see is disgusting, decayed urbanization, excessive sprawl, and a generally unattractive environment.</p>
<p>New haven was kind of depressing to be honest when I visited, though the campus drew quite a few gasps and wide eyes.</p>
<p>This is my problem too, though I want to study Spanish and PoliSci/EPE (polisci if i go to stanford and epe at yale).</p>
<p>SCEA Yale and RD Stanford…so I guess it’ll come down to BDD and Stanford’s Admit Weekend.</p>
<p>Though I am at Harvard, my older sister went to Yale for undergrad and is now finishing up grad school in one of the social sciences at Stanford and has been a teaching assistant or whatever they call them at Stanford for several classes. She echoes some of the observations that have already been offered in this thread. </p>
<p>Like JHS, she feels the undergraduate intellectual climate is more vibrant at Yale: better class discussions, more lively dining hall chatter, and a much better arts and culture scene. The passion for academic and extracurricular life (except for sports!) is much more muted at Stanford undergrad. </p>
<p>The sprawling campus and lack of a college/house system detracts from the intimacy of the experience as well.</p>
<p>From my personal experience, I was not that taken by Stanford’s campus and decided that my personal preferences was for a more intense East Coast experience.</p>
<p>I’ve a younger colleague, YoungerEngProf, we’ll call her, who went to Yale undergrad, Stanford grad, which included much exerience teaching Stanford students. I asked her this question of “Yale versus other schools” when my D was deciding where to attend at this time last year. My colleague said that she’d loved for the range of people very involved in the arts who ALSO had a serious academic subject or two that also interested them at a high level. She gave as examples the sheer numbers of people playing musical instruments at Yale, AND that she had her choice of playing in a string quartet in her residential college, a symphony, etc. She said the residential college system also gave everyone a shot at competing in sports in a great rowdy fashion. At Yale, she said, the undergraduates in humanities were way, way ahead of their counterparts at Stanford. </p>
<p>There is no question, however, that Stanford is excellent for engineering. </p>
<p>As I am personally very fond of West Coast weather, in part from having grown up in New England, I asked her if she didn’t mind the weather in CT and she said no, not really, that it had the change of seasons and the coldest times are only a few weeks. Campus does empty out over the winter break.</p>
<p>The OP is no longer interested in the Y experience:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/896471-stanford-vs-harvard.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/896471-stanford-vs-harvard.html</a></p>
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<p>So, my post #2 still holds ;).</p>
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<p>yeh us standford kidz no speek inglish to gud. wut u meen hoomanatees?</p>
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<p>Not just engineering. Stanford’s excellence is deep and wide. There exist very few (if any) academic disciplines in which Stanford cannot compete with Yale; there are some (especially STEM fields) where Stanford easily blows Yale out of the water.</p>