<p>Just wanted to know your thoughts on these</p>
<p>Especially about the environment and people of the school.</p>
<p>Academically, there isn’t much to say. Can’t go wrong, though the engineering at Stanford and Princeton is generally considered stronger (especially at the former). A degree from any of the 3 will serve you well whatever path you take in life.</p>
<p>I personally liked the campuses at Yale and Princeton better than the one at Stanford, architecturally and size-wise (Stanford is HUGE, and the architecture just wasn’t to my liking). The weather at Stanford is something to consider though; I do believe it has grown and thrived in part because of its reputation as being the top nice-weather school in the nation. </p>
<p>I did feel like Stanford, perhaps because of its size, was the most active of the three campuses *at the time of year<a href=“I%20visited%20all%20three%20in%20the%20summer”>/i</a>. Yale has a bit of that vibrancy to it, though that in my opinion is a function of its location in a city, whereas Princeton was definitely in “off-season” (though the nearby namesake town was lively) - regardless, with students on campus during the school year, I don’t think you’re going to find much discrepancies in the quality and quantity of things to do on campus, since all three attract very active personality-type students.</p>
<p>In terms of social life, I can’t really speak for Y or S, but I’ve already been around the eating club scene at P and believe me, the bad things said about eating clubs are pretty ridiculous. They’re basically just fun places to party, and they aren’t even necessary to one’s social life (I think half the campus isn’t even part of an eating club anyways).</p>
<p>As for the students, well I can imagine they’d be quite similar as well, given who the top schools typically attract. College stereotypes have more or less been proven false in the last 25ish years due to the expansion of the accessibility of elite schools to more than just the upper class in certain geographic areas. Nevertheless, you are probably going to, in several posts after me, hear about the friendliness of Yale (or maybe even its supposed inferiority complex to Harvard), the elitism/WASPishness at Princeton, and the mellowness of the people (of course, the weather probably does render this somewhat true) at Stanford. All these things, good and bad, are severely overblown at best.</p>
<p>Conclusions: Y=P=S, except not really, because it’s all based on personal preference of certain criteria. Do NOT, however, mistake the opinions here (including, in fact, my own) as objective statements of life at each school. This is easily best judged by yourself. So yes, I more or less wrote out this entire post to tell you that this post and the posts following it will not be very useful. Cheers.</p>
<p>get in first. your decision may be made for you.</p>
<p>ditto, KB.</p>
<p>^^Maybe he can only afford to apply to one of them.</p>
<p>^^Application fee wavers.</p>
<p>monstor344–Your post was really thoughtful and I appreciated it. The OP is currently a freshman in high school, so he/she has several years before he needs to decide which schools to apply to.</p>