Is Yale better than Harvard?

It seems like everyone is talking about Yale now. My sister and her friends are dying to go there. Is it now the top dog Ivy?

I went to a "little Ivy" and several people I know who got into Yale and Harvard couldn't get in (and wanted to).

Yale and Harvard are not the end all and be all.

It may be true. Word is that Harvard is too Jewish now.

They are both not what they were, too consumed by a hunt for wealth and power. I don't know if there is a university in America anymore that cares only for "truth"

R3, did you go to Bigot University?

Chipmunk, rah! Chipmunk,rah! Chipmunk, Chipmunk, Chipmunk!

It is Princeton that sits as the best undergrad to go to, not Harvard or Yale. But yeah as long as you go to a top 20 it is all the same, those are the "elite" names.

[quote]I went to a "little Ivy"

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Among academics, Yale is considered better (partly because it's smaller). But to the general public, it doesn't have the same cache as "Harvard". To most people, there's Harvard and everything else is also ran.

Well, OP tell your sister that Cambridge is certainly 10x nicer than New Haven, although New Haven has charm too. Yalies in my opinion are more off beat types whereas Harvard students are more conservative. That is just my opinion.

What was that supposed to be, R9?

Yale - Bleeding heart Liberals, the people who will one day make idiotic policy that's totally incompatible with human nature;

Harvard - Conservative Plutocrat Princelings, who at some point will have an opportunity to burn The Economy in a blazing ball of hubris.

I have to say "Yale" but New Haven is now full of crime and Cam,bridge is full of Islamic extremists.

I'd say Yale is probably more LGBT friendly.

My lesbian sister graduated from there. She was there as a rower. She majored in philosophy.

New Haven has always had crime. It is much, much safer than it used to be 20-30 years ago.. There is a lot of urban renewal and gentrification going on currently, Yale New Haven Hospital is expanding, Yale is expanding, there is a very large and bustling restaurant community and arts community downtown that is as active as ever. A large community college as well has taken over the site of an old mall and the result has been a safer and more sane downtown area. The presence of policemen on foot and on bicycles and horseback has increased foot traffic in a city where folks only walked if they absolutely had too. Now, lots and lots of pedestrians can be seen coming and going to and from the major employers of YNH hospital, Yale University and everything in between.

The waterfront district has been cleaned up and Ikea has been a major force in that area. The new Q Bridge has made traffic a nightmare but the results will be well worth the disturbance now. However designed the bridge did a great job. It looks very similar to the bridge by the harbor in Boston.

In these days with knowledge everywhere colleges only serve as a way to meet people and enter a social network. Though honestly that has been true for a long long time.

For law, yes. It's more complicated when it comes to undergraduate studies. Both are about equal with the others in the top 15. The admissions criteria have hit a ceiling at elite American universities; top school cannot select a "better" freshman class at this point.

All things considered, it's about your classmates and the contacts you make. Harvard people have a better rep. Also, at 3:00 am on a weekend, you would much rather be in Harvard Square than anywhere in New Haven. Greater Boston is far superior to greater New Haven.

Harvard is surrounded by a collection of competitive colleges that make the whole undergrad scene so much richer. At Yale, you go out to a club and there are Yalies and maybe someone from U. New Haven or Quinnipiac. In Boston, you go out to a club and there are kids from Harvard, MIT, BU, BC, Northeastern, Brandeis, Tufts, Wellesley, Babson, and a bunch of smaller specialized colleges that abound in the area.

New Haven sucks although it has gotten better over the years. Cambridge and Boston are thriving cities. THis makes a huge difference.

More importantly, which school has hotter guys? My experience tells me that Harvard guys are hotter.

Hottest guys are at UCSB.

[quote]Both are about equal with the others in the top 15. The admissions criteria have hit a ceiling at elite American universities; top school cannot select a "better" freshman class at this point.

Exactly. When it comes to roughly the top 15/20 colleges the people that get into them are already as selective as it can really get.

Bowdoin College is for the true snob who doesn't require a scene.

I prefer Middlebury, R25.

Bowdoin?? Middlebury??? EGAD!

Either would be fine for me. Middlebury is a bit more overtly snobbish. Bowdoin College just prefers to go along virtually unknown. Middlebury is beautiful though.

Yale is not liberal. It is Wall Street's school. Through the Kennedy School, Harvard has disproportionate influence in Washington and has more political and bureaucratic types. Harvard Law school is famously left wing and has been downgraded compared to Yale for that. In business, HBS is not especially prestigious: even Stanford, Kellogg, and Wharton are considered just as good. In Medicine, Harvard is supreme. Harvard made a more serious effort to become "America's National University" which led to it generating tons of professors. Yale and Princeton have taken the more long-term view that they want to maintain their links to the rich Establishment. Harvard has already fallen behind in alumni donations because of that, although its aggressive portfolio management keeps it in the lead overall.

For undergraduate experience, Harvard and Yale are very similar. Harvard has adopted a policy of hiring only "stars" as professors, which means that you will have famous instructors, but not always much interaction. Both universities have residential colleges. Both have independent fraternities. Harvard seems to cheat a little to keep up sports dominance in a few areas.

Yale can never be as good as Harvard because of the shitty city it's in. Never.

[quote]Word is that Harvard is too Jewish now.

I don't know about "too Jewish" but it looks far browner than back in 1980

Yale is about half the size, so if you'd rather go to place with a smaller student body, Yale is the better choice.

My sister went to Yale undergrad and Harvard grad. She was amazed at how many more resources Harvard had

[quote]Yale is about half the size, so if you'd rather go to place with a smaller student body, Yale is the better choice.

That is misleading. This thread seems to be focused on undergrad Yale has around 5.5k undegrads, Harvard about 6.5k, it isn't a big difference.

Harvard has a ton more graduate students, but doesn't really affect the life of most undergrads.

If you really care about getting a top notch education as a undergrad you should go to Williams, Amherst or Swarthmore. Those kind places. What people outside of academia don't realize is these elite institutions only really care about their research and professional schools. They don't give a flying fuck about educating undergrads. But people go to these places to network and put the name on their resume so it works.

R32, browner, Jewish, no real difference.

I LOVE YALE! I was a cheerleader, you know. I got smart going there.

MInority enrollment hasn't really changed that much over the years. Both schools have more international nowadays than in the old days. Harvard seems to have grown substantially recently.

Harvard offers more students more financial aid.

Is it Harvard or Yale that gives you a complete 4 year free ride if your parents make less than $100K combined annually? $50K if you're from a single parent home.

Vanderbilt is a better school than both Harvard and Yale, and the campus is prettier, too.

How does Williams College in Williamstown, MA compare to Harvard? It's definitely prettier than Harvard.

Vanderbilt? Surely you jest R42. Princeton here. Traditionally Harvard out ranks all. With Princeton and Yale tied for second place.

It is for musicians, yes.

Princeton is the best undergrad for rich white people who need to buy their little delinquents Ivy League acceptances. Harvard and Yale have weeded many of them out now that international students are taking up more slots. The George W. Bush of this generation will go to Princeton.

Middlebury is for private school kids who got rejected from all the Ivies, who then they spend the rest of their lives trying to convince everyone they ever meet that Middlebury is just as good, if not better than all the Ivies, and they're SO GLAD they went there instead. I've had a nearly identical conversation with 4 separate people about Middlebury, where they went into a lengthy, unsolicited explanation. They must give them a speech to memorize at freshman orientation. Total Napoleon complex.

[quote] Vanderbilt is a better school than both Harvard and Yale,

Oh, Mary. Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary...

Most "Harvarditis" is gone by the end of freshman year.

For those who know, Middlebury and Bowdoin and all those little posh schools are aces.

When anyone wants to trumpet their school, they always say "better than Harvard." Harvard is the best because it is the yardstick everyone else is using.

R45 you've got the wrong Ivy.

Actually, Princeton is the most selective (in an unpredictable way). If its acceptance rate is slightly higher than Hahhhvards, it's because the applicant pool is more self-selective.

And academically it's by far the most rigorous. There's a reason people say "the hardest part about Harvard is getting in."

It's not where parents from Japan want to send their kids but it has the best reputation among academics and has for a long time.

[quote]I don't know if there is a university in America anymore that cares only for "truth"

Reed, Swarthmore, St. John's, Chicago, and Rice are all hardcore "life of the mind" schools.

My friends who went to Harvard and Yale said they felt somewhat alienated by the class divisions (they were working class smarties) and that so much of their undergrad education was taught by grad students. I went to Northwestern (didn't feel I could stray too far from home, though I wanted to go to Middlebury and got in--folks nixed that and Columbia, where I was also admitted). Northwestern has its size issues, but it also has niches of small programs with really good faculty-student ratios and interactions So, it's always probably program-specific. My partner went to Reed and said it changed his life intellectually and led him to become a college professor; a colleague (I'm also an academic) went to New College in Florida and another to Hampshire--both fit them perfectly, they said, and they are very smart, accomplished (female) academics.

Scumbag College all the way.

In its own mind R51. You'd be hard pressed to find a single Princetonian who has made a contribution to the general welfare in the last 30 years.

Obviously the Vandy comment was ironic because Vandy looks like Wonka's factory. (except the Peabody College of Teachers area, but that is probably not meant).

Whatever. I went to San Diego State University (go Aztecs!) and was making five figures within 2 years of graduating, so...

...the weather was nice.

R57, it took you two years to bust out of the $0 - $9,999 income bracket? Go you!

I know, right, R58? And then only took another 10 yrs or so to get to six figures, so bottom line, I'm glad I chose SDSU instead of Harvard.

(Oh, I got laid off nearly a year ago and my SDSU network has been amazing for helping me... find great new hiking spots and taco shops around San Diego)

"You'd be hard pressed to find a single Princetonian who has made a contribution to the general welfare in the last 30 years." While Harvard has contributed Lloyd Blankfein (and his son, who obviously was admitted to the business school entirely on his own merits), Stephen Schwarzman, Jamie Dimon and Bill O'Reilly (really!), as well as most of the senior partners of Goldman Sachs. So on balance, I think most non-one percenters will agree that they've actually done serious net harm to the general welfare.

Does anyone need reminding that it was Goldman Sachs that did the mega-swap with Greece that triggered the country's financial disaster?

Yes, R60, I do think they need reminding, actually! Most of the reporting on the current Greek crisis is ridiculous in its assumption that this crisis happened all in a Greek bubble without any international influence.

[quote]Middlebury is for private school kids who got rejected from all the Ivies, who then they spend the rest of their lives trying to convince everyone they ever meet that Middlebury is just as good, if not better than all the Ivies, and they're SO GLAD they went there instead. I've had a nearly identical conversation with 4 separate people about Middlebury, where they went into a lengthy, unsolicited explanation. They must give them a speech to memorize at freshman orientation. Total Napoleon complex.

This is not even remotely true. "Total Napoleon complex"? Hardly. Middlebury was my first choice. I didn't even apply to any of the Ivies. I also went to a public high school, a really good one mind you, but public nonetheless so your rigid profile of the "typical Middlebury student" is far from universal. Great professors, incredible English/theater/languages/sciences/etc., stunning campus, some of the best ranked cafeteria food of any school in the country, good-looking student body, the list goes on. People who went there just happen to love it.

Where did you go to school by the way, R45?

R58 Hey! $9,000.00 was big money in 1897!

The Middlebury campus is stunningly gorgeous, and such a spectacular setting. How much does it cost to go there?

R35, R51 and R52 are correct.

If you really care about getting the best undergraduate intellectual experience you would not attend Harvard or Yale.

R64, the comprehensive fee for the 2015/16 school year at Middlebury is expected to be $61,046.

This reads as if none of you have ever beer been to a college or university, certainly not a top one. If Harvard is so horrid, try getting into it, dolls. Admissions is too polite laugh in your face, but I'm not. J.H. ~ '08

This actually reads like people who are familiar with top colleges R67. If you honestly think schools like Harvard and Yale are focused on educating undergraduates, it is you who speak as if you have never went to college. Those professors are rock stars because of their research, that is what they are there to do. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is the reality of the system.

I went to Princeton pre-med, Yale for med school, Harvard for residency, then Hopkins for fellowship. Harvard med school grads were the most arrogant and looked down on non Harvard graduates. Hopkins grads had the best bedside manners.

Maybe Osler still holds some sway at JHopkins

I don't get all the hate for elite schools. I only wish that I were smart enough and/or rich enough to have gone. I went on the college tours and all I could do is drool. Rich schools have so many resources. They attract so much brainpower. I sat at one of their classes and was blown by the quality of the discussions. The professors were not all amazing. Some are really there to do research and have no talent for teaching. But the students are there to learn. They are smart enough to make almost any discussion worth participating in. I was definitely inspired. The students with good ideas had so much support and so much access to funds ugh, I was definitely jealous. If you entered a lecture hall blind folded and had to listen to students discussions I bet you would be able to tell first tier from second tier, factory state schools to quality state schools like UVA. It's not just the name of the school; it's the talent of both staff as well as the student body.

Also - I remember leafing through Brown's course catalog (most classes can have less than 10 students) and it was a few inches thick. So many different and interesting options. How could that possibly be something you would look down on? How could you possibly sniff at having an opportunity to work/study with people at the top of the field?

I honestly don't get the hate people have for education. And snobs come from all walks of life. It's not exclusive to the top schools.

Maybe I just hit upon a group of them but Yale seems to graduate a lot of homos. I've slept with many Yale graduates.

Yale has had a reputation as the gay ivy since at least the 80s. It has a large and prominent gay population.

Princeton is the best place for an undergraduate education, Yale IS the gay Ivy with a great theater program, and Harvard is totally focused on its grad schools, where the prestige, and above all, the money, are.

Getting into Harvard is hard because everyone wants the brand name (especially in today's competition-from-kindergarden educational environment), but once you get there, it's a factory for undergrads. You'll never see the famous profs.

which one has the hotter guys?

Yale decided not to double in size like the other Ivies did because it was a concerted effort to keep focus on undergrads instead of grad schools.

I think academically it's a toss up. However, given the choice between Cambridge and New Haven, I would choose Harvard.

I went to University of Chicago(undergrad) and Duke Law followed by Wharton. I'm still thought of as a dumb frau and called a cunt at least once a week here at the DL.

It really doesn't matter much except for bragging rights at country club cocktail parties, does it? As someone said upthread, one can have a degree from SDSU and earn 6 figures within a few years if they have the right stuff. Unless your parents are either loaded or very very poor, it makes no sense to aim for the snob schools.

Is LA better than New York City?

Wheaton College in Massachusetts, Williams College in Mass., both great schools. Williams is rated #1 in the country.

Say what you will about Harvard but their men's hockey team is consistently the best looking college sports team.

How much does a year of Harvard undergrad cost right now?

I posted as Thurston Howell 3rd yesterday or earlier, and now my post is gone. This seems to happen a lot This is very frustrating. Maybe I didn't hit enter twice, which seems to be required now. Otherwise, I can't understand why this is,

People with undergrad degrees from Harvard usually need to work it into a conversation within 10 minutes of meeting someone, even when their 50. Yalies are far less annoying. I've been impressed with Yale and Harvard medical grads, but people who've come out of some of their grad programs can be pretty disappointing. I don't think you have to be particularly bright to get into or get through Harvard's School of Public Health--just money. Grad students teach a lot of undergrad courses at Harvard, just like at Ohio State (and in some fields a Big 10 School probably has better students).

The most remarkable people I've met have been graduates of U Chicago, Oberlin, or Swarthmore.

Anyone who uses something like US News rankings for any serious purpose is pretty stupid. They are easy to game and, of course, there are now so many catgeories, plus the usually outdated grad ratings

St. Andrews. My dad's Welsh and he went there. It seemed like the best place to study history.

I work in DC now, and everyone loves to rave about their elite liberal arts colleges. I've never heard of half the ones I'm supposed to be impressed by. The gorgeous campus and great cafeteria food don't make a difference 15 years later when you have the same job as someone who went to a state school.

I was a high school senior when that video came out, r87! I still like it.

Princeton's the preppiest so it kind of goes without saying that it has the best looking bunch of the three...

[quote]How much does a year of Harvard undergrad cost right now?

Have you attempted to Google this?

[quote]The gorgeous campus and great cafeteria food don't make a difference 15 years later when you have the same job as someone who went to a state school.

But I don't the same job as them. I have a better one.

I'm in DC too btw.

Do you attribute your success more to being a Mid graduate or to your own self reliance, r91?

R93, I think where you went to school can help you build up a network from which to draw when you're ascending the professional ladder. That said, I think you can get a good education pretty much anywhere if you really want to. It's up to you.

My initial response to R45 was really meant to quash this ridiculous notion that everyone at Middlebury ended up there because they couldn't get into an Ivy league school which is just not true.

What is Middlebury known for? I mean, it's not Williams.

Way, out, of, my, league. LOL!

To laugh at self is humble.

All I know is Yale makes better locks. I've never even heard of Harvard locks.

I reject the assumptions implied in the question.

Middlebury is mostly known as an excellent school for learning foreign languages, International relations and economics, writing (Breadloaf Writers Conference) and for humanities in general. It's an excellent college and part of the group of eleven "Little Ivies": Amherst, Williams, Wesleyan, Trinity (CT), Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Tufts, Connecticut College, and Hamilton.

All top universities are mostly Chinese kids now. Bunch of little cockroaches.

I think the Ivy league schools were easily the best in the country in the fifties and sixties, but as state schools started growing dramatically they started to get a breadth of programs that was sometimes larger than what the Ivies could offer. Their focus was on professional education though, and the Ivy insistence on liberal arts helped give more well-rounded people. However, in recent years the narrowing of graduate fields for Ivy graduates to corrupt sectors like Wall St, Hollywood, and Washington, and the conscious embrace of 1% arrogance has seemed to have a very corrupting influence on them which is rather disappointing.

So on the one hand their admissions have never been open to more diverse groups of people; and on the other, their output of graduates has never been less diverse in occupation and outlook, or less ethical.

For the past several years, Yale Law has outperformed its peers in a number of evaluations.

But there is a strong political component to that as Harvard is a stronghold of the National Lawyer's Guild.

With the exception of Greg Palast I have met no outstanding Chicago graduates. Their economics department is a sick joke that has had a very disastrous and evil influence on the world.

Based on my past two predecessors, I would have to say no.

R100, That kind of attitude won't work in 10 years when you have a Chinese boss. If it bothers you much, you won't come across much Asians in law schools. They go into fields that are actually useful.

Both are Oxford wannabes.

@R86 St Andrew's as in the Scottish one in the UK?? Where Kate MIddleton and Prince William went?

R95 I'm not an American and know nothing about American universities but isn't it supposed to be the place where the series "How to get away with Murder" is filmed?

Save your money! Don't go to college!!! You won't be able to get a job no matter where you go.

But still they use the name of the uni, right? R111

Brown gave me a full ride when Columbian and U of Chicago did not. Brown was great. The full ride was fabulous. Do these little distinctions matter among the, say, top 50 schools?

P.S. - here's a secret. Many of the top schools have grade inflation, and Harvard definitely does. Cornell is the only Ivy that does not.

R112 not true! If you go a proper Ivy you are set for life

Oh honey R108 Oxbridge have no money, everyone knows that......

R115 which are the improper Ivies that doom you in the life stakes?

R113----

How to Get Away with Murder is set at Middleton University. It isn't a real school.

They always do that on TV. The real colleges would probably sue if they used their name.

r115 is in for a rude awakening

R120 are you sure? Do you know any Harvard or Yale grads stacking shelves in a supermarket or working as cleaners or janitors?

Obviously if you are lazy and have a poor work ethic you get nowhere in life no matter where you go

[quote]Do you know any Harvard or Yale grads stacking shelves in a supermarket or working as cleaners or janitors?

Ivy kids usually have parents to fall back on so they don't have to sink to that level. They just move home or have parents pay the rent. It has gotten a little better now but 3-4 years ago Ivy grads were as unemployed as everyone else.

R79 you're a riot! You care what a bunch of losers and parents' basement dwellers think of you? The DL are just a sub-section of society with little influence, that's where the bitchiness comes from. When you find these bottom feeders is bc they feel bad about their situation of powerlessness so they try to crap on all those they perceive as weaker than themselves: women, ethnic minorities, transsexuals, etc...

Btw the institutions with the 'snob factor' have the resources and expose you to all sorts of intellectually interesting things which is useful in itself without adding the 'social mobility' aspect to it.

Doubtful Ivy grad unemployment ever goes as high as non-ivy grad.

With my shitty improper bottom of the Ivy degrees, I have always had jobs thrown at me when I needed one. Sometimes average jobs but there are plenty of employers who feel comfortable hiring an ivy grad even out of his wheelhouse.

but r123 you post on DL....so you are one of us.

R125 true. But a lot less on the bitchy side :)

[quote]Doubtful Ivy grad unemployment ever goes as high as non-ivy grad.

depends on the major.

I know an Asian Studies grad who works at Starbucks and a Theater major who works in a call center.

Hi. I'm the elephant in the room no one is talking about.

But I'd probably put Harvard as #2 and Yale as #3.

Yale is complicated. It's possibly the gayest school in the country, up there with NYU, Vassar and Sarah Lawrence, but W also went there as did his daughters.

I thought rich Vassar donors pushed it through several waves of de-gayification and they have gaydar in the admissions office now to keep it to quota.

Harvard is too smug and self-satisfied.

When you now read "Asian" in complaints about education, 50 years ago it was "Jewish." Brand names are important for the aspirational, and one tends to meet more of those types at Harvard than at Penn. Then, once they are there for the reason that they think it is WASP and exclusive, they want to force their cultures on it, making it less WASP (and actually less exclusive to those who know).

Judaism really isn't what was important to Alan Dershowitz. If it was, there is nice Brandeis University. But the point was colonizing Harvard and foisting the Center for Jewish Studies on the school. Now, the Asians are having their turn.

As noted above, Harvard and Yale are more about research and also, like many schools, more like hedge funds with schools attached as well as places where those so inclined can start their first businesses. Stanford is big on the latter, so maybe no longer a good choice for "life of the mind" types..

All these Ivies are the epicenter of cultural rot.

At least in theory, a cartoon written by Yale graduates would know when to quit.

Isn't Yale in a really bad neighborhood?

I remember someone from high school who had the grades for it was confused about applying because it seemed so crime infested.

(he got a full scholarship to a state school and took that instead. did ok in life and no debt so it worked out for him I guess.)

[quote] Isn't Yale in a really bad neighborhood?

When my parents lived in Connecticut, they used to call it "Jail" in a Puerto Rican accent.

Neither one of them let Asians in anymore...so who gives a fuck.

R135 yes it is. But so is Penn and so is Columbia.

If you want “pristine, idyllic college towns,” the only ivies that fit that bill are Princeton and Dartmouth. The two “conservative” Ivies (well, conservative for an Ivy League school, and even Dartmouth now has “questioning” dorms, so...the distinctions don’t exactly mean much anymore)

Stanford is now considered better than both, at least by kids and parents of kids who've been polled about their first choice. And by half the recent rankings (usually it's Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, and then sometimes Princeton. Yale has fallen down a few notches).

Better campus, better weather, less crime.

However, there's a weird anti-intellectualism at Stanford.

Does any Ivy League have quality penis?

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