Reply to How to pick between Columbia, Cornell or Princeton?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DS recently graduated from Princeton. One of his main gripes was that he wanted to get to know other college students besides those at his school and he wished that he would've went to Penn instead. So keep in mind that Cornell and Princeton are kind of in their own island so to speak. He did visit NYC often as it's a train ride away, but it's not the same as knowing kids in a closer area. He liked Cornell also, but it's a bit more rural than he was looking for[/quote]

I'm not sure why your son thinks he would have met kids from other colleges if he'd gone to Penn instead. Most kids at most colleges stick to themselves and Penn is no different. It's also a bigger school. They're not hanging out with Drexel or Temple students. [/quote]
Not sure about Philly but my kid’s in Boston and he had friends from lots of different schools. [/quote]

That wasn’t really my experience.  I had some high school friends at other schools in Boston and would occasionally get together with them and their friends, but otherwise I mostly hung out with folks from my own school.  Once in a blue moon there would be someone from elsewhere at a party, but it wasn’t wildly common.[/quote]
Everyone has different experiences.[/quote]

I'm sure they do. But as someone who went to two Ivies (undergrad, and a resident adviser while grad student at another) I probably have a pretty good understanding of how common it is for students to hang out with students from other universities in the same vicinity. And that it is not common at all. It does happen but it is not common.

First of all, how exactly would you meet students from other colleges to develop friendships where you saw each other on a regular basis? You might get a friend of a friend who comes to visit you for a day or a weekend. But rarely are you going to parties or activities at other campuses. Why would you when there's enough stuff going on at your own campus. Most Ivies are residential with most students living on campus or very close by, it's a bubble unto itself. And there's the pedigree factor too, insomuch as one would like to pretend it doesn't exist - Penn students did not consider Drexel or Temple students "equivalents." Between the heavy workload, the gravity towards your own campus factor, your own set of friends on campus, and the pedigree aspect, there's little incentive to look further afield. [/quote]

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