do a search

Don't go to Yale... definitely NOT the better choice. But I'm not the one to say if you will regret or hate it there. I wouldn't go and yes it's going downhill...

All those questions should have been addressed prior to applying....otherwise why would you apply to place you have no clue about. What's up with you people!

@Kevin W

Haha VERY TRUE...you young kids need to stop applying to grad school blindly and take it more seriously! (I know this is not true of everyone but...)

@Rhinosucks,

Now, what I'm going to say might both hurt you and help you, so be prepared. First off let me say that sadly while the above comments are leaving you with brief answers which is YALE SUCKS, it is really true. I'm sorry. OLD.CONVENTIONAL.DYING.BORING. Yale is no good. As odd as it seems, I've heard this from both alumni, faculty, and current students there. Embrace the new with an ambitious yet realistic goal in mind. Like my team right now with Ramon, Bynum and McRoberts we will bring home the Gold.

Anyways on a tangent to what Kevin has said, all your questions could be answered easily through a search here in the forums, let alone your own personal research prior to applying! I understand you probably just want some confirmation and are lazy to look up the answers. In any case, a lot of questions you've asked like campus life, opportunities, network....NEW YORK clearly wins. With this said, though, I have to say given from what you have said, you are clearly not as serious as you should be about graduate school. You are making your decisions based on the "NAME" concerned with which name is going downhill. Your education is basically useless if you don't know which program is better for you and if you decide to go to Yale you will probably further marginalize yourself.

-KOBE

A clueless student applied to a school for clueless reason. And decided to go there for clueless things. After finishing clueless project after another, got a clueless degree. Start working for a clueless job at clueless firm. And proudly start making CLUELESS DESIGN! 

Haha. I love this enthusiasm.

@rhinosucks You'd be doing yourself a big disservice making a decision based on these ^. That being said, they're both great schools. It really depends on what you want to do. Columbia is traditionally more focused on digital methods/ parametricism etc. while Yale adopts a more pluralistic approach so you get a funny mix of everything from people like (Greg Lynn/ Mark Foster Gage who push parametrics/ fabrication etc.) to the old 'warhorses' like Eisenman and Gehry. Remember, this is a broad generalization.

Another important point to note is that Yale is a smaller school and is most often compared to Princeton due to the 'generalist' pedagogy that both schools promote. Princeton/ Penn/ Yale/ GSD/ Columbia draw from the same pool of resources and most faculty at these schools have taught at all of these schools at some point of time. For instance, Alenjandro Zaera Polo was doing a studio at Yale last year and he has now been appointed dean at Princeton (he taught there too). Marion Weiss was at Yale and is now at Penn. Bjarke Ingels of BIG visited at Columbia in 2009 (?) and did an advanced studio at Yale in 2011.                              

In terms of competitiveness, Yale is definitely more competitive to get into. There are fewer places and they hand out aid to almost all of their students. Their acceptance rates are comparable to the GSD. Princeton/ Cooper Union will be the lowest. ALL the top 4 or 5 architecture schools offer great networking opportunities and none is 'better' than the other in this respect. Same with jobs. A quick linkedin search will show you that the 'best' East Coast firms hire from top schools in the NYC/ Greater New York/ Boston area.

What I'm trying to get at is that it depends on YOU and your academic goals. If there is someone specific that you want to study with? If there is a particular aspect that draws you? etc. 

Also, for a more balanced and informed viewpoint, check out this thread from last year. http://archinect.com/forum/thread/2545885/harvard-s-gsd-vs-yale

@ rhinosucks 

Both Yale and Columbia are great schools, you won't make it wrong if you decided to go either.

@ sg 18

I don't think Yale is more diverse than gsapp, instead, I think Yale is pretty stiff and sole. Yale do have some parametric faculties like Greg, Foster and Gehry, but the school itself doesn't really explore the theory besides use digital as a fancy tool. In my mind, Yale is conservative in teaching architecture. The entire school still treats building as their soul, but regardless the advanced theory like urbanisation, urban design, landscape, sustainability, social network, etc. (The school only have M.Arch and MED program). From Robert Stern's letter on their website, he and the school do against the new technologies and their ideologies still remains in 20 centuries modern architecture period. In my mind, this  school will be marginalized pretty soon. 

On the other hand, GSAPP is more like a research and experimental institute. They always think years foreword the current practice and experiment the new theories for the next decades. Their Studio X network and rich laboratories resources are the evidence. 

To sum up, Yale will make you be good at make domestic buildings and work for local traditional firms. Columbia will make you more international and futuristic, you will be good at work anywhere and teaching.   

Or in short, Yale sucks.

@archiecowboy

You're from CED right? What's your name?

@ Thom

Berkley CED? no... why? lol

@cowboy

Why you lying? Clearly you wrote your stats elsewhere....Anyways I ask because I think my friend was your GSI once.

@ Thom

haha keep it private. where are you heading to?

To sum up, Yale will make you be good at make domestic buildings and work for local traditional firms. Columbia will make you more international and futuristic, you will be good at work anywhere and teaching.   

You literally have no idea what you are talking about.

Haha, this is ridiculous.

@archicowboy you need to educate yourself a little. I'll help you out.

1. Michael J. Crosbie compiled a fairly representative list of important young firms working in New York in his book, 'New York Dozen: Gen X Architects'. Look it up here.

2. Andrew Bernheimer wrote this piece as a rebuttal to Ourousoff who contended in a 2009 article that the architectural scene in New York had become stale compared to the West Coast. Bernheimer mentioned some of the people that Crosbie has also included in his book.

Now, do everyone a favor, look up this list and find out how many of them are from Yale (and Columbia for that matter).  Once you've done that, find out how many of these people are currently on the faculty at Yale. Please be thorough.

To sum up, Yale will make you be good at make domestic buildings and work for local traditional firms. Right, just like Lise Ann Couture, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster (who, by the way does not teach there and is by no stretch, "a parametric faculty".)

@ purveyor

what are you trying to say? i am pretty confused by your link, can you just post those date here?

i beat you are a current yale student right? 

Anyway, Yale sucks. No one wants to live in the ghetto and study with anti-social hipster. Everyone knows Yale is the back-up plan for Harvard rejecter (not only architecture but in all aspects). Columbia, at least their students are rich enough to open their own firms and hire those Yale losers. So Yale losers, please stop displeasing your future boss :)

@purveyor

Stop trying to justify an already dying, if not dead, school. You are obviously outnumbered on this opinion and probably a GSD reject; bitter about the fact that you chose a limited school that will not help you with your future. I'm trying to remember the last time I met/heard of a faculty member, student, or even architect for that matter from Yale...NEVER...Now go back to your classroom and put together your basswood model and eisenman diagram drawn by pencil, thinking you are so architectural.

@archicowboy

I already finished M.Arch...Working now... good luck on your decision

Haha. What a bunch of juvenile idiots. 

Also, @Thom Mayne is Steve Jobs, You need to get out more.

You too @ purveyor, a marginalized Yale loser. Hopeful you can make enough money to live in the NYC one day, my dear bumpkin . 

You know whats funny? I'm not even in Yale. Wonderful arguments though. Hope you get to go to college someday. 

Now go back to your classroom and put together your basswood model and eisenman diagram drawn by pencil, thinking you are so architectural.

God forbid a contemporary architecture program consider embracing purposeful design through drawing and modeling, when everyone knows that at the BEST schools REAL students choose to spend their time 3d scanning hot, amorphous blobs of their own feces, so they can render them, drop in a silhouette of the corpse of Bernard Tschumi rolling over in his grave and call it avante garde architecture. Thank you for clearing this up for all of us.

I'm trying to remember the last time I met/heard of a faculty member, student, or even architect for that matter from Yale...NEVER

@ Thom Ma....../ Bu(r)gerking,  Like I said, pick up a book once in a while. And just because you said it, I can't help but point you towards some architects from Yale. Sure they might not pass your 'Architect-o-meter', but who cares. Next time, you'll remember.

Weiss Manfredi/  Leven Betts Studio/ Studio WXY/ Patricia Patkau/  MAD Architects/ Studio In Formation/ Leroy Street Collective/ Mark Foster Gage/ PORT Architects/ Gray Organschi/ Craig Hodgetts/ EOA/ Maya Lin/ Norman Foster/ Richard Rogers.

Faculty - Hilary Sample (MOS), Alejandro Zaera Polo (FOA), Keller Easterling, Peter Eisenmen (oh no!), Greg Lynn (but how can this be?!) Tod Williams, Frank Gehry, Bjarke Ingels to name a few.

Again, lest you to suspect me of being a marginalized Yale student, I'm not. I just use the internet for reasons other than trolling and happen to know a little bit about architecture in the New York Area.

this tread is getting too funny..

@purveyor

like a little child, you are judging the schools based on the "reputation" and "fame" of ( btw very old) alumni, alumni's firms and of professors and/or visiting professor... that, by the way, tell me, how many times you'll see per year? or if they are listed as studio professors, how many time will they attend to your cirtts and revisions?!

Let's be a little serious, are the NAMES making a school a good school of architecture?

Do we really want to diminush architecture to names and firms, and let's say it, marketing??! this is the real problem. And it seems, that the new blood is not interested in changing this.

@proteus

pathetic

@ casafelice

You're telling me! Its ridiculous.

I didn't set those criteria. I was just responding to 'Thom Maynes is....s' inane ill-informed juvenile comment. It really is stupid to sit here and troll schools like these idiots do. BTW, just so you know, almost all of these 'NAMES' are regular faculty. Some of them conduct advanced studios each semester. Like any other half-decent school of architecture. 

Also, I have to take you up on this. Old you say? Most of them are quite young by architectural standards! 

Just to be clear, Proteus is 'pathetic' and the others are not? Haha. I love your objectivity. Especially after you lament about the lack of objectivity! 

I'm beginning to think Purveyor and Proteus is the same troll living behind his computer posting sad "I love Yale" notes all day long.

Just to be clear, Proteus is 'pathetic' and the others are not?

i repeat, pathetic, and i add, infantile. Is it all a matter of "who started what?" Is it??!

very very childish. And thinking that these are treads read and joined by supposed and potential graduate architecture students..

And thinking that these are treads read and joined by supposed and potential graduate architecture students

To think that some of the respondents to these threads are actual graduate students? Even more scary.

@cooper klein, Sorry. Not the same person. Whats more? I don't go to either of these schools.

"Like a little child...."

How fortunate that we should stumble upon someone with the requisite level of self-righteousness necessary to teach those of us who dare suggest that Yale is anything but a rotting cesspool of old men and old ideas when held up to the mighty standard of a place like Columbia. Such infantile trolls are we! Thank you for teaching me the importance of knowing my place.

To rhinosucks, should you still be checking this: The fact of the matter is that both are very good schools, though neither is what it once was. I have a number of friends at Columbia who seem quite content and are doing interesting work. One of them, however, is an international student who decided to attend the school despite the fact that he will be saddled with $300k in debt by the time he finishes. Fortunately for him his parents are footing the bill. Not all of us are so lucky. I would argue that ANY school that tries to squeeze you for that much money is not worth it. Maybe money is not an issue for you. If it is, you should have a conversation with their financial aid department if you haven't already.

Yale is also expensive, but they are surprisingly generous with aid. I don't think there is any question that the facilities at Yale are better than those at Columbia, and its not even close. When it comes to faculty, that is a really personal decision. Research the faculty. Look at their work. Also, be aware that you will likely learn as much from your fellow students as you will from your professors. Studio dynamics are important. Its a shame you couldn't get to any of the open houses.

In closing, ignore the BS you find on these boards, which i have willingly participated in. No one will make this decision for you.

 

@archicowboy, Yale does have a Ph.D. program in addition to the M.Arch. and M.E.D.

Can any of you people bashing Yale tell me why it's going downhill? I see adjectives like old, conventional, and boring, but nothing to qualify those terms so I can judge for myself. Ok, so it's old, conventional, and boring. What makes it so? The faculty? The students? To be honest, I don't see much of a difference between the Ivies in terms of faculty. It seems like the big names rotate through the schools enough so that everyone has taught everywhere, at least as visiting professors. Pedagogy and class dynamic are where they seem to differ more. Any thoughts?

Wow, what a crazy thread. I really don't know where all this random animosity/ resentment comes from.

@joker

Here's my two bits worth. You're right. And its not just the big names, many of the studio professors/ instructors have taught at 2 or more ivies at some point of time. Class dynamics is where things get interesting. The GSD and Columbia are much larger (in terms of number of students) than Princeton and Yale. They have more departments and offer more programmes. Princeton is decidedly the smallest. Yale is slightly larger. Therefore it can said that the GSD offers possibly the greatest exposure to various related disciplines. Even more so now after the reconfiguration of its landscape department which has now sort of become its new flagship. IMO, Princeton and Yale are similar in terms of pedagogy. Historically, both have had a combination of modernists and post modernists closely associated with the schools. Michael Graves/ Geddes at Princeton and Scully/ Stirling/ Rudolph at Yale. Even now, both schools embrace a sort of pluralism and refuse to 'endorse' any particular ideology or style. Both of them promote a broad based inter-disciplinarism and regularly offer studios which work at the intersection of architecture/ urbanism/ landscape. Stan Allen/ Diller/ Dan Wood at Princeton and Joel Sanders/ Diana Balmori etc. at Yale. I have seen student work from both places and I have to say that they are in some aspects quite similar. They seem contemplative and theory-rich and can be difficult to grasp. You can see hints of Cooper Union influences at both places.Possibly due to presence of Diller at Princeton and Eisenman at Yale. 

I think Princeton has benefited hugely from the outgoing dean Stan Allen who put the school prominently back on the map. Princeton is also more avant garde and 'young' thanks to prominent younger people like Dan Wood, Amale Andraos, Philippe Rahm etc. Interestingly, Keller Easterling, a professor at Yale was one of people who was in the search committee's shortlist for the position of dean. (AZP has been chosen).

Yale too has benefited from its current dean Bob Stern although in ways different from Princeton. Stern has managed to secure massive funding and has overseen a number of infrastructure upgradation projects including the complete refurbishment of Rudolph Hall. Furthermore, being an influential commercial New York architect, he has tremendous 'pull' and has consistently managed to get a wide cross section of important people like Bjarke Ingels, Joshua Prince-Ramus, Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Gehry, Hadid etc.  to conduct semester studios. He also seems to aggressively promote a sense of diversity which would explain people like Greg Lynn/ Hernan Diaz Alonso teaching alongside people like Eisenman and Krier. 

That being said, Yale definitely feels more dated. Although, I would argue that far from going downhill, its actually a regained lot of the prestige and reputation it lost in the late 80s. Although I hate ranking systems, DI has put Yale at number 2 (behind the GSD of course) consistently over the last few years. Princeton strangely languishes at number 12 or something where it should be right up there with Harvard and Yale.

Again, this is from interaction and observation. Its best to ask current students.

Also, I got a few of these names from a post in the Yale/MIT thread so I can't vouch for their accuracy. Check the school websites.

That came out wrong. I meant check the current status of their positions at these schools.

What an interesting post. @sg18 What do you think of Columbia compared to Yale? 

@lhc830green

I don't know if they can be compared. Columbia has always been the most experimental of the ivies. It has produced quite a few interesting practitioners in the last decade many of whom have become prominent architects in New York City. However, they have a clear and distinct pedagogy that aligns itself with the relentless exploration of digital methods/ parametrics by incorporating it into their curriculum in a more theoretical manner than any other East coast school. (Penn is trying something similar)  

Yale is definitely more staid and 'old fashioned'. Its also harder to generalize because of the variety of people that teach there. However, IMO Yale is more 'prestigious' and from my experience, harder to get into. It also seems like the sort of school that makes it easier for most of its graduates to get jobs in top firms. When I was applying I looked at what recent graduates were doing and I was quite surprised with the kind of diversity I saw. From people like Chris Marcinkoski/ Andrew Modrell of PORT (who now teach landscape at Penn) to Ma Yansong who runs the bombastic Chinese firm MAD.

But like I said, difficult to compare the two. Both are great. In their own ways.