@Eagle

First off congratulations on your admissions! I'm going to save you some serious slack and tell you that MIT is the better path for you. It seems that you have already researched the reasons for that. MIT has better resources/facilities hands down and is definitely going uphill rather than (Yale) downhill. And as you've mentioned, in MIT you can cross-register classes with GSD which is a great experience. Yale does not have a better program or network. Let me ask you a question: when was the last time you've heard of someone coming out from Yale versus other schools? And finally, New Haven blows big time.

@Eagle_Dept 

This idiot ^ is the most uninformed person I have encountered on this site so I suggest you speak to some real people in both schools and make an informed decision. Visit them both if you haven't already. Congratulations!

Congratulations. Both are wonderful schools.

I concur with purveyer, this guy has no idea what he is talking about. My familiarity is with Yale, so i will tell you what i can with regard to your questions.

Facilities? Paul Rudolph Hall is fantastic. You will have two desks, and after your first year you will have dual monitors at your desk. 10 laser cutters, 4 cnc mills plus a kuka arm, full metal and wood shop, wood/plastics can be purchased at cost in the shop, printers on every floor, photography room with customizable lighting, 3D and point scanners, and two computer labs. Voluminous library (though the check out policy leaves something to be desired).

The faculty is, by and large, wonderful. Contrary to what "Thom Mayne" will tell you, there are a large number of critics and professors who also teach at Columbia who still find it worthwhile to take the train up to Yale 2 or 3 days a week to teach here. This year at Yale, if you are looking for big names, you could have taken classes with David Chipperfield, Peter Eisenman, Kurt Forster, Bjarke Ingels, Alejandro Zaera Polo, Frank Gehry, Greg Lynn, Mark Gage. You could have seen all of those lecture at some point, as well as Sir Peter Cook, Ken Frampton, Francois Roche, Preston Scott Cohen, Patrick Schumacher, Michael Graves, and Marion Weiss, to name a few.

Yale is diverse, and your education can be whatever you want it to be which is what makes it so remarkable. I can't speak to MIT, but i've heard great things about it as well. Go with your gut.

@Eagle_Dept

I don't mean to be rude but there is enough information out there on both these schools including their own websites/ student blogs. Its silly to have to write a description of schools like Yale or MIT on this forum.

However MIT/ Yale are rarely compared with each other. GSD/ Yale/ Princeton are compared most often. MIT has a slightly different pedagogy as compared to any of these schools. MIT is generally considered to slightly less rigorous on the studio front as compared to the other three. They do however have a strong group of serious researchers/ academics on the faculty (people like Beinart, Goethert, Anne Spirn etc) along with a few well known practitioners.

Yale is extremely rigorous and studio-centric and has arguably the best facilities/resources of any architecture school in America. At least compared to the other 3, all of which I have visited many times. Faculty at Yale is better 'connected' that MIT. Most of them are from New York and have taught in other schools in the area. Most often Princeton or Columbia (Keller Easterling, Joel Sanders etc). Like proteus said, Yale has the advantage of having many 'important' people on their faculty. The usual starchitect suspects like Gehry, Eisenman, Chipperfield, Zaha (couple of years ago), Joshua Prince Ramus, Bjarke Ingels, Zaera Polo...the list goes on. All of them conduct advanced studios at Yale etc. Best of Luck!

Well for the record I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with MIT.

I find Yale's name and campus to be sexier (along with their student body) but ultimately saw more opportunity at MIT. Talking to students at MIT they clearly have a much higher opinion of the program than outsiders do...they generally really like it. 

Further reasoning: I already feel like I'm a good designer and can create interesting buildings in my academic projects. At Yale those skills would have been honed, but at MIT I have the ability to add completely new skills in other areas...areas I could explore if I decide to venture away from architecture.

I still have little doubt that in terms of amount of fun you have in grad school, Yale wins against any other school I looked at.

Further info on past MIT work/grads can be found here: http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7749/browse

There's still a day to change my mind but I'm 95% going with MIT

Sorry for hijacking the thread, but I was wondering if MIT tends to have a heavier focus on engineering and building technology compared to Yale? Might be a stereotype, but seems more MIT architecture students have a tech/science background than other schools.

Thanks!