(Disclosure: I am a current yale student)

Resources:

Currently Yale but the others can't be far behind...three 3 axis mills, 6 axis robotic mill, plastic printer, plaster printer, 4 laser cutters, hot wire foam cutter....go look at the website...

Dialogue: at this point it's a coin flip, it will all depend on who you want to be dialoging with

Sustainability: I would say Yale with the growing influence of the school of forestry partnership, there is a new endowment for a professor next year who will teach in both programs, also working with the guys from Atelier Ten in the systems class, as well as the classes that Jim Axley teaches.

Commitment to social, economic, ecological: Harvard is addressing this on the global scale most effectively. At yale you can find a professor or two (Mario Gooden...another name isn't coming to mind) who are interested in the but for the most part there is a wide ranging discourse that all falls with the insular umbrella of architecture for architectures sake. (In this aspect I have been dissapointed)

Post Grad Opportunities: again its a coin toss, any of these schools with open up a bunch of opportunities

Overall good time: this will completely depend on who your classmates are and there is no way of knowing that until you meet some of them. At all of the schools you will get pissed off at the administration but your social well being hangs on the interrelationship of the student body.

Class social dynamic history at yale (grossly generalized):

class of 2006: average
class of 2007: terrible
class of 2008: great
class of 2009: average
class of 2010: great

as a member of YSOA's class of 07 - the one with the "terrible" social dynamic - i can say that my classmates were by far the best thing i got out of the program.

I've been known to knock ivies and schools like them alot for the simple fact that you have to pay so much to attened only to enter into a profession that seems partly defined by poor compensation, but the basic fact of the matter is that the Ivies and schools like them attract a caliber of student that is typically extremely passionate and knowledgeable. I was hugely impressed by the people I met who attended Harvard, Columbia and MIT. I would imagine the best thing about getting an M.Arch from those schools is your fellow students.

I'm 'average'.

Hi Gaby!

Oh, Fred. You're nothing of the sort.

They're all great. Depends on what you want to do with yourself.

robust 84: in your opinion, what are the differences in what the grads from each of these schools want to do, or end up doing? i think that would help answer part of the original question.

i'm curious, i'm not trying to call you out.

Well... I could say lots but I'm not sure exactly what you want to know and I only have a few minutes right now so here's my basic impression:

1) I don't know too many MIT grads...

2) Harvard students are very, very skilled when they're done. The only drawback I think is that they seem too indoctrinated in Harvard's neo-modernist ways, they all generally had a socially un-stellar past 3.5 years, and many go on to very corporatey (rather than avante-garde) jobs.

3) Yale students are also very good. They are perhaps not quite as thoroughly skilled at Harvard students (Yale's stance seems to be idea-diversity rather than focus) but they have an ambition and drive that they've learned over the past three years by navigating all of the diverse faculty at resources at their school that I think benefits them greatly. They also have more contacts in New York than the Harvard students because they are closer.

Hey ... I'm also YSOA '07 .... Funny, because I was in the sculpture building last night hanging out with some of your classmates. Not so "terrible", huh?

Gaby, Fred ... hey there.

Gaby ... you'll be hearing from me on Tuesday :)

I hear Yale students build a lot more models (especially study models) than Harvard students.

I guess that can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your perspective.

It really depends on which emblem on your diploma you want to stare at the most while you're at work detailing the double-sealant and baker rod in between EIFS panels for the next Hilton Garden Inn...

Not exactly on topic, but if anyone heading to MIT or the GSD is looking for an apartment I'm vacating a nice 2 bedroom about midway between the two schools starting June 1. Contact me if you are interested.

Also, on topic, my experience at the GSD has been that there is no shortage of study models.

Resources - ditto on the above description of our fabrication. We also have a lot of fabulous libraries! MIT and GSD seem to have a lot of overlap and they too have fabulous libraries. I suppose Boston probably has more general in-town resources. But Yale is closer to NYC.

Dialogue (theoretical/practical) - Uh, is it going to be particularly terrible at any of these schools? I get to talk about the stuff I want to talk about. You find a way.

Relevant Discussion of the place in Sustainability in Design - ditto above.

Commitment to design which addresses social, economic, ecological disparities - I don't know if there is any school which institutionally, as a whole, has a commitment to these issues (bringing them outside of discourse and contending with these disparities concretely) that fully satisfies me. Certainly not Yale, Harvard, or MIT. Then again, I am pretty politically/experientially different from most people at any school I've ever attended. The Building Project has a lot of class issues, but at least they come up.

Post Grad Opportunities - You are going to end up impoverished, embittered, and ashamed after graduating from any of these schools. You have no future. You are going to MIT, GSD, or Yale. Laaaaaaaaaaame. Shame on you. Especially if you believe this. It will come true. Trust me.

And an overall good time. - I am having a GREAT time at Yale. After visiting all of my potential schools, it felt the most right, intuitively, and I feel like I made the right decision. Today, I spoke with a student who attended the open house here last week, and that person got the same feeling from a different school. So, obviously, they are (and should) attending the other school, where they will do just fine and be happier. Different schools work for different people; if you have any gut instinct, trust it!!!

There are quite a few people I absolutely adore in the each class mentioned above, including the ones commenting in this thread... though perhaps less so the ones that don't give me a call when they're in town :P I think part of what makes my class so notoriously great ("The Happy Class") is the fact that so many of us considered Yale our top choice, and are very excited to be here, and don't want to be anywhere else.

'Notoriously Great' is a noble apellation. So is 'Happy Class'.

I thought my class was pretty great, but then I thought Gaby and Enrique's class was pretty great, too.

namby's right, it's totally a vibe thing, either you're feeling it, or not.

On the social/economic/environmental justice tip, yes, more people should be talking about these things, the issues aren't just moral, they're interesting. It's something that I think people could make happen from the bottom up anywhere.

At Yale I did see, in the course of three years, huge chunks of the pedagogy get shifted around, scrapped, and built from scratch, all on student feedback and initiation. So make it happen.

:P indeed ..... I was too busy with symposium stuff. I'm back in May, tho. :)

Yale is the avant-garde program. The others are the equivalent of a Cincinnati High School.

uhhh....or, anon, they're all really good. you just gotta visit and see what feels right.