What do Yale students think of New Haven as a city? originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.
Answer by Sabrina Ali, Studied at Yale University, on Quora:
I went to Yale from 2007–2011 and I really liked living in New Haven. For context, I grew up in New York City and I love cities generally, so if you’re optimizing for a college town that is clean / suburban / quiet, my perspective might not resonate with you.
Here are some reasons that New Haven is a great college town:
- Feels like a city – this was a huge positive for me. The area around Yale is pretty dense, there are a lot of restaurants / stores / things going on, and the architecture is urban. New Haven never feels desolate, isolated, or too quiet. It’s also possible to leave the Yale campus and not be in the middle of nowhere, which is certainly not true for a lot of other colleges.
- Not too big, not too small — As much as I love New York, I’m glad I didn’t go to college in a huge city. Most colleges I’ve been to in big cities don’t have as much of a campus “feel,” and it’s hard to find anyone. New Haven is small enough that Yale’s campus is the center of life for students and there’s not too much incentive for students to disperse out into the city. Yale also goes to great lengths to provide everything students would want / need (food, activities etc.) so there’s not a lot of reason to leave campus. However, New Haven is urban enough to provide tons of great options if you do want to leave campus – this is particularly true for good, cheap food, and any amenities you might want to buy.
- You definitely don’t need a car – I live in the Bay Area now, and New Haven blows the Bay Area away in this regard – you don’t need a car in New Haven because basically anywhere you’d want to go is within walking distance. Metro North (the train) is also very accessible if you want to get to NYC. Contrast this with the Bay Area, where everything is very spread out and not having a car can be difficult.
- Close enough to a lot of cities and locations you might want to go on the East Coast – Yale is not too far from New York, Boston, Philadelphia, etc. It’s still a couple / few hours’ commute away from these places, but my point is that if you’re involved in an extracurricular that involves traveling to other colleges (as I was) or have friends at other schools you want to visit on the weekends, Yale is pretty conveniently located. This feels very different from, say, Cornell, which feel very isolated for obvious reasons.
When most people talk about the negatives of New Haven, they talk about crime. I never felt that New Haven was less safe than New York City, but then again I always lived on campus and mainly went off campus within New Haven for food reasons (i.e. with groups of people, not too far or late at night, etc.). Muggings certainly do happen in New Haven, but I think different people will just weigh this differently in their minds: if you’re generally nervous in urban environments (I know many people who feel this way), you might prefer a more enclosed college outside of a city. The risk of mugging / crime honestly didn’t scare me that much.
More generally, many of people who make fun of New Haven haven’t spent a lot of time there or are just stereotyping / have a certain image in their mind (I believe there is sometimes a racial / racist component to this but that’s a longer and different discussion). If you’re considering Yale and are worried about New Haven, you should definitely talk to current students and visit Yale before you let it tip your decision.
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