Harvard vs Princeton for undergrad

Habibi come to Princeton. Seriously they got rid of grade deflation officially a few years ago and it only really persists in a select few departments; definitely not Econ. Academics may be slightly harder than Harvard/Yale but it’s very manageable and makes you a smarter person without pushing you to unreasonable limits. There’s more finance interest at Harvard, so it’s a bit less competitive here, which can be nice. People still treat Princeton with a lot of weight. Case in point, I landed two BB/EB first rounds without networking (non diverse).

Also curious what do you think the top finance club at Princeton is?

Harvard.

Yale guy at a BB with friends from both H&P, so pretty unbiased but understand the difference between these schools recruiting wise. If there’s any chance you will do anything internationally ever in your career, go to Harvard and never look back. Boston is also fucking awesome, and you can get cool internships in VC/PE during the year/over summer easier. Also, being in TCM doesn’t really mean all that much. Clubs help you find competition, understand timelines, and find mentorship. However, if you’re on this site asking this question, you’ll be able to do that on your own once you find your group of fellow hardos. You’ll still wanna figure out your unique niche on campus to stand out anyways. Lastly, Harvard is just a lot more fun than Y or P. You’ll be happier there and meet more people since boston is the worlds biggest college town.

Great problem to have!

Damn you're the envy of so many people. I would pick harvard just because its harvard lol but you literally can't go wrong

if you're at a high target then you don't need to be on the top clubs

I am very biased as a Princeton alum but please do yourself a favor and go to Princeton. You'll have more fun. You'll be a part of an alumni base that will run through walls for the university and goes out of its way to help other alums. Nobody I know who went to Harvard would ever lift a finger for another Harvard alum just because they also went to Harvard. You can always go to HBS later on if you still want to get a Harvard degree but you almost certainly aren't going to Princeton for grad school.

Congrats on your acceptances to Princeton and Harvard! Both offer unique advantages. Princeton seems to have strong networking opportunities, while Harvard offers grade inflation and broader connections. Go where you feel you'll thrive academically and personally.

Can’t go wrong, visit both and see which you prefer. Congrats 

Princeton alum here, so I'll give my perspective and hopefully some Harvard alums can comment on whether grass is greener on the other side. 

Both are great schools, and the experience will heavily depend on what you make of it. From a general outsider perspective, I would imagine the "Harvard" name might bear more weight as the first "best" school most people think of. Whether or not more specialized financial circles cater to Princeton or if our primary claim to fame is "#1 according to USNews" is for you to decide. My assumption (given limited in-depth knowledge of Harvard) is that Princeton's smaller campus population and residential colleges make it easier to get to know fellow undergrads (since grad students are cordoned off to a distant corner outside of main campus beyond the golf course). The scale of most clubs/events are far smaller than Harvard as a result though, but you likely have a greater stake/involvement in more tightknit/personal interactions (i.e. Unilever CEO did an event and it was a small discussion with maybe 20-30 attendees, vs Harvard would likely fill an entire auditorium with hundreds/a thousand participants). 

Academically, Princeton will likely be tougher than Harvard due to lingering remnants of grade deflation, but academic difficulty is largely driven by self-selection. The official deflation policy has been dead for a while now, but some profs stick to old habits and tend to curve things poorly and "naturally" end up with only 30-40% of students getting A's. I once walked into a Philosophy class where Prof openly stated that "A" papers are ones that he is impressed with, and that he's "not easily impressed". I immediately walked out and registered for something else. If you talk with upperclassmen/read course reviews, you can identify which classes are easy or worthwhile, and which ones you should avoid. If you don't want excessively rigorous classes that kill your GPA, you can generally work around it without too much issue, so I wouldn't make academics a primary consideration of which school to attend. Maybe look towards more specific programs (like Princeton Econ vs ORFE and potential certificates like Entrepreneurship given there is no double-major option, vs what majors/double majors or minor combinations are available at Harvard). 

Not even sure which finance club can be considered the "best" anymore, but most tend to be far smaller/cliquier than you might expect (most tend towards maybe 15-20 people at most, with only a few megaclubs at the 50-100+ member mark). You won't get large institutionalized pathways to banking at most, and its more about personal referrals and knowing upperclassmen who already have internships/jobs at banks by the time you apply for SA. While not explicitly finance, BusinessToday holds the biggest "prestige" events and has lots of high finance alums so you might find better luck there. At least when I was on campus years back, Tiger Investments was somewhat dead/inactive or primarily held events within their in-group, TCM was on incline (known for their social scene as a pseudo-frat), and PCFC was a fallen titan that was slowly rebuilding. Things tend to shift a lot over the years, so you should focus more on knowing specific alums or clubs that have tight-knit bank affiliations. Sad to say some groups I knew were known for their Deutsche/CS/Barclays affiliations, which might not have aged too well nowadays. However you'll always still see plenty of GS/JPM (maybe to a slightly lesser extent MS) opportunities too depending on the people you get to know.

In terms of clubs, Princeton honestly focuses more on your eating club affiliation over your regular clubs (which are largely considered feeders into a particular club). Harvard also has its exclusivity in finals clubs, but my impression is that Princeton makes eating clubs more of a core aspect of campus life for a majority of students. In contrast, Princeton's equivalent to Harvard's finals club equivalents are its low-key frat culture (especially after successive waves of crackdowns) which only a select few are a part of and many might not even know about. Of course sororities are widely public and accepted though, but there have been years where frat affiliation merits disciplinary action. Bicker (audition for eating club) can be rather brutal and it's best to go where you feel most welcome/accepted naturally rather than attempting to force yourself into circles where you don't feel welcome solely for clout/connections. I had friends who went into Ivy/Cottage but left after a year due to really not enjoying the holistic club environment even if they liked individual people within them.

Lastly, look towards recruiting stats and see how things are going nowadays. In my day, I didn't hear a lot about placements to most boutiques which don't do on-campus recruitment. Think there might've been an occasional Greenhill/Evercore, but the likes of Lazard etc never took anyone as far as I know. Ultimately it is primarily connection based, and the ones who held more events on campus (GS, BoA, Citi, Barclays, DB) gave more opportunities, whereas UBS had 0 presence. Some definitely had more slots than others (such as Barclays having a program which skipped super-day and went straight to offer following final round on-campus, and DB spending a lot of time on-campus), but things have definitely changed since then so YMMV. Maybe you'll score the elusive singular spot for Bain Capital or a rare Apollo/Bridgewater opportunity since they do hold on-campus interviews. There's always strong MBB recruitment on campus as well in case that's also of interest in case IBD doesn't work out (and also some banking rejects who have some compsci/quant background go for big-tech product management as well).