On "Gilmore Girls," Rory Gilmore's dream college before choosing Yale was Harvard University.
Rory talks about Harvard from the beginning of the series, viewing it as the ideal destination for her academic ambitions and future journalism career. Her goal helps explain why attending Chilton matters so much: the demanding private school is presented as a route toward elite universities.
Rory is eventually accepted by both Harvard and Yale. She chooses Yale instead after weighing the schools, with Yale's academic strengths, closer connection to her family history, and her grandfather Richard's alumni ties all influencing the decision. The choice surprises some characters because Harvard had been Rory's lifelong dream.
The answer is sometimes confused with Princeton or Brown because Rory's world includes several prestigious Ivy League schools, and her classmates also discuss elite-college ambitions. Stanford is another distractor, but it is not an Ivy League university. Rory ultimately studies English at Yale and works for the Yale Daily News while pursuing journalism.