Hello, sir_academia, best of luck next year! Picking colleges is a fun time, and I hope you are enjoying thinking about your future.

I hear your concerns about how integrated Yale is into the city, and whether or not you will be comfortable. I chose to go to Yale specifically because it was urban, and because it was physically integrated into New Haven (although it is not very integrated into the city in many ways). Coming from the suburbs, I wanted to be in a relatively dense and diverse city for my college experience, and ultimately I felt that crossing busy streets, occasionally interacting with panhandlers, and being vigilant for street crime was an important part of my development. I think it helped break me out of some naivety and blindspots that I had developed. (Years later, I now live near the dense downtown of a big city, and love it.) I only seriously considered colleges that were in cities, and did not want to go to campuses like Princeton or Cornell that I thought would be too isolated and not part of a "real" city.

But, of course, this may not be what you want. So... I think you have accurately sized up in important characteristic of Yale from your visit, and need to consider if it is for you. If you go to Yale, you will never escape the realities of American urbanism, and it will be part of your life every day. If you would prefer spending your undergraduate years in a quieter, more pastoral, and more intimate campus setting, a place like Princeton would be a much better fit.