I guess it's time for me to weigh in seeing how it is getting closer and closer to the time where we all will be making these decisions and I Seem to have found myself in a very similar place as the original poster...being that I have interviews and both cranbrook and yale while I'm still waiting notification from my third school, mica.
I applied to these school for in large part the same reason, an experimental, critical, and theoritical approach to the way design functions both as an industry and practice, meaning I didn't want to go to school to learn how to design a for sake of example a stop sign, rather Im interested in how the sign functions out in the wild, how can it be pushed past its present understanding in order to better serve its purpose in the cultural that its functioning in now rather than the one it is designed in. This question can then be used to also question the formal aspects of the object(which undoubtedly effects the function). I wasnt really able to find this sort of questioning and skeptiscm in anyother graduate programs
Now I am interviewing at cranbrook this Friday and I really, though I have done as much research as time allowed, have no idea exactly how the school functions and this sort of thing that entices me, but also sort of pushes yale ahead, and this may change after my visit tomorrow, who knows, but both programs from the outside seem very intelligent and offer what ever they can to push there student and the field alike.
(Tearing done my bfa show right now more in a bit...)