<p>what! why would we agree to such a ridiculous thing?</p>
<p>I am allowed to talk about her. I am her mother. You are not. You are not related to her. </p>
<p>And no, actually that was one of her concerns about Harvard. To preempt your next post, she applied EA to Harvard because she was advised it was her safest bet. True story.</p>
<p>Now does P-ton have a quality physics program? I'm awfully new to the whole college search thing as I'm a junior this year so...</p>
<p>"Yea, these are undergraduate school rankings. Therefore, first cut out every mention of medicine, business,or law"</p>
<p>Penn and MIT both have undergraduate business schools, so why not mention them when they are, according to US News, the #1 and #2 best overall business schools in the country?</p>
<p>As for Penn being above Stanford and tied with Duke...Stanford screwed it up for themselves when they bashed the US News, so blame the administration :) ... Then again, both Duke and UPenn are amazing schools, so I still do not see why it's such a bad thing to be in the top 5.</p>
<p>hardheadedchild - That is true. I was merely pointing out that he should only consider the undergraduate education of the school, rather than take into account the accomplishments/prestige of a school's grad programs.</p>
<p>Ouch, Byerly, that one was a little ad hominem for my tastes.</p>
<p>As for dance at Princeton, it's irrelevant to the real task of ranking the undergraduate academics, which Stanford excels at far, far more than the rankings indicate. </p>
<p>Stanford deserves the #2 spot.</p>
<p>mea-okay, I understand your logic.</p>
<p>zephyr - my dad was a professor at Stanford for his entire career. We know the place extremely well. I think USNews underrates Stanford, but for undergraduate education I think HYP are most likely a little bit better. But the difference between the top five or six is so infantesimal it really doesn't matter. HYPSMC - each one is approximately equivalent in student population and quality of education. So that means the institutions sort themselves out by organizational culture. If you want to be in CA in the sun, gotta go to Stanford. If you want to be in the city, gotta go to Harvard or Yale. If you want to do technical stuff more than anything in the world, gotta go to MIT or Caltech. If you want to be in the green suburbs of the Mid-Atlantic, gotta go to Princeton.</p>
<p>While geography might seem simple, if you consider it, location really does set the first pillar of school culture.</p>
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<p>How so, exactly? Stanford's sciences and engineering departments are far better than HYP's, and the humanities are about the same. The student body is more laid-back and Stanford also has more school spirit. Harvard is criticized for neglecting their undergrads. What exactly, besides the Ivy-reputation, makes HYP completely better than Stanford (I'm not trying to argue; I'm just curious)?</p>
<p>Are you so sure that Stanford's science programs are better across the board? Sounds presumptious to me, considering that Princeton's physics department is world-renowned. I will concede that Stanford does have slightly better engineering, but the difference is negligible. Harvard and Princeton offer superior humanities, and often times better financial aid packages. All in all though, Stanford is an incredible choice. Why do you make the generalization that stanford students are more laidback?</p>
<p>It's my assessment from having visited classes, heard professors talking, and from what my father has said over the years. No statistics, just an assessment. I suppose to be perfectly honest he has never said anything about Yale, so strike Yale. As for the school spirit, well some people like all that band dressed in funny outfits and the grreat basketball games, and some people don't. I don't count those things as education but as school culture.</p>
<p>And remember I said Undergraduate. I have every hope that Aludaughter will do grad work at Stanford:). Finally, I really mean that the difference between these places in terms of quality is infantesimal. That means really really really small to the point of hardly mattering:).</p>
<p>Across the board, I'm positive that Stanford's sciences and engineering departments are wholeheartedly better than HYP's. Yes, HYP excel at certain departments (Harvard's bio program is great, as is Princeton's physics) but generally across the board, Stanford is the top choice among HYPS for potential science/engineering majors. As for the student body, I wasn't making my own impulsive generalization. It's been stated many times by numerous people (even some adcoms) that Stanford's student body is generally seen to be more laid-back and less competitive than their East-coast counterparts. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's better; maybe HYP students are more driven. That's just what I heard from numerous sources, including some college guidebooks.</p>
<p>ForeverZero: Engineers might choose Stanford over HYP for college, but the majority of potential science majors still choose HYP over Stanford. I simply do not agree with you that Stanford's science programs are "better" than HYP's, and even if they were to be slightly better, the prestige of HYP would attract more top students.</p>
<p>And what makes you say that Stanford students have more school spirit? This may be true about Harvard, but definitely not Princeton. Have you not heard about our alumni support (# 1 worldwide) and P-rade?</p>
<p>There was an article posted on CC a while from the Yale Daily News about diversity at Yale that stated that "Yale may be losing Asian-American students due to the University's perceived weakness in the sciences or the Asian-American community's preference for Harvard and Stanford". As for the prestige of HYP, an excerpt from the Yale Herald states "Stanford is a much bigger competitor with Harvard and Yale for students than it ever used to be. As the YAM reported, Yale has recently 'begun to lose more Stanford common admits than it wins.'" I admit that Harvard still gets the vast majority of cross-admits, but Stanford manages to hold its own against Yale, at least (don't know about Princeton). It's very presumptuous to think that cross-admits will always choose HYP over Stanford because of the allure of the top Ivies.</p>
<p>ForeverZero - I live about ten minutes from Stanford. As a kid my babysitters were from Stanford. My Ds friends are going to Stanford. </p>
<p>The thing about Stanford is that we are all in Northern California. People here aren't really laid-back, we are just less formal in our demeanour. Think software start-ups. We work insane hours, but dress in jeans, the execs play in rock bands. That's sort of what the Stanford culture is like. Do not go to school there thinking you don't have to work. It's just that the weather will be really nice most of the time and you can't help but feel a moment of stress lifting when you walk outside to a sky as blue as a crayon.</p>
<p>Yes, I realize that the laid-back attitude is merely a facade, hence the Stanford duck analogy. Stanford students are certainly not lazy, it's just that they're not ultracompetitive and cut-throat either.</p>
<p>u cant really compare west and east. west in general is a lot more laid back than those in the east (new england area). cali, being even more laid back than the rest of the west, obviously has its influence over its students (and since stanford gets most of its students from the west...it is obviously more laid back). new england is just uptight so u cant compare the two because thats just how it is....</p>
<p>"theyre not ultracompetitive and cut throat either"
and with this...if u compare east coast high school and west coast high school students...it is there again. east coast is way more competitive than west coast...</p>
<p>In engineering, Stanford has 85 faculty members selected into the national academy of engineering, much more than HYP's numers (H: 15, P: 20, Y: 5).
HYP can not compete. </p>
<p>In science, H is a major rival of Stanford. It competes with Stanford in math, physics, chemsitry, and biology head to head. But Stanford beats H in geollogy, computer science, statistics, and applied math. P can only competes with Stanford in math and physics. Y does not have any science department that can be ranked within top 5. </p>
<p>National medal of science winners:
H (33 winners)
S (30)
P (15)
Y (8)</p>
<p>membership is national academies:
H (271 in total)
S (260)
P (97)
Y (100)</p>
<p>and once again u are looking at rankings for graduate school....there are no real departmental rankings for undergrad, just an overall best education for undergrad. u cant really use rankings to show that stanford or harvard or watever is a better undergrad school cuz simply they are rankings for grad</p>
<p>And also, like i have said many times before, you simply cannot compare the actual number of faculty members in the National Academies because of the HUGE difference that exists between Princeton and H, Y, S in terms of size. You cannot compare a school that has 6,000 students (undergrad + grad) to a school that has 17,000-20,000 (undergrad + grad) students (H,Y,S) if you aren't using percentages. </p>
<p>Maybe Stanford is much better than we here in the east perceive it to be. Unfortunately for Stanford, east coasters, who are much more competitive and live amongst a history of academic superiority, still consider HYP to be a grander form of education than Stanford. At least that's how it was perceived at my high school and amongst my family/friends.</p>