56 Hours Left: Harvard, Stanford, or Yale?

College Search & Selection
1

Hello all. I am a graduating senior with under 72 hours to decide where I will spend the next four years of my life. I am currently choosing between Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. I will address what I look for in a school and my particular concerns about each school. I would greatly appreciate any helpful advice as I make this decision. There are certain things I know will remain important to me (e.g strong political science department), but please let me know if I am focusing too much on something generally unimportant.

Academic/Professional
I am on planning on majoring in political science/government, with a possible double major or minor in human rights or ethnic studies. The two most important qualities in a school that I care about the most are academic and professional opportunities as well as a welcoming environment. To be more specific, I would prefer a more flexible curriculum and would appreciate the opportunity to minor. Above all, I would want a school with a robust social science department as well as plenty of coordinated programs related to professional experience working with human rights as well as support, specifically financial support, possible internships in government or human rights work, preferably in Washington DC or abroad. The opportunity to study abroad in programs coordinated by the school during the summer is a plus. I would want an academic environment that fosters discussion through the opportunity to enroll in seminars as early as the start of freshman year and is most suitable for individuals with a fiercely independent spirit like myself but still manages to promote collaboration within students. I would also prefer an academic environment that is very diverse but as a whole leans more towards the social sciences and humanities and has plenty of grad opportunities but ensures that their undergrads are equally, if not more, prioritized than their graduates.

As far as extracurriculars go, I would prefer a school that has a significant amount of service and social justice efforts, specifically work with immigrant communities, and cultural groups, particularly those catering to Latinx students . I would also want to be involved in government related extracurriculars, such as political consulting.

Social
On the topic of each school’s environment, I would prefer an environment in which people are overtly welcoming and one that facilitates friendly social interactions as opposed to leaving students to have to build their own network. Overall student happiness is very important to me and while I recognize that a given person’s experience is up to them, I would prefer a generally positive environment in competition is limited but in which students are very driven and ambitious. I would prefer a student body that is very progressive and has activist leanings. I would also strongly appreciate an environment in which students are not afraid to speak up about injustices they see on campus and one that has systems in place to ensure such grievances are fairly dealt with. Coming from a low income, Latinx background, I would also prefer a school that is the least elitist as possible and is very much welcoming of diversity across multiple lines. Sense of community is fairly important to me and I believe a residential college system is a plus. Therefore, support for low income/first gen students, whether it be through pre orientation programs or student groups, wouId be greatly appreciated. I would also prefer an environment in which quirkiness is appreciated and in which there isn’t pressure to party every weekend or partake in drugs or alcohol.

Additional Wishes
Vegan friendliness and K-Pop dance groups are a plus. I would also strongly want to be able to have a single room but still have plenty of interactions with the people around me. I would prefer a cool, but not excessively cold, climate and an urban location, or at least proximity to or direct access to one.

Specific Concerns
-Stanford: focus on STEM, lack of residential college system, distance from centers of government
-Yale: slight inferiority as compared to Harvard/Stanford, lack of coordinated professional programs for students interested in government, location not as good as the other two, unpredictable weather, less academic flexibility
-Harvard: most elitist, least happy student body, focus on graduate students,

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Have you visited all three? If so, which was your favorite? For freshman at pretty much any school, you are going to be in a room with other people. Honestly, Stanford is great at everything. Their STEM programs are renowned, but that does not mean that their social science departments are “weak”. You seem to want more flexibility, better weather, diversity, and a strong focus on undergraduates. If I’m not mistaken, Stanford is pretty strong in all four of those. I honestly think Stanford is the best option for you. You can’t go wrong, though. You are going to get a strong education at any of those schools. As for distance to Washington, none of them are close. They’re all over five and a half hours away.

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@aleo1200 Congratulations - what a great dilemma to have!

Stanford has a lot of interesting themed and special interest housing, including Latinx. Maybe this might be of interest to you?

https://resed.stanford.edu/preassignment/participate

TBH, I don’t have personal knowledge of any of these campuses, beyond cursory visits to Stanford and Harvard. I will say, though, that Stanford has an excellent reputation in Humanities & Social Sciences as well as STEM.

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I’d pick Harvard or Yale based on your major interest. Honestly, both would have more great classes and opportunities than you could possibly take advantage of.

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Each school is stronger than the others in some areas academically. Overall they’re all great. Stanford is the strongest in the pre-professional STEM areas, Harvard is the strongest in some SS and hum areas, and Yale in other SS and hum areas. All three are fine in the areas you mentioned. The difference academically is the focus they put on different fields.

In terms of undergrad focus: Harvard has the largest percentage of grad students, Stanford the 2nd largest, and Yale has the least. Using that as a crude, unsophisticated measure, Yale is the most undergrad-focused of them.

Yale’s social life revolves around the residential colleges. I am less familiar with housing at H and S – I believe they have fairly standard dorm cultures.

H has Boston, so there’s more to do than in Palo Alto or New Haven. But S and Y are only an hour or so from their magnet cities, San Francisco/Oakland and NYC. I don’t think any of the three would leave you bored on a Friday night.

To be able to contrast them for academic support, you’d probably have to have attended all three. Probably, as rich as they are, they all offer good academic and career support. Yale may have a slight edge here given its slightly higher undergrad focus. But… if you show up, I’m sure they will help you.

H and Y are more focused on the humanities and social sciences, overall, than S is. How? Well a university has a pie representing all the attention it can give to all of its programs. Stanford gives more of its attention to STEM than either H or Y, and if you were going into CS or Engineering, Stanford would be the best choice. But for hum and SS, H and Y put more of their weight behind those areas.

For weather, I’m not sure, because I don’t know how you define “cool” and “cold”. Winters in New Haven and Boston feature snow, freezing rain, temps generally between about 10-40F from Dec-Feb and into March. Some days are colder than 10 and some are warmer than 40, but in the main, the winter high temps will be from about 10-40… mostly 20s and 30s. I don’t think of that as cold, but I grew up in northern Wisconsin. Autumn and Spring are probably about equally pleasant in all three places. San Francisco’s temps are generally between about 50 and 85. A little colder at night, maybe, and a little warmer on some summer days, but in the main, 50-85. There is much less variety in the weather in SF than there is in the northeast.
I don’t know much about gov’t internship opportunities, other than the distance between each school and its state capital. Hopefully people with such experience will chime in.

These are all outstanding academically. If you focus on your fit preferences, you’ll make the right choice. And frankly, even if you made a mistake or changed during your four years, you’re still at a great school and could decide to continue aiming your petals toward the sun in spite of sandier soil.

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Great points. The only clarification is that Harvard has very residential style dorm system. All freshmen live in the freshman dorms on the main campus. Then as a sophomore you are selected for one the houses, which all have their own traditions and histories going way back. You used to have to get invited or bid for this similar to Princeton’s eating clubs. Now it’s a random assignment. They make a big deal about what house you’re in. Come and get you. It’s a big deal. You then live in these houses for the remainder of your time there. I think over 97 percent of all students stay with their house for the remaining 3 years. They have a professor and their family live there and others as well. Specific dinners together. Their own little quads and traditions. It’s actually the most attractive part of their campus to me. My wife is a grad and her dad too. First question when two h grads meet is ask what house are you in.

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In terms of stereotypical academic strengths you’d pick Stanford for STEM, Yale for humanities, and Harvard for social sciences — although all 3 are strong in all areas, and a lot depends on the courses/mentors you seek out.
In my opinion, Cambridge is by far the best “college town” of the 3 locations.

So I’d lean toward Harvard (unless your net price is lower at one of the others.)
But you’ve won the college admissions lottery and it really doesn’t matter that much if you take your winnings in Euros, dollars, or gold coins.

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political science/government… Harvard is the no brainer imo… although H and S are tied for the best poly sci depts in the country.

for Latinx (had to look that up… apparently it’s a gender neutral term) causes… Stanford is going to offer you more opportunities for obvious reasons.

Stanford has a top humanities and arts program… and is also strong in STEM… something you won’t find at any other university in the US… along with inter-displinary programs that combine both. good luck

9

As someone who went to Harvard a long time ago, and is from the New Haven area, I’d probably put a word in for Yale, based on your criteria. The house systems at H and Y are pretty similar, but my feeling is that Yale might be a little more welcoming. Yale also seems a little more liberal, and being in a city that’s about a quarter Hispanic, I imagine there are social justice/service opportunities. Yale is about an hour and a half from NYC, so that’s a place to go occasionally. From any school, you could get summer DC internship opportunities. I think the “slight inferiority” you mention is mostly irrelevant, and also mostly exists in reputation more than reality. I don’t think the weather difference between H and Y is much of anything. (Not true of Stanford, of course.)

On the other hand, Harvard Square and the Charles River is nicer than downtown New Haven, and most places in Boston would be within a half hour by subway.

I’m sure Stanford would be great also. And I have no idea which schools’ departments would be better for your specific interests. Presumably you’ve already looked through their course catalogs, which could tell you something.

10

Nice problem to have. My D had the same choices. Harvard was eliminated early on for not being as undergraduate focused and not having a robust core curriculum like Stanford, Yale, and Princeton offered.

I just wrote a long post describing her thought processes on another Yale vs. Stanford thread that I will copy/paste below. To it I will add that Stanford is very strong in poly sci and international relations and is a super-diverse and very inclusive campus with a lot of institutional support. This is what I posted on the other thread:

My daughter is an interdisciplinary humanities kid that studies art history, medieval studies, is interested in the classics, etc., etc. There were many things about Yale that interested her – Directed Studies, the residential college system, Yale’s Political Union, etc., etc. She applied SCEA and got in, fulling intending to enroll there. When she visited, however, she realized that she could not wrap her head around living in New Haven, so that complicated things. She did not expect to like Stanford (she anticipated that it would be too techie and too pre-professional, but happily has found that it is not). There were so many things about Stanford that made is feel right for her (quality of life was a biggie) and so many things about Yale that didn’t. She has never looked back and is absolutely certain she made the right choice.

Stanford has a number of interesting programs that satisfy many of the same intellectual and social things my D sought at Yale in equal measure (if not better). It offered these in what is, for her, a much better environment. Like Yale’s Directed Studies, Stanford has SLE – Structured Liberal Education – an intensive humanities core program (a sort of Western – and some Eastern – Civilization course). SLE has the advantage of having a living/learning set-up in which all of the classes take place in the residence and all of the 90 students participating in SLE live together among 3 small dorms. Discussions spill out of the classroom and into the dining hall and later into the lounge.

As for housing, what Yale’s residential colleges might have provided in theory (in practice, perhaps not so much as I explain below) my D is seeking to pre-assign to the special-interest housing and will have a built-in community there. Stanford guarantees four years of housing; over 92% of Stanford UGs live on campus, compared with 83% of Yale UG students. When you look at the rates of juniors and senior off-campus living at Yale, the numbers are staggering. A recent article in the Yale News says this: “The community within residential colleges is anemic at best. It’s no longer “cool” to live in your residential college as an upper-level student.” At Stanford, there is a lot of choice when it comes to housing – special interest or ethnic, cultural, or language-themed dorms.

My D’s biggest concern about Stanford was whether or not the humanities – an area where Yale has traditionally excelled – would be given short shrift at Stanford. They are not. As another poster on that thread pointed out, “Stanford has always been a leader in the humanities and social sciences, too - they have excellent departments, faculty, and research/scholarship in history, psychology, economics and English literature as well.” Add to that the arts and creative writing, art history, and the classics. While other schools are scrambling to shore up their STEM programs to compete with schools like Stanford, Stanford has been investing some real money into its arts and humanities programs over the course of the last decade. They also are ahead of the curve in creating a number of interdisciplinary programs.

As far as relationships with faculty go, the faculty could not be more supportive and available to undergraduate students. As a freshman, my D is into her second quarter of an independent study with one of her professors and was just offered a paid position doing research with another.

The weather thing goes without saying…CA has glorious weather. CT does not. Stanford is a much more self-contained campus with a suburban feel. Yale has a much more urban feel to its surroundings and the campus and city are interconnected. The architecture is a matter of taste; I think Stanford’s campus is gorgeous; some people say it looks like Taco Bell. Some people love neb-gothic, others do not. Both schools have easy access to larger cities. Both will have great alumni networks, lots of research and internship possibilities, etc.

As for quarter vs. semester thing, we like quarters more than we expected to – it’s as though students have a entire extra semester of classes (which they do!) with quarters. Right now, while everyone else’s kids coming out of Spring Break are heading into final exams and wrapping up their academic years, kids at Stanford have only just begun a new quarter…The main thing with quarters is you have to stay on top of the workload – it’s manageable, but there’s not a lot of time for procrastination and last-minute catch-up. The quarter system takes a bit of getting used to, but overall, I think it has way more upsides than downsides – what’s nice is that winter break and spring break really are breaks – no homework, papers, exams to think about during the time off.

Stanford is not for everyone – there are at least two people recently for whom I suggested Yale over Stanford – but it felt right for my daughter, and it sounds like it might be right for you.

I’m happy to answer any other questions you might have.

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to add to lovethebard post…

one reason Stanford has one of the top arts and humanities programs in the country… the Hewlett Packard foundation donated 300 million to Stanford back in the early 2000s specifically targeting Humanities/social sciences and undergraduate education.

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I would say go to Yale and be done with it. Have you visited these schools or done previous research? I don’t understand how you can get to April 29 and still have so many factors at work in your decision-making. Did you apply to these schools for a reason, or did you just apply to highly selective schools thinking you would figure out later where to go? I’m truly wondering why Georgetown isn’t on your list?

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Congrats!

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@Trixy34 This person is staying at this school for the next four years of their life. I would strongly advise against the just “going and being done with it” mentality. I would agree on the Georgetown point. For what this poster wants, Georgetown has a lot of that.

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If it was my kid for political science/government major my ranking would be:

1 Stanford

2 Harvard

3 Yale

All things equal, go with the best culture and weather.

For what it’s worth, close friends D (political science major) was rejected EA from S but accepted to H (among other top colleges, but not Y) She’s going to H in the fall.

At the end of the day, you have 3 excellent choices and cannot make a bad decision. Good luck!

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I know it’s grad school. But the influence of the Kennedy school attracts great influencers in the world of politics and government to campus.

All three are the top of the mountain and toughest tickets to get.

In the real world, Harvard is the gold standard for an educational brand. It would get my vote.

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All three schools are very strong in political science. A bit depends on whether you are interested more in the theoretical or practical aspects of political science/government. If you are interested more in the practical side, then one possible advantage of Harvard is its John F. Kennedy School of Government, which is right down the street from Harvard Yard. Although it offers degrees at the Master’s and doctoral levels, it has professors, seminars, and institutes that can enrich the academic experience for undergraduates and provide various opportunities. This school is a separate entity from the Department of Government in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, and it is very active, with 1200 students, 200 professors, and an endowment of $1.2 billion. Other similar schools would be the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, or the Fletcher School at Tufts, or the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins. I don’t believe Stanford or Yale have anything quite like these types of schools, although they do have various programs in public policy.

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@Trixy34 I appreciate your advice. In all honesty, I was not expecting to get in. I did have a preference prior to getting in, having leaned towards Yale, but after visiting all three schools, my preferences were most definitely thrown off. I was accepted into Georgetown, but I do not like the culture there as much.

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Apologies for my previous post, I guess I’m a little cranky today. What I probably should have expressed is that all of those are excellent schools. Any of the three is going to get you where you want to go if you put the work in. So, I think you should probably go with what feels like the right fit for you. Personally, I think I would prefer Yale to Harvard, and it seems to be a better fit for you personally. I understand the tendency to overthink things. I struggle with it myself, but I think with this decision, you can just trust your gut.

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Go undergrad where you feel you will get the most personal attention and best quality instruction across disciplines. You can always go to Harvard or Woodrow Wilson for grad school.