<p>1) Their undergrad Theatre/Art History/Classics Dept.
2) Social life - not a smoker, quite a drinker, love to go out and dance, very gay
3) how recognized a uni is INTERNATIONALLY (you'd be surprised how little European people care for Stanford, obviously)</p>
<p>Any advice? </p>
<p>My thoughts now:</p>
<p>Brown - seems nice, but is the weakest academics-wise. I've heard it's "very liberal". What does that mean?
Columbia - not sure of its academic rep compared to Stanford and Harvard, NYC seems too huge to handle
Stanford - noone told me anything unique about stanford why I should go there and not anywhere else. everyone simply says "it's an great school".
Harvard - obviously best academics-wise, and the only one <em>everyone</em> knows of, but I'm scared that it's socially dull and that it's a lot harder to handly (studying and all) than the remaining three.</p>
<p>I hope this doesn't seem like showing off, I sincerely need help deciding. Gimme your best, folks!</p>
<p>Maybe your experience is different… but my European friends all agree Stanford is one of the top names in Europe. And in world rankings that are largely dependent on prestige, Stanford is usually top 5, sometimes #2 (after Harvard).</p>
<p>But that doesn’t even matter–prestige is overrated.</p>
<p>Stanford has top departments in the ones you listed (they’ve beefed up their humanities departments significantly over the years). The description of your social life fits perfectly with the ones that students usually lead here.</p>
<p>You’ll need more criteria to differentiate them.</p>
<p>Wait, enthusiast, did you just say Stanford is nowhere near HYP?
There are just so many things wrong with what you just said, so I suggest you thoroughly research Stanford before throwing statements like that around…</p>
<p>I second what phantasmagoric said. In world rankings, Stanford is almost always #2.</p>
<p>Well, most European rankings (highly correlated with prestige) disagree with you. Many say that in the world, Harvard has the most prestige, followed by Stanford (possibly also Oxford and Cambridge).</p>
<p>What is probably easier for you to decide is to visit Stanford before you make any decisions – between Harvard and Stanford. Things could be easier at Stanford than at Harvard.</p>
<p>My guess is that you are from Europe, and Stanford may only accept one or two from each country. As you said that you may be the only one in there who knows and applied to Stanford. Anyway, a guy with CC’s name as 2008_applicant from Turkey had a similar situation last year. I am quoting here what he said;</p>
<hr>
<p>Greetings from Turkey!</p>
<p>I have been admitted to Harvard, Stanford and Columbia. I pick STANFORD.</p>
<p>A friend of mine got accepted from UPenn, Harvard, Stanford and UC Berkeley. He also picks STANFORD.</p>
<p>Thanks for the good job! </p>
<hr>
<p>This is what he saw the 60 data I collected for the HYPSM cross-admits for the class of 2013:</p>
<p>------ Harvard Yale Princeton Stanford MIT
admit …37…34…43…30…25
attend…13…15…15…10…7</p>
I don’t have enough time to obtain a tourist visa. Sucks, I know. :(</p>
Anyway, a guy with CC’s name as 2008_applicant from Turkey had a similar situation last year. I am quoting here what he said;</p>