<p>pwoods - i don’t think that yale research is stronger than columbia. yale is not quite in the H,S,C,B league of universities that have as much strength across a range of departments. there are things that yale does well in (and at times surprisingly so, like forestry, drama and art), but they don’t have a serious engineering school, their natural sciences are ok, their econ has recently become a force, but wasn’t traditionally so. yale med as a school may be ranked higher, but the research and breadth of research is nowhere near columbia’s work. in the humanities - it is kind of where columbia was in the 80s, living off a few septuagenarians that were once known by something. in history, the discipline i know the best, yale is at times still considered the best program, but that is a creature of habit than a culture of producing truly innovative research. Yale SOM is good but probably rarely considered better than CBS, Yale doesn’t have a journalism school, it doesn’t have a fully-fledged international affairs school, it has good programs (but not top ranked) in public health, doesn’t have an education school. it makes up a lot for what it lacks in unique programs (its arts programs are pretty amazing, and sfes is a leader in environmental work), but it just isn’t as complete from start to finish the way columbia is.</p>
<p>i have argued for some time there are 4 complete universities out there - harvard, berkeley, columbia and stanford, and this is affirmed by most ratings out there like the NRC that ranks only those 4 in as many categories and as highly. they all have great arts & sciences, a fully-fledged engineering division, multiple highly ranked professional schools (including in lesser known professional areas). and amongst academic circles i would say those 4 are the ones that we would immediately identify as providing the most comprehensive university experiences. and as someone who does role in academic circles i don’t think this is from bias, so much as the reality. it isn’t to say the general public feels the same way, but they look toward prestige more than how comprehensive a university is. pick a random discipline and it is more likely that someone would reference HSCB than yale or princeton because the breadth of HCSB is so strong and their size and scope that much superior.</p>
<p>yale, upenn and princeton are unis that are fantastic at what they do, but there is quite a bit that they do not do, and in the case of penn there are some things they aren’t superlative at. (by my estimation, by the estimation of rankings, by general feel.) now, this isn’t to say that they aren’t fantastic universities, and indeed what they do is great. they just aren’t in the same league as HSCB.</p>
<p>there are also flagship state unis that i’d say are almost as close, but do suffer from not having the undergrad school that is considered out of this world. but uw-madison, umich, ucla are the other schools that approach being as complete as hscb.</p>
<p>then there is uchi and jhu that also suffer from the lack of breadth, but also have the problem of not having top rate undergraduate experiences (and in the case of uchi, yet). though they are superlative at everything they do, or so it seems.</p>
<p>now this isn’t tiering, it isn’t saying one is better than the other, but if we are to select which schools fully and truly represent the potential of a university, you wouldn’t include yale in that conversation.</p>