@gravitas2 I acknowledged in my OP that it is unlikely for me (or anyone) to get into Stanford, but thanks anyway for repeating the obvious! P.S. this thread is more abt Harvard vs. Stanford, in case that was not clear.
From reading the comments, my question now is for undergraduate studies does it really matter the reputation/rank of the cs dept in the school? I know it is important for grad school but idk abt undergrad.
MIT has a very strong, Top 10 philosophy department–with both an undergraduate major and PhD program.
Not just philosophy. It is very strong in a variety of humanities and social science areas, and offers majors in them.
Arguably a great fit for someone who wants to be a philosophy major, but also has serious STEM interests.
Really? You’d think that with each skimming the cream there would be a goodly number of cross-admits.
If there aren’t many, does that speak to the notion that “it’s a crapshoot” (among highly qualified students, anyway)?
I only know one cross-admit, but that’s out of an admittedly small sample size. A more charitable and optimistic view is that rather than speaking to the notion that “it’s a crapshoot,” it’s actually an indication that holistic admissions actually often succeeds in determining who is better suited for which school.
Re “skimming the cream”: there is more than enough cream to fill the tippy top schools a few times over. If there were only slightly more than enough, I agree that there would be loads of cross-admits.
Well, to get this class, Stanford made 2,145 offers and got 1,678 acceptances. That is nearly 500 students who…did something else.
Harvard had nearly 400.
I wonder how many were cross admits?
In real life, the same cream can’t go into different churns, but in college admissions, they can. At least until acceptance day.
I can verify that - well, 30 years ago. Do not see why it would have changed.
These are good points. I don’t know what the immediate impact of the Ballmer grant will be but it might be a great time to be at Harvard with new opportunites cropping up along the way. I also wonder about the kid who wants to combine CS with something quite different. How easy is that? And is Stanford still the better choice for the non-engineer? I don’t have the answer. Both are excellent institutions but I’m really not sure it’s as clear cut as some are making it out to be.
I thought this was a great discussion:
@JHS re the Yale West Campus - that seems to be something of a trend to build new remote campuses. Stanford is now planning something similar in Redwood City, though from what I understand that seems intended to move administrative functions out of the central campus area, where the Yale one seems to be more for research facilities. I also heard that Harvard is putting the Allston plans back on the front burner after slowing that down due to the recession. Allston is obviously closer to the main campus than the Yale and Stanford satellites though.
That’s not even counting things like Carnegie Mellon’s campus in Mountain View or Michigan’s MBA program in Los Angeles, although those are more to tap new geographical markets rather than just build more physical space.