<p>Just as Harvard and other Ivy League engineering programs will "change dramatically" in the next decade, so will Stanford's. That's my argument. Did you look at the planned construction? It's a very large project.</p>
<p>Yeah, um, I think you guys have licked one too many mushrooms. Comparing Stanford Engineering to Harvard Engineering? Harvard...engineering? hahahaha, that's really clutching for straws. "While it lacks a ChemE department"...HAHAHA!</p>
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Harvard has good humanities and social sociences but that is where it stops
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<p>Uh, I think the Harvard natural sciences are pretty good too.</p>
<p>Consider the following USNews graduate rankings in the various natural sciences:</p>
<p>Biological Sciences
1. Stanford University (CA) 4.9
2. Harvard University (MA) 4.8
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 4.8
University of CaliforniaBerkeley 4.8 </p>
<p>Physics
1. California Institute of Technology 5.0
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5.0
3. Harvard University (MA) 4.9
Princeton University (NJ) 4.9
Stanford University (CA) 4.9
University of CaliforniaBerkeley </p>
<p>Chemistry
1. University of CaliforniaBerkeley 5.0
2. California Institute of Technology 4.9
Harvard University (MA) 4.9
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 4.9
5. Stanford University (CA) 4.8 </p>
<p>Math
1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5.0
2. Harvard University (MA) 4.9
Princeton University (NJ) 4.9
Stanford University (CA) 4.9
University of CaliforniaBerkeley </p>
<p>Now obviously those were graduate rankings, not undergrad rankings. Unfortunately USNews doesn't publish undergraduate rankings in the sciences. But anyway, it belies the notion that Harvard is somehow strong only in the humanities and the social sciences, and nothing else. Heck, according to the numbers, Harvard is just as good as Stanford in graduate science rankings (Stanford beats Harvard in biology, but Harvard beats Stanford in chemistry, and the other categories are a tie). </p>
<p>Or, I'll put it to you another way. Harvard is named as the #1 choice by more winners of the Intel STS competition (formerly known as the Westinghouse Science competition, and dubbed the "Junior Nobels" ) than any other school. Why would all these science-stars want to go to Harvard if Harvard was bad at science?
<a href="http://www.sciserv.org/sts/63sts/winners.asp%5B/url%5D">http://www.sciserv.org/sts/63sts/winners.asp</a>
<a href="http://www.sciserv.org/sts/62sts/winners.asp%5B/url%5D">http://www.sciserv.org/sts/62sts/winners.asp</a>
<a href="http://www.sciserv.org/sts/61sts/winners.asp%5B/url%5D">http://www.sciserv.org/sts/61sts/winners.asp</a>
<a href="http://www.sciserv.org/sts/60sts/winners.asp%5B/url%5D">http://www.sciserv.org/sts/60sts/winners.asp</a></p>
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gotta admit that Harvard is pretty weak in engineering though</p>
<p>They shouldn't even have an engineering program, it just pulls down the university as a whole
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<p>By that logic, you should say that MIT and Caltech ought to eliminate all their humanities programs. Are you prepared to say that?</p>
<p>Yeah, Harvard is the real deal in pure mathematics as much as any school in the world. That's not saying any other school is bad, but Harvard is "second to none" in that field at least.</p>
<p>In pure mathematics, MIT easily outpaces Harvard.</p>
<p>Sure, Harvard has a pretty good science program. But its engineering is terrible, and the most important science of all, biology, is outranked by Stanford.</p>
<p>Actually, there was a very eminent math student who used to have a statement on his Web site that the very best way to study matematics is to do what he did: major in math as an undergrad at Harvard and then go to graduate school at MIT. He removed that statement from his Web site after becoming a lecturer at Stanford. :)</p>
<p>Forgetting Princeton's grand math department, are we?</p>
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In pure mathematics, MIT easily outpaces Harvard.
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<p>Well, I don't know about "easily" outpacing Harvard. I'd like to believe that were true, but it looks like more of an "slightly outpacing" more than an "easily outpacing". After all, USNews gives MIT 0.1 more ranking points than Harvard. The NRC gives MIT 0.02 more ranking points. That doesn't seem like anybody is "easily" outpacing anybody.</p>
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But its engineering is terrible, and the most important science of all, biology, is outranked by Stanford.
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<p>Engineering is terrible? 31st is actually pretty good, in the grand scheme of things. If 31 is terrible, then what about everybody below them? I guess they must be REALLY terrible. </p>
<p>Look, every school out there has some programs that are worse than others. That doesn't mean that the school should just get rid of those programs. For example, Caltech doesn't have the best humanities programs. Does that mean that Caltech should just dump those programs? I don't think so. </p>
<p>I also find the contention that Stanford is necessarily better than Harvard in Biology to be debatable. The NRC seems to think that it's a tie.</p>
<p>And of course I think we can all agree that Harvard outranks Stanford when it comes to medical school. And I would think that if there were any "subfield" of biology that would be the most important of all, it would be medicine. Not that I really want to get into the debate of what part of biology (broadly defined) is more important, but I would think that, if anything, the ability to heal sick and injured people is more important than knowing about the migratory patterns of some animal that nobody's ever heard of.</p>
<p>lol, i dont think stanford's program can really change that much lol.</p>
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Now if only Stanford were willing to invest in top students to the same extent it is willing to invest in salaries for athletes. As it is, Stanford says it will be five years before it is able to provide financial aid to applicants of low income to the extent Harvard, Yale and Princeton have done through recent initiatives.</p>
<p>The shocking fact is that Stanford could easily provide adequate need-based aid if only it would reduce by half the staggering sums it pays to athletic performers. The Ivies award only need-based aid, and do not give athletic scholarships.
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<p>Byerly,</p>
<p>You assume that Stanford spends a lot of its operating budget for athletics, sacrificing academics (including funds for low-income students) in the process.</p>
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Unlike other campus departments, athletics raises all its own funds -- apart from the $4.2 million a year paid by the University to run physical education classes and recreational facilities.
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Stanford will offer 33 varsity sports next year - 17 women's, 15 men's and one coed, funded by a $28 million budget which pays for scholarships that cover about $25,000 a year in tuition and room and board costs. </p>
<p>"Without using university dollars," Leland said. </p>
<p>"We're totally self-funded."
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<p>Looks like your accusation is unfounded. If you don't know where their money comes from, you are in no position to bash how they use it.</p>
<p>"The program is not "weak" at all; it is just very small. In the GRE score of entering students, the % of faculty belonging to the NSE [sic], and research expenditures per capita, it is very near the top."</p>
<p>This is only partially true. Here's the real story:</p>
<p>1) There are several world-class engineering faculty at Harvard. Yes, most of them belong to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE, which is what I assume you meant above). And the department is indeed very small ... very few faculty and students compared to competing schools.</p>
<p>2) However, it's very wrong to say that Harvard engineering's "weakness" stems only from its strength. The department's focus has traditionally been extremely theoretical (often in an arrogant "we're too good to worry about practical problems way) - but they do a good job at that. In that way, they've become increasingly out of touch with modern engineering. In that way, they largely "missed the boat" and are struggling to catch up.</p>
<p>3) Harvard realizes that this is a major problem, and has tried taking steps to correct it. As the above post suggests, they're talking about investing $$ in new engineering facilities ... but that's off in the distant future (and competing institutions will likely be investing those same $$). Their younger engineering faculty have a much more practical focus ... and so far have not generally been the "top" in their fields.</p>
<p>4) Published materials show that Harvard engineering graduate students have high GRE scores. That's true. But those students are <em>not</em> generally drawn from the same population of those who are applying to top engineering schools (MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, etc) ... they're qualitatively much more similar to "applied physics" graduate students.</p>
<p>Remains to be seen what will happen. Harvard has tremendous resources - if they're serious (and they talk like they want to be), they have a chance to catch up - particularly in niche fields. But there's a significant infrastructure problem, and correcting it will require much more than $$ and talk.</p>
<p>Harvard and most of the Ivy league schools missed the boat of engineering initially. They continue to struggle a bit by being behind other engineering schools in new initiatives, i.e. they have traditionally not been computer science schools. Further, engineering schools were often viewed as trade schools by many of the traditional liberal arts schools like Harvard.</p>
<p>This perception/reality is changing with the huge investments that almost all engineering schools are making in the life sciences with Harvard being one of them. I believe that their proposed investment in expanding engineering facilities and an expansion of thier undergraduate class is directly related to thier desire to not miss the boat again.</p>
<p>Over time I suspect that schools with large endowments and a medical school associated with the university will be in the best position to make an impact in the life sciences engineering fields, i.e. Biomedical Engineering. These schools would include Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, WUStL, Stanford, USC, BU, Tulane, Northwestern, UMich, UCLA, etc.</p>
<p>It should be interesting to watch this play out over the next 20 years.</p>
<p>To illustrate how this effort is well underway here is and article from today's Boston Globe on stem cell research at Harvard:</p>
<p>Here is the first few lines of the article:</p>
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Harvard scientists have created cells similar to human embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos, a major step toward someday possibly defusing the central objection to stem cell research.
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<p>In looking at the rankings it is more important to look at the peer assement number because there are so many ties. Harvard dropped .1 in their peer assement.</p>