<p>I’d pick Stanford 
The weather & location is lovely, you were accepted EA, and it definitely is less competitive than Harvard, but still has the “intellectual” vibe to it.
Yale is more liberal, but I think Stanford trumps the others overall.</p>
<p>Well, congrats! I am an alumn of harvard, yale, and stanford - for undergrad, grad schools etc… - around 15 years ago. Here’s my take on the choice - if you want languages and an intellectual environment - you can’t beat harvard - the indian studies dept beats the other two by far. Stanford’s choices in that department aren’t nearly as comprehensive and there is more of a “laid-back” veneer compared to serious scholar feel at harvard. yale is in between - but doesn’t reach an optima in either direction.</p>
<p>to JHS,</p>
<p>I would say for engineering, MIT> Stanford = Caltech > Harvard > Yale. MIT is clearly the most well-rounded engineering school, ranking #1 in the biggest number of engineering fields and according to the widest set of criteria. For sciences, I would also say physical sciences: Caltech = MIT > Stanford = Harvard > Yale. For Life Sciences, MIT > Harvard = Stanford > Caltech > Yale.</p>
<p>to the OP, in Stanford, engineers are seen as superior to others. You will not feel that in HY.</p>
<p>Hmmm, I’m not certain why you directed that at me, EngineerEng; since the OP didn’t ask anything about engineering, I didn’t address it at all. I don’t disagree with you about engineering or (probably) physics, but it matters to some people being around other people who are achieving similar excellence in non-STEM fields, and MIT and Caltech don’t offer that. (MIT has great non-STEM classes and faculty, but that’s nothing like having other students who are as strong and committed to their fields as the engineers at MIT are to theirs.) So if you are that kind of prospective engineer, or if you harbor some doubts about whether you really, truly want engineering – there ARE other options in life, after all – then I would think Stanford or Princeton might get the nod over MIT.</p>
<p>Stanford should be #1 in the rankings. EVERY single one of its departments are in the top 5 in rankings. H or Y can’t say that. There’s not a single thing Stanford is not TOP at.</p>
<p>Which of the three, Harvard, Yale, or Stanford, will be a better school in 15-20 years?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>While you, OP, should go wherever you feel you would be happiest–my impression is that our Near Eastern/etc. languages/studies department is exponentially stronger than the equivalent at most colleges, but otherwise I don’t have much advice to give you–that quote is patently false. If that wasn’t clear.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Stanford or Harvard? Never Yale.</p>
<h1>TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION RANKING in humanities and social science</h1>
<p>1 Stanford University United States 88.6 95.6 60.4 47.6 94 78.9
2 Harvard University United States 87.8 94.5 64.3 36.1 93.2 77.7
3 University of Chicago United States 87.1 92.1 64.9 Data withheld by THE 95.6 67.7
4 Australian National University Australia 84 77 86.3 38.9 96.5 76.4
4 Princeton University United States 84 90.7 41.5 71.2 93.1 68.2
6 University of Cambridge United Kingdom 83.2 93 62.2 64.9 96.9 38
7 University of Oxford United Kingdom 83.1 90.2 71.4 44.9 95.2 47.6
8 University College London United Kingdom 81.5 84.1 82 38.2 91.1 58.2
8 University of California Berkeley United States 81.5 89.5 38 38.9 94.6 57.8
10 University of Toronto Canada 79.7 81.3 60 36.1 90.5 65.8
11 University of Edinburgh United Kingdom 79.6 83.9 74.1 39 85.1 64.7
12 Yale University United States 79.5</p>
<p>economics
H 1
S 5
Y 6</p>
<p>English
S 2
Y 2
H 4</p>
<p>history
S 1
Y 1
H 5</p>
<p>politics
H 1
S 1
Y 5</p>
<p>psycology
S 1
H 3
Y 3</p>
<p>sociology
H 5
S 5
Y 20</p>
<p>Average rank of these fields:
Stanford, (5+2+1+1+1+5)/6 = 2.5
Harvard, (1+4+5+1+3+5)/6 = 3.17
Yale, (6+2+1+5+3+20)/6 = 6.17</p>
<p>To EngineeringEng, </p>
<p>Your ranking in engineering, science, and life science apparently has a MIT bias. Since OP is not interested in these fields, I’ll save the debate in future.</p>
<p>
I wouldn’t call Stanford housing a normal dorm system. Freshman year is all standard dorms, but afterward there is a significant diversity in housing options. Many students live in houses/mansions for one, if not two or three, years. Ethnic dorms/houses and co-ops are where you probably get the most people with the misty-eyes, because their residents will often be there for multiple years. There’s also apartment style housing, frats, sororities, standard dorms, and so forth. </p>
<p>I definitely think that the freedom our housing system allows counterweights the lack of attachment that may result. And if an attachment is something one is looking for, there are definitely ways to do that here. </p>
<p>
I’ll qualify this by saying that CS/EE/entrepreneurs view themselves, and are viewed by the surrounding area, as superior to others. I don’t like it, and it’s probably not going to change anytime soon.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s basically what a normal dorm system looks like. There’s nothing wrong with it other than it’s not the impossible-to-replicate residential college/house system at Yale or Harvard. I know a number of people, by the way, who lived in co-ops at Stanford, and none of them are misty-eyed about it (although none spent more than a year in one – but neither did most other people).</p>
<p>As for other-than-EE/CS engineers – compared to its peer schools (Ivy League, Chicago, Duke) Stanford is amazingly engineering-centric, and it’s NOT just EE/CS (although that’s certainly important). This isn’t something you can evaluate as a Stanford student – you lack the experience of other places.</p>
<p>to Stonesn,</p>
<p>there are Stanford weaknesses. Architecture, music, and urban planning are examples. sociology and religious studies are not amazing. stanford lacks dental schools, veterinary school, public policy school, public heath school, military programs.</p>
<p>To be honest, they’re not quite Stanford or MIT when it comes to engineering/entrepreneur culture, but Harvard/Yale/Princeton are nothing to sneeze at when it comes to big names in tech/startups…Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and a number of more recent (but pretty loud and noticeable) names like Zappos, Gilt, Pinterest etc were all started by H/Y/P alum. </p>
<p>Yes, MIT and Stanford are much more comprehensive, and if you want to do things like MechE or EE, yeah, S and M are stronger and better equipped (Princeton excepted in a few areas). Still, the other schools do attract a fair number of good hacker-types.</p>
<p>OTHO, I have a weird feeling when people think startups and entrepreneurship and engineering (esp the average person), they think coding or programming some FB like site. There’s a lot more beyond that, including things like materials science or biotech. The companies that are the easiest to start are software companies however, since they require comparatively little capital. It’s really darn near impossible to bootstrap your way to a successful drug or computer chip company without lots and lots of capital or institutional support at the beginning.</p>
<p>“That’s basically what a normal dorm system looks like. There’s nothing wrong with it other than it’s not the impossible-to-replicate residential college/house system at Yale or Harvard.”</p>
<p>Agreed. </p>
<p>“I definitely think that the freedom our housing system allows counterweights the lack of attachment that may result.”</p>
<p>There’s no counterweight to the self-segregation, which is the part I’m more concerned about. Even if you choose to live in the most mixed upperclass housing possible, you do not have the option to live with the folks who’ve moved into the frats, ethnic houses, etc. and removed themselves from the pool.</p>
<p><a href=“but%20neither%20did%20most%20other%20people”>quote</a>
[/quote]
It appears that’s changed. A majority of the 45+ people I know who have lived or are living in co-ops are past residents and/or are intending to live there next year. </p>
<p>
If it weren’t for EE/CS, I fail to see how we would be much different from, say, a Cornell, Princeton, Michigan, and so forth. The reason Stanford seems engineering-centric is because the EE/CS guys are and have been making big names for themselves, the EE/CS students are recruited heavily (turning the engineering career fair basically into a computer-tech career fair), the EE/CS/entrepreneurial stuff was at the center of the whole New York Campus thing, and so forth. It’s high-tech computer engineering centric, but that’s only a subset of engineering. </p>
<p>
What I can do is add nuance to what I view as generalizations that, from my viewpoint on the front lines, are not entirely accurate. </p>
<p>
Honestly, I think that makes for a better social environment for all involved. As a freshman RA, I see the influence with which the prototypical partiers hinder the social development of the residents who aren’t into beer pong/flip cup/the latest cup game, and how they likewise limit the partiers. And frat guys/sorority girls still live in upperclass residences, as they tend to live in the Greek house for only one or two years. </p>
<p>With the ethnic stuff, yeah I’ll give you that, but the number of legit ethnic houses is pretty minimal. Also, I find troubling components in what I interpret as your criteria; the fact is, some minorities prefer the environment of ethnic houses, but you seem to prefer schools that limit this opportunity for your own want for diversity. I doubt this is your intention, but that’s where your logic seems to be headed.</p>
<p>datalook:</p>
<p>Save for C.S. and engineering which clearly are stronger at Stanford, HYS all offer top departments and sufficient depth for any of their shared majors. It makes no sense to accord academics much role in disinguishing amongst these schools. </p>
<p>I’ll shamelessly plug for Y and rarely even look at these H boards but the ease of travel into or out of Cambridge is as good a reason as any to choose H > S > Y. To paraphrase another CC poster with wise words, visit all three and just reflect on which place gives you the warm and fuzzies. Even if you can’t articulate what it is that you like about the place, subconsciously you must have understood something about your best fit. Congrats on your fine choices.</p>
<p>The Stanford housing system is not like the dorm system at other universities. All dorms/houses are no more than 3 stories high, with the exception of Mirrielees, which is apartment-style housing. A large portion of the student body lives in the houses, on Mayfield or clustered around the lake. Houses are generally around 50 people each, which creates a small-community feel. All of them, except for the co-ops/self-ops, have a chef and a small dining staff; some chefs have extensive background/training, e.g. there was a Daily article on the French House one who worked as a personal chef for UN ambassadors and trained in culinary schools in Europe. Each house has a dining room, a living room, a laundry room, etc. Between those and the small community, these houses feel very much like being at home. That’s part of the reason that they’re the most desirable housing on campus, the other reasons being that they’re in a prime location and that they tend to host more parties, providing a common social venue for students.</p>
<p>There are a huge variety of houses that are themed: entrepreneurship, public service, arts, education & society, Slavic studies, LGBT, human biology, etc. (Some students even think the variety of themes is ridiculous and confusing; few if any universities can match Stanford in the variety of themes.) Half of the students in these dorms are pre-assigned, i.e. students ‘apply’ to them and show why they want to live there (each has different requirements, e.g. giving a presentation each quarter on a topic related to the theme). The other half are randomly assigned.</p>
<p>As far as I’ve seen, students who choose to live in the co-ops/self-ops are *very *enthusiastic about them. Recently, the university took over the governance of Chi Theta Chi, which has caused a huge backlash from the student body, citing their loyalty to their self-ops and desire for independence. Synergy is known for its hippies, who seem to love the oddness of their house (e.g. no meat allowed, voting structure, etc.). The same can be said of the others like Columbae, Enchanted Broccoli Forest (EBF), and Narnia. (Why yes, the 60s were kind to Stanford. :p)</p>
<p>The dorms vary in size. Most freshman dorms are 50-80 students - again, cultivating a small community. Even other dorms, such as the Lagunita dorms, are generally small. A few dorms are larger, e.g. Toyon, Crothers, Roble. On that note, students have the option to live in an all-frosh dorm, a freshman-sophomore dorm, a sophomore dorm, or an upperclass dorm (non-freshman). The staff:student ratio in these and the houses are much better than at most universities (several RAs, tutors, peer health educators, res comp staff). And of course they have a variety of facilities, depending on the dorm - lounges with TVs and cable, game rooms, conference rooms, theaters, computer clusters, libraries/studies, laundry rooms, music practice rooms, etc. All of them have a large piano. There’s also a very large number of singles, two-room doubles, suites, etc. available for upperclass students. </p>
<p>In general “dorm” means “dorm house” (different from a ‘house’), and dorm houses are clustered into dorm halls. I always thought this was a nice compromise between a college system and a dorm system: small communities (houses) within a larger community (hall). While other universities have this model as well, most aren’t able to get that small-community dorm right. It’s true that the college system tends to have more individual facilities, whereas some facilities are standard in all of Stanford’s dorms/houses, others are not, in which case there are shared facilities (e.g. athletic fields/courts, gyms, music practice hall). The draw makes the process very fair, so that students aren’t disproportionately forced into housing they don’t want. Changing houses also means you widen the groups of people you interact with, rather than just those in your college. </p>
<p>Dorms have dining halls, which are pretty good compared to most universities, esp. since the majority of the food comes from directly local areas. There are late-night dining options within or right near student residences (open till 2AM I think), and one dining hall that just opened has continuous service except from ~2AM to 7AM. </p>
<p>Gender-neutral housing is widely available. The Greek houses are nice and nestled among non-Greek houses. Most housing has fast access to the center of campus (White Plaza, the Science/Engineering Quad, the Main Quad, the libraries).</p>
<p>Stanford’s housing system is unique because it offers *all *of its students good housing, numerous amenities, awesome dining, a huge variety of types of housing, flexibility in changing your house/dorm, nice locations, and above all, small communities within larger communities. I don’t know of any university that’s like Stanford in all this; it’s certainly not a ‘normal dorm system.’</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s right to say that H and Y do social/living better, esp. since Harvard undergrads continually complain about the lack of common social spaces (something you don’t hear at Stanford). Of course, some will prefer the colleges, some will not; I personally didn’t like the idea of being bound to a group that I’m randomly assigned to for undergrad (and yes, I know you can change it). But there’s definitely a lot to be said of Stanford’s housing system.</p>
<p>Go to Stanford. Cali weather + the worldwide fame = perfect</p>
<p>“the fact is, some minorities prefer the environment of ethnic houses, but you seem to prefer schools that limit this opportunity for your own want for diversity. I doubt this is your intention, but that’s where your logic seems to be headed.”</p>
<p>Some white people prefer to live with mostly white people, too. I prefer a system that limits ALL students’ ability to self-segregate – hippies and athletes and rich kids as well as people of color. This doesn’t benefit the white kids at the expense of minorities. We’re all a community, and we need to learn to live together.</p>
<p>“Honestly, I think that makes for a better social environment for all involved.”</p>
<p>Well, that’s not a very compelling argument for Stanford. There are a bunch of your fellow students who you’re better off not living with? Of course people at Harvard and Yale have different social groups and may not be best friends, but there really isn’t any community that I wish would isolate themselves away from the rest.</p>
<p>Look, I LOVE Stanford. I wish I had more than one lifetime so I could have gone to college there too. (Bless them, they accepted me as a transfer, and call me a sap, I’m grateful for it to this day.) I just believe the House/college system is the platonic ideal for housing undergrads.</p>