<pre><code> In comparison to its peers, Stanford is young. It was founded in 1885, while the following peer schools were founded at various times:
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<p>Harvard Founded 1636
Yale founded 1701
Princeton founded 1746
Columbia founded 1754
MIT/ Chicago/Caltech--also relatively young. </p>
<p>My question is: How do schools (namely Stanford), build such solid reputations so quickly? And secondly, what's to prevent other schools from doing the same thing? Could we have 15-20 Stanfords/Harvards 100 years from now? </p>
<p>It just amazes me how Stanford was founded 249 years AFTER harvard, and yet it is viewed as a peer institution, or is there no relationship between "prestige," and age?</p>
<p>I’ve actually wondered the same thing myself. There’s no definite answer, and in Stanford’s case, I think it has to do with leadership and perhaps a bit of luck.</p>
<p>I think there are a few reasons why Stanford is as prestigious as it is now, but I think the biggest reason is the leadership of Frederick Thurman after WWII. Thurman expanded Stanford’s science, math, and engineering departments, and he helped the university compete for government grants and funding. He also encouraged graduates to start their own companies. The result of Thurman’s leadership was Silicon Valley. A lot of high-tech firms and start-ups are located in Silicon Valley like HP, Google, Apple, etc. Not surprisingly, most of them have been founded by Stanford grads and nearly all of them have had a connection to the institution in some way. Stanford has benefited the most from the technological boom we’ve seen in the past few decades, in my opinion, and consequently, its cachet and renown has also benefited.</p>
<p>So I suppose what’s really allowed Stanford to rise so quickly is it’s investments in science and technology, and it’s ability to foster innovation and promote an entrepreneurial activity not only on campus, but in the surrounding region.</p>
<p>It grew up with the state of CA, which went from being virtually nothing to having an economy that would be like #5 in the world, were it a sovereign nation. I think it is only like for there to be a similar rise to prominence in an exploding economic context.</p>
<p>So maybe the next Stanford will be in a BRIC nation.</p>
<p>MIT, Cornell, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and Chicago were all established during the so-called “Second Industrial Revolution” (the period from roughly the end of the American Civil War to WWI). George Eastman, the inventor of camera roll film and founder of Eastman Kodak, was a major benefactor of MIT. Leland Stanford and Johns Hopkins made fortunes in railroads, Ezra Cornell in the telegraph (as the founder of Western Union). John D. Rockefeller, founder of the University of Chicago, made his fortune in the oil business.</p>
<p>In addition to being a period of tremendous wealth formation, this was a period of intense demand for the practical application of scientific knowledge. So both the motive and the opportunity existed to shape the modern university as we know it during this period. The Morrill Acts (1862, 1890) were the legal impetus for establishing public universities in many states. These schools generally followed the same German-inspired model of the modern research university, which tended to supplant earlier models developed largely to provide religious instruction.</p>
<p>Information-age tycoons have not been keen to found universities in their own names, for whatever reason.</p>
The interesting thing about Stanford is that it did not, in fact, have that much money during much of its early history. The university struggled considerably with finances and very nearly went under. Stanford didn’t really take off properly until the 1940s/1950s, and the university as we know it today didn’t really exist until the 1960s.</p>
<p>Stanford’s yield has gone up nearly 15% (from ~55% to ~70%) in the last 20 years, and the number of cross-applicants with Harvard and Yale doubled during the 1980s and has quadrupled since then. Stanford is in many ways still a very young university, I think.</p>
<p>Location, location, location. Proximity to Silicon Valley, whose growth Stanford and Berkeley enabled. There is a practical advantage to attending college within a 45 minute drive of tends of thousands of jobs that pay $125k+ </p>
<p>There is also the supply and demand equation with a California-located Nat’l Uni education. A person wanting to live in the northeast can choose among H, Y, P, M, C, P, B, C. In northern California, just Stanford and Berkeley; in southern California just UCLA and now recently USC.</p>