Why not “C” or “D?” I am confused. Lol.
Many years ago, I chose S over M as a prospective electrical engineering major. At the time, I preferred having more options outside of engineering if I changed my mind, I had a more positive visit in person at S, and I preferred the location (including weather/climate). I’m sure there are many other contributing factors I am not remembering.
While attending, there are many things that occurred at S that would likely not have occurred at M, some of which had a tremendous influence on my life. For example, I had a very positive experience in freshmen chem, which was a class of mostly pre-med kids. This contributed to me choosing to continue with the pre-med classes. I also walked on to the crew team as freshmen due to seeing them recruiting freshmen while walking in the quad. Both events probably would not have happened at MIT.
I ultimately decided against medicine and instead entered a program at S that was designed to foster tech entrepreneurship by combining a grad degree in an engineering related field with a grad degree in a business related field. I did both as co-terminal masters while simultaneously pursuing a bachelor’s, allowing me to complete both a bachelor’s and first master’s in 4 years. I finished the 2nd master’s remotely, while working full time. Nearly 40% of engineering students at Stanford do a co-terminal master’s , and Stanford has a stronger tech entrepreneurship presence than MIT, so I doubt this would have happened at MIT . Doing this tech entrepreneurship program and hearing about so many successful tech startups at Stanford contributed to me starting a successful, small Internet company soon after graduating, which became the primary source of my income.
The combination of my positive experience with the CA climate/lifestyle at Stanford and the overwhelming majority of employers at job fairs being from CA contributed to me taking a first job in CA, where I live today. I grew up on the northeast and live thousand of miles away today. I expect I would have been far more likely to live in the northeast today, had I attended MIT.
There are countless reasons why a student may prefer one college over another, including any of HYPS over M, far beyond the ones I listed. Perhaps a better question would be to ask what criteria is important to you in a college, and which of HYSPM best meets that criteria?
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Some students have not visited these campuses until admitted student days. There may be any number of reasons one would make a decision that is not MIT, but based on this year’s lowest admission number ever by MIT along with their reference to yield it would seem more are picking MIT than even the MIT yield calculations and model predicted.
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