<p>Don’t argue with datalook, lest this thread turn into another 13-page flame war on why Stanford is better than MIT.</p>
<p>All hail Stanford! Hail!</p>
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<p>Rivest and Liscov are at MIT. But both are Stanford traind Ph.D and Rivest used to teach at Stanford. So they have a TIE to Stanford.</p>
<p>@datalook: Look, we agree Stanford is great, I’m sure there’s no doubt about it. But here Affe is making a decision for himself, and rankings and alumni list aren’t gonna help much…</p>
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<p>And I would respectfully disagree, having experienced the culture. MIT has plenty of architecture students, economists, linguists, business management (which is usually the second or third most popular major), and the like. You definitely should not restrict yourself to hard sciences or engineering when you think about MIT. What I would say is different: given the MIT core, you will not prosper at MIT if you don’t like or at least tolerate math and and sciences. Look most people at MIT like math to some degree. This has its benefits and its drawbacks. Economics at MIT tends to be highly mathematical, because the professors can assume a more than basic familiarity with the mathematical concepts that they may wish to use. MIT does do a fabulous job with most of the less popular humanities and arts subjects as well, and I know several MIT alumni who I speak with regularly who are working in the arts. Nor is there any sense that a music major at MIT is in any way a second class citizen. MIT is quite collaborative and quite supportive, and everyone has to get through the same core.</p>
<p>Look, its not about picking a school, its about picking a home. A close friend from my secondary school ended up at Harvard, a mile up the road, and as a result, I spent a fair amount of time on the Harvard campus particularly my freshman and sophomore years. One day I turned to her and explained that Harvard never felt particularly right for me, it was always vaguely pretentious in a way that I was not completely comfortable with. “I’m so glad you said that,” she said to me. “I’ve always felt the very same way about MIT.” And indeed it is a very different kind of pretentiousness at Harvard and at MIT. I was better off at MIT, she was better off at Harvard. I would not wish to claim that one school was “better” than the other. </p>
<p>When I think of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT, I think of very different feelings walking around the campus (and yes, I have walked around all of those campuses). I think that the original poster should forget all the well meaning advice about which is “better” and, if finances permit, visit both of the schools. Then go to the one at which you feel most at home. There is no wrong pick here.</p>
<p>You’re right Mikalye, that was a horrible mistake on my part, especially considering I’m aware of the political science, economics, Sloan school, music, etc which others have brought up. It was committed not through unawareness but carelessness…</p>
<p>I think why I still caution the OP is that (s)he sounded rather uncertain of the economics/CS interest and of where the interests lie in general. I’m sure having been accepted to both these schools, the maths skills are at least decent (so I would hope certainly). For someone who may as well end up majoring in sociology, I simply have a gut feel that the broader school might feel most natural. Being fully aware, as others have been kind enough to explain to me, that even the humanities at MIT can be awesome.</p>
<p>What I would rephrase my belief to be is that choosing the more lopsided school without truly feeling you fit in is probably for the worse. For instance, I come from a school where there is no uniform student culture – it’s so incredibly spread out, and so there’s really no question of not fitting in. So while it’s great if a clear answer exists, I think in the case of ambivalence, one must have a choice where to err.</p>
<p>That’s really all I have to say, and my gut feel could be wrong of course.</p>
<p>To datalook: Those ties have no connection with the current strength of Stanford CS department, especially for OP. He cannot work with those Stanford alumni if he decides to go to Stanford. Currently, there are 3 Turing awardees affiliated with Stanford CS department (Feigenbaum, Knuth and McCarthy), while MIT has 4 (Liskov, Rivest, Minsky and Lampson). MIT also has more membership of NAE (114 vs. 92). To put it fairly, I don’t see MIT in anyway weaker than Stanford in computer science and engineering. MIT appears to have slight edge in achievement.</p>
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<p>MIT has more NAE members because MIT is bigger. Stanford’s engineering school has 240 faculty memebrs, while MIT has 370 faculty members. Stanford also has less faculty members in computer science than MIT.</p>
<p>See the links below:</p>
<p>[Stanford</a> School of Engineering - Facts and Figures: Stanford Engineering by the Numbers](<a href=“http://soe.stanford.edu/about/facts.html]Stanford”>http://soe.stanford.edu/about/facts.html)</p>
<p><a href=“http://engineering.mit.edu/about/statistics/statistics.php[/url]”>http://engineering.mit.edu/about/statistics/statistics.php</a></p>
<p>I think in terms of the achievements in academia, MIT and Stanford are comparable. But if you count the # of publications, MIT should have more because of its bigger size. But Stanford’s contributions to IT industry through Silicon Valley are unmatched.</p>
<p>^^Using that same argument, a guy claimed that Harvard had the best engineering program in the country because they had a higher percentage of engineering faculty in the NAE/NAS.</p>
<p>I am also having the same problem >< losing sleeps to choose between MIT and Stanford. I cannot go for CPW of both, so I cannot really experience the culture. My professor told me that I can do undergraduate in one and graduate in another. So, just a quick question, is graduate admission in MIT as competitive and selective as its undergrad programme?</p>
<p>Graduate admission to both MIT and Stanford is very selective, although how selective depends on the particular department in question – graduate admissions are done by professors in the department to which you’re applying, not a school-wide committee.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, I don’t think it’s wise to choose an undergrad institution based on the idea that you can go to another place you also like for graduate school. In the first place, you may change your mind completely about even attending graduate school. Somewhat more subtly, you should never pick a graduate program based on the overall reputation of the school where it’s housed – graduate studies are very specialized, so you should pick a graduate program based on specific professors with whom you’d like to do your graduate work.</p>
<p>Hermes, to give you a small idea from my knowledge of a single field – MIT’s math program supposedly told some students who asked (note: this is something I heard from someone else) that if you’re a student from a small, lesser-known school, if you want any chance at all, you should be the best student they’ve seen in 5 years or so. For a big name school, you should be one of the very topmost in your area of interest to stand a real chance. </p>
<p>If you’re an IMO gold medalist becoming a subsequent Putnam fellow in a US university who’s published groundbreaking work in your field of interest, I anticipate you’re in without any question at all, unless you’re a criminal on the run or something – it’s not super unpredictable in these cases. But obviously these are incredibly rare applicants. Those I know personally who made it in to these schools had really impressive applications</p>
<p>As for graduate study, to comment a little:</p>
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<p>I think it depends on the individual, because some individuals are actually quite flexible in regards to what they would be willing to specialize in, and go in with the opinion that they want to learn about various fields, and make real contributions to at least one. So sometimes, depending on how flexible you are, you could just go to a great school which has something you want, as long as you’re fairly sure you want to do real professional research in that area.</p>
<p>I don’t think you should bank on being too flexible though, because to sit through graduate school in a discipline is really grueling work, and unless you care about the minute details, you won’t make it…important to consider, because a lot of things appear attractive when presented in a refined form during a course. For all you know, if you don’t have an idea what research is like, you may find it’s very boring, as interested in the field as you may be.</p>
<p>All this said, I think I end up coming to the same conclusion as Mollie, which is you shouldn’t play the whole “Oh, I’ll head here for undergrad and there for grad, no big deal” game and expect to be happy with the results.</p>
<p>Wow thanks for your advices 
I’m really losing sleeps over college decision 
and the deadline is coming really fast
I know that MIT has this great UROP does Stanford have something similar?</p>
<p>Summer Research College
[UAL</a> - Summer Research College (SRC)](<a href=“http://ual.stanford.edu/OO/research_opps/SummerResearchCollege.html]UAL”>http://ual.stanford.edu/OO/research_opps/SummerResearchCollege.html)</p>
<p>Student Research Grants
[UAL</a> - Student Research Grants Descriptions and Deadlines](<a href=“http://ual.stanford.edu/OO/research_opps/Grants.html]UAL”>http://ual.stanford.edu/OO/research_opps/Grants.html)</p>
<p>Departmental Research Programs
[UAL</a> - Departmental Research Programs](<a href=“http://ual.stanford.edu/OO/research_opps/ResearchDepartments.html]UAL”>http://ual.stanford.edu/OO/research_opps/ResearchDepartments.html)</p>
<p>Other Research Opportunities
[UAL</a> - Other Research Funding](<a href=“http://ual.stanford.edu/OO/research_opps/ResearchOtherFunding.html]UAL”>http://ual.stanford.edu/OO/research_opps/ResearchOtherFunding.html)</p>