Need Help: Stanford vs. Yale vs. MIT

College Search & Selection
1

Stanford/Yale/MIT

Intended major: Electrical Engineering or Mechanical Engineering

Background: I’m planning on going into the Air Force after I graduate college to pursue my dream job of becoming a fighter pilot. However, I do want a tech background since I also intend on working in the high-tech industry after I leave the military. I’ll be doing the Air Force ROTC program in college as I’ve gotten a 4-year scholarship to whatever college I go (so cost doesn’t matter).

Yale Pros: Air Force ROTC program is so good (100% pilot rate for those who want the slot), residential college system (like Hogwart’s houses), Ivy League connections, new state to experience living in, great funding/endowments, awesome campus

Yale Cons: Engineering is not very good there, cold weather (I don’t mind that much though), New Haven is not a good neighborhood, culture is very different than what I’m used to (not sure if I will fit in)

MIT Pros: #1 for engineering, ROTC program is also very good, Boston area, can take humanities classes at Harvard, not preppy

MIT Cons: I’m not THAT kind of nerd/geek (not THAT into engineering/STEM), networking not as strong as Yale/Stanford, cutthroat (I will probably drown), campus is ehhhh

Stanford Pros: childhood DREAM school, awesome sports teams, great weather and like they’re good at freakin everything, relaxing, love the environment so much (more so than Yale and MIT), Bay Area access/networking, awesome campus

Stanford Cons: Near my family, want to go out of state, ROTC program would require me to commute to San Jose State at least 2x a week in the very early morning (I might have to drop ROTC and do Officer Candidate School after I graduate if I attend Stanford)

I am so grateful that I have these choices and I’m definitely not taking them for granted. I just need a little help deciding, so thank you to all who provide insightful feedback!

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Congratulations on earning your way into this excellent dilemma!! Your love of Stanford is evident in what you’ve written. It seems to me that your mind is telling you Yale, and your heart is telling you Stanford. If that’s true, and based on your pro/con list, I think a safe place to start is to take MIT off the list. It’s easier to decide between two than among three, IMHO. (And you don’t need the #1 engineering program in the nation in order to have “a tech background.”)

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Congrats! You must be pretty exceptional. I agree, get rid of MIT, as you clearly don’t like it as much. I’d say choose Stanford, but your cons are pretty compelling. Your cons about Yale are minor and not really cons, except for maybe that you think engineering isn’t great. Great is relative though.

You seem to have a clear plan, and that involves joining the Air Force. Go to Yale.

4

Congratulations on your acceptances and scholarships! Given your list of pro’s and cons, I think Yale wins, hands down. Stanford is great but its not worth the commute for ROTC. Good luck!

5

I think objectively speaking Stanford is the best for your academic interests and the kind of environment you want. it also helps that it has been your dream school since forever.

I get that commuting for ROTC would be hard so only you can decide if it would be worth the trouble or not. That said i d have a really hard time turning down Stanford for Yale as a STEM student.

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Agree with @Penn95’s point about the STEM advantages at Stanford - though I’m a Stanford grad and undoubtedly biased toward the school and the area :slight_smile: Frankly, you can’t go wrong with any choice in this wonderful dilemma.

A couple of thoughts: It’s a 22-mile drive between Stanford and SJSU, and in the early morning (depending how early) it would be a traffic-free commute – less than half an hour. Surely other Stanford students would be making the same trip, so carpooling would also be an option. CalTrain is another possibility.

You mentioned that you are eager to live in another state and not be so close to family. Lots of young people feel that way, which is only natural… but they have the option of returning to their local area after college. You’ll be taking off for real (no pun intended) by joining the Air Force upon graduation. College will go by faster than you think. You might want to pause and reconsider how important it really is to you to be far away NOW. You might decide, upon reflection, that you’d actually like to be closer to home for the next four years, before you REALLY are gone. Lots of ROTC/Service Academy grads in my family. I urge you to carefully think this through.

Lastly, can you visit Yale (for the first time or again) before deciding? That list had pretty strong pro side. Yale may be the right choice. But I get the sense that giving up your “childhood DREAM school” with an “awesome campus” which is “good at freakin everything,” where you “love the environment so much (more so than Yale and MIT)” etc, would be easier if you have another look at Yale’s social scene that is “very different than what I’m used to (not sure if I will fit in).” I also think you’d feel more certain about passing up the chance to attend Yale (or MIT) if you visit one or both with “accepted student eyes.”

Again, what a great dilemma to have, and you just can’t go wrong. I hope you’ll share what you ultimately decide!

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Who are you people? Haha, this is an incredible dilemma to have. Go to Stanford. The gut is seldom wrong.

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I have only a few comments.

On MIT: Cross registration at Harvard probably sounds better that actual availability. Since the schools courses meet on different days and times going from one school to the other may be difficult. If you are not that into engineering why do you want to study Electrical Engineering or Mechanical Engineering. MIT is not preppy. The MIT industrial liaison program is one of the best industry connections available. MIT EE is as good as it gets.

On the Air Force: Getting to be a pilot is not easy. A relative was a Tau Beta Pi engineering student. He entered the Air Force to become a pilot. He was placed in an engineering job. He paid for his pilot training and became instrument rated. He was in very good shape; he played football in high school and ran half marathons. His AF performance reviews were all outstanding. He was passed over and over for pilot school. He was finally accepted into pilot training where he was at the top of his class. While he is an AF pilot today getting to be a pilot was very difficult. Try to get a good reading on if you successfully complete the AF ROTC program are you necessarily admitted to pilot school.

1 Like
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What you wrote points to Stanford, just get up in the morning. Find a fellow afrotc student to carpool with or sleep on the train.

10

Just a little love for Massachusetts.

Stanford better than MIT in the subject areas. Absolutely not.

MIT is fun and they have good parties. Kids from my daughters school think they are the best and kids most normal.

Nobody cares if you are rich or poor.

It is super intense to keep up and to perform well against classmates. It’s hard even for the genius. You need to be a super genius it appears. Lol

Boston is great.

But Stanford sounds great too. And Yale would be awesome. Tough choice.

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Getting to choose from those 3 with no concern for money - priceless. Sounds like you’re leaning Yale or Stanford and if that’s the case I think Stanford is your best pick.

Yes, I am biased :smile:

12

Stanford is great, but I think you are ready for ‘next’.

So, Yale.

Congratulations.

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Thank you to everyone who has given me insight. I think right now I have to visit all three schools and figure out the social vibe before I make a decision. I’m visiting Yale during Bulldog Days, but I’m only visiting Stanford for one day, which irks me because I might not get the feel for campus in that little amount of time. Regarding the environment of each school, I don’t think I can confirm any of what I said in my first post until I’ve visited every school.

I visited MIT during CPW this past weekend, and was pleasantly surprised by MIT’s offerings. I really loved Boston’s unique college culture, and I also liked the social scenes at MIT as well. However, I think that I liked MIT more because of its academic opportunities, which may not be the way to think about choosing my undergrad education.

I recently talked to a Yale undergrad/Stanford grad (Masters + PhD) alum, and this is what he basically told me (without regards to the ROTC program):

  • You’re not going to college to be an engineer, you’re going to learn more about yourself and develop lifetime relationships (these are your only 4 years of college!)
  • Go to grad school if you’re getting a STEM degree—that’s when the academic opportunities of each school actually matter
  • Choose the university that feels like home, where your community is the strongest
  • Do not base your decision on academics (ultimately, they’re all the same at the undergraduate level)
  • What happens in tech 10 years from now is not what is important now, so don’t worry about the hiring process or the strength of the STEM programs
  • Think about when you change your major (because you most likely will): where will I still feel most at home?
  • Why would you not trust your gut when you’ve been doing it your whole entire life?

He said that he loved both Yale and Stanford for different reasons, and would do it the same way again in a heartbeat. He felt that the residential college system at Yale was incomparable with other schools, and that the friendships he formed at Yale were much tighter than he could’ve imagined if he went to Stanford for undergrad. He also mentioned that Stanford’s programs (especially in tech) offer so many opportunities, but at the undergrad level I shouldn’t focus too much on academics.

Would you agree with this? Given his advice, I think I’m gonna take MIT off the list.

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@gallentjill @Penn95 @CardinalBobcat @PtonAlumnus

I think I’ve decided that going to Stanford with ROTC is not worth the commute. If anything, I’ll just go to OTS after I graduate (assuming I still want to go into the Air Force after I graduate).

At this point, I’m also not entirely sure I want to go into the Air Force. I realized that being a pilot is a 10-year commitment after you get winged, so about 11-12 years total. I do want to work in tech eventually, and it worries me that it’ll be really hard to transition to tech after being a pilot for over a decade. My parents also think it’s a waste of school and my brain skills to be a pilot (which is more of a physical job), when I could be working on Wall Street or something. I’m also considering what I would do in the Air Force if I wasn’t selected for a pilot slot (maybe because of medical reasons or competitiveness, etc.). However, the Air Force is currently facing a severe shortage of pilots, so both the MIT and Yale detachments have been handing out pilot slots to whoever is medically qualified.

I do want to give ROTC a shot for sure, but should that play a role in deciding colleges? Namely, whether or not they have a good program (crosstown vs. on campus)?

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@PtonAlumnus

I want an engineering background so that I can open up pathways for other careers. I want to get an MBA eventually and do the business side of tech (be a manager or something like that).

Also, IF I do ROTC, I’m required to be a tech major (I declared MechE). It’s tied to my scholarship I believe.

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Well, my son did exact what this person didn’t-- my son chose Stanford over Yale, and now he is a Google Product Manager with 4 degrees from Stanford (two BS degrees, an MBA and an MS-CS.) He was not recommended to study engineering and he didn’t. The reason was that as parents we had 6 college engineering degrees and we could sell him one if he needed one.

So you have a sample of size two with possibly two outliers of the truth.

Stanford puts its admit weekend on the last day(s) for a reason – if you are still undecided and come to the admit weekend, you are probably among the 80+% admits who will come to Stanford.

P.S. I am not sure how many close friends he has because he didn’t go to Yale.

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No, I would not agree. His conclusion was logical, but based on his starting assumption/premise, which is that an Engineering degree s/b a grad degree and therefore the obvious undergrad choice is one that focuses on liberal arts. In other words, the way he framed his discussion allowed him to come to only one conclustion. (Of course, the counter to his pov is an engineering degree at Dartmouth which is 4 years of liberal arts+1 year for ABET.)

The reason I don’t agree with his pov is that the vast majority of undergrads who go into Engineering go into Engineering, not liberal arts.

While Stanford is clearly better than Y for engineering, the 25 mile commute for ROTC would get old quickly. Driving to SJSU in the early am is not a problem, but returning to PA during rush hour could be tough.

But if you are apparently not fully committed to ROTC, and you could drop it mid-way, then Stanford becomes the easy choice given your interest in Tech. MIT would be my second choice.

18

On MIT and humanities classes, students go to Wellesley for very in depth humanities and social sciences, but MIT arguably has excellent political science department, world language department, and believe it or not, history and theatre is strong right at MIT. Music library at MIT is also amazing, and music classes good. Harvard is there, need to be a junior or senior and it is easy to cross register at Harvard, and take the T over there, but you may not need to given Wellesley’s breath. There are buses to Wellesley on the half hour, and its really common and well developed cross registration program. Wellesley is one of the premier LACs in the country. All women, aside from the MIT men
in humanities and social science classes. You need 8 humanities and social science classes to earn an MIT degree.

You can take all 8 at Wellesley if you prefer.

Cambridge as a location, is more fun/urban/active with Boston right there, a T ride away, than either Palo Alto or New Haven, and I think MIT alumni network is stronger than you may think. MIT + Ivy Networks have formed now in Colorado and all 50 states, I believe. Air Force ROTC group is fantastic at MIT.

On being a pilot, maybe don’t focus that way, too soon. Its truly more technical than you or your parents seem to believe, but not everyone takes to airplanes. Have you flown in a smaller plane? Does it thrill you to death? Then go for a pilot slot. Pilots are very technical people, because there is a lot of adjustments and understanding aerodynamics to fly a plane well. It takes an engineering brain to be a good pilot, and also a desire to be up in the air, which has a strong appeal for some engineers.

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MIT Lincoln Labs was started as an Air Force Research Lab, and continues to support the Air Force with great technologies. Undergraduates at MIT have preference at Lincoln for summer positions. I think ROTC may assign
Air Force students to Lincoln Labs.
https://www.ll.mit.edu

There are buses between MIT’s campus in Cambridge and Lincoln Labs in Lexington on the Air Force Base.

20

If you become an Air Force pilot you will probably stay in the AF for 20 years. At the 12 year mark you may be a Major and can receive AF retirement at 20 years. AF suppliers, e.g. Boeing love to hire retired pilots with engineering degrees. Being an AF pilot can be a good life; my relative says that every AF base has a golf course and the bases generally have a good climate.

If you want an MBA consider MIT Sloan and Stanford. Both have good programs for engineering management. My relative received his Masters online. A plug for MIT. At MIT you can study engineering, take courses at the Sloan School and join ROTC.