<p>Our son is deciding between Stanford and a H/Y/P school and is being recruited by each. He is leaning toward Stanford, partly because his sister goes to the other school. Both schools are terrific but we are from the NY metro area and as parents our one hesitation with Stanford is that because you develop many friends and a network in college, the contacts you would develop (both personal and work) at a H/Y/P would be much deeper and more valuable on the east coast. Are there any Stanford grads from the east coast that returned to the east coast that can comment on that. His interest right now anyway is science/bio-med/engineerning. Thanks so much for your input.</p>
<p>Any east coast grads out there care to comment? Or is the non-response an indicator of Stanford’s presence on the east coast. Thanks again.</p>
<p>Marksc, I think the non-response is a result of the fact that most of the people in this forum are high school students in the process of or looking forward to applying to Stanford. I wish I could be of some help, but I am not sure where the best place would be to ask for alumni input. Maybe someone else out there knows.</p>
<p>I am a Stanford law graduate; my sister got her undergraduate degree there. We grew up in upstate New York. Apart from my years at Stanford, I have spent all of my life in the Amtrak corridor since I was 18.</p>
<p>Here’s the bad news: My sister never came home. Neither did most of her friends. SHE has lived in the Bay Area since she was 18, except for two years in London (and that was unplanned, and she was miserable). She has a great life, makes a ton of money, and her Stanford connections have been central both to her career and to her social life. While people DO sometimes return from California (me, and my mother did, too, after going to college there), on a net basis it doesn’t happen. California has had net immigration since approximately the Ice Age.</p>
<p>New York and Washington are fairly well populated with Stanford grads. But it is weighted to the West Coast (and generally the Pacific Rim), no question. Looking forward 40-50 years, or looking backward for that matter, that doesn’t look like such a bad thing. For a while in the late '90s, Palo Alto seemed as much the center of the world as New York, and long term the world’s center of gravity looks like it is moving in that direction.</p>
<p>I know a lot of Stanford grads who moved back East and are very well connected in their Boston, New York, and DC communities–as lawyers, scientists, and engineers. Most of them were Stanford undergrads and went to graduate or professional school back east–that’s when they made their real connections.</p>
<p>If he opts to stay in California for grad school, you’ve probably lost him to the Left Coast. But it’s way too early to worry about that.</p>