<p>Some crazy people think Stanford is more prestigious than Columbia, I don't think so. Here is the link. Columbia is a top 4 school in the nation, while Stanford is top 9 (since there are 4 other #5 schools on the USNWR list).</p>
<p>It’s subjective…</p>
<p>What’s up with this new CC Columbia-Stanford rivalry…?</p>
<p>In California, Stanford is more prestigious. In New York, Columbia is more prestigious. In the US as a whole, the more prestigious is whichever one fares better in a massive study (which has yet to be conducted) of random people on the street, employers, graduate schools, and Jewish mothers-in-law. But I think it would be a tie.</p>
<p>This is a somewhat dynamic situation. Columbia is an up-and-comer on the scale of a few decades and may not have plateaued yet. That isn’t so much the case for Stanford, but athletic programs and connection to the tech industry also give it a bigger public profile.</p>
<p>Based on my own observations in a CT public school, Stanford prestige >>> Columbia prestige.</p>
<p>Prestige and ranking are two different things, and though Columbia may be ranked higher this year, Stanford has more layman’s prestige.</p>
<p>The fact that you would even make the statement that “Columbia is more pretigious than Stanford” or even vice-versa belies a very obvious fact: You have no real association with any of them. Alums or students or real world people don’t speak or even think like that. Actual alums of top schools don’t care.</p>
<p>Do you know who, at Stanford or Columbia, cares deeply about USNWR rankings? No one.</p>
<p>You speak like someone who’s obsessed with everyone else’s SATs or class ranking. Rather pedestrian thinking here.</p>
<p>“This is a somewhat dynamic situation. Columbia is an up-and-comer on the scale of a few decades and may not have plateaued yet.”</p>
<p>Historically, that’s backwards. Columbia was one of the most prestigious schools in the first half of the 20th century and the postwar period, while Stanford didn’t become a nationally-known school until the late 1970s and 1980s (the same time when Columbia, and New York City more generally, were at their nadir). </p>
<p>I suppose you could say that within the last 15 years, Columbia is an “up-and-comer” as it’s been regaining prestige, while Stanford has been well-established, but within the last century, the opposite is actually true.</p>
<p>These discussions of prestige are myopic. Ask yourself first what you want to do and then compare schools. It’s perfectly fine not to have an idea of what career to pursue, in that case choose the school that maximizes career opportunities, academic enrichment, and social engagement. </p>
<p>However, these discussions of prestige help perpetuate the current system of elite higher education, one in which educational quality is subordinated to the selection mechanism of reputation. Stanford has one of the best CS departments in the world and Columbia has one of the best Synthetic Chemistry departments. Which university is better?</p>
<p>A system in which prestige is the main determinant of school ranking perpetuates itself indefinitely. Students will continue to choose schools that are the “best”, leading to self-reinforcing cycle that’s difficult for the schools to control. Think about the factors that have driven the reputation of Stanford and Columbia in the past decades: the decline of the American city and the rise of computing. Prestige and reputation are more epehermal than your intellect and ability. </p>
<p>Build a life, not a resume.</p>
<p>[The</a> New York Times > Week in Review > Image > Collegiate Matchups: Predicting Student Choices](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/09/17/weekinreview/20060917_LEONHARDT_CHART.html]The”>The New York Times > Week in Review > Image > Collegiate Matchups: Predicting Student Choices)</p>
<p>Stanford/Columbia cross admits choose Stanford. Personally, I think the difference is negligible between the two in prestige.</p>
<p>Stanford and Columbia don’t compare in layman’s prestige:</p>
<p>[Harvard</a> Number One University in Eyes of Public](<a href=“Harvard Number One University in Eyes of Public”>Harvard Number One University in Eyes of Public)</p>
<p>Notice that Stanford is second only to Harvard, whereas Columbia is mentioned by only 1% of the population, on par with NYU, Iowa, Purdue, etc.</p>
<p>Also, according to data released by Stanford, only about 12-13 students each year choose Columbia over Stanford. Although that doesn’t tell us a cross-admit %, it does shed light on the relative scarcity of those at Columbia who can claim they got into Stanford and turned it down. (Conversely, there’s a huge number of students at Stanford who can claim they turned down Columbia.)</p>
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<p>I agree that the previous poster is confused in his/her understanding of the history of Stanford/Columbia, but this is equally wrong. Stanford rose to HYP-level with the rise of Silicon Valley, but it was already considered elite long before that. For example, in 1900, when the Association of American Universities was founded, there were 9 original private universities: HYPS, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, JHU, and Penn. (At the time Stanford was much richer than even Harvard or Columbia.) If you look up newspaper archives on Google, you can find very old college rankings from decades before Silicon Valley that place Stanford among the top 5 or top 10. So it was “nationally-known” very long before the 1970s.</p>
<p>Three words:</p>
<p>Who freaking cares? </p>
<p>And I didn’t even apply to Stanford or Columbia. Man, what a riot… Inferiority complex kids getting worked up over layman’s prestige between two top schools… get a grip on reality, folks!</p>
<p>Stanford is literally exponentially more prestigious than Columbia in the eyes of the general public.
Phantasmagoric’s post says it all.</p>
<p>Stanford is arguably the most prestigious school in the world. Columbia doesn’t hold a candle to it in terms of lay prestige.</p>
<p>I would say they are roughly equivalent.</p>
<p>My kid applied to both.</p>
<p>If he gets into both, I really wouldn’t care which one he went to. My “gut” feeling is that Stanford is slightly more “prestigious”. So I guess I must be one of those crazy people you refer to in your post. But we all have our own idea of what is “good”. </p>
<p>It might be noted that the future leader of France, who had his chances derailed by the incident with the hotel maid, sent his kid to Columbia.</p>
<p>If you want to be in NYC, you go to Columbia. If you want to be in California, you go to Stanford. This might be a bit of an over-simplication, but if you plan on working in asia one day, you might tend to go to Stanford. If you anticipate working in Europe, I would tend to lean toward Columbia.</p>
<p>One is not “better” than the other.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t pick one over the other just because one is slightly higher ranked in US News.</p>
<p>1st lesson for OP:</p>
<p>USNWR rankings are ****. Save your tears for next year, when the rankings are completely different.</p>
<p>I somehow came across this thread and it provided me with a lot of humor. The same people on this thread arguing about the prestige of these schools are the same ones who know they aren’t getting in either. Clearly none of you went to Columbia/Stanford and you can’t speak from first hand experience, so i don’t want to hear it at all. If you actually had the knowledge then i wouldn’t bash any of you. However, since none of you have the slight chance of getting into either, it’s best if you keep these as your dream schools.
/thread</p>
<p>Only on College Confidential does this supreme idiocy manifest itself! Really, ONLY here do people argue about whether one top ten university is more prestigious than another. Or, attempt to quantify their assessments with meaningless data sets. The persons perpetuating the debates probably never went to any of these schools. Persons fortunate to attend schools of this caliber DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT, have these kind of arguments over relative prestige. Why, because they are either busy pursuing their extraordinary educational opportunities, or doing something meaningful with the degrees thus earned. When I was at UChicago in the 1980s NO ONE CARED where the school ranked! When I was at Harvard earning a Ph.D, NO ONE CARED!!! If one is fortunate enough to attend ANY of the schools at this level, one is always grateful for the opportunity, and spends his or her time making real MEANING of the experience while in school, and later in life. </p>
<p>To anyone thinking of applying to any one of these exceptional schools, ignore those on any of these threads or forums who would attempt to diminish your aspirations toward one or the other with utterly meaningless arguments over relative prestige. Just consider what school best fits your educational and personal needs! These persons are nothing more than bored neurotics and/or intellectual frauds.</p>
<p>@Swingtime: My sentiments exactly in post #7. Having attended one of these “top” schools, one of the biggest single things I learned was there are many amazing people around me – at the school and out of the school – including (gasp) gratuates of “lesser” schools! </p>
<p>Sarcasm aside: these “mine is bigger” debates are insipid.</p>
<p>Just to add another perspective, as somebody who has gone through the US applications process while living in Europe, I’ve noticed that Columbia has a much more recognizable name than Stanford. I had a friend visiting who was admitted to Stanford and while she was here she got a lot of blank looks when she explained where she was going. I’ve never had that happen to me when I said I was considering Columbia.</p>
<p>As far as I can tell, Columbia’s name reasonates louder directly across the Atlantic than Stanford’s does, but that may have to do with geographic proximity and the general fascination with New York around here.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I am under the impression that among people who are familiar with BOTH schools, Stanford has more of a wow factor.</p>
<p>That being said this thread is dumb. : )</p>