<p>Harvard has a larger endowment, but Stanford's now is #3 among all private universities and has raised more money than any other school for each of the past few years.
Stanford has a much better engineering school than Harvard.</p>
<p>Stanford has been a peer of Harvard’s for decades. USNews began ranking National Universities in 1983 when it asked 1,308 college presidents which schools “offered the best education.” Stanford came out on top back then and it has remained above or equal with Harvard on most similar surveys ever since.</p>
<p>Despite that history, Harvard had continued to lead Stanford in a few statistical measures (admission rate, # of applicants, yield, fundraising, etc.), but in recent years Stanford has started to pass Harvard on those measures too. At this point I don’t think it’s really possible to pick one over the other based solely on reputation/prestige.</p>
<p>Acceptance rates don’t mean squat. Julliard has a much lower acceptance rate than Harvard and Stanford. Stanford has always been “on par” with Harvard, but will never achieve Harvard’s name brand recognition.</p>
<p>In addition to its irrelevance to a discussion about non-specialty schools, the rate of admission at Juilliard is definitely not “much lower” that at Harvard and Stanford, and when the dust settles for the last cycle, probably higher. But again Juilliard’s rates are as relevant as the admissions at the military academies or at the technical institutes in India. Meaning … not at all. </p>
<p>It is simply something people like to throw around for no good reasons.</p>
<p>on par? that is an opinion and could be applied to every school out there. do you think harvard has some secret thing they teach that they do not teach at stanford. shhhhhhhh everyone people have 11 fingers but only we at harvard know, whatever you do do not tell those stanford clowns. I doubt that so how would they be or not be on par?</p>
<p>Almost everyone in the world (educated or non-educated) knows about Harvard but we can’t say the same thing about Stanford. Academically, Stanford is definitely on par with Harvard. Standford is also more well rounded.</p>
<p>I don’t think cross-admit data is readily available, but at least with the class of 2014 Stanford needed to pick up only 40 or so more cross-admits to pull even with Harvard. Stanford’s yield has increased quite a bit since then and the significant decrease in offers Stanford made for the class of 2017 suggests the school is predicting Its highest yield ever. Add to that the unfortunate events in Boston that forced Harvard to cancel its admit weekend and I think it’s not out of the question that Stanford could end up with more of the cross-admits this year.</p>
I understand your question in a general sense, but since there is no such thing as a “general” student, I don’t get the utility of it. The answer depends upon what the student wants to study, where the student prefers to live, and other intangibles.</p>
<p>major? </p>
<p>lifestyle?</p>
<p>Undergrad or grad? </p>
<p>If grad, you have to include Berkeley as a possible #1. That too is irrelevant b/c who is going to get 48 Ph.D. degrees at one place?</p>
<p>It wasn’t so long ago that the more politically and socially conservative would pick Princeton or Yale over Harvard without hesitation. </p>
<p>There is no question that Harvard has the strongest Brand in higher education. It is probably also true that Harvard undergrad would on average win the cross admit battle with any other school. But again, we get into generalities that mean nothing in a very specific world.</p>
<p>I still recall the back and forth three years ago when poster Grim Shogun chose Pomona over Harvard.</p>
<p>@DunninLA, students all know that they should really be trying to figure out which is “best for them,” but many just want to know which school is “the best” (which is why the USN&WR rankings were so instantly popular).</p>
<p>Historically Harvard has been considered by most to be the grand prize in college admissions. This fact, as timetodecide12 suggests, has played out in the cross-admit data. (Think about it. It makes no sense that Harvard would be such a perfect fit for all those cross admits.) So the fact that Stanford could challenge Harvard on this metric is newsworthy, though (hopefully for most applicants) also meaningless.</p>
You were right to adjust barrk’s number, but for an utterly bizarre reason you adjusted it the wrong way. I really doubt anyone would agree that students at Cornell, Johns Hopkins, or UVA lack access to “great opportunities”! :rolleyes:</p>
<p>The top 5 do indeed have great opportunities…as do the top 10…as do the top 25, 50, and arguably even 100 colleges. All of the top colleges have far more resources at their disposal than any given student could ever use, and comparisons of degree are virtually meaningless devoid of a specific context. </p>
<p>(It’s rather like bemoaning having “only” $50 billion instead of $60 billion. How much of that could one ever use?)</p>