Stanford...OR Yale

<p>pagEL60, what city, is it richmond??? b/c then new haven would seem like a cute playground compared to there.</p>

<p>anybody who is basing their decision on whether to go to stanford or yale based on its name-recognition with rural country dwellers across the world in some small town in Korea is an idiot.</p>

<p>An idiot indeed.</p>

<p>virtuoso_735....</p>

<p>I really like Yale, but my decision comes down to Harvard and Stanford because of my intended majors. In physics and math Harvard and Stanford are outstanding while Yale is not known for these fields.</p>

<p>No, I'm not from Richmond, but where I live is pretty crappy. We can't even wear solid red or blue at school b/c then they will think we are part of a gang. New Haven shouldn't be a problem for me.</p>

<p>the SRS should be a stratified random sample not a simple. This is not a sample too, and therefore a population proportion test should not be used. (What would be the proportion and what would we be testing percent wise) There is a more complex method. This would be a voluntary bias anyways. A decent interval would not appear but it would be highly skewed.</p>

<p>Stanford might beat Yale for me in terms of fin-aid. At Stanford, I get the Cal grant, and all I need to do is do work study to earn $2,000 a year, no loans at all. At Yale, I won't get the Cal grant, which might mean I will have to take out loans. I'm not sure yet, b/c I have yet to receive the fin-aid letter from Yale.</p>

<p>How is Stanford's international relations department versus Yale's? </p>

<p>Also another thing that might make me sway towards yale is Stanford's location. Although I love the weather in Cali, California is also pretty isolated from the rest of the major cities. For example, I am very interested in doing something in media/politics and I feel like the better location might be the east coast due to the fact that it's closer to New York as well as D.C.</p>

<p>What if we have to make this decision without visiting either campus? I can't go to Yale's Bulldog Days or Stanford's Admitted Student Days because of huge conflicts, but I don't want just to close my eyes and pick. It's going to be really hard to make the decision without visiting. That's why I'm leaning towards Princeton right now...because I can actually go visit.</p>

<p>Help!</p>

<p>^GO VISIT!!! Try to make time for it!</p>

<p>pagEL60, why don't you politely ask Yale to match Stanford's Financial Aid offer? My DD is going to be doing that. BTW, Stanford's Financial Aid offer for DD was better than Yale's offer (or for that matter better than H, P and C).</p>

<p>Just to throw fuel on the fire: Stanford has (or recently had) quite a few more NMS Finalists than Yale. It hosts the second most in the nation next to Harvard.</p>

<p>to truazn,</p>

<p>*Harvard, Yale, Columbia, MIT, and Berkely (cuz so many damn asians go there) are the best known in China. *</p>

<p>Just curious. How did you know?</p>

<p>hey, sorry to pop in, but someone earlier said that yale would be better for law and stanford would be better for premed. why is this? is it because of the majors/departments, or are premeds just more successful at stanford?</p>

<p>and does anyone know... how cutthroat are stanford and yale, exactly? how do their academic environments compare</p>

<p>MSMDAD, I called to ask Yale to match Stanford's aid, but they said they couldn't b/c for people with an EFC of 0 everything is set in stone apparently. :(</p>

<p>MorsVenit...where did you find your stat on NM Scholars? Stanford trails Yale by 22% and both are behind many schools:</p>

<p>Harvard 294
Florida 257
Texas 250
Washington U. 241
Northwestern 198
U. of Chicago 196
Arizona State 189
Yale 186
Stanford 153</p>

<p>These stats are from the NMSC for 2006 (the most recent available). This list is not all-inclusive. Stanford is nowhere near second place.</p>

<p>Here's where I got my data:</p>

<p><a href="http://collegeadmissions.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/laissez-faire-1999-2000.txt%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://collegeadmissions.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/laissez-faire-1999-2000.txt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>As you point out, it's out of date. My mistake. </p>

<p>As far as National Merit Scholars per capita, Yale and Stanford fare better than the middle 6 on your list.</p>

<p>My DD is also trying to decide between a few schools, including Yale and Stanford. She just commented to me that Stanford is focused primarily on the sciences/engineering and that it is not as strong in the humanities (political science and English) as Yale. I would appreciate any comments on this?</p>

<p>Stanford's Political Science department is #1. Every one of Stanford's programs are top 5 or top 10, so I wouldn't really call Stanford focused "primarily" on science/engineering, so much that Yale is just comparatively weak in most science and engineering fields (just comparatively, they're still strong in their own right). Talk to alums from both schools and most would agree that Stanford offers superior academic breadth.</p>

<p>i second stanford being more well rounded. as hard to believe as it may be, more people here major in polisci, econ, ir (the numbers are NOT combined) than in compsci. actually, the compsci department is suffering from a dearth of undergrads (straight out of the mouth of my compsci prof autumn quarter) and are trying to "recruit" people with CS106A, aka "compsci for fuzzies (humanities ppl)." henessey was in my dorm the other day and remarked that the school of engineering has the smallest amount of students on campus - not the law school, or the med school, but the engineering school. obviously this does not mean stanford compsci/medicine/engineering sucks - it means more individual attention, but also demonstrates that lots of people do ir and polisci at stanford, which does correspond to university interest there. </p>

<p>MSMDAD and </p>

<p>LittleLis, you are right on the geographic factor - stanford is on the west coast. but there's an amazing "Stanford in Washington" program that basically sets you up with an amazing internship in DC, where that is basically all you do academically for a quarter (or more, and they'll give you a scholarship to extend it into the summer as well). previous participants have met with stanford grads such as sandra day o'connor, etc. west coast politics are also important - obviously we have a monopoly there - but we are certainly not lacking nationally.</p>

<p>i agree with Hrteeexz - stanford offers an unparalled academic breadth.</p>

<p>faviola: though yale is much less cutthroat than harvard, i personally love stanford's very laid back - though not true as far as the duck analogy goes, plenty of people here whine about work and visibly work/struggle/suffer - academic environment, which is really conducive to working as a group. everyone forms study groups, is really friendly and will help you out. </p>

<p>MSMDAD and LittleLis: as a polisci major (prospective, but pretty much ready to declare once i find an advisor), i can speak some for the polisci/ir/publicpolicy/econ depts here. unfortunately, this'll be like the 5th time i repeat: stanford has an amazing polisci program! henessey's latest pet project is "interdisicplinary intiatives" - he was in my dorm the other day and explaining that this is where he thinks academia is going and where stanford should be going and where he's going to try to bring stanford - and one of those is international relations. A LOT of money is going into the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and combined with the Hoover Institution (though it houses many conservatives, it does house liberals - some of its notable occupants are george schultz former secretary of (???state???defense???yeah...), condi rice, james baker, larry diamond (governance advisor to Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, world-renowned expert in democratization), etc.). Ex-directors of RAND, lead figures at the National Endowment for Democracy, current secretary of state, current chief policy advisor the secretary of state, etc. security experts, democratization experts, rule of law experts - a ton of these are at stanford. there is a lot of emphasis on POLICY at stanford, so much so that you can fulfill math/engineering/etc. requirements with policy-focused classes.</p>