<p>My personal experience of these two universities is 25 years old, but recent visits to both and discussions with current undergraduates lead me to believe that some of the distinctions remain true today, although they are almost certainly less marked than they were back then. I was an undergraduate at Yale, and went to graduate school at Stanford while my sister was an undergraduate there.</p>
<p>Stanford was a world-class university long before it had a world-class undergraduate program. Back then (the early 80s), Stanford’s crown jewels were its professional schools (including Engineering), and there was general acknowledgment that the college was the weakest part of the university. Undergraduate advising, in particular, was terrible. That was a really strong point at Yale, and I was often amazed at how easy it was for my sister to slip between the cracks in ways that would have been impossible at Yale. A couple of years ago, at an information session with recent Stanford graduates, I asked them about undergraduate advising, and all of them agreed, in nice, appropriately qualified language, that it remained pretty bad. Given that most students are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, that’s not the worst thing in the world, but I think it remains an issue.</p>
<p>There was a culture of public anti-intellectualism among Stanford undergraduates. People studied in secret; they pretended not to do any work. Of course, some of them weren’t pretending, but they were often confused about why other people who weren’t (visibly) working any harder than they were getting better grades. At Yale, almost everyone was fairly passionately engaged in what they were studying. People walked around looking like they were on fire with ideas. I remember sitting around a room at a party at 2:00 am as the immediate past captain of the football team earnestly explained to about half the offensive line what he was trying to say about the pre-Socratic philosophers in his senior essay, while they probed and criticized. That was not a scene that could have occurred at Stanford. </p>
<p>On the other hand, for motivated Stanford undergraduates, there may be significantly less competition for faculty attention, since lots of their classmates don’t care about it much. When I was there, it was very, very easy for Stanford undergraduates who wanted it to have extensive personal involvement with faculty. That was available at Yale, too, but it took a lot more work and confidence to stand out as an undergraduate.</p>
<p>I think this is an area where Stanford has improved a lot, and Yale has maybe recessed towards the mean. But I believe Yale still has a significantly more intellectual environment than Stanford. </p>
<p>Stanford was and is very engineering-centric. Between the undergraduate and graduate programs, engineers constitute the single largest shared-interest group on campus, and the success of Silicon Valley gives them prestige and fabulous opportunities. Yale is working to expand its once-moribund engineering program, but engineers at Yale are anomalies, and at Stanford they are the norm. Even 100% humanities people live and play with engineering students. I regard this as a point in Stanford’s favor, the positive other side of the anti-intellectualism coin.</p>
<p>Yale is much, much artier than Stanford. The volume and quality of undergraduate (and graduate) music, drama, visual art is astounding compared to anywhere, and a huge percentage of the students participate in some aspect of artistic activity. (And half of the ones who don’t are writing novels.) Stanford has all of that, but no one is going to use the word “astounding” about the arts scene there.</p>
<p>Yale is very focused on the East Coast and Europe, although it has always been very strong in Chinese language and history. Stanford is a lot less parochial than it once was, but it still regards California, not New York, or London, or Paris, as the center of the world, and looks much more to Asia than to Europe. Stanford may be right, by the way.</p>
<p>Students at Stanford don’t complain about their living arrangements at all, and seem to make lasting friendships, etc. Yale’s residential college system is the absolute best aspect of Yale College, and the envy of every other U.S. institution. Basically, it’s perfect.</p>
<p>Stanford looks like a golf course. It is very set apart from its surrounding community, and its surrounding community is one of the richest suburbs in the world. San Francisco, perhaps the most beautiful city in the world, is 45 minutes away. Undergraduates don’t go there much. Yale looks like a bizarre imitation of Oxford, and is thoroughly integrated with a gritty, depressed small city. New York is 1-1/2 hours away, and students go there about as often as Stanford students go to San Francisco. If urban environments make you feel uncomfortable, you will feel uncomfortable at Yale sometimes. If suburban environments give you a sense of malaise and ennui, you will have that sense at Stanford sometimes. In the end, though, both institutions are about their intellectual environment, not their physical environment. I am a city person through and through, and I loved Stanford.</p>
<p>Stanford, of course, has perhaps the best climate in the world – warmer than San Francisco, and fog free, but more varied than Southern California. The beauty of the foothills and ridges right behind it to the west is incredible and soul-stirring. At Yale, all of the beauty is man-made, inside the buildings, or in their courtyards.</p>
<p>Stanford has world-class athletes, in football, basketball, swimming, track, volleyball, tennis, and, Lord knows, golf. It competes against colleges with similar athletes, often more of them. The competition is high quality. Yale has a few odd-sport Olympians, and every once in a while a future professional at something. Ivy League sports are enjoyable to watch as long as you make certain not to watch any real sports.</p>
So its ‘facilities’ are top-notch in that respect, as well.</p>![http://farm3.static.■■■■■■■■■■/2361/2062268068_4dea3cfea4.jpg?v=0[/url]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2361/2062268068_4dea3cfea4.jpg?v=0%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
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