<p>I’ll enumerate the reasons I chose Stanford over Yale sometime, but for now, I’m going to spout some of my fanboyism here, but more to contest some of the claims made about Stanford that I think are just plain misled. So bear with me. :)</p>
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1) I believe that Yale has more of an undergraduate focus than Stanford. It is notably smaller, the residential college system creates the HEART of the university and an unparalleled social structure, and the university puts so many resources into undergraduate education (e.g. even though it is finals within the past week every day of finals there has been wonderful study breaks with free chinese, thai food, etc). Even though Yale is smaller, we still have the larger endowment so on a student/endowment ratio Yale is can't be beat.
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<p>Not anymore. Haven't you heard of Yale's huge losses in its endowment (bringing it down to $17 billion)?</p>
<p>Granted, Stanford's has probably lost some value too, but you forget about alumni donations; Stanford has typically raised more than twice what Yale has, and for Yale to match that kind of spending power with its endowment, it must have an additional $10 billion (spending roughly 5%). So no, Yale is not more financially rich.</p>
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2) Do not forget that Stanford is a school for athletes. At the admit weekend and talking with my numerous friends who attend (I'm from Bay Area), I had forgotten how much of the university is dedicated to athletics. Realistically, you are looking at a class about half of whom are athletes and/or legacies.
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<p>Do you have a source on that by chance? I sincerely doubt that.</p>
<p>Looks like you chose based on erroneous perception. ;)</p>
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Yale is NOT an athlete school
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<p>I notice you conspicuously left out mention of legacies when talking about Yale. I don't think anyone would deny that Yale has a heavy preference for legacies, if not much more so than Stanford.</p>
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3) The facilities at Yale are better and the campus is more concentrated.
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<p>"The facilities"? I can tell you one thing, though: Stanford, being a much more research-intensive university than Yale, probably has better, more diverse, and more updated facilities. Heck, Yale is still trying to build much of the infrastructure to keep up with Stanford, infrastructure that Stanford has long had.</p>
<p>All the dorms are undergoing renovation; Stanford has a $1 billion project going on that, and many dorms have been renovated.</p>
<p>In Stanford's case, there's no need to redo the gym, the library, etc. Why? Because they're already of superb quality. Damn Stanford for being top-notch by nature! ;)</p>
<p>You also seem to be focusing solely on the appearances, an argument too superficial for me to really contest with blow-by-blow pictures. But I will say, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who tours the campus and says that it isn't gorgeous. (All the insides of the buildings, too, are polished, I'll add.) Heck, it seems every day I ride my bike past the Oval, I see tons of people pouring out of tour buses, taking their cameras out, and immediately snapping pictures of the campus. ;) So its ‘facilities’ are top-notch in that respect, as well.</p>
<p>As JHS had said, his knowledge of Stanford may be a bit outdated, which is what I’d like to clarify.</p>
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There was a culture of public anti-intellectualism among Stanford undergraduates. People studied in secret; they pretended not to do any work.
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<p>I can tell you, this is far from the truth these days. Just in my experience: people study very visibly (computer cluster, lounge, their rooms with the doors open, etc.), and are constantly “off to the library.” As for this whole “paddling duck” thing, I’d say it’s the exact opposite: people seem more keen on showing how much they are doing. I won’t go on much about this, but I can tell you that people aren’t afraid to wear their nerdiness on their sleeves—one girl danced around about how much she loved her math class, others go on about their intent to major in earth systems for the eventual goal of improving the environment, many are passionately engaged in research, and so on. Dinner conversations are typically relaxed, but we do also talk about papers we’re writing, research we’re doing, classes we’re taking, majors we’re thinking of, etc.</p>
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Stanford was and is very engineering-centric.
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<p>Very, very not true these days. Only about 12% of the student body is in engineering. Heck, social science majors are more than double engineering majors. Even with the prominence of its engineering program, Stanford is very, very far from engineering-centric. (Perhaps if you’re in one of the departments, then it may seem so.)</p>
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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.
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<p>I’d say Stanford arts are “okay” right now—not nearly as good as Yale—but just as Yale is attempting to improve its sciences and engineering, Stanford is attempting to improve its arts. In fact, about $1.2 billion of its $4.3 billion campaign focuses on improving the arts at Stanford.</p>
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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.
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<p>Students generally seem happy not having a residential college system; I know of a few who expressly disliked Yale et al for that reason.</p>
<p>Stanford’s dorms are clustered into about 11-12 groups that could be called “residential colleges” (each having an academic dean, dining hall, etc. as well as libraries for some), but obviously with a very different system of housing.</p>
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San Francisco, perhaps the most beautiful city in the world, is 45 minutes away. Undergraduates don't go there much.
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<p>Not true—well, depending on what you mean by “much.” Undergrads go there relatively frequently, I’d say, with improved transportation (Cal Train, BART, etc).</p>
