<p>of course not. how can there ever be an overinflated view of stanford?? its the most amazing school ever.</p>
<p>Which part is overinflated? Yes I will admit that Stanford is more famous than Yale, and I am part of the Yale Class of 2009. In addition, I don't think it's too far of a stretch to say that Stanford can possibly surpass Harvard in prestige. Harvard's sciences and engineering programs, like the other ivies, are shoddy in comparison to Stanford's. Stanford's humanities, on the other hand, are not shoddy compared to Harvard and Yale's.</p>
<p>I believe that Stanford is the school of the future. It's remarkable how highly regarded this school is considering how young it is. In certain international circles (such as many Asian countries), one can argue that its prestige even surpasses Yale's (although not Harvard's, at least not yet), because those countries base a school's worth largely on its science/engineering programs. In terms of research quality, Stanford is virtually unmatched. There is a ranking where Stanford is second only to Harvard in the world. In twenty or thirty years, who knows? Its science/engineering programs are quite possibly the best in the world (after MIT) and the humanities there rival those of HYP. It's amazing across the board, throughout the disciplines. As someone mentioned before, Stanford is like Harvard and MIT combined. In the future, it may very well be unbeatable.</p>
<p>Yeah Stanford probably is the school of the future. However, I don't think America will remain a superpower for long, and so all of our top schools may end up like the UK ones--forgotten and obscure.</p>
<p>If stanley ford duch a super then how come 80% of the US population only sends in 4000 applications out of 19000. It a regional school, primarily competing with UCB for 50% of it encoming class. At best it is regional University. It does have world class engineering school, do does UC Berkeley and MIT. Drive around Sunnyvale, San Jose business areas, see the empty buildings, business is moving away from Valley to China, Taiwan, AZ, Oregon . There was a brief bubble where 2001 time frame every idiot wanted to be Computer Science major, With dot com madness, kids worshipped tech schools. Now most EE design, IT and Software is heading to Undia, China, I am not sure what these bubble driven prestige can do for you.
Back to real earth now: Harvrad yield 80%, Yale 70%. Most tech schools will suffer enrollment issues. IVYs will thrive they are not tech centric.</p>
<p>hahahaha..omg..competing with UCB or 50% of its incoming class..no, try Harvard, Yale, MIT
Stanford HARDLY competes with UCB in terms of cross-admits. </p>
<p>and as for the reason why stanford has ~40% of CA residents in its incoming classes, here it is:</p>
<p>Stanford, who had remained at Leland's bedside continuously, fell into a troubled sleep the morning the boy died. When he awakened he turned to his wife and said, </p>
<p>"The children of California shall be our children."
These words were the real beginning of Stanford University</p>
<p>Source: Stanford University website </p>
<p>its okay baba...you can keep living in your little imaginary world...if you are going to berkeley...i feel so sorry for them. some of my best friends are going there...i feel bad that they'll have to be a part of your class. how did berkeley ever admit you? you have so many issues.</p>
<p>There's a reason why tech schools like MIT and CalTech are ranked so highly and regarded so well. We live in a tech age. The dotcom bubble may have burst, but IT and software development is still a very strong industry, even with outsourced jobs and foreign competition. The next "hot" industry will probably be biotech (depending on how the govt deals with bioethical issues), which is developing rapidly southern California. There was a news article a few days go which stated that the biotech industry looks very promising, especially in the Bay Area. Let's face it: humanities majors just aren't what they used to be. A university's national and international prestige depends mainly on its strength in science and research (which is what the world rankings reflect). Why are LAC's not nearly as internationally prestigious as the top tech schools? Because that is the kind of society we live in. HYP are highly regarded nevertheless because they have long since established themselves as the divine trinity of education. But now you see that tech schools also dominate, often beating out the other Ivies.</p>
<p>In any case, Stanford is, by no means, a tech school like baba suggests. It is a very complete university with outstanding humanities and social sciences departments. These departments rival those of HYP.</p>
<p>It's funny how a person like baba who isn't really good enough to get into HYPS yet whores HYP AS IF he belongs.</p>
<p>So what if Stanford is RELATIVELY more regional than HYP based on where the applicants come from? It doesn't necessarily conclude that Stanford has less reputation. You failed to take into account of how readily people from the east coast want to venture out to the west coast and vice versa. Maybe people from the east coast are more inclined to stay in their region. That's just one of the example factors that got nothing to do with reputation and academics. </p>
<p>SO baba, thanks for trying to hard to show Stanford has a slightly more regional pool. Too bad an idiot like you doesn't realize it doesn't mean less reputaiton necessarily. LOL! FYI: in Asia, I think Stanford has higher reputation than PY. They not only know about its name but also its excellence in computer/science/engineering.</p>
<p>Regarding "regionality"</p>
<p>Of course Stanford gets more applicants from the west coast. On the east coast the Ivy league schools get to divide up the east coast appliants between 8 schools and a few LACs. On the west coast there is not anything similar. Using other privates and LACs the closest thing is USC and Pomona/Claremont schools for competition.</p>
<p>This even leaves out the MIT and CalTech schools for the tech type. Note that MIT is significantly larger than CalTech if you want to throw that into the mix also.</p>
<p>Gutrade,</p>
<p>First, Harvard's engineering IS strong in absolute terms, but not very broad... and it's very, very small. Relative to MIT=Stanford=Berkeley, obviously Harvard isn't in their league in engineering... but that doesn't mean Harvard engineering is bad... in fact, most of the students in Harvard engineering get accepted to MIT=Stanford=Berkeley engineering graduate school.</p>
<p>Second, engineering and science are NOT the same thing...
In the pure sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, astrophysics, geophysics, math), then Harvard=Princeton=Stanford=MIT=Berkeley.</p>
<p>I think most people who know what they're talking about will agree that for engineering, there is 3-way tie for the top: MIT=Stanford=Berkeley,
whereas for pure science, there is a 5-way tie for the top: Harvard=Princeton=MIT=Stanford=Berkeley.</p>
<p>More related points:
Harvard, though RELATIVELY behind in engineering, is making huge multi-billion dollar investments in its engineering program as it expands the campus across the Charles River... so it's engineering programs won't remain static over the next couple of decades (it will take decades for this to take effect however).</p>
<p>Second, see my post in the Harvard thread about the fact that Harvard and MIT almost merged into one institution one hundred years ago in 1905... The merger almost went through, but was blocked at the last minute when MIT was in the process of trying to sell-off its campus...
It's an interesting story... what an amazing super-university that WOULD have been... alas, it never came to be.</p>
<p>Third, Harvard and MIT have incredibly close ties... which are only getting stronger, especially in biotech and biomedical engineering... they even offer joint graduate degrees in certain fields...</p>
<p>To sum up, don't be naive and think the rankings tell the WHOLE story... Harvard science is already phenomenal, engineering is improving... don't think that Harvard is going to slip into obscurity in 50 years... with the largest endowment out of any university in the world, it will certainly be able to re-position itself in the coming decades.</p>
<p>Of course it will jab93. I have no doubt that Harvard will continue to be seen as the very best educational institution in the world for plenty of time to come. However, you cannot deny that if there is any university that can challenge its supremacy in the near future, it is Stanford.</p>
<p>As several posters have already mentioned, Stanford is strong in both the social sciences and humanities as well as natual sciences and engineering, thereby making it a very complete academic institution. In addition, Stanford has outstanding graduate schools and a rapidly growing endowment, which I believe is the third largest in the world.</p>
<p>It has both the size and quality that has made Harvard the renowned institution that it has become except Stanford is some 200 years younger.</p>
<p>Inuendo,
Of course Stanford is phenomenal... I'm NOT saying Harvard is better. I think they are peer institutions. I was just contesting this crap that Stanford is going to eventually dwarf Harvard.</p>
<p>By the way, here are the rakings of endowments for schools with minimum 3 billion:
Amounts are in BILLIONS of 2004 dollars</p>
<p>Institution 2004 2003 % change Rank in 2003
1. Harvard 22.14 18.85 +17.5% 1
2. Yale 12.75 11.03 +15.5% 2
3. Texas 10.34 08.71 +18.7% 4
4. Princeton 09.93 08.73 +13.7% 3
5. Stanford 09.92 08.61 +15.2% 5
6. MIT 05.87 05.13 +14.3% 6
7. California 04.77 04.37 +09.1% 7
8. Emory 04.54 04.02 +12.8% 9
9. Columbia 04.49 04.34 +03.5% 8
10. Texas A&M 04.37 03.80 +15.0% 10
11. Michigan 04.16 03.46 +20.2% 13
12. U Penn 04.02 03.55 +13.3% 11
13. Wash. U. 04.00 03.47 +15.3% 12
14. Northwestern 03.67 03.05 +20.2% 15
15. Chicago 03.62 03.22 +12.4% 14
16. Duke 03.31 03.02 +09.8% 16
17. Rice 03.30 02.94 +12.4% 17
18. Cornell 03.24 02.85 +13.4% 18
19. Notre Dame 03.10 02.57 +20.3% 19 </p>
<p>Note that Harvard's endowment is more than TWICE Stanford's,
and also note that it is growing at a FASTER rate.
The point is that Harvard knows its engineering is weaker, and has the money and power to turn that around... more so than any other institution. Harvard can re-position itself like no other institution can... they know the future is in tech, and they are rapidly ramping up its resources in tech so that it will continue to remain one of the leaders.</p>
<p>
[quote]
3. Texas 10.34 08.71 +18.7% 4
[/quote]
Just clarifying that this is split between all of the UT's... so individual school endowments are much smaller. Making the ranking per school:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Stanford
etc.</li>
</ol>
<p>-Eddie-</p>
<p>Eddie...
They don't report endowments separately for university systems like Texas and California... that's the whole point of a public institution... they pool their resources. In any case, in Texas, the Austin campus is the flagship campus and has the bulk of resources... so it is NOT much smaller.
California is a little complicated in that it has multiple premier campuses (Berkeley, UCLA, San Diego, UCSF)...
Michigan is like Texas in that only one of its campuses, Ann-Arbor, is a flagship.</p>
<p>jab93, I think these figures are slightly old. On Stanford's website, it states that their endowment exceeds $10bn.</p>
<p>Also, on the website, it states that Princeton's endowment was $8.7bn and Yale's $11bn. That would place Stanford ahead of Texas and Princeton, into 3rd position.</p>
<p>Also, unlike Harvard and Yale, Stanford does not take into account the value of the land that it owns, which, no doubt, would increase the value of their endowment.</p>
<p>No, these are the official figures for 2004.
Obviously 2005 figures are not yet available...
There may be slight variations in how institutions exactly count there assets... that's why I did not rely on individual websites, and used a COMMON source:</p>
<p>Note that Stanford has roundedthere numbers, whereas my original source has more significant figures.</p>
<p>In any case, it still does not change the fact that Harvard's endowment is more than twice Stanford's.</p>
<p>Regarding your statement about land, you are only partially correct:
"The value of the endowment reflects the market value of Stanford properties that have been commercially developed, such as the Stanford Shopping Center and Stanford Research Park. But the endowment does not reflect what the university's land would be worth if it had the potential to be sold." </p>
<p>So they include some very lucrative land, and not others. How do you know Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc. don't do the same thing... include comercially developed land, but not land that cannot be sold?</p>
<p>That crazy idea, was a quote from Stanford's own website. It states that since the land was an endowment with the stipulation that it can never be sold, it would be pointless for the university to attach a value to it. As far as I am aware, this is not the case with Harvard or Princeton. I am quite certain about Princeton, since a professor I met there was telling me about Princeton's endowment, the land they own and surrounding town, and their plans. </p>
<p>This is the website, it also has the size of Stanford's endowment and that of HYP listed:</p>
<p>Inuendo...</p>
<p>I was in the process of editing my post when you posted yours.</p>
<p>Sorry about that jab93. </p>
<p>As I said with Princeton, I am quite sure that they include all the surrounding town and any other land that the university owns. I also said, that I am not quite certain about Harvard, however, the university is located in Cambridge, so I would assume that they value the property, and in all likelihood, very highly. I'm sure Byerly can confirm or oppose my statement. </p>
<p>Using a common source makes sense though. It is probably a better method of comparison than what is stated on individual university websites. </p>
<p>In any case, there is no doubt that Harvard's endowment is by far the largest, and double that of Stanford, Princeton and almost double Yale's.</p>