<br>
<blockquote> <p>HYP were founded in what, the 1600s?<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>H = yes. Y&P = no.</p>
<p>Harvard was founded in 1636. Yale and Princeton were founded in the 1700s. The only other US college founded in the 1600s was William and Mary.</p>
<p>Except William & Mary shut down after all their buildings were burned down in the Civil War era and didn't re-open again until the early 20th century. They still have the oldest academic building in the country though (The Wren Building).</p>
<p>Established year of the schools:</p>
<p>*Harvard *- 1636
*Yale * 1701 (+ 65 years after H)
*Princeton * 1746 (+ 110 years after H)
*Stanford * 1891 (+ 255 years after H)
*MIT * 1861 (+ 225 years after H)</p>
<p>The above are all private schools</p>
<p>In comparison to</p>
<p>*Oxford * Unknown for the year, but teaching existed since 1096
*Univ. of Cambridge * 1209</p>
<p>There two are public schools.</p>
<p>W&M only closed during part of 1880s(1880-1888 I think). Became publicly assisted circa 1906. Quite a rebound from such catastrophes. Thanks to J D Rockefeller who fronted the monies to rebuild the campus and W"burg as a whole in the 1920s. The good part is that by necessity, they became first coed college in VA circa 1918. UVirginia amazingly remained truly a good ol' boy school until late 60s and all white until 70s. I am guessing at those dates but I think they are pretty close. Makes you understand Sen. George "Macacca" Allen a little better though (UVA '74?)</p>
<p>I haven't had a chance to check back in a while but...</p>
<p>"For example, ask yourself how many Harvard professors have won Nobel prizes in last 30 years, and how many have won the USA National medal of sciences, can Harvard still beat Stanford?"
"What if you look at the current staff, try to find how many living Nobel prize winners are still in Harvard and how many are still in Stanford? Can Harvard still win?"</p>
<p>Yes and Yes.</p>
<p>"Harvard and Stanford are about equal in business school. Stanford MBA program is harder to get in and on average Stanford MBA graduates earn higher starting salary than Harvard's. Stanford's business school ph.d. program has a beautiful placement record, at least as good as Harvard's. Stanford has its fair share of CEOs in big companies. Percentage wise, Stanford doesn't lose to Harvard in this metric, even though in total, Harvard has created more CEOs than Stanford. That is because Harvard has graduated much more MBAs than Stanford (twice more?)."</p>
<p>Please provide data supporting each of your claims - I cannot agree with anything you say except: Stanford is "harder" to get in, meaning smaller % admitted, which is ENTIRELY due to the fact that it has a small class size. That means very little about its quality. Yes, Harvard has many more famous and successful graduates partly because it is larger, of course, but that it can collect so many more awesome faculty and students is itself an impressive quality. After all, there is only a limited pool of outstanding faculty and students. Being big and outstanding is hardly automatic, while having a smaller acceptance rate is automatic if the class size is small. When you compare the two institutions next to each other, without getting bogged down by dumb statistics like the faculty-student ratio, acceptance ratio, etc. etc., Harvard Business School as an institution is a giant that wields enormous influence unmatched by any other school in the country, and hence its nickname "The West Point of Capitalism". Stanford Business School is a midget that does a terrific job of training its students and getting them good jobs in the Silicon Valley. The "quality of training" there is probably not that much different from that at Harvard, but so is the quality of training at half a dozen business schools. As an institution, Stanford Business School can not hold a candle to Harvard Business School.</p>
<p>"Stanford is pound for pound (i.e., adjusted for it's size which is 14K students vs Harvards 22K students) a better institution. Stanford actually has MORE grads on the US Supreme Court; adjusted for size, Stanford's bschool has more CEOs in Fortune 500 firms, PE/VC firms and top nonprofits than HBS. And Stanford Medicine produces far far more in research $$$ per capita than Harvard."</p>
<p>You discredit yourself by lying through your teeth. If you are going to try to deceive other people, at least make it believable. How can Stanford have more grads on the Supreme Court when Harvard has 6 out of 9 and Stanford doesn't have any? Please give me links to your claims about Stanford GSB having more CEOs. And same thing about Stanford Med producing more research money than Harvard. No dirty tricks with inflating Harvard's faculty number, such as including clinical practitioners at all the Harvard Hospitals as "researcher". Analogous to my comparison of Harvard Business School vs. Stanford Business School above, Harvard Medical School is a giant and by far the most dominant school in American medical education and research. It produces the deans and faculty of other medical schools. The sheer amount of research that goes on at Harvard Medical School is easily several times those of other schools. Stanford Medical School is just a midget, that trains its students extremely well and has a core faculty of top researchers, but hey, in the competitive crowd of top American medical schools, it is just a midget, outranked by schools like Johns Hopkins, Washington U., Duke, UCSF, Penn, etc.</p>
<p>Ske,</p>
<p>First, let's keep in mind Harvard gas more than 10,000 faculty members, while Stanford has less than 2000 faculty members. So in terms of faculty size, Stanford is a 'midget' (according to you) when compared to the 'giant' Harvard. However, The 'midget' has something that the 'giant' can not beat.</p>
<p>Currently, Stanford has 16 Nobel prize winners in its staff. Now a question to you, how many living Nobel prize winners are still in Harvard's current staff? You claim Harvard has more. Any official link?</p>
<p>In terms of national medal of science winnners, you claim Harvard has more. You are wrong. in reality, Stanford has won 34 in total, while Harvard has won 33. Since year 2000, Stanford has won 6, while Harvard has won 0. Which university has the momentum? The answer seems obvious.</p>
<p>Stanford has 128 faculty members in the national academy of science. Although Harvard has 167, percentage wise, Stanford is far better than Harvard.</p>
<p>Stanford medical school has less than 800 faculty members, while Harvard medical school has more than 10,000 faculty members. Although Stanford is much smaller compared to Harvard and other top medical schools. Stanford has 54 faculty members in the prestigious institute of medicine (IOM), only behind Harvard and UCSF. Of course, Harvard has most IOM members in total (it got to be #1 in this metric according to its size). However, Harvard has less than 110 IOM members. So on per capita basis, Stanford is far better than Harvard. In US-News medical school ranking, there is a column about the average research fund per faculty member, Stanford has been beating Harvard in this metric over the years. </p>
<p>According to US-News business school ranking, Stanford MBA has higher starting salary than Harvard over the years. I haven't looked at 2009 ranking yet. But I believe it is still the case. In terms of the placement of the ph.d. program from Stanford GSB, here is a link: Economic</a> Analysis and Policy: PhD Program: Stanford GSB
Stanford claims that it has the best average placement rate in economics field:
[quote]
Economic Analysis and Policy
Academic Placements
From 1978 through 2007 the Stanford Business School Economics and Decision Sciences program, graduated just over 70 students - about equal to the combined output of the Harvard and MIT economics PhD programs in a single year. Within that small group we have produced a large number of outstanding economists, giving us the best average placement rate by far of any economics PhD program.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I'm not argueing that Harvard is not a great university. I'm simply pointing out that Harvard is not always #1.</p>
<p>Ske,</p>
<p>First, let's keep in mind Harvard gas more than 10,000 faculty members, while Stanford has less than 2000 faculty members. So in terms of faculty size, Stanford is a 'midget' (according to you) when compared to the 'giant' Harvard. However, The 'midget' has something that the 'giant' can not beat.</p>
<p>Currently, Stanford has 16 Nobel prize winners in its staff. Now a question to you, how many living Nobel prize winners are still in Harvard's current staff? You claim Harvard has more. Any official link?</p>
<p>In terms of national medal of science winnners, Stanford has won 34 in total, while Harvard has won 33. Since year 2000, Stanford has won 6, while Harvard has won 0. Which university has the momentum? The answer seems obvious.</p>
<p>Stanford has 128 faculty members in the national academy of science. Although Harvard has 167, percentage wise, Stanford is far better than Harvard.</p>
<p>Stanford medical school has less than 800 faculty members, while Harvard medical school has more than 10,000 faculty members in its medical school. Although Stanford is much smaller compared to Harvard and other top medical schools. Stanford has 54 faculty members in the prestigious institute of medicine (IOM). The only other place that has more IOM members is UCSF. Harvard has less than 110 IOM members. So on per capita basis, Stanford is far better than Harvard. In US-News medical school ranking, there is a column about the average research fund per faculty member, Stanford has been bebeating Harvard in this metric over the years. </p>
<p>According to US-News business school ranking, Stanford MBA has higher starting salary than Harvard over the years. I haven't looked at 2009 ranking yet. But I believe it is still the case. In terms of the placement of the ph.d. program at Stanford GSB, here is a link: Economic</a> Analysis and Policy: PhD Program: Stanford GSB
Stanford claims that it has the best average placement rate in economics field:
[quote]
Economic Analysis and Policy
Academic Placements
From 1978 through 2007 the Stanford Business School Economics and Decision Sciences program, graduated just over 70 students - about equal to the combined output of the Harvard and MIT economics PhD programs in a single year. Within that small group we have produced a large number of outstanding economists, giving us the best average placement rate by far of any economics PhD program.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>What I said above was that Stanford Business School is a midget compared to Harvard Business School in terms of the institutional resources, both intellectual and financial, the accomplishments and scholarship of its faculty, the success of its graduates, and the overall influence in the field of business administration, both in the academia and in the real world. You can make pretty much the same statement about Stanford Medical School and Stanford Law School. </p>
<p>I do not know how many Nobel Prize winners are currently at Harvard. The university website mentions 43 living winners in the current and former faculty. How many does Stanford have? Probably not many more than 16, because Stanford winners don't move around that much. </p>
<p>I told you not to use dirty tricks counting Harvard Medical School faculty members. Most of the "10,000" faculty are clinical practitioners. Any attending physician at a Harvard teaching hospital is an "instructor" at the Medical School and is considered faculty. So your comparison is not valid. </p>
<p>The examples you use to support Stanford's supposed superiority is quite revealing: the examples show that you are very desperate. </p>
<p>What the heck is the national medal of science? Is that the thing George Bush gives out once a year to one person he selects? LOL!!! Just what is the selection process? Is someone who gets this medal really all that much better than some another scientist who doesn't? Hey, no one that I know has gotten this dumb medal, and I know plenty of brilliant scientists. Do you think the pattern of the national medal of science given over 6 years translates into a meaningful assessment of universities? </p>
<p>Similarly, the example you use for Stanford Business School isn't even about the MBA program but about the economics Ph.D. program within the Business School. They say they produced a "large number of outstanding economists" (how do you define "outstanding"?) and therefore they have the "best average placement rate" (again, very vague about what they mean, and no mention of statistics for the competitors). This is pretty laughable. Harvard of course has an economics Ph.D. program that is unmatched by any in the world (MIT is the only one that might claim to come close) - what is about comparing economics PH.D. programs at business schools? Perhaps you are in this Stanford program yourself? Otherwise no one else would know this highly obscure and dubious statistic or give a crap about it. Look, the point of a business school is to produce executives, not academics. Harvard Business School does that better than anyone. </p>
<p>The fact that these are the best examples you can come up with speaks volumes about the validity of the argument you are trying to make.</p>
<p>It's obvious that Harvard is a huge, amazing, premier institution of higher learning. That's a given not really worth disputing -- or really disputable. What's not as obvious to people -- because people look at brand names and Harvard has the strongest -- is that Stanford is an institution that does superlatively well across a broader range of disciplines, sort of like Harvard and MIT put together or Berkeley and UCSF put together.</p>
<p>Now can we let this thread die -- or at least get back to what the OP was asking about? Though I am sure by now he/she's made his/her decision.</p>
<p>Look -- both of these schools are amazing. The bottom line is individual fit and comfort level with either one, and it's totally unhelpful to say that "H is awesome because it's most prestigious and IMnotHO I am always correct" or "S is way better because it has a world-class engineering school" (with "statistics" to support each of these claims).</p>
<p>But in terms of nit-picking about these science awards:</p>
<p>1) Since 1990, Stanford faculty (across all schools) have won 8 Nobel Prizes, and Harvard faculty (across all schools) have won 3.</p>
<p>2) The National Medical of Science is one of the most prestigious awards that a scientist can receive. The statement that "I know plenty of brilliant scientists, and I don't know anybody who has gotten it ... therefore it must not mean anything" is obviously <em>completely</em> ridiculous.</p>
<p>Again, congratulations and good luck to the OPs...</p>
<p>ske,</p>
<p>By saying that the national medal of science is a 'dumb medal', you have clearly defined yourself. It is not too bad that you don't know the medal is the highest honor in science that USA can give to an individual. However, you have disgraced yourself when you claimed something as 'dumb' even though you have no clue on it.</p>
<p>No more discussion is needed.</p>
<p>Of course I know what the National Medal of Science is. My point is that it is given to such a vanishingly small number of people that having 1 more winner over 5 years or 2 more winners over 10 years implies nothing about the overall quality of the faculty that numbers in thousands. The total output of the faculty is almost certainly hundreds of times more important than the work of a single National Medal Science winner. </p>
<p>Let me state it more precisely. What is dumb is not the Medal you are trying to turn into a surrogate for the quality of the faculty; what is dumb is your reasoning. It's like concluding that because Miss Mexico won the Miss Universe title twice in the past 10 years and Miss Russia won it only once, Mexicans are better looking than the Russians. The same goes for the Nobel Prize. Such vanishingly few people get it, and there is clearly a great deal of chance/politics/element of randomness in the selection, having a few more winners over a couple of years means very little. The true pattern emerges only if you have a large enough sample size, which I would say would have to be several decades, not just 10 years. This is analogous to the situation with Rhodes scholars. Yale may have the largest number of scholars in some years, Stanford might in other years, but when you look at several decades, there is very little doubt which school is the most successful.</p>
<p>I have never argued that Harvard is better because it is the most prestigious. If you read my posts carefully, I have argued that Harvard is better because it has far more resources than any other school, including physical, intellectual and financial resources, has collected the greatest assembly of top scholars and students on earth, and its faculty and graduates have made far greater impact than any other school in many key aspects of our society; government, law, medicine, business, media, etc.etc. Indeed, Stanford has given us Google and Yahoo (the latter of which is scheduled to be soon swallowed up by Microsoft, incidentally, a company founded and run by Harvard graduates) and it has a great engineering program, although I'm not so sure it's really all that much better than engineering programs at many state schools and tech schools. But in pretty much every other aspect of society I have listed above, Stanford is nowhere as visible as Harvard. And that's why I must rank it in a tier below Harvard's. Nuff said.</p>
<p>Gates didn't graduate as we all repeat frequently:).</p>
<p>These posts are getting very childish, but for the sake of argument...</p>
<p>"The true pattern [for relationship between # of Nobel Prizes, etc and "quality"] emerges only if you have a large enough sample size, which I would say would have to be several decades, not just 10 years."</p>
<p>With regard to the Nobel Prize ... since 1990 (2 decades) H has had 3 Nobel Prize winners, and S has had 8. Since 1980 (3 decades), H has had 10, and S has had 12.</p>
<p>With regard to the National Medal of Science, as datalook pointed out, S has had more winners than H since the award was given in 1959 (5 decades).</p>
<p>For some of the reasons you mentioned, I wouldn't necessarily use these statistics to argue that S is "better" than H (whatever that means). But the statement that "I must rank Stanford in a tier below Harvard's" is completely ridiculous and arrogant.</p>
<p>"I have argued that Harvard is better because it has far more resources than any other school, including physical, intellectual and financial resources, has collected the greatest assembly of top scholars and students on earth, and its faculty and graduates have made far greater impact than any other school in many key aspects of our society; government, law, medicine, business, media, etc.etc."</p>
<p>I certainly don't disagree that there are incredibly talented faculty and students at Harvard, but these grandiose statements are simply impossible to defend. What is "impact"? What defines "physical and intellectual resources" as great? From having actually studied at places other than Harvard, I've discovered that there are many smart people at those other places too ... and some of them are actually smarter than their counterparts at Harvard. Yet for some reason, the arrogant "I think I'm better than you" types seem to cluster around the Big-H. Case in point here.</p>
<p>I doubt anybody is trying to say that H isn't a wonderful institution. But that's no reason to start insulting other schools and posters.</p>
<p>kingduke's air of maturity and moral superiority is simultaneously amusing and irritating as usual but as you say, for the sake of argument...</p>
<p>The "grandoise statements" originated with red& blue claiming that "In the entire range of academic disciplines (arts, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, engineering, professions) Stanford is equal to or superior to Harvard." The reality is of course that Harvard has an edge in pretty much all of these areas with the only possible exception of engineering. I was merely pointing this out, and that does not equal arrogance on my part. It's quite possible that this arrogance you accuse me of is actually your own that you are projecting onto me. Your condescending attitude, as amply demonstrated in your other posts, gives away what's underneath the facade of neutrality and reason. At least I don't attempt to make any pretenses.</p>
<p>"What is "impact"? What defines "physical and intellectual resources" as great?" Umm, shouldn't this be this fairly evident by all the leading politicians, jurists, business executives, physicians, journalists, and academics that Harvard has produced? Don't all the research laboratories, affiliated hospitals and institutes, libraries, the endowment, the faculty, etc. put Harvard well ahead of the others? Either your powers of observation are severely limited or you are in denial. </p>
<p>"I've discovered that there are many smart people at those other places too ... and some of them are actually smarter than their counterparts at Harvard." Very nice. You know what, I've known that even without having to travel to other schools. It's just that overall, Harvard has more of these people than other schools. </p>
<p>Nuff said.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>To the OP: ske293 just made me re-think my preference for Harvard... Maybe you should go to Stanford.</p>
<p>Actually given how this topic has delineated and completely lost course, I'm a little disappointed with the representatives from both schools.</p>
<p>Hmmm, ok, I'm surprised no one has brought this up....(tried using the search thing for this thread)...but Stanford has the Quarter system while Harvard has the Semester. The Quarter system means that Stanford has 3 grading cycles: Fall, Winter, and Spring. You're going to be more rushed in your class and finals will come before you know it. However, it also depends on the kind of person that you are. If you are very organized and have great work ethics, Stanford should fit you. Failing a class at Stanford or getting a very low grade is also very less detrimental to your GPA since you can take more classes to bring up that GPA. I personally like Harvard Semester system because I've been doing that since middle school. It gives you time to learn the material and then take the finals or what not. Harvard's grade inflation also counters the fact that you can take more classes at Stanford to bring up your GPA. They make it very hard for you to fail out.</p>
<p>Is there grade inflation at Harvard? I am shocked.</p>