Stanford vs. Harvard vs. Yale

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

Hi everybody!

I am very humbled and blessed to be accepted into Harvard last month and received my Yale and Stanford likely letters yesterday! As a first-generation college student, having this opportunity is something I never dreamed of and I am so grateful. Even though the turnaround is very quick, I am having a lot of difficulty thinking about which school would be the best for me. There have been other Stanford vs. Harvard threads, but I think your opinions should be based on each student’s goals, interests, etc. I will try to explain this as best as I can.

I am hoping to become a pediatrician in developing countries with a big focus on global health, education, and policy. My dream school has always been Stanford, but ever since I was a non-finalist for Questbridge, I rethought everything and thought if I could get into anywhere, it would be Harvard. Harvard is very prestigious and is strong across the board and probably has the best in biology and public health programs for HYS. There are many opportunities for undergrads to get involved.

However, Harvard is known to not be as strong in undergraduate teaching as Stanford and Yale. I thrive off of intriguing and charismatic teaching and having a more even number of undergraduates and grad at Y and S is appealing to me. I am also very passionate in urban affairs and health and being in Cambridge and having a larger city in Boston nearby allows me to really develop this focus and help underprivileged youth in MA. Yale is similar with New Haven, and Stanford is a little more distant from the bigger cities (SJ, SF). However, I love to go outside in anytime I can (hiking, soccer, running) and Boston doesn’t have the best climate as compared to more moderate Stanford. I know it shouldn’t be a big deal, but that is something important to me. Harvard and Yale are also relatively closer to home since I am from the Mid-Atlantic and my parents want for me to stay relatively close to home just in case anything happens since I am their only child. I love to explore and start fresh but my family is very important to me.

Stanford and Boston to an extent intrigue me as they have their respective Vietnamese student associations but also are situated in areas with high Vietnamese populations. My heritage is very important to me, and I haven’t been able to do much while living in the Mid-Atlantic, so having that around me and being able to contribute more would be great pluses. They all have wonderful service opportunities. I also do not thrive off of pressure, and I’ve heard contradictory things about this but I’ve generally heard that the competition at Harvard can be very cutthroat and that many lower-income urban students like me have had a hard time adjusting to the elitism and prep environment (at Yale too). Stanford and Yale (to an extent) seem to be more collaborative and subjectively, have more school spirit. Stanford has amazing athletics that I want to participate and attend as much as possible and the general vibe of being more relaxed on the Farm in the California sun is very idealized but appealing to me. I also am not a frat type of guy at all, so I am still wondering where it is not that big of a presence on campus.

I have visited Stanford and will visit Harvard this weekend. Yale is on the horizon too, and I know these visits are a big deal!

Finances are extremely important, but luckily, due to these school’s generous financial aid programs, the only costs I will have to pay will be through summer and term-time work. If i am misinformed in any of my judgements, please let me know! I hope it’s not too mumbled jumbled. I will be very grateful to hear your guys thoughts! Again, I am so fortunate and lucky to be in this situation.

2

congrats on a wonderful problem! I had a similar one in that multiple wonderful colleges had accepted me as well (most during RD, one early). What allowed me to “order” the schools was a visit I took in Jan of my senior year. Frankly, interacting with the students gave me a “feel” of which I could best envision as HOME for the next four years. I certainly realized that my ability to judge the relative “rankings” of one college’s department faculty over another college’s faculty was practically nil.

I didn’t apply to H or S – only Yale and other schools. Yale became my #1 choice because the students there really stood out in their enthusiasm and unbridled sense of enjoying being there. Of course I visited H and other schools – I visited Stanford often and even worked there one summer. To me, Yale was the right choice – the compact campus, the lively campus life, the culture, the camaraderie. For others, it might not be. I think after visiting each, trust your gut instinct. Feel free to contact me off board if you want more detail.

3

First off, relax! I know this feels like a really weighty decision, and of course it is. But in another sense, there’s very little really at stake, because there’s no wrong answer at all. All three universities are stupendous, and the main determinant of your experience at any of them will be you, not the university. There are superficial differences among them, but on the whole they are much, much more similar to one another, especially Harvard and Yale, than they are different. Don’t be afraid to make a decision on any basis at all, including something random. It will work out fine any way you go.

A few small points:

Yes, there is more access to poor people at Yale and Harvard, but there low-income neighborhoods not that far from Stanford – biking distance. (At least there used to be, and they hadn’t completely vanished as of a few years ago.) Being at Stanford is living in an affluent suburb that sometimes seems like the center of the world, but as with many affluent suburbs the poor are simply less visible, not absent. If you look, they’re there.

The canard about Harvard undergraduate teaching is false, or to the extent it’s true it doesn’t necessarily matter to the experience of an individual student. If you want a close relationship with your teachers, and are willing to work for it, you can have it at Harvard. Of course, you can have it at Yale or Stanford, too. It’s more common at Yale, and easier at Stanford because, frankly, fewer students want it. That’s an issue at Harvard, too – some of the supposed problem with undergraduate education at Harvard is that the undergraduates tend to focus their lives on what they do outside the classroom. Again, the ultimate point is that you will have the relationships you want.

Several years ago, I would have told you that Stanford had by far the weakest undergraduate program of the three. I am not certain that’s true anymore – they have made a lot of improvements, and I don’t know how well they have worked. You just shouldn’t assume that Stanford is great for undergraduates and Harvard bad. (You can safely assume that Yale is great for undergraduates.)

There’s no question that Yale has a weaker reputation in life sciences than Stanford or Harvard. So here are things that friends of mine from Yale who became physicians are doing or have done: Chair of Oncology at a world-famous hospital. Chief Quality Officer at another world-famous hospital (and professor at its world-famous medical school). Chair of Hematology at a top-10 medical school. Several dedicated family medicine practitioners in a large city. GP in Alaska, and sometime chair of the state’s internal medicine society. Professors (2) of infectious disease at two top-10 medical schools. Public health official. In other words, Yale’s “weakness” won’t be a problem if you like it there.

The weather and scenery in Palo Alto are really, really nice. As a result, people really do work less, and play more, there. The importance of the Vietnamese community in California eclipses anything you would have experienced on the East Coast.

4

The house/college system at Harvard and Yale is significantly different from housing at Stanford. Freshman at Stanford can elect an all-freshman dorm or one mixed with upperclassmen; I chose the latter, and many of my closest friends were upper classmen. My sophomore year roommate (by choice) was a senior; I did a co-terminal master’s degree, and lived in graduate housing my final year. Fraternities exist at Stanford but are a small part of the overall environment - I never really had any interaction with them. It’s a much more heterogeneous environment from a housing perspective, for both better and worse.

The opportunities at all 3 schools are extraordinary. It’s just a matter of finding the best fit.

5

How can my kids get a problem like this!? :slight_smile:

First of all, great congratulations.

The advice above is great…i will mention one thing…which is the difficulty of having too many great choices. The V at my kid’s school last year is an extraordinary person – he received full scholarships (including paid-for study abroad, etc ) at Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, U of Southern CA and also generous offers from Yale and others. He agonized over it. He chose one. He just started 2nd semester and he’s not happy. But here’s the thing…I think he would have been unhappy no matter what offer he chose because the road-not-taken is always alluring. So no matter what incredible offer you take, try to be satisfied with that decision.

6

I should have added that the housing systems are really different. Not so much Harvard and Yale, which are really only different freshman year, for some students, but the two of them vs. Stanford. Students at Stanford tend not to mind their housing system, but they don’t love it anywhere near as much as Harvard and, especially, Yale students love theirs. My sister was an undergraduate at Stanford when I was in graduate school there, and coming from Yale I couldn’t believe how little the housing system contributed to her experience. She was always moving around, with no continuity, especially when she took a quarter abroad.

7

Congratulations! I’m a current Harvard freshman, so if you have any specific questions about Harvard I can try to help! I didn’t have to choose between three amazing schools like you but I remember reading up on Harvard and feeling really intimidated by all the rumors of its supposedly poor undergrad experience and ruthless environment.

To address your concerns, I was intimidated by the “cutthroat environment” rumors too but so far I haven’t seen ANYTHING to suggest that that was even remotely true. There is pressure to succeed, yes, but I think it comes from students’ own willingness to do well, not so much other people trying to compete. Of course, I am more of a humanities person than sciences so I’ll admit I’m not sure how it is in those kinds of classes!

As for climate, it’s true that Boston is famous for its winters. As I type we’re in the middle of a big snowstorm that’s supposed to drop about 8-10 inches of snow on us! But until this happened we were actually having surprisingly mild weather.

Anyway I don’t come on CC as much as I used to because I haven’t really needed to but if you have questions feel free to ask! Good luck choosing, you have amazing options :smiley:

8

I’ll second what @JHS said about the housing at Stanford vs. Harvard/Yale. I visited Stanford often and summered there (I can vouch for the amazing weather). My longtime Stanford GF (a pre-med BS/MS student) had nowhere even NEAR the camaraderie that was second nature to what I had at Yale and its residential colleges. She wasn’t antisocial – but my circles of friends were very large and heterogeneous. Her friends were fewer and interests more similar.

I wouldn’t have traded my residential experience for hers in a million years (despite the wonderful weather). In my humble opinion, the forced randomization of Yale’s residential college assignments > Harvard’s house assignments as sophomores. We immediately bond with upperclassmen in our colleges from day one. Havardians stress about clustering with friends and vie for spots in various houses after freshman year. It strikes me that this forces more tribalism than Yale’s artificially enforced randomness. I loved Yale’s assignment process.

9

“To address your concerns, I was intimidated by the “cutthroat environment” rumors too but so far I haven’t seen ANYTHING to suggest that that was even remotely true. There is pressure to succeed, yes, but I think it comes from students’ own willingness to do well, not so much other people trying to compete. Of course, I am more of a humanities person than sciences so I’ll admit I’m not sure how it is in those kinds of classes!”

I can second this for science classes too. My daughter graduated a few years ago with a degree in Physics, and she said the “cut-throat” canard against Harvard was simply not her experience. Same for the supposed epidemic of unhappiness at Harvard. She said she knew one or two kids who wished they had gone elsewhere, but that was very rare. She and all her friends loved it there. She considers picking Harvard among the very best decisions she ever made.

(And I agree you really can’t go wrong with Yale or Stanford either.)

10

@phanp16 Hi! Congrats on your acceptances! I live really close to Stanford’s campus and have spent a lot of time on the East Coast, particularly in and around Boston. For purposes of cultural references, I’m grouping Yale and Harvard in one category and Stanford in another.

I work for two Stanford teams as a high school statistician and honestly, the people at Stanford are some of the best people I have ever met, and not because they are smart or athletic or abide by any such identifier, but because they lead a balanced lifestyle. I was born on the East Coast and know that the culture at Yale and Harvard is much more constricted and much less integrated into the surroundings than at Stanford, where there is hardly any educational divide in students in Palo Alto and at Stanford: it seems to be one big, happy family that rallies for Football, Women’s Basketball and Soccer and Arts programs frequently.

Nonetheless, people at Harvard and Yale are often put on a pedestal because their campuses are so public: tourists crowd the yard (and I guess Yale’s equivalent to that), whereas at Stanford, there is much more room to spread out and roam the campus via bike because it is more secluded.

Also, seeing as you are from Maryland, you might want to ask yourself if you would like to experience West Coast culture because at Stanford, students don’t take themselves too seriously. I can’t say the same goes for Harvard and Yale. Going to school across the country can be scary, but it can also be extremely rewarding and can open your eyes to many new traditions and cultures you may not get the chance to experience otherwise. Of course, the choice is yours and fit is very important, so choose the school that you would be proudest to represent in and out of the classroom for the next four years.

11

@phanp16
Congrats!! You should be very proud of yourself. For most people nowadays the dilemma would be between Harvard or Stanford due to the status of these two schools as the competitors for the top spot in higher ed. Basing decisions on what school is the most prestigious, most popular is of course not the way to think about this but if I were in your shoes, for purely practical reasons I would mainly consider Harvard or Stanford.
The reason is that you are set on studying medicine, and Harvard and Stanford have the two best medical schools in the country. It is no secret that top medical schools show a very strong preference during admissions towards undergraduates from the same institution. Harvard Medical School admits a disproportionate number of harvard undergrads. Also the research opportunities you will be afforded at Harvard and its affiliated hospitals (which are the best hospitals in the world) or Stanford exceed those you will have at Yale. Having the opportunity to engage in research and build connections with doctors/scientists at the two best medical schools in the country will significantly improve your chances of getting into those schools and any other med school really. Yale Medical is great but it aint Harvard or Stanford.

I don’t mean to say that if you feel you fit in perfectly at Yale you should reject it because of this. If Yale is the best fit you should def go.You will get an amazing education, do great research and obviously Yale students do amazingly in med school admissions. I am just presenting more practical criterion that maybe could help you making a decision.

12

Thank to all you have replied in the last few weeks! It is heartwarming to hear all the support and respect for the various schools. I would say I learned a lot from reading your posts and would say the decision is harder than ever! All schools have their unique programs and characteristics, and I am certain I will end up where I feel most fit and happiest.

There are different pros and cons for each school, but I will be as open-minded as possible until the various admit weekends occur. Since all the schools are top-tier, prestige isn’t an issue with me. I am more interested in the opportunities for community service, public/global health, education, urban studies, etc. and will try to learn more about these programs at the various schools.

To be completely honest, I was not really considering Yale, but my interview (which happened after I received my likely) really changed my perspective that I would say that it’s almost even par. The various phone calls/emails with students, alumni, and counselors have been awesome too. I visited Harvard in the middle of a snowstorm and did not have the most fulfilling experience there, but I hope things are better in April for Visitas. I am visiting Stanford in two weeks, and Yale soon after. I am not sure where I am headed, but your feedback definitely has opened my eyes to really important issues and misconceptions. Thanks again so much!

13

The Harvard School of Public Health is very well-regarded and could be very useful for you.

I wouldn’t say that one school or the other has an edge for undergraduate teaching quality. All are major research universities, and so none will give you the experience that somewhere like Amherst will, if you’re looking for an undergrad-focused school. All are also huge and you can easily find amazing teaching-oriented professors in your field at all 3.

14

Where do we signup to have such a problem? :slight_smile: In all seriousness, there is no wrong answer, but considering your choice of career path, I agree with most here that Harvard would be just ahead by a nose…

15

True. But the HSPH’s location on the medical campus is far removed from Cambridge and the main university, making it unfortunately fairly inaccessible for most undergraduates.

16

Shuttles leave every 10 to 15 minutes to the HSPH. Its about 3 miles away

17

I agree with @JHS and @T26E4 about the housing differences at these schools. Though my son is a freshman at Stanford now, the residential college system at Yale was very attractive and, from what we’d heard, better than the housing situation at Harvard or Stanford. We did speak with an alumnus at a Yale event whose experience in his residential college didn’t sound typical—though he made friends there, he didn’t feel that the experience was quite what it was cracked up to be. So I’m guessing that a lot depends on the personalities of individual students. Stanford does have a couple of options that allow students to live in the same place for two years—one for freshman and sophomores, and the other for fraternities (which sound quite tame compared to the stereotype). Apparently there are other ways to do this too, such as by being an RA. I wish there were a three- or four-year option so students could have that choice. That said, there definitely can be advantages to moving each year—so far, my son likes the people he’s met in his dorm, which offers endless social opportunities, but he’s also looking forward to meeting new people next year. He knows someone at Stanford who joined a frat for the “bonding” and who’s had a really good experience with that so far, though frat members still can only live there for two of the remaining three years.

18

The residential house system at Harvard is one of a kind and amazing. I assume it is similar at Yale. Stanford just does not have anything similar