<p>Stanford and Harvard utterly dominate the West and East Coast respectively. One of them spawned Silicon Valley and the other is a neighbor to the most tech savvy university in the world. But all that aside, which school would you personally choose and why?</p>
<p>Harvard utterly dominates the East Coast?</p>
<p>Anyways, I would go to Harvard, because I like the East Coast and its wintery weather. Boston is nice too.</p>
<p>Yeah, I'm sorry, ubermensch, but I have to disagree with your comment. There's a difference between being the "most prestigious" school and the "utterly dominant" school.</p>
<p>Even though I applied EA to Harvard last year, given what I now know I would most likely pick Stanford if I had to choose between the two (not that I would be particularly excited about going to either at this point).</p>
<p>Whaaaat? Newt, you actually LIKE wintery weather? Crazy kid... do you live in the NE or do you just think you know what it's like?</p>
<p>I couldn't choose one because they are completely equal in my mind, just with different high points. Harvard is closer to home for me, Stanford has better weather (in my opinion). Harvard has a tad bit more name recognition, but what does that really matter? I can't choose!</p>
<p>I don't know if Harvard dominates the East Coast, but Stanford definitely dominates the West :)</p>
<p>I was actually faced with this decision last year. I got into Harvard early action but soon after I got accepted I decided I didn't really want to go there after all. The place just seemed too depressing. My final two college choices were Stanford and Dartmouth and I finally chose Stanford.</p>
<p>Since those Stanford bastards rejected me early action, I'd choose Harvard.</p>
<p>curiouskatie, I do like winter... It makes me appreciate summer more. Plus, I live in Chicago, which has pretty bad winters, imo.</p>
<p>It depends on my major. If I were to go into science, I'd chose Stanford. For the liberal arts, I'd probably go to Harvard.</p>
<p>stanford due to locale... and the fact that the cardinals dont suck</p>
<p>i'd go to stanford, more name recognition on the west coast... and that's where i want to live. so, one is dominant because one "spawned" silicon valley(i dont even think that's true), and the other is dominant because it's across the street from MIT? i don't see the logic...</p>
<p>i think its the stanford cardinal, not the cardinals.</p>
<p>I vote Stanford because I hate cold weather and I'm not crazy about the northern section of the US.</p>
<p>Actually, it is widely known that Stanford did indeed spawn Silicon Valley. Most of the entrepreneurs came from Stanford and most of the research was done at Stanford. Also, it's not a coincidence that Silicon Valley started up right next to the Stanford campus :)</p>
<p>Although I don't care for either of them, I'd have to say that Stanford has the better campus and weather.</p>
<p>i was aware that stanford leased out a lot of their land to tech companies, but silicon valley was jumpstarted with the invention of semiconductors, i think. not(at least not in the beginning) from stanford grads.</p>
<p>"The university's philosophy of theory and its application in the real world started a fast pace of groundbreaking inventions. The development of wireless communications at the beginning of the 20th century sparked a curiosity among Stanford professors. Cyril Elwell, a young engineering graduate from Stanford, set up shop in Palo Alto where he turned his bungalow on Cowper Street into a wireless telephone station. Elwell was unable to raise backing for his project, so Stanford President Jordan offered to invest $500 of his own money. This investment not only motivated other faculty members to back the project, it also marked the beginning of venture capitalism. </p>
<p>By the mid-1930s Palo Alto had built up a small electronics industry. Its infrastructure provided the framework for modern Silicon Valley. The connection between Stanford and local technology enterprises provided a stream of engineers and scientists who found jobs in the local industry and support in their research from the school. </p>
<p>Frederick Terman, dean of engineering at Stanford, was said to have been directly responsible for the rise of Silicon Valley. He wanted to set up a community of technical scholars in the valley. For that, he realized he needed companies with strong roots in the region. </p>
<p>He tightened the link between the university and local businesses by creating the Stanford Research Park. In order to increase the university's revenues, Terman initiated the idea to lease the land surrounding Stanford's campus to commercial industries. This plan created a permanent link between the school and industry and transferred technology from academia to the commercial market place. </p>
<p>Varian Associates was the first company to move into the Stanford Research Park in 1954. It was soon joined by Hewlett-Packard. "</p>
<p>"William Shockley brought silicon electronics to the San Francisco Peninsula. Shockley, a Palo Alto native, had invented the transistor with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey, an accomplishment for which the group later received the Nobel Prize in physics. Shockley returned to the Peninsula to establish Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1955. In turn, Shockley recruited a group of talented physicists and engineers to work with him Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, Jay Last, Eugene Kleiner, and Jean Hoerni, among others. Rebelling against Shockley's heavy-handed management style, these men left to start their own company, Fairchild Semiconductor, with financing from Fairchild Camera and Instruments in 1957. In a few years, Fairchild Semiconductor revolutionized the semiconductor industry"</p>
<p>"Fairchild Semiconductor also reshaped the Peninsula's electronics manufacturing complex. It brought venture capital and venture capitalists to the area. Financiers and engineers involved in the establishment of Fairchild Semiconductor set up a series of venture capital partnerships such as Davis and Rock, and Kleiner Perkins. Fairchild's success led also to an extraordinary entrepreneurial expansion on the Peninsula in the 1960s and early 1970s. Sixty semiconductor companies were established in the area from 1961 to 1972. They were almost all founded by former Fairchild engineers and managers. For example, Noyce and Moore incorporated Intel in 1968. Other Fairchild employees set up Amelco, Signetics, Intersil, National Semiconductor, and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). These corporations exploited the revolutionary technologies developed by Fairchild Semiconductor and further enlarged the commercial markets for integrated circuits. Intel used a new MOS process developed at Fairchild to manufacture high performance computer memories. A group of Intel engineers around Ted Hoff, Federico Faggin, and Stan Mazor, also designed the microprocessor, a computer-on-a-chip, in 1971. As a result of these and other innovations, the Peninsula's semiconductor industry grew enormously in the late 1960s and the first half of the 1970s. The total semiconductor employment on the Peninsula grew from 6,000 workers in 1966 to 27,000 in 1977. This rapid expansion deeply reshaped the region's electronics manufacturing complex. It transformed an industrial district dominated by tube manufacturing into the "Valley of Silicon," as the area became increasingly referred to in the early and mid-1970s."</p>
<p>guess that leaves people to decide which source is more credible.</p>
<p>Well maybe we can agree upon this. Stanford may not have single handedly created Silicon Valley all by itself, but it was directly responsible.</p>
<p>yea, i just wanted to make the point that stanford didn't spawn silicon valley. it sure as hell contributed, but it was only partly responsible. most of the responsibility would go to the semiconductor and transistor entrepreneurs.</p>
<p>I agree totally with Gutrade :)</p>
<p>What are my chances?
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=229159&posted=1#post229159%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=229159&posted=1#post229159</a></p>
<p>AceRockolla, </p>
<p>Hmmm, the some of the names you mentioned above were Caltech graduates, so I think in the end, we may claim that silicon valley was established primarily by Stanford, Caltech and Berkeley grads, couldn't we?</p>