<p>I visited harvard and stanford, although i never had any intention of even applying to harvard, but i sat in on classes at both and am pretty fmailiar with both of their respective environments as per their regions. </p>
<p>IMO, unless you want to study engineering, in which stanford is superior by most accounts, the academics aren't significantly different, nor are reputation. they're both big names as well, if that matters to you. hell, i even got a job at nordstrom of all places for the summer just by dropping stanford's name even though i was probably the worst possible candidate in terms of expertise and time availability. </p>
<p>thus, i would do some soul-searching as to which environment you like better. Stanford has a fairly slow-paced lifestyle outside of academics since it is fairly isolated. palo alto is a small, chic town which is nice but not terribly exciting, like a resort town. san francisco has all the busybody urban excitements but in all reality is a little bit of a hassle to get to and far away enough that you dont get the feeling of the hustle-bustle urban lifestyle with lots of events going on all of the time...which is exactly what you get in Cambridge, which is a ten minute ride from downtown boston anyway.</p>
<p>for what its worth, weather does have an effect. i'm a coloradon, so i do like snow and cold sometimes, but some peoples' psyches are drastically affected by weather, which in stanford, rotates between a kind of mild, clear-skied summer, late spring, and early fall, with almost daily rain the rest of the year, vs. boston's hot/humid and snowy/frigid, but for the most part traditionally 4-seasonal alternation.</p>
<p>campus culture is harder to pin down, although at harvard the kids i talked to tended to seem too busy to give me their attention,and the overall environment in dining halls and such seemed very intellectual, but i wouldnt consider that conclusive, im sure plenty of people are nice. ive spent extensive time at stanford though and people almost universally, while having extremely heavy courseloads and interesting thoughts, seem to go about life a little more slowly, annd the social environment is almost anti-intellectual, with most conversations being well, not as rigorous as at harvard as i remember, although when pressed, people always have something interesting to say.</p>
<p>ultimately, you ought to spend some time at both schools WHEN THEY ARE IN SESSION</p>