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<p>I interned at an MBB consulting firm last summer, and there were an equal amount of Columbia, Stanford and Princeton students there. Not that many compared to Harvard, LSE, Wharton and Oxbridge. They were mostly undergrads. Some of the UK grads had multiple masters degrees though. Columbia, in general, has a very strong reputation in the UK.</p>
<p>@lifeless lowlife scum, why do you quote me out of context from another thread that has little to nothing to do with this thread?</p>
<p>Btw the weather forecast for tomorrow is 49°F - 70°F.</p>
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<p>No, I didn’t. Please re-read what I said: Princeton is not better than Stanford for undergrad experience. You took from that that I was saying Stanford is better than Princeton, a conclusion which can’t be drawn from what I said. I was simply un-skewing the claim that japanoko seemed to be making. I do have enough experience here to know not to claim that Stanford is “better” for undergrad. They are equal but attract different students who will like them, etc.</p>
<p>To the OP:
Have you visited the campuses? P looks like out of Harry Potter (some buildings), campus is quite small. S is more wide spread, Mexican architecture, fountains, and PALMS!
Climate
Look at the kinds of classes and imagine what you would sign up for?
How far from home?
Honestly, don’t worry about the rankings (especially graduate program rankings)
S would let you take classes in business, law, a wider range of course offerings. P is a bit more traditional in course offerings.
Grading. P has grade deflation, S doesn’t.
In the end, go by your gut feeling.</p>
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<p>ha!</p>
<p>been around for a while and this is the first time that I have heard that a 500 acre college campus for a 7,500 total student population is “quite small”…</p>
<p>phantasmagoric, I’m just going by Princeton’s history. Their emphasis has always been on undergraduate education. Yes, they have some excellent graduate programs. But their history is to create graduate programs to take advantage of the faculty they have accumulated to teach undergraduates.</p>
<p>Mostly I think you can evaluate these two colleges by looking at the numbers. No one goes to either for the weather, party scene, or the faculty’s positive personalities - not unless they have VERY low standards in those areas. Which I think is a good thing. Once you are 18 you are an adult. It’s time to put aside childish things. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)</p>
<p>PRINCETON
Endowment: $14.4 billion
Undergraduates: 5,044
Graduates: 2,450</p>
<p>STANFORD
Endowment: $13.8 billion
Undergraduates: 6,887
Graduates: 8,779</p>
<p>The numbers are that Princeton has a larger endowment which it spends on fewer students, most of whom are undergrads. The cost of living is also lower in Princeton than Palo Alto. At which college do you think you’ll have access to more resources? Get more bang for the buck?</p>
<p>OP, assuming you didn’t long ago abandon trying to follow this meandering thread, I’d take anything you read here with a grain of salt. Most of the people offering advice either have an axe to grind or they are one of the students hired by Undergraduate Admissions to say good things.</p>
<p>Your better bet is to visit these colleges and speak with real people. And don’t restrict yourself to the people and events that the Admissions Office schedule. Go visit the departments in which you are interested. Ask students not working for Admissions about the pros and cons of their school. How helpful was their advisor? Was the advisor a member of the faculty or an administrator or secretary. (Yes, I’ve known more than one student who’s frosh advisor was a secretary.)</p>
<p>And get an idea just how much “intellectual” discussion really takes place. You might be surprised how little.</p>
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<p>From Stanford’s 2010-11 Common Data Set:</p>
<p>Total all undergraduates: 6,940
Total all graduate students:12,595
GRAND TOTAL ALL STUDENTS:19,535</p>
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<p>Endowment/Student – College</p>
<p>$1,895,607 – Princeton
$1,436,384 – Yale
$1,419,680 – Harvard
$941,274 ---- Pomona
$819,183 ---- Swarthmore
$800,975 ---- MIT
$794,579 ---- Amherst
$749,309 ---- Grinnell
$748,952 ---- Stanford
$725,554 ---- Caltech
$719,063 ---- Williams
$668,647 ---- Rice</p>
<p>Much as I hate to contribute to one of the most asinine threads I’ve ever seen on this forum, I feel the need to point out that (1) japanoko’s data is incorrect. Per Stanford’s current webpage for Graduate Studies, there are a total of 8779 graduate students enrolled, not the 12,595 japanoko cited above, and AFAIK there have never been anywhere near that number of grad students; and (2) contrary to the assertion of Doss, pom pom waver for Princeton, Stanford doesn’t hire students to come to this forum to say good things about Stanford. They don’t have to. ;)</p>
<p>Neither counting frosh year grades = win! :)</p>
<p>The difference between the two graduate student numbers seems to be full time vs part time where Stanford is listing part timers as part of their final total.</p>
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<p>yes, you are correct</p>
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<p>This has been debunked a number of times. Endowment per student does not make sense and is used more by those who don’t understand how endowments work. For one, most of the endowment is restricted for specific purposes, in specific funds, most of which undergrads will never see. Just having the money does not mean that any money is being spent on the undergrads. For another, only a tiny portion of the endowment is spent each year, and it varies by college how much they rely on the endowment. Finally, and most importantly, most revenue–what gets spent on students–doesn’t come from the endowment! There are many sources of revenue, and all of these combine to support the students. Stanford’s annual budget is roughly $4 billion dollars. Granted, much of that is devoted to things only tangentially related to undergrads, but if we’re going to look at useless numbers, why not look at the actual spending of the university?</p>
<p>Simply having more undergrads does not mean that they are prioritized. The grad:undergrad ratio at Berkeley is 2.5:1 but you don’t think they have a better undergraduate experience, do you? Princeton’s “history” by the way has emphasized graduate education. Why do you think Princeton does so well in the NRC rankings? It emphasizes graduate education as well. So does Stanford. Neither gives you a better undergraduate experience, and it’s Princeton fans who keep trying to promote that so that they can maintain some semblance of competitiveness with HYSM (all of which P loses to in cross-admits).</p>
<p>japanoko, that graduate number you’re using from the CDS includes all the people who are enrolled in courses, including those who are enrolled through the Stanford Center for Professional Development in distance learning courses for professionals (the classes they “attend” are videos of the lectures). It doesn’t make sense to include them in the figure of graduate students, because they don’t cost the school any resources (and in fact, contribute lots of $$ to enroll in a course).</p>
<p>I’ve just realized something japanoko–are you aware that when you use all caps and bold text, it sounds to other users that you are screaming at the top of your lungs? Kind of an over-the-top response to a simple claim that you were using an erroneous figure for graduate students.</p>
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<p>It’s hard to understand why you viciously attack others over simple claims of local climate and student body size! Yet you do…</p>
<p>japanoko, lol did Princeton pay you to BS this much? If not, you’re just sad.
Mods, please close this thread.</p>
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<p>japanoko, I did not contest that it came from the CDS. But if you look closely at the CDS, almost 4,000 of the “graduate students” are “enrolled in credit courses.” So my point stands: they are not graduate students, but just people enrolled in graduate courses (most of them likely through SCPD, which is for distance learning).</p>
<p>And you want to know what uses the real figure of graduate students?</p>
<p>[Graduate</a> Program: Stanford University Facts](<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/about/facts/graduate.html]Graduate”>http://www.stanford.edu/about/facts/graduate.html)</p>
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<p>sorry phanta, but as I have stated many times, all I did was copy/paste the very same figures and label to the figures that were released by Stanford in their common data set, stated that it was from their common data set and posted the link to the common data set.</p>
<p>what else do you want from me here?</p>
<p>^ I know what you’re doing, but I was* simply adding the additional caveat *that the figure included people who are never on campus and don’t take up any resources (and are not actual graduate students).</p>
<p>^ no problem</p>
<p>in reality, when reporting these figures, the FTE (full-time equivalent) should be used which assigns a 1/3 to part time students and 1/3 to part time faculty.</p>
<p>this methodology is used for determining the student/faculty ratio in the common data set…</p>
<p>But they’re not even actual students. They’re just enrolled in credit courses, and from a distance. They don’t take up resources. Therefore, they shouldn’t be used in calculating grad:undergrad ratio.</p>