<p>datalook, what you need to understand is that US News is not some sort of inerrant truth. The most reputable rankings of (graduate) academic programs is done by the NRC. Sadly they haven’t come out with a ranking since 1995 (though the new one should be out in 2008). There are, of course, other rankings as well. Academic Analytics has produced a ranking based on faculty scholarly productivity. Though it’s far from perfect, it has as much validity as US News.
What you’ll find in it is a much more nuanced picture than you like to paint. Looking at biology, for instance (which is an extremely broad field with many subfields), you’ll find that Yale is stronger than Stanford in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Cell Biology, Epidemiology, Evolutionary Biology, Immunology, Neurobiology/Neuroscience, Pharmacology and Physiology while Stanford is stronger than Yale in Biochemistry, Biophysics, Developmental Biology, Genetics, Microbiology and Oncology/Cancer biology.
From this, one might well argue that it’s far from clear who is stronger in biology, and, moreover, when you take this to the undergrad level, the differences are small enough that other factors become controlling.
You’re right that Stanford’s stronger in the physical sciences, placing higher in Applied Physics, Chemistry, Computational Sciences, Computer Science, Physics and Statistics (though lower in Geology/Earth Sciences and Geophysics). But in the Social Sciences and Humanities (contrary to your inane claims otherwise), Yale is easily superior (I’m tired of listing out programs, so you’ll just have to accept my word here).
Of course, if you ask me, I’d say that the fact that basically anyone would tell you that Yale has the superior History or English program doesn’t mean that history majors should necessarily go to Yale over Stanford, because the differences are small enough not to matter at the undergrad level, and other factors should be far more important. I’d say the same in reverse about Physics or Chemistry.
You, however, are so obsessed with small differences in a meaningless and poorly designed ranking (US News) that you don’t see that these differences are in fact virtually meaningless for undergrads. Of course, if you’d like us all to adopt your simplistic view calling for total acceptance of US News, then remember what someone else pointed out to you (I think it was in a different thread). Your beloved US News ranks Yale better than Stanford in its undergrad rankings (and has almost every year). I think this difference is trivial and meaningless, but based on your reactions to other parts of US News, it should imply to you that Yale is better for undergrads, and thus anyone pursuing an undergrad education should choose Yale over Stanford. If this sounds overly simplistic and silly to you (as it should) then perhaps you should consider what that means for your reliance on US News’ other rankings.</p>