<p>this is a random point, not really having to do with the us news ranking...</p>
<p>harvard gets more apps because not only it is a great school, but EVERYONE and i mean EVERYONE knows harvard by name. i fyou say "i got into harvard" it doesnt matter if its the president or a hobo, they'll KNOW harvard is a (or THE) top school. </p>
<p>however, there have been several time i've told random curious people i'm going to stanford and they've been like "good. where's that?". it's obvious they didn't know much about the school or its reputation. it didn't bother me, but just goes to show you more people know about harvard than stanford. not that many but a few.</p>
<p>don't get me wrong, 95% of the people i tell say "wow, that's incredible," and the usual praise. but i'd bet $5 that more people in this country know about harvard than stanford, generally speaking.</p>
<p>It is not underranked. USNews is a ranking based on a certain set of facts and figures. It is NOT a list of the best universities. Such a list would vary for each person anyway, as Harvard is not the best college for everyone, certainly wasn't the best place for me. It is a list of the colleges with the top facts and figures, no more.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Thanks to its donor support, Stanford is far less dependent on the year-to-year success of its revenue-producing teams than other programs. While few schools could duplicate the Cardinal's fund-raising success, many are trying to emulate Stanford's financial stability by finding other sources of revenue, including corporate partner programs, licensing initiatives and lucrative conference arrangements. </p>
<p>What sets Stanford apart is that the school gives its alumni and boosters a variety of reasons to buy into the program. They win, most of the time. They have good kids to whom donors can relate. And they have never had a hint of trouble with the NCAA. </p>
<p>"The biggest disaster we could have is a scandal," Mr. Leland said. "If we went 0-10 or 0-11, our boosters wouldn't be happy, but they wouldn't stop supporting the program. An ethical problem ... that's a different story."
<p>Why not have donors give to academics? This simply proves the point that college athletic programs are not REALLY self-supporting--they have to go pursuing dollars beyond what people pay willingly to watch games being played.</p>
<p>Donors do give to academics. It is just separate from the athletic donations. In this manner it is similar to raising money to fund a new theatre or an endowed chair in a particular subject. It does not go into the general fund the money is more directed.</p>
<p>Directed funds are a bit more problematic for the schools because they have to use the funds for those purposes. However, they may not get the funds otherwise. For the problems directed funds create research Mugar library fund donation to Boston University. They ultimately had to refund his donation because they did not build the library for which they said they would use the money.</p>
<p>Additionally, the academics (nor theatre, etc.) are not REALLY self funding either. That is why schools charge tuition, submit for gov't grants, use the interest on their endowment and have capital campaigns to raise more funds.</p>
<p>My god, its incredible what a name can do to people. Just get over the names, i mean the most amazing people i have met went to colleges you will never here in your entire life. Do you really think john nash, or maxwell would have been regular joes if they had gone to sucky schools. Of course not. And stop saying a school should do this or that to increase their ranking points. I mean do you think that a kid, like me that has dreamed with stanford or any other elite school will come and change his mind because of what byerly says. Do you really think that a student in college will be worried about average sat scores and averae high school rankings. Knowledge is the same at hyps as it is in the tiniest library of a small town in chimaltenango. Lets grow up already</p>
<p>hoho. you guys are great man. nice reading your arguments.
well, my only gripe about stanford is, perhaps, that they should start considering need blind intl financial aid.</p>
<p>If any of you have read "How They Got into Harvard", you'll see one of the best examples of a jock getting into Harvard based on athletics alone. This guy had a decent 1260 SAT but a 2.75 GPA!! (I wouldn't doubt his SAT score was much lower before Harvard told him how important the AI was). He had no other ecs listed other than being captain of his school's baseball, football, and basketball teams (basically the perfect jock). Without doubt this kid was amazing at baseball; he was named Ivy league ROY and got drafted by the Red Sox.</p>
<p>Stanford pays its athletes by giving them scholarships, Harvard payed this athlete by allowing him into a prestigious college where he was academically grossly underqualified.</p>
<p>Where are there figures about typical SAT and GPA levels of Stanford athletes? I ask, because the only guy from my high school class to go to Stanford sure wasn't anywhere near the top of the class, nor was he one of the top scorers on the SAT, but he did play a lot of football while at our high school.</p>
<p>I'll let Byerly jump in himself but his basic argument against "merit" scholarships for athletes is that it is paying them for their services. He points out that once they lose their ability to compete, i.e. broken leg, they lose their scholarship. They only receive the scholarship as long they can continue to compete. My contention is that once a student loses their athletic scholarship they go into the financial aid pool. In essence, they are where they would be if they did not receive an athletic scholarship.</p>
<p>Byerly considers this paying because there is a certain level of performance associated with the scholarship. While I agree with that contention there is also a certain amount of performance associated with academic merit scholarships. For example,to continue receiving the scholarship you need to maintain a 3.0 GPA or better. These students are not called paid students, though Byerly disagrees with providing academic merit scholarships also.</p>
<p>As noted above, I have no issue with providing merit scholarships once 100% of financial need is taken care of first . . . however, the term 100% of financial need is defined.</p>
<p>"though Byerly disagrees with providing..."</p>
<p>So Eagle79, by appealing to Byerly for argumentative assistance, are you conceding that you yourself have no argument? That you need Byerly to rescue you from the superior arguments presented here, mostly by Sam Lee? </p>
<p>Since when is Byerly, with his terribly biased demeanor, the arbiter of all things higher education? </p>
<p>Byerly disagrees with offering merit scholarships because if top schools did, Harvard's vaunted cross-admit dominance would vanish in a day. Even if Yale or Stanford offered only $10,000/year scholarships to top students, Harvard would no longer win the majority of cross-admits.</p>
<p>Your argument is flawed. You say that if top schools offered merit aid, Harvard's cross-admit numbers would not be as lopsided. What you fail to recognize is, if top schools begin to offer merit aid, Harvard will too. Basically, the absolute best students (those worthy of merit aid at Harvard) will be the ones getting merit aid at YPSM. All else being equal, the cross-admit numbers will remain similar to what they are now, because the best will still choose Harvard with merit over YPSM with merit.</p>
<p>The only way offering merit aid would ruin Harvard's dominance in cross-admits would be if YPSM offered merit aid to those who were not as qualified, hoping to offer merit aid to someone who did not receive merit aid from Harvard (playing admissions games, a la 'Princeton Type').</p>
<p>I'm not trying to side with anyone on the arguments presented in this thread, I'm merely pointing out a flaw in your argument.</p>
<p>That being said, I'll see you on the farm in a couple of weeks. Go Cardinal! (We'll pick you over Penn no matter what USNews tells us to do)</p>
<p>Interesting interpretation of what I said . . . bascially I was saying that merit aid is a good thing. Byerly believes otherwise. I was trying to present both sides of the argument for context anticipating that Byerly may jump in. I can make my own arguments but also wanted to anticipate what may be said.</p>
<p>The advantage that Stanford has is that it CAN offer merit aid quite easily, like Duke does. Stanford is not in the Ivy League and bound by their rules. I think about 5 or 6 years ago Stanford offered $3000 merit scholarships to try and raise their yield when it was mired in the low 50's. </p>
<p>The schools not in the Ivy League, like Duke, Stanford, Chicago, etc. stand a great advantage this way. Stanford is one of the few top non-Ivy schools to NOT offer merit aid--probably because they want to compete directly with HYP. Duke, Chitown, Rice, Swarthmore, etc. all do. </p>
<p>The other thing is that if Yale and Princeton and whoever offer merit aid to students who are not as qualified, but still got into Harvard, then they must be pretty damn qualified. The top students usually get accepted to multiple schools in the big five (HSYPM) are the best of the best, and why would Yale accept students who aren't as good to give them merit aid? That doesn't make any sense. </p>
<p>I'll see you on the Farm, Eddie. I'm glad to see there will be some debaters around on campus. I can't wait! </p>
<p>Eagle79, I realized that you disagreed with Byerly, but your post made him seem like an authority on merit scholarships, as if his opinion meant more than yours or mine. That's what bothered me.</p>
<p>I was an athlete at Stanford, though not on scholarship. My teammates and many of the other athletes I knew were some of the most incredible people at the university - committing thirty-plus hours a week to the team and still making awesome grades in tough fields; earning a BS and an MA in 5 years, then graduating to play professional football; fitting other activities and community service into an already packed schedule. The incredible mental discipline of a world-caliber cross country runner, for example, adds diversity just like everything else a university considers in admission. Stanford is a better place to learnn, live, and grow because of its athletics programs.</p>
<p>As an alumni, I donate to both the Staford Fund for Undergraduate Education and the Athletic Department.</p>