Gold rush</p>
<p>Lately, however, it seems that many students have not followed and are instead flocking to California. This month’s Yale Alumni Magazine (YAM) reports that “in addition to its traditional rivals Harvard and Princeton, Yale must now battle Stanford for the top students from the West.” Indeed, as Stanford’s reputation has risen over the past few decades, so have its admission numbers. This year, Stanford’s acceptance rate was slightly lower than Yale’s, and its yieldthe number of admitted students who actually matriculatewas one percentage point higher. Though such small differences indicate little about the relative quality of each school, one thing is clear: Stanford is a much bigger competitor with Harvard and Yale for students than it ever used to be.</p>
<p>As the YAM reported, Yale has recently “begun to lose more Stanford common admits than it wins.” In the past, Harvard has typically won most students admitted to both Yale and Harvard, but Yale has historically won common admit battles with other colleges like Princeton and MIT. As Shaw told the magazine, “the dot-com world is a big part of the draw for Stanford.”</p>
<p>But Adam Fingerhut, assistant director of undergraduate admissions at Stanford, disagreed with Shaw on that point. “We continue to see students who are interested in coming to Stanford to pursue a variety of things, including the liberal arts,” he said. If there’s one thing he can agree on, though, it’s that Stanford has become a major rival to Harvard and Yale over the past few years, especially with regard to luring prospective students to California. “I think from an admissions standpoint, we’ve certainly become a major competitor to both Harvard and [Yale],” he said.</p>
<p>Still in the running</p>
<p>Levin, though, remains unfazed. “There’s no doubt that Stanford is a serious, serious, very serious contender for faculty and students,” he said. “There’s no question about that. But let them focus on wherever they want. Yale wants to be the best Yale it can be, and I think we have some distinctive assets, especially with regard to undergraduate life and culture, that I think would be hard for Harvardand especially Stanfordto replicate.”</p>
<p>And, even though Levin has admitted that Stanford is, at this point, superior to many universities with regard to science, technology, and entrepreneurship, he remains adamant that, despite programs like the Mayfield at Stanford and TECH at Harvard, Yale is on equal footing with both schools. “We actually have a program just like those,” he said, referring to the Select Program in Engineering, which allows undergraduates to obtain a joint B.S./M.S. degree