<p>ez, you are pretty much talking out of your butt here.</p>
<p>There’s no question that Stanford is a world-class university, one of the best anywhere. It is also the newest member of that club, by a lot. (Well, if you consider Duke on the same level, then Duke would be a more recent addition to the club.) 40-50 years ago – which is not long in institutional time – it was second-rate.</p>
<p>There’s also no question that Berkeley is a world-class university, one of the best anywhere. Berkeley has been at that level for longer, but is facing some challenges now (along with the entire University of California system) that Stanford isn’t.</p>
<p>It is stupid and immature for anyone to talk of either university “whomping” the other, aside from sports contests.</p>
<p>It is also stupid and immature to put too much weight on the preferences of 17 year-olds. Stanford is smaller and gets better yield on the freshmen it accepts, so it accepts far fewer students and “wins” selectivity measures. Berkeley has a different philosophy, admitting far more students, and mostly charging them far less. About twice as many people apply to Berkeley as to Stanford.</p>
<p>The ARWU rankings measure productivity, but I think it is productivity per faculty member, not aggregate productivity. That kind of measure is a relatively small factor in the NRC rankings, some of which are effectively reputational rankings. If you don’t understand how PhD program quality directly affects undergraduate academic quality at a research university, you have some studying to do.</p>