<p>First of all both of these schools are amazing and extremely prestigious and on par with each other. Now, in response to the question, this isn’t really my sentiments but from what I have observed (I’m an international btw- Caribbean) and it would seem that Stanford is the more prestigious of the two.</p>
<p>“at Brooklyn Tech, which is a specialized high school as well, most students consider Columbia on the same level as HYP.”</p>
<p>I highly doubt that. I’ve known many students from Brooklyn Tech, and most seem to dream about HYPSM. I’m sure that most students at Brooklyn Tech consider Columbia to below HYPSM. I know at Columbia has a big reputation at one no name school in a poor district (bigger reputation than Yale and Princeton) because Columbia seems to be the pinnacle of education for those students in the city that haven’t even heard of Stanford, Yale, MIT, Princeton, or anything important in the outside world.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>I wonder. How much of that has to do with the particular “pro-Columbia” students at Brooklyn Tech and other NY area schools feeling they have no chance at Stanford and thus, saying Columbia is more prestigious as a form of sour grapes?</p>
<p>As a native NYC resident and a specialized high school graduate(Not Bklyn Tech), the idea that anyone in the NYC area would think Columbia is more prestigious than Stanford is, to be quite honest, quite laughable IME. No one I know from any of the specialized high schools believes this for a second. </p>
<p>It was much more so in the mid-90’s when my graduating class was applying to colleges as if anyone asserted Columbia > Stanford…we’d be wondering what drugs have they been smoking considering a substantially greater number of people were accepted to Columbia College/Engineering than to Stanford and the latter school required HYP level stats whereas Columbia was often regarded as a safety by the top students in my class. Of course, there has been some changes as just two years later…Columbia College substantially jacked up their acceptable stats.</p>
<p>Disclaimer: No real dog in this hunt as I’ve never attended either school for undergrad. Both schools, however, will be on my grad school list.</p>
<p>
On the behalf of CC, I would like to apologize for our collective insecurities. From now on, we will all be sure to distinguish between Harvard and YPSM. i.e:
- “Yeah you have a shot at Harvard and YPSM”
- “So I’ll be applying to Harvard and YPSM”
- “The schools with the lowest acceptance rates are often Harvard and YPSM”
- “Those scores aren’t Harvard and YPSM level”
- “Gee I wish I could get into Harvard, the only elite school, but I had to settle for a YPSM”
- “YPSM? They should change it to SP(am)MY…For taking up my mind with junk when the only school that deserves my attention is Harvard”
- “So monstor, I get that you turned down one of the SPamMYs for another…But you also spurned Harvard? Are you high? Or have you merely been seduced by the false construct of an elite tier of institutions when THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE?”</p>
<p>I hope we may someday be forgiven for our hubris, Porsche 06.</p>
<p>^lmao .</p>
<p>Quality of education and selectivity aside, Harvard and Oxford are the most recognizable brands of higher education in the world by a WIDE, WIDE margin. In fact, if we are just talking about the power of and familiarity with the name brand of the university, YPSM are much closer to Columbia, Duke and Georgetown than they are to Harvard.</p>
<p>Stanford and Columbia are both very prestigious schools, however, the fact that Columbia is an Ivy league school definitely gives it an edge against Stanford.</p>
<p>^that argument makes no sense and is pretty old. Fact is, how many people can name all the Ivy League schools? A ton of people include Stanford in the Ivy League schools, too.</p>
<p>^^Yes, I agree with you. Harvard is Harvard.</p>
<p>O.K., folks, here it is. Incontrovertable scientific evidence that Columbia University is more prestigious than Stanford University, though neither is as prestigious as Harvard. I give you … drum roll … the Google n-gram prestige-o-meter:
[Google</a> Ngram Viewer](<a href=“http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Columbia+University%2CHarvard+University%2CStanford+University&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=5&smoothing=10]Google”>http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Columbia+University%2CHarvard+University%2CStanford+University&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=5&smoothing=10)</p>
<p>I don’t think it is possible to distinguish between those two. In an absolute sense, I think Stanford may have a slight edge, but Columbia is one of the top universities on Earth, and it is located in NYC, which definitely gives it an extra boost. One cannot ignore the fact that more Nobel Laureates have been assosociated with it than any other university in the World. Then again, Stanford is ranked slightly higher than Columbia is every single field of study, except perhaps Medicine, has a financial stanbility that few universities can boast of having and is at the forefront of technological innovation.</p>
<p>Oxford became fashionable again because London became fashionable again in the last two decades, and Oxford was able to feed graduates into London banks. London became fashionable precisely because of the strength of the finance industry worldwide, which was brought about by the tech revolution in California, of which Stanford spearheaded.</p>
<p>I wonder where OP ended up matriculating… per some other of her posts, she had been admitted to Stanford, then admitted to Columbia off the wait list. I’d love to hear why she made whatever choice she did.</p>
<p>
Huh? In the MODERN world, Cambridge is far more prestigious than is Oxford. </p>
<p>Harvard=Cambridge, Yale=Oxford.</p>
<p>BlueDevilGuy – do you have something against modern scientific discovery?</p>
<p>leave it to CC to have a five page thread on a prestige debate b/w columbia and stanford.</p>
<p>Actually DunninLA, I would say that Oxford is still more prestigious than Cambridge. I think it really depends on what field you’re talking about though. For example, if you are talking about the math and science side of things I would say Cambridge would come out on top, however apart from that and overall I think Oxford would have a slight lead over Cambridge. I could be wrong though. </p>
<p>Random fact: Has anyone ever realized that most geometry sets are made by either Oxford or Cambridge? Lol</p>
<p>
Oh, somebody please keep me from ripping my hair out at the sight of such juvenile nonsense! Is this the type of person who thinks the amp that goes to 11 on the dial is louder than the one that stops at 10?</p>
<p>
That’s a point that’s been made repeatedly before by several other posters, and it’s one the numbers seem to support. Look, for example, at yields. One wonders if the others would be at Princeton’s level without early action.
[ul][<em>]Harvard 75.5%
[</em>]Stanford 71.6% (with SCEA)
[<em>]Yale 68.7% (with SCEA)
[</em>]MIT 64% (with EA)
[li]Princeton 56.8%[/ul]</p>[/li]
<p>By pretty much any measure - selectivity, popularity, prestige, name recognition, award production, library holdings, what have you - Harvard comes out on top. There is a reason other schools are known as the “Harvard of the [insert thing/area].” </p>
<p>Not that this makes it the best choice for any and all students, mind you. CC posters in the past have turned down Harvard for Pomona, Vanderbilt, and other schools; none of them have regretted that decision in the slightest.</p>
<p>
This I’m going to have to disagree with. Why in the world should this be so? They’re of roughly equal selectivity, and league tables almost always place them on roughly equal footing. In fact, they’re so comparable academically that applicants are not permitted to apply to both.</p>
<p>In terms of name recognition, Oxford far outpaces Cambridge. The number of Americans applying to Oxford as undergraduates, study abroad students, or postgraduates dwarfs the number of those applying to Cambridge. In fact, my own university did not have Cambridge approved as a university of suitable quality for study abroad (since nobody wanted to apply, they hadn’t investigated), whereas it has a half dozen programs approved for Oxford. To be honest, I’ve never really understood why this is so, but it’s something I’ve just shrugged and accepted as an oddity of people.</p>
<p>This perception of “Cambridge is teh awesomest for science/engineering, liek omgz” and Oxford as a stuffy place for arts and humanities is, I think, largely overrated. One poster (cupcake) has studied in the sciences at both and repeatedly noted that he finds them to be quite comparable – though most people ignore him anyway.</p>
<p>Harvard>Stanford>Cambridge, Oxford, Yale, MIT</p>
<p>How many times does CC have to arrive at this fact. This number of threads on HYPSM, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn, Brown, Oxford, Cambridge, etc. rivals the number asking which school is best for investment banking.</p>
<p>They’re both very prestigeous schools though in my opinion, Stanford is more well known.</p>
<p>Of course Harvard is by far the most prestigious school in the world. But how practical would it be to constantly differentiate in posting between Harvard and other schools determined as elite (whether that be the rest of the Ivy League, YPSM, top 25 USNEWS, whatever)? There’s little need to beat a dead horse about the matter, although I suppose in that sense the HYPSM acronym could be done away with.</p>
<p>Sigh, only on CC would I write something like the above.</p>