<p>Stanford admitted about 1000/2350 HYPSM cross-admits last year, do you think that it would have suffered very low yield like Columbia had? regardless the distances.</p>
<p>You’re missing my point. It has no real West Coast competitor, so of course it will have high yield despite the distance. Every west coast kid who wants to be on the west coast and every east coast kid who wants to be on the west coast will elect it over anything else because there is nothing else quite like it.</p>
<p>If there were several other schools of similar caliber around it, its yield would decline, no doubt. Right now though it’s the “only game in town” so to speak. By the way, Columbia’s 58% yield is not “low yield.” It is one of the highest in the nation among highly selective schools, and its enrolled student body still has higher class standing and SAT scores than Stanford. So does Dartmouth and Brown for that matter. Not saying it makes one more prestigious than the other, but it is something to consider.</p>
<p>Stanford. I would say it has more prestige internationally than even Princeton, MIT, and maybe Yale.</p>
<p>yoda, Brown does not have higher SAT ranges than Stanford. Columbia and Dartmouth do, but then again, they do not have a huge Division I athletics program as Stanford does. Those athletes who take Stanford to Final Four appearances, Rose Bowls and Director’s Cup trophies do not have as much time to practice for the SAT as students who focus more on their studies.</p>
<p>Furthermore, one cannot compare yield rares at schools lile Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Dartmouth and Penn to yield rates at schools like Chicago, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale. The former enroll a chunk of their student bodies through ED. Remove ED from their strategy and their yield rates would drop, albeit not significantly.</p>
<p>Not that it matters since yield is not necessarily an indicator of prestige. Caltech, Chicago, Cornell, Duke, Johns Hopkins and Northwestern have lower yield rates than Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth and Penn but they are not less prestigious.</p>
<p>Doesn’t Penn admit close to half the enrolling class ED? That would skew the yield results cause there is no way they have a higher yield than Princeton.</p>
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<p>Well, Andrew Luck was a National Merit Scholar.</p>
<p>And practicing for the SAT? There are plenty of students who have never had “time to practice for the SAT” who have gotten into Stanford and its peer institutions with high scores. And besides, an SAT score isn’t always a figure to depend on with college admissions anyway. What about everything else? </p>
<p>Stanford has a holistic admissions policy.</p>
<p>is this a real debate? stanford is more prestigious than columbia. columbia is on par with chicago, duke, dartmouth, et. al. if the argument were instead how much more prestigious is stanford, than well, i’d argue that it’s pretty close but that stanford is still more prestigious.</p>
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Andrew Luck is an absolute tank and probably owns at life. But I don’t think the entire roster of football players at Stanford comprises National Merit Scholars. Not that such is the case at Ivy League schools either, but when it comes down to it, it’s a lot tougher to field a top 5 FBS team while maintaining a pristine standard of academics than it is to field any FCS team while maintaining those standards.</p>
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Stanford has gone to one Rose Bowl and one Final Four a piece in the last 25 years. Besides, Duke has the same large athletic program as Stanford and its incoming class stats are almost exactly identical to Stanford’s. Stanford is more selective than Duke however because its acceptance rate is greater and I would bet the house that it gets more “competitive” applications, which is what really matters at the end since it can craft its incoming class in a more creative and interesting way. Stanford does better than Duke on the Wall Street Journal Feeder survey because of its slightly better students and undergraduate focus, but even the difference here is negligible.</p>
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With regards to faculty/department/financial strength, can you please explain how a Stanford UNDERGRAD would benefit from having “better” resources in these areas compared to a Columbia undergrad? Would a Stanford undergrad learn more from his Economics classes than a Columbia undergrad because his professors are “marginally” better? Would a Stanford undergrad be able to attain some sort of special fellowship or get into a certain PhD program over a Columbia undergrad even if they are of similar caliber? Are there certain grants for international research that are available to a Stanford undergrad which would be unattainable for a Columbia undergrad if he equally invested in the opportunity?</p>
<p>None of the three criteria you use are directly tangential to undergraduate education in any meaningful way. There will be no difference in what learns from a Stanford or Columbia Political Science class at the Intro Level or the Upper Level barring differences in teaching styles. No elite PhD program is going to tip an admissions decision in the favor of a Stanford applicant over an equally qualified Columbia applicant just because the former’s department is slightly better established. No international foundation is going to discriminate between a Columbia and Stanford undergrad based on educational qualifications if both are passionate about bringing clean water to developing countries, doing humanitarian work in war-devastated countries, etc. etc.</p>
<p>What makes Stanford more prestigious than Columbia is its lower acceptance rate/higher yield/stronger student body, better connections with the top employers in every industry and better reputation among the upper middle class/wealthy segments of the American population everywhere. Perception is everything and Stanford has a better brand than Columbia. Just like Columbia has a better brand name than Tulane, Boston College, UMich, Emory, etc.</p>
<p>"With regards to faculty/department/financial strength, can you please explain how a Stanford UNDERGRAD would benefit from having “better” resources in these areas compared to a Columbia undergrad? Would a Stanford undergrad learn more from his Economics classes than a Columbia undergrad because his professors are “marginally” better? Would a Stanford undergrad be able to attain some sort of special fellowship or get into a certain PhD program over a Columbia undergrad even if they are of similar caliber? Are there certain grants for international research that are available to a Stanford undergrad which would be unattainable for a Columbia undergrad if he equally invested in the opportunity?</p>
<p>None of the three criteria you use are directly tangential to undergraduate education in any meaningful way. There will be no difference in what learns from a Stanford or Columbia Political Science class at the Intro Level or the Upper Level barring differences in teaching styles. No elite PhD program is going to tip an admissions decision in the favor of a Stanford applicant over an equally qualified Columbia applicant just because the former’s department is slightly better established. No international foundation is going to discriminate between a Columbia and Stanford undergrad based on educational qualifications if both are passionate about bringing clean water to developing countries, doing humanitarian work in war-devastated countries, etc. etc."</p>
<p>Absolutely LDB. I have always said as much. I always emphasize that individual students are not associated with the university they attend. Nobody in the real world assumes one candidate is better than another because he/she attended one school over another. We are each measured according to our abilities and track record. But we are talking about institutional prestige, and that is determined by how good the university is. A university’s quality is determined by its faculty, departments and resources. </p>
<p>“What makes Stanford more prestigious than Columbia is its lower acceptance rate/higher yield/stronger student body, better connections with the top employers in every industry and better reputation among the upper middle class/wealthy segments of the American population everywhere. Perception is everything and Stanford has a better brand than Columbia. Just like Columbia has a better brand name than Tulane, Boston College, UMich, Emory, etc…”</p>
<p>Columbia and Stanford have the same acceptance rate (~8%-10%) and quality of students. The rest of your points (reputation among the educated elites, corporate recruitment, yield rate etc…) are all a direct result of Stanford having a slight edge in prestige, thanks to its stronger (albeit slightly) academic offerings.</p>
<p>I am not going to go into Michigan in this thread, we are here to discuss Columbia and Stanford.</p>
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<p>haha, you had to slip that in there did you not? :)</p>
<p>I am sure alexandre is mature enough not to chew at the bait</p>
<p>“Stanford has gone to one Rose Bowl and one Final Four a piece in the last 25 years. Besides, Duke has the same large athletic program as Stanford and its incoming class stats are almost exactly identical to Stanford’s.”</p>
<p>I do not intend to compare Stanford and Duke, but I think Stanford’s athletic complex is one of the greatest in the nation. They won the Director’s Cup every single year since the trophy has been handed out (sometime in the early 1990s). Although Stanford is not a Football and Basketball powerhouse, they have done relatively well in both sports. I remember their going 18-7 during my first two years in college. They also had some decent seasons under Ty Willingham, going to the Rose Bowl in 1998. Although Stanford is not going to the Rose Bowl this year, they are going to a BCS Bowl nonetheless (the Orange Bowl I believe). Their success has not been consistant, but it has been noteworthy. However, in many other sports, Stanford has been downright dominant.</p>
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<p>I beg to disagree. </p>
<p>There are several excellent schools in California that can claim to be just as good as Stanford academically. Just on top of my head are: Caltech, Harvey Mudd, Pomona, Berkeley, McKeena, UCLA and USC. All these schools offer excellent undergrad programs too. Though it is true that Stanford is superior to all these schools, it is not fair to say that it is “the only game in town”. I bet even Caltech, Harvey Mudd and Pomona students have multiple acceptances from top East Coast schools too.</p>
<p>Stanford is not superior to CalTech by many, many measures. </p>
<p>In this specific paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), CalTech is found to be the second most desirable university in the nation only behind Harvard.</p>
<p><a href=“http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=069113004124117096067107016104002002039056057018054055095127064009111107068064101077102022016029019024016001094013002005065054071014016049002026028012070010052006095066004031007095021030097000093&EXT=pdf[/url]”>http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=069113004124117096067107016104002002039056057018054055095127064009111107068064101077102022016029019024016001094013002005065054071014016049002026028012070010052006095066004031007095021030097000093&EXT=pdf</a></p>
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<p>That’s just it. There are systemic differences in teaching styles (broadly understood). Setting freshmen loose to take (or not take) any arbitrary Political Science intro course is not the same as requiring a common “Contemporary Civilization” Core course like the one Columbia has developed over many years.</p>
<p>One can make an argument for or against the “Core” concept. Either way, this academic difference will be more significant to your undergraduate experience than any supposed differences in prestige.</p>
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<p>Firstly, Stanford does not have a stronger student body than Columbia. Columbia is also a division 1 school. Of course its athletics department is not nearly as great as Stanford’s, but they both have athletes. What proportion of athletes constitute the Stanford student body to drag down SAT scores and class standing so much? Columbia also receives nearly 30,000 applications, so I do not think they take a less “holistic” approach when filling their student body. Every top school basically has their pick of top students. Data below for comparison:</p>
<p>[Stanford</a> University Overview - CollegeData College Profile](<a href=“http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=781]Stanford”>http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=781)</p>
<p>[Columbia</a> University Overview - CollegeData College Profile](<a href=“http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=399]Columbia”>http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=399)</p>
<p>Secondly, with the exception of venture capital and engineering jobs in Silicon Valley, Stanford shares no better connections with top employers than Columbia. In fact, for Wall Street jobs or just about any other job in highly competitive fields, Columbia is more represented than Stanford on the east coast.</p>
<p>Lastly, while Stanford may enjoy greater prestige in many parts of the country, it is by no means the clear winner with the “upper middle class/wealthy segments of the American population everywhere.” As a New Yorker who went to a private school, I can tell you that unless you were set on being an engineer or going to the west coast, the top schools for the top students in New York most often consisted of Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Harvard. Stanford was on the radar, but it was never considered clearly more prestigious than Columbia. Maybe before in the mid 90s when NYC as a city needed work , but certainly not in the early 2000s when I graduated from high school.</p>
<p>Stanford certainly is a prestigious school, but your assertion that it is the cut and dry winner as judged by everyone everywhere is a bit ignorant.</p>
<p>About the state thing, the same thing can be said with Stanford and California. I went to high school in New York, born and raised, and always considered Stanford more up there on my list when comparing with Columbia. I live very close to Columbia and wanted something else besides NY, which also determined why I didn’t apply and instead, applied to Stanford and I’m a poli sci major wanting to go to law school.</p>
<p>Honestly though, after looking through this thread, I think it’s stupid to keep talking about prestige and who has the bigger stick (pause) yada yada yada. It just comes down to preference at the end of the day. I would say, though, after talking to the majority of Stanford kids from California, the general consensus I got was that Harvard, MIT, Brown, NYU, Georgetown and Princeton were more attractive to them than Columbia. Of course there were some exceptions, but I bet you would find more NY kids looking at Stanford than you would find Cali kids looking at Columbia.</p>
<p>Columbia and Stanford are amazing places, nonetheless and both are winners in their own ways. They’re both hegemons in this college game and students and alumni of both should be very proud of that, but more so of what they do with their time at said universities. You honestly can’t go wrong with either of them and I would feel bad for the mid-western kid from Kansas City if they were choosing between the two before May 1st.</p>
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<p>This is why I put “the only game in town” in quotes. Clearly there are other great schools on the west coast. But nothing really rivals Stanford in terms of prestige of a large private research (ex Caltech) institution. If you live anywhere in the US and you had to choose one large, private, prestigious research institution on the west coast, Stanford clearly sticks out.</p>
<p>On the east coast, you have all eight Ivy League schools plus MIT (east coast version of Cal Tech). If you want to include schools like USC and UCLA, in New York you also have NYU. In Boston you have BC, Tufts etc. If you want to include LACs, you have Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore etc. </p>
<p>My point is that there are many more high caliber institutions to select from in the Northeast, so students have more to choose from. This is not the case with Stanford, so it is no surprise their yield is what it is.</p>