<p>UCSF remains a strong contender in terms of stem cell research, both due to its intense focus on biology-related sciences and location in California. </p>
<p>My point about the facilities and funding is that Stanford obviously spends much more money on the sciences and especially engineering and biology. One only has to visit the Engineering Quad and the Bio-X/Clark Center to see why. </p>
<p>Harvard's HSCI effort is a nice start, but it still lags far behind Stanford.</p>
<p>Who are Harvard's biggest competitors?</p>
<p>In Professional schools: Stanford.
Only Stanford can challege Harvard in Business, law, education, and medicine. Other universities can not compete with H and S overall.
Yale is good in law only.</p>
<p>In Science: MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, and Caltech. Along with Harvard, these 4 schools represent the future of science for USA. Princeton has top notched math ans physics departments, but not very strong in other science fields, such as biology, chemsitry, and geology. Yale is not a competitor at all in science.</p>
<p>In humanity and social science: Stanford. Harvard is better in English and politics (stanford is 2nd in politics). Stanford is better in psycology, sociology, and history, they are tied in econmics according to US news. Yale and Princeton are good in some of these fields, but neither is as complete as S and H.</p>
<p>In Engineering, Harvard gets its ass kicked by MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and Caltech.</p>
<p>That sounds fair enough.</p>
<p>
[quote]
In Professional schools: Stanford.
Only Stanford can challege Harvard in Business, law, education, and medicine. Other universities can not compete with H and S overall.
Yale is good in law only.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>As far as professional schools go, I would thrown in Penn. </p>
<p>Here are Stanford's professional school rankings, according to USNews:
Business - 2
Law - 3
Education - 3
Medicine - 8
Average = 4</p>
<p>Here are Upenn's
Business - 3
Law - 7
Medicine - 4
Education - 7
Average = 5.25</p>
<p>I would say that an average of a 5.25 is pretty darn close to a 4. Stanford is still better, but just by a hair. Heck, if you take out the Education Schools, then there's barely any difference at all between Stanford and Penn. </p>
<p>
[quote]
In humanity and social science: Stanford. Harvard is better in English and politics (stanford is 2nd in politics). Stanford is better in psycology, sociology, and history, they are tied in econmics according to US news. Yale and Princeton are good in some of these fields, but neither is as complete as S and H.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think a better case could be made for Berkeley in this regard. Consider the following Berkeley/Stanford departmental rankings.</p>
<p>Sociology - 2/6
Econ - 3/3
English - 1/4
History -2/4
polisci - 5/2
Psych - 2/1</p>
<p>Hence, Berkeley beats Stanford on 3 disciplines, loses on 2, and one is a tie. I would say that Berkeley has the slight edge. And if you take the averages, you will find that Berkeley has an average score of 2.5, Stanford has an average score of 3.33. </p>
<p>Let's look at the Harvard rankings:
Econ - 3
English - 1
History - 4
Polisci - 1
Psych - 5
Sociology - 8</p>
<p>Average = 3.83</p>
<p>So according to this, Berkeley and Stanford are actually BETTER than Harvard, on average. </p>
<p>The point is, when you want to talk about PhD/department rankings in the social sciences and the humanities, you probably should be talking about 3 schools - Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley. Don't leave Berkeley out.</p>
<p>I'm kind of new here, and I just wanted to know: do all threads stray from the original topic this easily here? This particular thread started by looking at overlapping applicants and cross-admits between Harvard and other schools, and now we're wading through tables of rankings - here I exaggerate, of course - courtesy of sakky.
I must admit, I don't read the US News rankings all that carefully. How exactly do they compare the schools? All of the numbers up there will be a lot more helpful if I understand how they were obtained.
Of course, for a lot of people, numbers aren't the ultimate deciding factor between schools. Intangibles play a great role, and the college search isn't really about finding the "best" school overall, it's about finding the best "fit" for you.</p>
<p>Those USNews rankings are total BS. </p>
<p>If Yale isn't ranked #1 for English, I don't think they're legitimate.</p>
<p>
[quote]
This particular thread started by looking at overlapping applicants and cross-admits between Harvard and other schools, and now we're wading through tables of rankings - here I exaggerate, of course - courtesy of sakky.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Hey, I'm not the one who started breaking things down by professional school and so forth. I'm just following a lead set by somebody else.</p>
<p>Look, I mean this in the nicest possible way, but if a particular offshoot of a thread does not interest you, then fair enough, don't read it. Nobody's forcing you. You can read the posts that you find of interest and ignore the rest. I certainly don't care if other people talk about things that don't interest me. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Those USNews rankings are total BS. </p>
<p>If Yale isn't ranked #1 for English, I don't think they're legitimate.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, I'm happy to report that Yale is in fact #1 for English (tied with Harvard and Berkeley). So does that mean that USNews is legitimate?</p>
<p>Look, I am not saying that USNews is completely reliable. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that they're total BS either. If USNews ranked Harvard as the worst school in the nation, then yes, I would agree, it would be total bull. USNews is not perfect, but it's not THAT far off. </p>
<p>If you don't like USNews, then what's the alternative? The only other ranking that I give serious credibility to is the NRC ranking, and it's pretty close to the USNews ranking.</p>
<p>Byerly,</p>
<p>I understand that at National Research Universitities the departements for the graduate students and undergraduates are one in the same. However, how do the LACs fit into that scheme. Those rankings are not in the USNews Graduate school edition. What I am looking for is a comparison of the undergraduate programs, i.e. Math, Economics, etc.</p>
<p>BTW, nice article. What will happen with stem cells and the future is hard to tell.</p>
<p>ubermensch,</p>
<p>I understand your position that it may seem strange to have the Diviinity School involved. However, I think they should be involved because they have a stake in the ethics involved in the discussion. There is a significant national debate on ths topic and their perspective is one of the many views that need to be addressed on the topic.</p>
<p>You don't see LACs listed because most rankings of faculty quality depend on objective criteria, including research and publications. Few LAC faculties measure up. See, for example, this study, which, despite its flaws, is an honest effort to develop a set of criteria in Political Science:</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>I'm kind of new here, and I just wanted to know: do all threads stray from the original topic this easily here? <<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>Yes. Stick around and we'll soon be talking about golf, pizza parlors, and UFOs.</p>
<p>I am not sure where you get your information, but Stanford does not compete with Harvard in terms of Medical School. It is even outdone by Yale's medical school. Stanford, in the medical world, is known as a soft medical school, and is not regarded as a top contender in any way with Harvard and JHU (Penn, Duke, WSTL, Columbia). It has about as much clinical research as the University of Bridgeport. </p>
<p>In Science, if you look at some rankings, you'll see Yale is in fact competetive in Biological Science, Physics and Math. In fact Yale has the fifth highest # of academy members behind Harvard, UCB MIT and Stanford. Maybe Yale is not as strong in science as it is in the humanities (which I don't understand how you say Stanford is the best), but I think you are being a bit naive when you say "Yale is not a competitor at all in science."</p>
<p>"In fact Yale has the fifth highest # of academy members behind Harvard, UCB MIT and Stanford."</p>
<p>not true - just check the NAS directory, here:</p>
<p>yale, with 64 members, trails not only HSM and berkeley, but also princeton (70), caltech (67), and UCSD (66), despite having the advantage of a medical school over both princeton and caltech. so, in reality, yale ranks no better than eighth on this measure.</p>
<p><a href="http://thecenter.ufl.edu/AnyFed1990-2000-II/Nat_Acad_Mem_1999-2003.xls%5B/url%5D">http://thecenter.ufl.edu/AnyFed1990-2000-II/Nat_Acad_Mem_1999-2003.xls</a>
As of 2003:</p>
<p>Harvard - 264
Stanford - 249
MIT - 234
Berkeley - 201
Yale - 104
Caltech - 96
UCSD - 95
Penn - 89
Princeton - 86
UCSF - 85
Columbia 84
Cornell - 80
UWashington - 77
UMichigan - 73</p>
<p>"I am not sure where you get your information, but Stanford does not compete with Harvard in terms of Medical School. It is even outdone by Yale's medical school. Stanford, in the medical world, is known as a soft medical school, and is not regarded as a top contender in any way with Harvard and JHU (Penn, Duke, WSTL, Columbia). It has about as much clinical research as the University of Bridgeport."</p>
<p>Crimsonbulldog, you seem to know quite a bit about medicine, but I think you're off base here. None of these statements are correct, aside from the implication that most folks who "know" would say that Harvard has the top medical school in almost every respect. As far as Stanford's medical school, it's much smaller than Harvard, JHU, Penn, etc ... and therefore suffers significantly in rankings such as US News. They are heavily research-oriented, and have had the highest rate of NIH funding per faculty among any medical school for many years. I don't know what you meant by the term "top contender," but don't think those statements would be true based on any metric of comparison. For example, Stanford is one of the few medical schools that several students each year will consistently choose over Harvard because of student research opportunities (and geography) ... the same is not nearly as true for JHU, WashU, Penn (although they have $$ that occasionaly lures top cross-admitted students), Yale, etc.</p>
<p>I personally don't think Yale's medical program is regarded in the same league as any of the ones listed above (including Stanford), and a casual glance at the residency match lists from any "top" medical school (aside from Yale's) would support that statement.</p>
<p>Stanford's Medical School suffers not from a lack of basic science research, of which no doubt Stanford is excellent at, but from an average medical center dwarfed in all resepects by UCSF and from a paucity of clinical research, which Stanford wearily needs to allocate more resources for. </p>
<p>Looking at the Stanford Match
<a href="http://deansnewsletter.stanford.edu/archive/2004_residency_match.html%5B/url%5D">http://deansnewsletter.stanford.edu/archive/2004_residency_match.html</a></p>
<p>And looking at the Yale Match
<a href="http://info.med.yale.edu/education/osa/milestones/commencement04/match.html%5B/url%5D">http://info.med.yale.edu/education/osa/milestones/commencement04/match.html</a></p>
<p>I can't understand how you say that Yale's Match is worse. For instance, totalling all matched to Harvard Programs (which is a pretty good indicator of strength since they are a sampling of the best residencies)
Yale 23
Stanford 9</p>
<p>And if you are looking for coastal bias, then how about UCSF which is the best of the west:
Yale 6
Stanford 7</p>
<p>How about a single hard program?
Rad Onc: Yale 3, Stanford 4
Derm: Yale 12, Stanford 6</p>
<p>How is Yale not in the same league, or perhaps a bit better? </p>
<p>And then, if we start to compare the match with harvard, or if you want to compare board scores, awards, or any sort of indicator of student body strength (if those figures were ever released) I guarantee that Stanford would easily lose. I am not saying that Harvard is the best medical school, as that is sort of an ambiguous term (it might be the best in terms of strength of students and research funding, JHU is probably the best in terms of quality of education), but it remains among medical circles a level above Stanford (and Yale for that matter). Not that anything is wrong with Stanford, I was merely refuting datalook's sweeping claim.</p>
<p>Crimisonbulldog, thanks for the response. What I meant about the residency match was to look at "top" medical schools, and to see where those students are doing their residencies ... specifically that many fewer of them go to Yale-affiliated programs than to other residency programs. You'll find that probably the only "top" medical school that consistently sends students to (willingly) attend Yale-affiliated residency programs is Yale Medical School. Admittedly this isn't a terribly good way to compare medical programs, but I certainly think it means something.</p>
<p>As an aside, you'd need to normalize for differences in class size before comparing residency match #'s.</p>
<p>I think the same can be applied to Stanford as well, as it is rarely a highly ranked residency among top applicants (Stanford Med sent 20 there, Columbia sent 2). Though I don't see exactly how this number is relevant to the strength of the medical school. Its almost like saying princeton sucks at history because it has so few graduate students, which isn't true of course. </p>
<p>As for comparing medical schools #'s, a quick count shows that both medical schools have about the same number of medical students. 86 at Stanford, 100 at Yale, so there should have been an adjustment, but pretty minor.</p>
<p>I'll concede that Stanford's medical school is not comparable to Hopkins, UCSF, or Harvard. It does remain a strong top-10 program, however, and when combined with consensus top-three programs in business (with Wharton and HBS) and law (HLS, YLS), Stanford remains one of the top two places to go to professional school in general, and this is not even including the best education school in the country. </p>
<p>The problem with Stanford is that an intense focus on the non-medical biological sciences has detracted from the medical school, and it's also competing with a better known top-three program just up the road.</p>
<p>In the current rankings, the Harvard School of Education is the clear #1, with UCLA #2 and Stanford trailing in third place.</p>
<p>Then Harvard is also #2 in schools of public affairs, (the Kennedy School) an area where Stanford does not even try to compete.</p>
<p>Don't forget Public Health. Harvard keeps the public more healthy than Stanford!</p>
<p>(though not as healthy as Baltimore)</p>