Why are people in the northeast so ignorant of Stanford?

<p>Everybody knows it at my average public midwestern school, well everybody that knows about college at least. </p>

<p>However, 80% of people believe its in the ivy league.</p>

<p>40% of people believe it's in New England, right next to Harvard and Princeton (I don't know if they know Yale)</p>

<p>20% of people tell me "wow, it'll be great to go to Florida, the girls are so hot!"
and then I correct them and say Cali and they're like "haha oh, well, the GIRLS ARE SO HOT"</p>

<p>Granted, Stanford is like the ultimate dream school here in the FREEZING midwest. Probably 30% of my love for Stanford is because it doesn't go weeks at a time with single digit weather.</p>

<p>And hey, who cares b/c when you go to Stanford, you'll be in NorCal anyways, and Stanford is like the god of all colleges in this area. :)</p>

<p>^^ Tyler09, I would beg to differ...the midwest definitely has double-digit temperatures in the winter...albeit in the negative, like -30.</p>

<p>but hey, who really keeps track? once your below 10 it's difficult to distinguish the degree of hellish coldness.</p>

<p>^ Hey, we (almost) have the same location. LOL</p>

<p>i live in arizona, and its not as bad but people still dont really recognize stanford as a prestigious school. i get "WOW STANFORD!"s and "oh.. isn't that like, a really good school or something?"s but even out here in the west, people dont know where stanford is... a lot of people thought it was out east</p>

<p>Im from Buffalo and there is some ignorance. My very own mother doesnt understand why i want to go so far to attend "some school". my dad tells her " Stanford is one of the best in the WORLD" and shes like " but its not ivy league?"(ughhhhh). At my school, a girl got into MIT early and everyone pretty much congratulated us the same. So it depends who you talk to.</p>

<p>^^ it's less coincidence...and more that I stole the idea from you :-P</p>

<p>Me - “I’ll be out of town over spring break.”</p>

<p>classmate - “Where are you going?”</p>

<p>“To Cali, to visit Stanford!”</p>

<p>“Congrats! I knew you would get into one of those Ivy Leagues!” </p>

<p>Smile & nod…</p>

<p>I’m usually not a fan of reviving old threads but I really enjoyed reading this one. For anyone who has a child attending Stanford, this really hits home. At least WE all recognize what an accomplishment it is for our child to accepted to Stanford; even if most in the general population have no clue how special that is…</p>

<p>FWIW, [this</a> poll](<a href=“Harvard Number One University in Eyes of Public”>Harvard Number One University in Eyes of Public) shows that Stanford is considered about as prestigious as MIT and Princeton in the East (though behind HY); in the West, it’s only a bit behind H and far above the others; in other parts, it’s about equal to Y and far above P and M. So I’d say Stanford’s name is pretty well-known. The East is what surprised me most, though.</p>

<p>When I was in SC, I was taken aback when people were impressed by Stanford. I had assumed (wrongly) that the few people I met in this very rural town wouldn’t have even heard of it. I’ve also met someone from Montana who had never heard of Stanford, or YPM either - only H.</p>

<p>Everyone I have met here in Texas knows how prestigious Stanford is. The reaction is usually, “wow”. One thing, though, is that mentioning one has a child at a prestigious school often creates a resentment reaction, as if one is bragging. That does not happen when a flagship school is mentioned.</p>

<p>The residents of states like Nebraska, Alabama, Montana, and Arizona live in their own bubbles and are oblivious of the landscape of higher education outside of the region of the country they are in.</p>

<p>Stanford is clearly in the next tier of schools after the big H with regards to familiarity so 90% of the people will have heard of the school.</p>

<p>Where I go to school (in New jersey) I gues a lot of people know about Stanford. Around 70-90%. Except no one applied there for like the past five years though…</p>

<p>Sadly, when I went to a doctor for a regular check up shortly after S was accepted to Stanford, the doc asked me where he was going. When I said Stanford, he said “Oh thats nice at least its not far, he can drive.” (Ugh!! The dummy thought I meant StaMford, Conn.) Needless to say, I switched doctors after that.</p>

<p>It must be funny, on the flip side of the coin, when a student says they’re going to Stamford or Samford, and people say "That’s amazing!"because they thought they meant Stanford.</p>

<p>Everyone around here seems to know Stanford is a top Div. 1 sports school, but are a little unclear on the fact that it’s academically on par with the Ivies. Many people were visibly shocked that D turned down Harvard, and thought she was making a BIG mistake.</p>

<p>I think most people nationally are aware that Stanford is on a par with other top schools, certainly prestige-wise. That said, east coast “ignorance” of that fact probably stems in part from the fact that Stanford has only truly joined the ranks of the top universities and LAC’s relatively recently (last 30 years or so, while HYP, Amherst/Williams etc. were the creme-de-la-creme going back over 200 years).</p>

<p>^ There you go again, trying to pump LACs up by lumping them in with HYPS. Fact: Stanford didn’t come to prominence “recently” - it was considered to be one of the best universities for over a century, which is why in 1900 it was one of the 12 founding members of the Association of American Universities (along with most Ivies, Chicago, etc.); there were quite a few universities that are prestigious today, like MIT, Brown, etc. that didn’t become members for a few decades. I’ve also seen rankings from the 1940s and 50s that put Stanford in the top 5 or top 10 (search Google’s news archives). While Silicon Valley helped push Stanford to #2 in prestige, it has long been considered one of the elite universities.</p>

<p>Fact: the top LACs even today are not prestigious in the general public. Notice that in [url=&lt;a href=“Harvard Number One University in Eyes of Public”&gt;Harvard Number One University in Eyes of Public]this[/url</a>], not one of SWA was mentioned by more than 1% of the population. In fact, they were so insignificant, Gallup didn’t bother to report whether anyone did mention them.</p>

<p>LACs are not on par with HYPS and never have been. Deal with it.</p>

<p>^^ Tell that to former Stanford president Richard Lyman (Swarthmore undergraduate) or the current presidents of Harvard (Bryn Mawr), Brown (Swarthmore), etc. etc. Presidents/faculty at leading research universities have a long history of having attended and/or sending their own spawn to top LACs, as they actually have a grasp. Not to rain on your parade, I assume you attend (or did attend) Stanford, and there is no lack of esteem and praise being heaped upon you, and it’s actually a very solid school :)</p>

<p>^ what does the undergraduate origin of these presidents have anything to do with the comparative prestige and value of LACs? The current president of Stanford graduated from Villanova and SUNY. Does that make them on par with HYPS in prestige? Does that make them on par in value? No, of course not. In fact, people who go to LACs typically a) didn’t apply to universities like HYPS, or b) applied and got rejected.</p>

<p>This may sound harsh, but it’s well-known in academia that in general LACs get “leftovers.” The professors there usually couldn’t get a tenured position at a university. The students there usually couldn’t get into a school like HYPS (of course, this is true at most universities that aren’t HYPS(M)). Sad but true. No amount of cheerleading from you changes this reality.</p>

<p>It’s funny that you say Stanford’s a “very solid school,” when previously you would rail on Stanford pretty hard and have only more recently toned down your rhetoric.</p>