datalook

Finally, to OP.

Even though Stanford is much better than Brown in CS, it doesn't mean you have to transfer. The reason is that the difference in undergraduate learning might not be as big as in graduate study. If you become a top student in Brown CS (top 3?), you may have a chance to become a Stanford CS graduate student in the future. If you can not make into Stanford, you may still have a chance in other distinguished CS programs like Berkeley, MIT, CMU, UIUC, Princeton, Cornell, and etc.

wolfmanjack

Oh good lord.

larrykinglive

Oh good Lord is right. If you want to go to school with ^ then by all means transfer. The reason people select Brown over Stanford is so they do not have to endure ^ for four years. Please do us future students a favor and leave as quickly as possible.

datalook

How do you know that ^ is at Stanford?

I don't think you have the authority to ask people to leave.

Sorry to burst your bubble that Brown is as good as Stanford in CS. The hard facts (data) are sometimes cruel. But they are facts.

Olivewood

Haha I understand that this is Brown thread, but it is absurd to even compare Stanford and Brown.

Stanford, MIT, Harvard > > > Brown (especially in CS)

Verstuff

How is Harvard > Brown in CS?

wolfmanjack

Oh good lord.

larrykinglive

Ha, Ha, oh good Lord is right. And you wonder why people think Ivy types are such elitist A-holes? Now you know... Thank God I decided not to surround myself with ^ that. And yes, I did have a choice.

mgcsinc

I'd like to point out that characterizing elitism that puts Stanford and MIT above Brown is hardly Ivy League elitism...

Galanter

Let me preface what I am about to say by saying that Stanford and MIT are fine schools. But one measure of a school's desirability is whether alumni of the school what their children to attend that same school. By that measure, MIT is sorely lacking. I've heard very few MIT alums say they want their children to attend the school, even if they are talented in Math and Science. Having some experience with the school because my S.O. used to work there, it seems to me that the school, along with Caltech, are about a sort of academic hazing rather than the pursuit of knowledge. During the MARS explored mission a few years ago, Brown, along with Cornell, basically ran that show, not MITers.

I know of no one, excepting West Coast Wasps and Asians, who think Stanford is a more prestigious "undergraduate" experience than Brown. It's a different type of school, more akin to MIT or Caltech than a true great liberal arts university like the Ivies. Brown's computer science program at the undergraduate is as good as any in the country. Significantly better than Harvard or Yale, and on par with Stanford and the tech schools. Andries van Dam is one of the most respected people in that field.

If one wants to transfer to Stanford because they love California and The Bay Area, that's understandable. Stanford represents a different kind of atmosphere for a great university. But if you want a university-college experience where you can pursue your intellectual interests in the true spirit of intellectual inquiry, Brown is the better school.

Humboldt

^ Lol (No offense though)

In reality, Brown is not on the same level as the schools you mentioned. It is just one of the good schools top 15ish like JHU and WashU etc. Come on I don't even want to argue about this b/c, frankly speaking, what you said is almost a complete nonsense outside of Brown network.

End of story.

bernie12

The topic of this thread is really dumb and it makes all people at or admitted to top schools just seem really spoiled (and many of us kind of are), so I won't entertain opinions on Stanford vs. Brown cause I don't care. They are both solid and if the OP does well at either, they will be successful in their field.
Anyway, this is dumb- But some poster said that MIT and Caltech=academic hazing. What does that mean? They have to work very hard? Oh, how sad, because you shouldn't have to at a top school, especially an engineering school.
And exactly how do the other top schools mentioned encourage "pursuit of knowledge"? Like most of the other schools in the top 20, their grades are so high that many students can do everything but pursue knowledge (in theory they have enough time for it, but often it doesn't happen). I've seen the MIT coursework and I admit, it's very challenging(is this what you mean by hazing? There is nothing wrong with that, most top schools "should" be like this) and one must pursue the knowledge and be able to think (often critically) or else you won't do well. Basically seems like MIT better integrates creative/critical thinking into coursework. There is nothing wrong with this approach in my opinion. Just as there is nothing really wrong with most top schools (or schools in general) becoming more civic oriented (another possible area of creativity) and less focused on challenging academics. Let's say it like this: Most schools today are hardly about the pursuit of knowledge, or at least the students attending are not about it. If so, the rigor of the coursework would have caught up to the current quality of the students at most of us. Without the intellectual challenge, it's easy to graduate a top school w/o pursuing knowledge, though our gpas will indicate otherwise. I just found it laughable because as a person who goes to "sad, little old lowly" Emory, and having compared coursework of similar courses offered here and at places like HPY and other higher ranking institutions (I can look up say, exams, online and compare it to anything here. I'm a science major, so I generally compare these courses), there is not much of a difference. In fact, I've found some courses here to be harder (I've hardly made this observation when looking at MIT. It also made me sad to observe organic chemistry at most Ivies was much easier than my organic chemistry course and some of the other sections). I was just expecting the coursework to be eons harder across all departments given their ranks and the supposed superior students (which HS stats. would dictate so). If we can handle difficult coursework, they should be able to as well (theirs should be much harder). How can faculty/university inspire "pursuit of knowledge" when the level of the coursework is relatively uninspiring and is surprisingly below the par of students attending. I will admit that most of us are a bit harder than even state flagships w/lower inflation, but difficulty is still less than expected. Hopefully the professors at these institutions do something something else to inspire such pursuit (great mentoring/lecturing. However, even we have that. It's that students here among the many at top schools not really there to learn).

Also, the fact that the OP is considering transferring to Stanford from Brown indicates that they are also less caring about "pursuing knowledge at a nice, well-rounded, liberal arts institution" and are more about boost that additional prestige can provide to their future career prospects. Like most of us, they don't care about learning as much or pursuing knowledge, and I guess it's kind of ok (but not really).

datalook

Rank/ Program/ Survey Quality/ Research Productivity
1-2 Stanford University Computer Science 1-2 1-2
1-4 Princeton University Computer Science 1-3 1-3
2-15 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science 2-12 3-14
2-15 Harvard University DEAS-Computer Sciences 3-19 2-10
3-18 University of California-Berkeley Computer Science 3-16 3-17
3-18 University of California-Santa Barbara Computer Science 3-16 3-26
3-22 University of Pennsylvania Computer and Information Science-SEAS 3-15 4-30
4-24 Cornell University Computer Science 4-21 4-27
4-32 Carnegie Mellon University Computer Sciences 3-16 7-48
5-30 Columbia University in the City of New York Computer Science 6-30 4-25
5-30 Duke University Computer Science 9-36 4-25
5-38 University of California-Riverside Computer Science 5-34 5-41
6-38 University of California-San Diego Computer Science and Engineering 7-35 6-39
5-38 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Computer Science 6-36 5-38
7-37 University of California-Los Angeles Computer Science 6-29 9-45
7-46 Stony Brook University Computer Science 7-39 8-59
6-45 University of Maryland-College Park Computer Science 8-45 6-53
8-48 University of Wisconsin-Madison Computer Sciences 10-48 7-43
7-46 University of Rochester Computer Science 7-39 10-61
8-46 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Computer Science 8-42 11-54
Rank Program Survey Quality Research Product
10-49 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Computer Science and Engineering 12-45 12-56
10-58 The University of Texas at Austin Computer Sciences 22-66 6-45
10-59 University of Massachusetts Amherst Computer Science 13-55 10-64
12-53 Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Computer Science 13-49 14-66
11-57 University of Southern California Computer Science 16-57 9-57
11-60 Rice University Computer Science 17-60 9-61
14-58 Boston University Computer Science 14-51 12-74
13-57 University of California-Davis Computer Science 15-51 15-72
13-59 Michigan State University Computer Science 10-45 21-79
15-57 Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus Computer Science and Engineering 15-51 15-65
16-54 University of Chicago Computer Science 18-52 14-52
14-63 University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus Computer Science 16-57 13-61
13-62 University of South Florida-Main Campus Computer Science and Engineering 18-62 10-60
17-59 Ohio State University-Main Campus Computer and Information Science 26-64 10-52
14-63 Purdue University-Main Campus Computer Sciences 16-56 14-67
17-59 University of Virginia-Main Campus Computer Science 20-59 12-59
16-61 University of Washington-Seattle Campus Computer Science and Engineering 17-55 15-73
17-63 Dartmouth College Computer Sciences 9-38 29-90
19-60 Brown University Computer Science 24-59 14-54

datalook

Academic Ranking of World Universities in Computer Science - 2010

World Rank/ Institution/Total Score/ Score on Alumni/ Award/HiCi /PUB /TOP

1 Stanford University 100.0 90.7 86.6 100.0 80.9 97.9
2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 94.8 54.2 100.0 89.2 87.8 89.3
3 University of California, Berkeley 82.7 100.0 96.8 42.9 76.7 86.1
4 Princeton University 78.7 68.6 71.8 60.6 63.0 94.7
5 Carnegie Mellon University 76.4 42.0 79.1 55.3 85.4 75.4
6 Cornell University 67.9 42.0 57.3 55.3 57.3 85.5
7 University of Southern California 66.6 0.0 39.5 65.5 68.4 86.8
8 The University of Texas at Austin 66.3 42.0 39.5 55.3 70.4 77.2
9 Harvard University 65.6 97.0 0.0 42.9 65.5 93.7
10 University of Toronto 65.5 24.3 53.0 49.5 71.1 78.3
11 California Institute of Technology 63.0 59.4 0.0 60.6 46.8 100.0
12 Weizmann Institute of Science 62.8 54.2 72.9 49.5 37.0 78.6
13 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 62.5 42.0 0.0 49.5 81.7 81.5
14 University of Maryland, College Park 61.9 0.0 0.0 60.6 81.5 84.9
15 Technion-Israel Institute of Technology 61.1 34.3 0.0 49.5 76.7 84.3
16 University of California, San Diego 58.5 0.0 0.0 65.5 68.0 81.3
17 University of Oxford 57.5 24.3 53.0 42.9 60.0 66.6
18 University of Michigan - Ann Arbor 57.4 54.2 0.0 49.5 63.5 76.2
19 Purdue University - West Lafayette 56.6 0.0 0.0 49.5 82.7 75.4
20 Columbia University 56.2 0.0 0.0 49.5 61.5 95.3
21 The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 55.4 24.3 30.6 49.5 46.4 79.4
22 University of Washington 55.0 0.0 0.0 49.5 62.7 89.6
23 Georgia Institute of Technology 54.6 0.0 0.0 42.9 77.9 79.6
24 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich 54.4 24.3 53.0 0.0 72.8 85.3
25 University of California, Los Angeles 54.1 42.0 0.0 35.0 66.4 80.5
26 The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 52.2 0.0 0.0 35.0 67.0 89.6
27 The Chinese University of Hong Kong 51.6 0.0 0.0 35.0 75.5 79.0
28 National Taiwan University 51.0 34.3 0.0 24.7 74.7 74.0
29 University of British Columbia 50.9 0.0 0.0 35.0 62.1 89.8
30 University of Cambridge 50.2 24.3 30.6 24.7 59.6 71.9
31 Tel Aviv University 49.2 42.0 0.0 22.6 62.0 79.2
31 Yale University 49.2 34.3 0.0 42.9 44.5 79.6
33 University of Colorado at Boulder 49.0 34.3 0.0 42.9 44.9 78.3
34 Duke University 48.9 48.5 0.0 35.0 41.1 84.1
35 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 48.3 0.0 61.2 0.0 50.8 89.8
36 National Chiao Tung University 48.2 0.0 0.0 24.7 80.1 72.1
37 University of California, Irvine 48.1 0.0 0.0 35.0 61.3 80.3
38 The Ohio State University - Columbus 47.9 0.0 0.0 42.9 56.7 76.2
39 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick 47.4 0.0 0.0 49.5 51.8 72.8
40 University of Massachusetts Amherst 46.7 0.0 0.0 63.1 49.2 59.1
41 University of Pennsylvania 46.6 0.0 0.0 35.0 52.0 84.2
42 The University of Manchester 46.3 0.0 0.0 24.7 66.2 78.9
42 University of Minnesota, Twin Cities 46.3 0.0 0.0 30.3 58.5 81.0
44 University of California, Santa Barbara 45.3 0.0 0.0 42.9 54.1 69.3
45 City University of Hong Kong 45.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 83.7 81.6
46 National University of Singapore 45.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 87.7 77.6
47 Ghent University 44.8 0.0 0.0 24.7 67.1 72.7
48 University of Oslo 44.6 34.3 68.5 0.0 43.0 65.8
49 Brown University 44.2 0.0

LoremIpsum

Datalook, why do you keep highlighting Harvard when this thread is about Stanford?