<p>I don’t think we need Nobel Prize Winner counts to know which schools are big research schools. It’s kind of a naive way to do it. Stanford’s full of wildly brilliant researchers – enough said. For those who actually want to benefit from these, an estimate like “number of Nobel Prize winners” is hardly useful – rather, they should take more specific looks at the faculty, and check who is actually willing to consider talking to the students.</p>
<p>Depending on the field, Harvard may flatly be better than Stanford, or, for instance in the case of something like computer science, Stanford flatly wins. </p>
<p>I don’t understand why on Earth people would do something like compare schools at the level of Harvard and Stanford based on how many Nobel Prize winners there are. Seriously, the brightest research-type students at both these schools would probably both laugh pretty hard at this. </p>
<p>The one and only way to usefully compare two very reputed schools is by personal preference – what does the given student desire. Not such general means.</p>