@CollegeAngst
“That is precisely the point. The ratio doesn’t tell you why, it just tells you right now Harvard and Stanford have a more powerful brand and prestige relative to Princeton and Yale. Again it says nothing about quality of education, just perception. As you can see from Post #25, this was not the case even a few years ago. Stanford, Yale and Columbia were more tightly bunched together.“
Harvard has always had a more powerful brand and prestige relative to Yale and Princeton. The why is pretty straight-forward. Harvard has stronger graduate programs and schools, more awards and international achievements associated with the school and a bigger, more impressive research output, way more resources and a richer/more successful alumni base than Yale or Princeton. It is ranked consistently amongst the top 3 US universities along with Stanford and MIT in every international ranking while Princeton is usually in the lower end in the world top 10 and Yale most often does not even crack the top 10.
Stanford has risen in the past 10-15 years gradually from being more closely grouped with Yale and Princeton (I personally wouldn’t group Columbia with them), to join Harvard and MIT in terms of international prestige and recognition. This had to do a lot with the rise of silicon valley but also with the sound investments and strategic decisions made by Stanford which helped all of its graduate programs, research output etc to rise to further prominence.
I do not see any way that this is just a temporary phenomenon and do not see how Princeton or Yale will truly catch up to Harvard or Stanford. There is a reason Stanford, Harvard yields are in the 80%+ range and Yale, Princeton are around 69-70%.