<p>I attended both back in the dark ages. Undergraduate degree at Princeton. Started graduate school at Stanford. Loved the place, the weather, but not the program and transferred to Harvard. I was a mediocre varsity athlete in a minor sport at Princeton and played with people on the Stanford team in their off-season when I was there. I joined an undergraduate eating club there (I think this was for lunch and maybe dinner, I can’t remember) and so knew a fair number of undergraduates. What I am going to say is both dated and I think accurately reflects the cultures of the institutions – my sense from talking to people is that these generalizations about the cultures still apply. Both places are fabulous schools with fabulous faculties and great student bodies.</p>
<p>Princeton was more overtly intellectual and was much more serious and intense academically. Stanford’s students were bright but downplayed their work and typically didn’t discuss exciting ideas, etc. There was very little buzz of intellectual excitement that I sensed when I was there among undergraduates – not that it wasn’t there but the comparison to Princeton was striking. More of the emphasis at Stanford is on the graduate students. </p>
<p>Both schools love sports. Princeton fields an unbelieivable number of varsity teams and I played intramurals in the off-season and I think I played intramurals as a grad student as well. Athletes generally are more on a pedestal at Stanford. I think there was a sense at Princeton that the football and basketball players got a big leg up in admissions; not so clear for other athletes. My son interviewed with a Princeton alum this year who was the school’s star hockey player when he was there. He said it was like having a 30 hour a week job on top of school, maybe 40. I suspect at Stanford, it would be a lot closer to 60. There will be an inherent tradeoff between excellence in sports and excellence in academics. It is likely that tradeoff will have to be bigger at Stanford.</p>
<p>Based upon my dated experience and observation about the schools’ cultures, I’d rather live in Palo Alto but rather be an undergraduate at Princeton. Feel free to PM me if you think I might be helpful.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>“With an eye towards post-graduation employment”, there is no meaningful difference between the two colleges. Neither offers a guarantee, both offer as much short of that as anyone can expect or hope for. Make this decision on any basis you want, but this particular basis is not helpful.</p></li>
<li><p>If he goes to California, he’s a lot more likely to end up staying in California than if he goes to New Jersey. That can cut both ways, of course. My sister the Stanford alumna has a great life in California.</p></li>
<li><p>It may not be true of every sport, but for lots of sports the difference between Stanford and Princeton is enormous. The level of competition in the Pac-10 is far beyond anything in the Ivy League, unless you are talking about squash, and the time commitment and professionalism of the sports programs correspond. At Princeton, athletes face lots of pressure to devote time to their sport, but I would bet anything that in the course of a year 99% of athletes make some academics-over-sports choices without negative consequence. At Stanford, sports is the athletes’ first commitment. Also, at Princeton financial aid won’t be adjusted if a student quits a team.</p></li>
<li><p>Stanford does not resemble Charlotte Simmons much – for that you need a much more monolithic student culture, and that just isn’t how they roll there.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>You might want to have a frank discussion with him about how often he’ll be able to fly home for visits if he chooses to attend school across the country. We didn’t have that discussion and our daughter, who had never spent a lot of time apart from us prior to college, is now homesick.</p>
<p>Both my children had this choice to make. Both are now at Princeton. In both cases, it was because they felt like Stanford was too close to home. They grew up a stone’s throw from the campus and wanted to see something other than California.</p>
<p>I agree with others. There is zero advantage to one over the other for international business. Princeton sends hordes to Wall Street, always a good way to spend a few years before your MBA. Stanford has the Silicon Valley mafia and the informal startup culture. Both places have programs in China.</p>
<p>So it will be about the atmosphere. And about what sport.</p>
<p>Stanford doesn’t have the restrictions on recruiting athletes with subpar stats that the Ivies do. While Stanford’s football team graduates an amazing 93% of its recruits, the #s for men’s basketball (65%) and women’s basketball (50%) and even women’s fencing
(50%) suggest that not all student-athletes at Stanford are there for the education. </p>
<p>I don’t think you could find any team at an Ivy with a 50% graduation rate. </p>
<p>Now, I’d be the FIRST to admit that nowhere near as high a percentage of Ivy-athletes have the chance to turn pro as the percentage at Stanford. Still…
I think these #s suggest that in least some sports, Stanford recruits some students who are more interested in sports than academics.</p>
<p>I’d suggest that there’s a good chance that John McEnroe, Tiger Woods and Brook and Robin Lopez were more focused on their respective sports than their studies.</p>
<p>Moreover, the Ivies limit the amount of practice time out of season. The kids aiming for the Olympics resent this, BTW. And in some sports–notably football–there is no conference championship GAME or play-offs. Makes the season much shorter.</p>
<p>And, of course, because there are no athletic scholarships in the Ivies, you can quit a team and it won’t affect your financial aid. (Of course, if you aren’t eligible for fin aid, you might want to accept the athletic scholarship at Stanford.)</p>
<p>I have a friend whose son played baseball at Stanford. She said that he really didn’t have the “college experience” as a recruited athlete. He studied, he practiced a lot, he traveled to games. Because the graduation rate of its athletes is important to the coaches, the coaches will make sure you take a number of classes each term (no skimming by with the minimum number of hours per term) and they keep track of your grades. </p>
<p>At the big sports at Stanford, they own you.</p>
<p>Using basketball grad rates is a straw man, and generally not indicative of anything about a university’s athletic/academic rigor. Stanford has 4 seniors on its men’s team, and 2 seniors on its women’s team. If one player on each team doesn’t graduate, then (omg!) its grad rates are 75% and 50% respectively.</p>
<p>^^ This year Vanderbilt has NO senior basketball players. There were two- one transferred to Ohio State and one redshirted so is now a junior. It really varies.</p>
<p>Putting aside football/basketball stars, I don’t know how your professors would know you’re an athlete unless you told them. My professors only knew I sang because I invited them to attend concerts. If you needed to get permission for absences or extensions due to your athletic commitment, then of course you’d need to tell the professors…but I also think you can’t blame a professor for concluding that a student making those requests prioritizes the sport ahead of the class.</p>
<p>Hanna- that is a naive view of college sports. You do miss classes- the schedules (especially basketball) are grueling, with weeknight games all over the region. If you are a runner, you won’t miss as much as a basketball player, but you still have multi-day meets etc.</p>
<p>If you are a D1 basketball player in MOST leagues (not Patriot or Ivy), you are being paid to play the sport, so, yes, it is a top priority.</p>
<p>No, you wouldn’t. NCAA Div. 1 schools award 12 basketball scholarships total, across all four years. So about 3 to 5 recruits per year would be about right.</p>
<p>If the jock warm-up suit doesn’t give it away, then the weekly call from the academic assistant in athletics surely would. I got calls checking up on athletes very regularly, and asking if the student’s would benefit from any tutoring.</p>
<p>What do you mean by “HOURS”. The NCAA allows so many off season “FULL” practices in the team format. The team however does conditioning training and such all throughout the off season. Also; it is not uncommon for the players to “Practice on their own”. Which the NCAA can’t stop. As for the actual season practices, there’s no time limit. The coaches/team can set whatever they want.</p>
<p>I’m not an NCAA rules expert, but I’m pretty sure the NCAA sets practice hours maximums for all member colleges/sports. For Div. 1, I think the maximum is 20 hours per week, 4 hours per day, with one day off. Stanford and Princeton, both being Div. 1 schools, would be subject to the same requirements.</p>
<p>Ok, I may be asking a dumb question here, but if he was “recruited” by Stanford AND signed a letter of intent in the summer[?] to attend Stanford, he will be breaking his commitment by going to Princeton, and what will there be ramifications on his ability to play at Princeton? If he was accepted SCEA at Stanford, then the question is moot.</p>
<p>Princeton and Stanford are nothing alike. Stanford has a budget nearly three times that of Princeton. It is not so much that Princeton is undergraduate focused, but that Princeton has committed to keeping its graduate programs small which means that the undergraduate education is always its primary concern. Stanford has built itself into a school where undergraduate issues have to compete with the concerns of the graduate programs. Princeton has the greatest endowment per student of any college. They have the greatest proportion of their operating expenses supported by their endowment 45%. Their policy is that a student graduates with no debt. General Petraeus got his PhD in international affairs from their Woodrow Wilson school. The dean of that school was just made head of policy planning at the state department. Their finance, economics and IB track education is unparalleled. The life at Princeton is extremely intense. The motto is, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”. And if he goes there, buy him a tuxedo, he’ll need it. That part of the mystique is true and very very pleasant.</p>