<p>Computer science–trumps Harvard, Princeton, and MIT. They’re all strong in it–particularly MIT–but Stanford is simply unrivaled: its immense contributions to computer science, its proximity to Silicon Valley, its ties to over 3,000 companies in SV, its post-grad placement, its amazing faculty (16 of Stanford’s CS faculty have won the Turing award–nearly half of the Turing awards given), its CS patents (which bring in millions in revenue each year), and so on. It’s consistently ranked #1 in CS (NRC, US News, etc.).</p>
<p>[Turing</a> Award - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_award]Turing”>Turing Award - Wikipedia)
[List</a> of Stanford University people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“List of Stanford University faculty and staff - Wikipedia”>List of Stanford University faculty and staff - Wikipedia)
[List</a> of Stanford University people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“List of Stanford University faculty and staff - Wikipedia”>List of Stanford University faculty and staff - Wikipedia)
[Research</a> and Innovation: Stanford University Facts](<a href=“http://stanford.edu/about/facts/research.html]Research”>http://stanford.edu/about/facts/research.html)</p>
<p>For physics, Stanford is definitely top 5 or top 10. I don’t know as much about it (not my major), but we do have the SLAC.</p>
<p>[SLAC</a> National Accelerator Laboratory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLAC_National_Accelerator_Laboratory]SLAC”>SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>And Stanford’s generally ranked pretty high in physics. Also, we currently have a few Nobel Laureates in physics–of the 18 Nobel Laureates on campus, 6 of them are in physics, and some of them even teach introductory seminars (15-person classes on an introductory topic), like Doug Osheroff. Leonard Susskind (father of string theory) also teaches an introsem.</p>
<p>Check out the individual department sites–you’ll see why they’re great.</p>