<p>Phantasm’,
Here’s a section (they have a lenthgy write up in their Guide to Colleges) from Fiske overview:</p>
<p>‘Stanford is a world away from the Gothic intellectual culture of the Ivies. Virtually all the great Eastern universities began as places to ponder human existence and the meaning of life, using European institutions as their models. Stanford, by contrast, built its academic reputation around science and engineering, fields characterized by American ingenuity, and only later cultivated excellence in the humanities and social sciences. Stanford is, without a doubt, the nations first great American university.’</p>