Stanford Vs. Duke

bluedevilmike
Thu, 20 Apr 2006 23:30:29 +0000

Here’s the thing, Sam.

In my experience, when you talk to Northeasterners, they don’t take any non-Ivy school seriously. Stanford, Duke, even MIT.

When you talk to Californians, Stanford is clearly on par with HP, better than Y, and absurdly better than Duke or Penn. When you talk to Southerners, Duke is clearly on par with HYP, and better than Stanford and… Penn? Isn’t that a public school? Hey, I hear UVa has a pretty good one.

If you take a quantitative analysis to it, US News seems to consider Penn the strongest of the three, especially if you omit the admissions differences (i.e. Stanford gets higher SAT scores coming in).

Because Asian people have more roots in CA - even if they don’t actually live in CA - they tend to adopt that analysis.

My point? If I have one, it’s this: HYP are probably stronger than the other three. Penn probably comes next, and then I’d argue there’s a tossup between Stanford and Duke. Stanford has a reputation for attracting smarter kids in the first place, but they seem similarly prestigious - depending on where you are in the country - coming out.