Stanford Vs. Duke

Sam_Lee
Fri, 21 Apr 2006 01:46:46 +0000

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.



I am assuming you are talking about academic reputation in general, not investment/finance. You seem to have an oddly underrated view of Stanford.

First of all, check out the peer assessment score. That’s the measure of reputation and to me, it seems to be in pretty good agreement with my experience (not yours somehow). Stanford’s reputation is as good as Harvard and MIT.

Do you know that Penn, not long ago, was ranked like 15th or so? Penn, not
WashU, is the one that has made the highest leap since the US News ranking started. It’s only this last couple years that it’s been ranked higher than Stanford. Do you know there were huge threads about how Penn was overrated and how many were asking “how the heck Penn is ranked higher than Stanford?” on this board when that ranking was out? That was a surprise to many people.

Do you know when US News first came out, Stanford was ranked like 2nd? Stanford’s graduate departments, by the way, have been solidly top-5 across the board. It’s very difficult to find a department at Stanford that isn’t placed in the top-10, if not top-5 (not only in science/engineering but also humanities/social sciences).

By the way, in Asia, Stanford’s reputation is definitely greater than Duke/Penn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stanford_University_people Stanford has a large number of famous alums.