<p>@Sam and Cue. To be honest, I get the impression Stanford considers “only” Harvard as its true rival and Harvard considers Stanford as its true rival as well. Stanford only mentioned the “other” schools to be politically correct…</p>
<p>…as you know Stanford has been basically the top “dream” school for most students this past decade and in recent years even the parents have their eyes set on Stanford…</p>
<p>…the combination of top humanities/social sciences departments plus top computer science/engineering departments plus top law, business, medical schools make Stanford a force that will be hard to deal with in the coming decades…</p>
<p>…if the USNews was not published/edited by a Harvard man (Mortimer Zuckerman) and Forbes magazine was not published/edited by a Princeton man (Steve Forbes)…those reverse-engineered rankings would be more “believable”…but, as it is, one can easily see why they don’t want Stanford to steal their thunder or any other school for that matter…</p>
<p>…going forward Stanford and Harvard will separate themselves from the rest because they are the only two schools with strengths in all the departments plus top professional schools/PhD programs (Harvard will try hard to catch up to Stanford in computer science/engineering but it will be difficult because Stanford is located in the heart of Silicon Valley)…the problem with Princeton is that it lacks professional schools and Chicago lacks engineering programs…</p>