What are Stanford's Peer Schools?

hawkette
Sun, 20 May 2007 23:49:40 +0000

One anecdote about the “overall” comments made earlier. I was in Williamstown in February, 2006 over Winter Carnival weekend and attended the Williams/Amherst hockey game. I was told that this is their biggest social weekend of the winter. What I saw was a huge disappointment to me as there really wasn’t a lot going on, the hockey stadium (if I can call it that) was only about 2/3 full and the place just seemed pretty dead in a very rural area. The big event one day was a freezing and poorly attended skiing competition held about 30 minutes away from campus. I admire the kids who go there, but you better want to be in that environment because you could be miserable if cold weather and small, rural towns are not your thing.

A few weeks later I was in Charlottesville at U Virginia (one of Newsweek’s new Ivies) and someone described it to me as an “off” weekend. But to me, and particularly in comparison with the “big” weekend in Williamstown, the place was hopping with parties and an active social scene in the dorms, in their school Pub, and in several areas in the city that students frequent.

Now Williams and U Virginia are not academic peers (IMO Williams is more elite, more selective and higher quality), but if you want a very good school that ALSO has a large and lively social element, then a school like U Virginia compares very well with a school like Williams. This is the point that there are plenty of terrific schools where students can have excellent academics, but the non-academic factors also deserve a lot of consideration in the college search process. After seeing Williams and U Virginia, it was clear to me which school I found more appealing and I am sure that there are many others who would have the opposite reaction. (BTW, I think that Duke and Stanford are more like U Virginia and HYPA are more like Williams).