What could be better than Harvard?

[Data10]

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As a final point, the reasons for Stanford’s, and Cal’s, top ranked engineering department is its proximity to Silicon Valley. Engineering is much more of a central part of Stanford than it is, and has been, a part of Harvard. This can be seen in its history, and also in the successes of its alumni.

If you are referring to USNWR rankings, the grad rankings are weighted as follows:</p>

<p>25% - Faculty Resources
25% - Research Activity
25% - Engineering School Peer Assessment
15% - Recruiter Assessment
10% - Selectivity</p>

<p>Being located in Silicon Valley may correlate with the assessments, but it is by no means the primary reason for the high rankings. Plenty of other Silicon Valley universities are not ranked especially well.</p>

<p>Furthermore being located in Silicon Valley is not just a case of being in the right place at the right time. Instead Stanford was the key catalyst for the creation of Silicon Valley. It’s more Silicon Valley is a testament to Stanford’s long history of engineering and entrepreneurship. Back in the 1930s, after being disappointed that Stanford engineering grads needed to go to the east coast for jobs, an EE prof at Stanford focused on creating new technology and encouraged his students to start new companies. His students formed several successful companies. The most well known is Hewlett Packard. The Palo Alto garage in which HP started is sometimes called “the Birthplace of Silicon Valley.” Later that professor (Terman) became Dean of Engineering at Stanford and continued to encourage new technology and entrepreneurship. The Wikipedia entry on Silicon Valley calls him “the father of Silicon Valley.” That style has continued at Stanford for decades along with Stanford grads continuing to create numerous well known tech companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Cisco. I was in a related double masters program at Stanford that fostered tech entrepreneurship by combining degrees in engineering tech with engineering business management. MIT probably has something similar with tech companies being started in the Boston area.</p>

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I’d conjecture (this isn’t a point) that Harvard finally deciding to boost its engineering department has more to do with Yale boosting theirs than anything else. I think the Harvard-Yale rivalry is significantly stronger than the Harvard-Stanford rivalry, or any others. Harvard alumni probably hate being behind Yale in anything they do, so i wouldn’t be surprised if this was the spark that lead Harvard to finally decide to fund a world-class engineering department.

I believe Yale added its new SEAS school shortly after Harvard added its SEAS school. However, both schools new each others plans, so it could have gone either way. I agree that the timing is close enough that one school was imitating the other. An April 2008 article in the Crimson states, </p>

<p>“Following in the footsteps of universities including Harvard, Yale University will create a School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Yale President Richard C. Levin announced Monday.”</p>