<p>Stanford is in a unique position. I see Stanford surpassing Harvard during my lifetime, and I don’t believe that Columbia even has a chance of catching up to Stanford at the undergraduate level. At the end of the day, the only schools that have consistently remained at the top of the rankings are HYPS(M). MIT is not a well rounded university in my books, so I exclude it from the discussion. However, even within this tier, Yale seems to be in decline while Harvard and Stanford power on. I don’t see Duke taking 40% of cross admits away from Stanford in the foreseeable future. However, I would not be so quick to dismiss the possibility of Duke eventually drawing a good number of cross admits away from Yale. I would attribute Yale’s gradual but noticeable decline to a focus on the humanities as opposed to the STEM fields. Yale has also caught wind of the situation they find themselves in, and are attempting to remedy this disparity asap. The fact that there endowment is so much larger than Duke’s allows them the freedom to correct their course and become a scientific stronghold. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of some of the ‘lesser’ ivies. The fact that Duke has always been a research university that has demonstrated particular brilliance in the field of life sciences will hold it in very good stead for the next few decades as the inevitable biotech revolution begins to dawn on humanity.</p>