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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DD got into both and chose Stanford. Like your DD she didn’t know what she wanted to study so academics didn’t come into play with her final decision. She preferred Palo Alto to New Haven and has not regretted her decision. She has loved being able to ride her bike to the farmers market or to the mall to workout at places like Barry’s Bootcamp, Pure Barre or soul cycle. On weekends, she frequently rents a car at the Enterprise on campus which rents to Stanford students under 25. She has gone to many places including Napa, Big Sur, Capitola, Halfmoon Bay, into SF, Carmel, Sausalito....  As a parent, it would have been nicer to get in the car versus a plane to go visit her but once you arrive Palo Alto is much nicer than New Haven and has many many more hotel choices. Two of my kids, including DD who is currently attending Stanford, have done YYGS so between YYGS, college visits, and Bulldog days I have had numerous occasions to stay in New Haven hotels. I definitely feel she is much safer on campus at Stanford and would have worried about her going back and forth from the freshman dorms to the residential college late at night. I do not understand why Yale has not taken a page out of Penn’s book and drastically increased security around Campus and past it’s perimeter. [/quote]

Yale's campus is actually quite safe. There are campus police everywhere. Shops near the campus are required by their leases to stay open until 3 or 4 am, so that there are lights on and people around. If you compare crime rates for Yale and Stanford (look at, e.g., collegefactual.com), they are virtually identical; Stanford's is marginally lower overall, but it's rate of serious crime is marginally higher.

FWIW, at Yale you can walk 3-4 blocks to work out in the world's biggest gym (actually) for free -- including free classes/programming -- rather than bike to a mall to do suburban mom workouts. Stanford is the same driving distance from Carmel as Yale is from New York City, so the idea that there's more to do around Stanford (if we're counting Carmel as around Stanford) seems a bit strange. [/quote]

Most Stanford undergrads bike around campus. Campus parking is hard to get. I personally loved the bike culture, as did my recent graduate cousin. It's easy to take the train into San Francisco. As an undergrad, many students rarely need to venture off campus, for better or for worse. They call it the Stanford bubble. And you don't need to go to the mall to pay to workout. There are amazing athletic facilities on campus.

I think the Palo Alto scene is more important for grad students. Undergrads living in dorms with the most amazing food ever can be blissfully ignorant of the $3 million teeny tiny houses down the road.

My main critique would be that start up culture can be pervasive, depending on your major or crowd. That can be tiresome. But overall, students at Stanford tend to be pretty laid back. There's a work hard, play hard ethos. There are good sports, which is a nice diversion, but many students are not into that scene, and that's fine, too.

Having hired a lot of recent grads from HYPS, they're all very bright. Stanford grads have tended to be more well rounded and less burnt out. Since Stanford is on the quarter system instead of semesters, students generally get to take more courses throughout their schooling, giving them the potential for greater breadth of study. Many profs fit an entire semester into a shorter quarter, which can be intense. It does make it easier to go abroad or study in DC for a quarter or two Junior year. [/quote]

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