A Stanford Family Tree: Fill & Download for Free

Stanford is need blindIf you cannot afford it you will be assisted by the financial aid office. If your family makes over 50 K per year you will be asked to pay for example 3 to 5000 if your family makes over 150 K per year probably you will be asked to pay 10,000. Stanford recognizes that families with multiple children in college is a real stretch and fortunately there endowment allows them to not turn anyone away for lack of tuition and their family.There are many sports Scholarships which they do the best they can to spread them around example instead of giving one field hockey player a complete ride they will give for players a 1/4 ride and look to the family for whatever contribution they can make.So the bottom line is if you are accepted at Stanford they will find away working with you to allow you to attend with the minimum financial stress. This is because of their large and endowment and people such as myself, a Stanford grad who gives money every year to go towards the general scholarship fund.I have my 50th reunion in October and have never missed giving something each year, even in tough financial years for me I gave them $20. Fortunately today I can be a little more.So simple answer they are a “ need blind” school. They want to assemble the best incoming classes from across the country diverse and people from all backgrounds to keep it a cauldron of learning not only from teachers but from your fellow students.Andrew wald class of 68 major political science minor in economics and modern European history.… Beat Cal! And Fear the Tree!!!

In my time as a Harvard CS student, I've heard and thought it all:"Dude, isn't Harvard snobby and overcompetitive?""Stanford's Computer Science department is ranked #1 and it's in Silicon Valley. Why would you go to Harvard to study CS?""In what ways is Harvard better than Stanford?""In what ways is Stanford better than Harvard?"If you want to know the answers and explanations, read on! If you're in a rush, the tl;dr summary is:They're equally racially diverse.Harvard is significantly more geographically diverse. This may mean it's more culturally diverse.Harvard provides more financial aid to more students. This probably means Harvard is more generous; I'm not sure how the socioeconomic diversity of the two schools differs, but it's probably pretty similar.Harvard is more urban and convenient, close to shops and restaurants and other colleges, but less pretty and less temperate in weather.Stanford has newer but smaller dorm rooms, and most students change dorms every year whereas Harvard students live in the same House for 3 years, which can be a good or bad thing.Food and social atmosphere on both campuses is great!Harvard has a smaller CS department, but its intimacy and ease of standing out can be nice. Personally, Harvard CS's relatively chill requirements allow me the freedom to pursue all of my other interests, while still offering a world-class technical curriculum. If you'd really like to do more CS, you can easily cross-register at MIT.Stanford is more connected with tech culture/companies on average, and Harvard is more connected with finance/consulting culture/companies on average. You'll find plenty of opportunities for anything you choose at both, though.Overall, the differences aren't big - they're both absolutely amazing places to live and learn, and you can't really go wrong with either! I personally chose Harvard mainly because I'm from California and wanted to expand my horizons by experiencing a different environment. So whichever coast you're on, my suggestion would be to try out the other coast. But yes - rest assured that no matter where you'll go, you'll have a great time and meet amazing people!All right, if you're still reading, thank you :) Moving on: clearly, Harvard and Stanford are both top-tier undergraduate schools with respective pros and cons. I'll try to provide a balanced answer and touch upon the relative advantages of both schools.Why Am I Somewhat Qualified to Answer This?I'm a Bay Area native and have stayed in a Stanford dorm+sat in on classes, both during Admit Weekend 2011 and during winter quarter of 2013.I'm in the Harvard class of 2015 majoring in Computer Science with an interest in startups (things Stanford is way more famous for).In general "better" is always conditional on your values and how you prioritize them. For example, I do value convenience, but value the everyday convenience of an urban environment such that such that my 7-hour flights from San Jose to Boston are worth it. For each of the headings you should ask yourself "do I value this?" and make judgments accordingly. Let's dive right in!FINANCIAL AIDNo one likes student debt, right? Several years ago, Harvard increased funds for financial aid by 70% such that "no one who could attend would choose not to because of financial concerns." I imagine Stanford also has this concern in mind. Both schools seem to be pretty generous!Both schools cost about $60k an year, grand total [10] [11]. 51% of the Stanford class of 2016 receives financial aid, with an average of $39,933 (including all aid that doesn't come from Stanford) per student. [1]60% of the Harvard class of 2016 receives financial aid, with an average of $44,250 (including federal and outside scholarships) per student. [2]Conclusion: Harvard gives an average of about $4,000 more, or 11% more money, to about 9% more students than Stanford. Thus, I think it's safe to conclude that Harvard has a slight edge in financial aid.DIVERSITYHarvard was indeed a primarily affluent and Caucasian institution a few decades ago. I don't blame people for thinking of Harvard that way, but then again most colleges weren't so diverse either back then. Times have changed for all of us. Most elite colleges have become much more diverse in the past decade and continue to do so.RaceStanford class of 2016 is 40% white, 5% black, 15% Hispanic/Latino, 19% Asian, and 11% two or more races. [1]Harvard class of 2016 is 45-56% white, 10% black, 11% Hispanic/Latino, and 21% Asian. (The website lists neither white nor biracial percentages for some reason. I think it's reasonable to assume the "two or more race" population is between 0% and 11%, since Stanford's is 11%). [2]SocioeconomicThis is a tough one - I haven't been able to find current, official statistics about income levels or anything, so I settled for a secondary source and statistics on the percentage of "undergrads receiving Pell Grants", a proxy for "low-income undergrads", in 2009.Stanford: 14.1% of the undergraduate class receives federal Pell Grants [3]. Apparently, approximately 15% of the campus has a family income of less than $60k [4].Harvard: 15.0% of the undergraduate class receives federal Pell Grants [3]It's likely the numbers for both colleges have gone higher in the 4 years since then. Both schools are probably still similar in proportion of low-income undergrads. The majority of students in both schools are at least moderately affluent (over $200,000 in family income). [4] [5]GeographicBased on Class of 2016 statistics, Stanford's undergrads are about 40% Californian, while Harvard is very evenly distributed across regions; for comparison, Harvard's New England constituency is about 17%. About 10% of both schools are from outside the States. [9] [7]Conclusion: Harvard has significantly more white freshmen and about twice as many black freshmen as Stanford, while Stanford has more Hispanics. The other races seem to be roughly similar in proportion. Both schools are about 50% "minority" (here meaning "non-white"). Stanford has a huge 40% Californian constituency and both colleges have basically the same proportion of low-income students and a majority of well-off students, so I think it's reasonable to say that Harvard and Stanford are essentially equal in racial and socioeconomic diversity, but Harvard has the advantage in geographic diversity. This may mean Harvard's more culturally diverse.CAMPUSLocation, Size, Transportation, Notable Things NearbyStanford, CA is next to Palo Alto, a suburb embedded in Silicon Valley. It's about an hour away from San Francisco, and about an hour away from Santa Cruz (beaches!). Because the area is suburban and Stanford's campus itself is enormous, you want a car or bike to get places efficiently. Downtown Palo Alto is next to the campus but is far enough from dorms that walking there is a hassle (30 minutes). There is a free bus line to get around Palo Alto, the Marguerite.Harvard is in Cambridge, MA, a 20-minute subway ride from Boston and a 10-minute subway ride from MIT. It's about 3 hours away from New York by train. Harvard is within an hour of ski resorts and 90 minutes from Cape Cod. The campus is urban, in the middle of Harvard Square, a romantic little spot with many shops and bars. It's cozy enough to walk most places, and anything further has public transportation readily available (buses and subways). Being close to so many other Boston-area colleges and the city itself offers opportunities to enjoy diverse cultural and social pursuits.ClimateStanford is beautiful, sunny, and temperate most of the time. It's usually T-shirt weather.Harvard's weather varies and can be grubby - hot and humid in the summer, cold and sometimes rainy and sometimes snowy in the winter. As long as you don't forget a coat, boots, and a scarf, you can handle the cold, but the extra clothes are indeed inconvenient. Snow gets annoying when it turns into slush. Temperate weather lasts for less than a month in spring and fall.Architecture and AestheticsStanford is expansive and flat. Its architecture is mostly Mission Revival style, with arches, sandstone walls, fountains, and a LOT of trees. Buildings tend to be farther apart with fairways leading to them. University Avenue, the Quad, and Memorial Church are all gorgeous.Harvard is cozy and tall. Its architecture is diverse, having been through almost 400 years of history, but the dominant feel in Harvard Yard and along the river is Georgian and neo-Georgian: red bricks and mortar. Its urban environment doesn't make for a very consistent aesthetic outside of the Yard. One building standout is Annenberg hall, the freshmen dining hall that looks like it came straight out of Hogwarts: magnificent arches and stained glass windows. In the fall, the autumn leaves are sublime, and in the winter, the snow blanketing the earth is pretty.HousingStanford students have some control over what dorm they live in, and generally move in and out of dorms year to year. From what I've seen, Stanford dorm rooms are mostly standard-sized (small) and relatively new.Harvard students live in a random dorm in the Yard freshman year (roughly the center of campus and smaller than a football field), which makes for an intimate feel. After the first year, they (together with friends they choose) are placed into a random House, and generally stay there for the next 3 years (like Hogwarts but randomized). As such, House pride and activities play a significant role in students' lives. Dorm rooms tend to be relatively large but old-feeling.The most prominent tradeoff here, I think, is between living each year getting to know new and different people or growing closer with the same people/having a house to definitively call "home".Food SceneStanford's close to downtown Palo Alto which is a great place to find food. It's around a 30-minute walk away from where students usually are on campus, but biking/driving should get you there in 10.Harvard Square has a lot of restaurants that are a 1-10 minute walk from dorms. It's very convenient to eat out. Boston, a 20-minute subway ride away, offers an even greater variety of nice restaurants.Restaurants at both places are lively and span a range from cheap and good to classy and good. Residential dining at both colleges is quite decent, in my opinion.SOCIAL ATMOSPHEREHarvard and Stanford are very diverse and you'll find wonderful friends who share your interests in anything, through classes, clubs, and dorm life. The differences in dorm life I mentioned above under Housing. And they're small enough to feel relatively intimate: at both schools, there are ~6,400 undergrads and at least 96% of them live on campus [6] [7].In particular, if you're worried about people being too WASP pretentious or competitive to be friendly at Harvard, here's a great answer by William Chen that gives a good overview of what Harvard students are like: What are some typical impressions of Harvard undergraduates?Whether you want to drink and party or play Settlers of Catan on a Saturday night, you'll find plenty of venues for those on both campuses. There's more I could say but really, both colleges offer vibrant social scenes.ACADEMICSI can't say much about differences in curricula outside engineering, but based on what I hear (and whom I see matriculating at each college) it seems like Harvard and Stanford are both awesome at math, the sciences, and the humanities. The one major difference is engineering, and in particular Computer Science; Stanford has more famous CS professors, more CS classes, and more classes that deal with software engineering in practice.Personally, I'm satisfied with the practical software experience I've gained from personal projects and summer internships, and don't think I'd take more CS classes (especially more vocational and less theoretical ones) even if Harvard offered them. If at any point you do wish to take on more engineering classes, though, cross-registering at MIT is pretty easy (and of course MIT is a top-tier engineering school). That said, if engineering is your one and only passion, you should probably choose Stanford (or MIT or Berkeley).I actually like Harvard CS in particular because it's more flexible in requirements and thus offers me the freedom to take whatever classes I want - I can explore my interests in philosophy, psychology, and sociology while staying on top of my CS curriculum. (The same is not true of other types of engineering at Harvard, by the way.)Both Harvard and Stanford have grade inflation; the average GPA has been steadily rising in the past years and is around 3.5 now [8]. I'd say this alleviates academic stress and competition a bit. On that note, because I hear worries about Harvard's competitiveness a lot: the sort of competition I've encountered at Harvard has never been at others' expense; the idea is that you're competing with yourself to be the best you can be, not jostling with others to be on top. I imagine Stanford is similar, but this is all just my personal intuition.CAREERBeing in located Silicon Valley most directly means that more tech companies and startups will go to Stanford for recruiting. That said, Harvard's CS community is smaller and you have more opportunities to stand out. Boston's tech community offers plenty of opportunities, but if you'd like to work at small Bay Area startups, you will have to be more proactive in seeking them out. There are definitely more than enough tech events and recruiting fairs going on, from the presence of various Boston startups, MIT, Google Cambridge, Microsoft New England R&D center, etc.If you're specifically interested in startups, Stanford is undoubtedly more established in this regard, but Harvard's entrepreneurship culture is growing very fast: from Hack Harvard's tech talks and incubators to the Harvard College Innovation Challenge to the Harvard Innovation Lab, there's plenty of resources for ventures.For finance and consulting, Harvard's culture and network seems more established and larger - after all, it's next to Boston and near NYC.If you're more of a generalist, Stanford peer pressure tends to push you into the tech world while Harvard tends to push you toward finance, consulting, and law. In the end, I'm convinced that if you go to either school you'll get the job you want when you graduate. And beyond the first job your school starts mattering less anyway.SUMMARYThey're equally racially diverse.Harvard is significantly more geographically diverse. This may mean it's more culturally diverse.Harvard provides more financial aid to more students. This probably means Harvard is more generous; I'm not sure how the socioeconomic diversity of the two schools differs, but it's probably pretty similar.Harvard is more urban and convenient, close to shops and restaurants and other colleges, but less pretty and less temperate in weather.Stanford has newer but smaller dorm rooms, and most students change dorms every year whereas Harvard students live in the same House for 3 years, which can be a good or bad thing.Food and social atmosphere on both campuses is great!Harvard has a smaller CS department, but its intimacy and ease of standing out can be nice. Personally, Harvard CS's relatively chill requirements allow me the freedom to pursue all of my other interests, while still offering a world-class technical curriculum. If you'd really like to do more CS, you can easily cross-register at MIT.Stanford is more connected with tech culture/companies on average, and Harvard is more connected with finance/consulting culture/companies on average. You'll find plenty of opportunities for anything you choose at both, though.Overall, the differences aren't big - they're both absolutely amazing places to live and learn, and you can't really go wrong with either! I personally chose Harvard mainly because I'm from California and wanted to expand my horizons by experiencing a different environment. So whichever coast you're on, my suggestion would be to try out the other coast. But yes - rest assured that no matter where you'll go, you'll have a great time and meet amazing people :)I'd be happy to clarify anything or hear different perspectives. Please feel free to comment or message me :D--P.S. Hit me up if you'll be visiting Harvard - would be glad to meet some fellow Quorans!Sources:[1] Stanford University[2] Harvard College Admissions § Applying: Statistics[3] The Cornerstone of African-American Higher Education[4] The Stanford Progressive[5] This Just In: Harvard is Really Affordable! (in the section "The Competitive Use of Financial Aid")[6] Stanford University Facts[7] Student Life | Harvard University[8] UC Berkeley may combat grade inflation through new system - The Daily Californian[9] Stanford welcomes Class of 2016 and incoming transfer students[10] Harvard: Cost of Attendance[11] Stanford: The Student Budget

tl;dr: Skip to the bottomLonger answer since Quora won't let me be succinct. I'll try to answer this without sounding like too much of a tool (not that I'm not a tool).See, during my last two semesters of undergraduate school, I had some credits I needed to fill out to remain a full-time student (failing to do so would cost me my full ride), so I started looking around for interesting classes to take. Up until that point, I'd been focused entirely on things in ECE, forgoing other things as "not that important". Well it was Senior Design time and I didn't have the bandwidth to take on more engineering, so I went out on a limb and took a class on theatre.I ended up with an A in there, but I realized something: I am horrible at acting. Like seriously bad. If this were Fallout, my CHR would be a 3 at best. But it was so much fun! I wondered what I'd been missing out on, but I wasn't really sure where to start looking.Fortunately for me, I had decided to start applying for grad schools because #yolo and because the prospect of working for Lockheed Martin in Cherry Hill, NJ was just not that appealing. I turned down that job offer and applied to a few schools. I applied to exactly one west of the Mississippi: Stanford. Why there? Because:1. The prestige, and2. My (now) wife encouraged me to apply there over BerkeleyIn mid-March 2008, I got accepted and ultimately decided to go because, again, #yolo.The environment at Stanford was beyond belief. Good weather year-round? In Indiana, I was used to horrible humidity and freezing my proverbial yarbles off in the winter. Here, summer was hot but not horrible and winter was mild. Plus tart oranges on all the trees.And the people, holy hell. I don't mean to brag, but back home I was one of the smartest people in the room. That sounds like it's great but it's actually boring and you ultimately realize that you stagnate by not finding people smarter than you. At Stanford, that's what I got. In fact, I'll never forget the words John Hennessy -- then the President of Stanford -- told us at the EE graduate orientation:"Look around you. Half the people here were either college or high school valedictorians. Some have doctorates already or published research. Most of them were probably the smartest person in their class or even their town. Here, you're just average. Don't forget that."That sounds like it would be discouraging, but it really wasn't. Living at Crothers Memorial, Munger and later EV, I met some amazing people, many of which I'm still in touch with or hang out with regularly. And, unlike too many people that I knew back home -- who were satisfied working 9 to 5 and coming straight home to their 2.5 kids and a dog -- these people were ambitious!There were at least two startups being run out of CroMem as far as I remember. If I got tired of doing problem sets, I could go to HappEE Hour (was one of the founding members, actually :P) or crash entrepeneur talks. You'd be star-struck the first time you'd meet tech luminaries like Sergei and Larry in person and realize they were just regular shits like you stopping on the way to class at Tressider for some food and hoping some dickwad wouldn't steal your bike overnight. Some nights, we'd all get together in the common areas and talk about interesting things, like this company that started making smartphones and why they were very undervalued at a price of only $60/share (this was in 2008 so divide that by 7). How you like them AAPLs?Hell, there were classes where you could try and build a cool product for a "startup". One of my roommates did one where you make a 3D video game that would be presented to Blizzard. People would prepare for almost a year just to take this class. Just before I got there, this happened: The ‘Facebook Class’ Built Apps, and FortunesMy professors, too, were some of the best in their field. I think all of them except for the emeritus guys had at least one successful company on the side. The emeritus profs didn't, but why should they? Widrow invented LMS and paved the way for machine learning as we know it. da Rosa could tell you some crazy stories from when he was a student during WW2.Coming home in the summer between quarters was weird. I can't explain it at all, but the closest example I can give would be the way Harry Potter must have felt when he was home from Hogwarts for the summer, but without the abusive caretakers. Yeah, like I said, I'm not trying to sound like a tool, I just am one.I didn't really want to leave everything I'd known behind and move west, but something kept drawing me back the whole summer. I knew my family wouldn't like it, but I had to do what I felt was best.What probably set it in stone for me was a party I went to that same summer to see my college and high school friends. I loved these people, but I remember standing there in my buddy's living room drinking some beer and thinking "Is this all there is?". These were my early-mid 20s and I was spending them working a job for a company nobody knows and living at home. I had never realized it until then but I was unhappy. I was bored. This wasn't the life I wanted.I went back to Stanford in the fall to finish my MSEE and knew at that point that, as much as I'd feel I wouldn't like it at first, I'd have to stay out west and make myself a life there. Fortunately for me, everything worked out amazingly well. Perhaps better than I could've anticipated.So how does it feel to go to Stanford? Like going to fucking Hogwarts if you're the type who likes tech and entrepreneurship. It's really like nothing else out there -- the people you'll meet are amazingly smart and wickedly talented, and the opportunity is the best that money can buy short of being born into the 0.01%.tl;dr: 10/10 would go againEspecially that now there's an alternative to Treehouse's sub-par burritos.Sorry guys, I appreciate your hard work but they just don't compare to Chipotle.