Ask HN: MIT, Harvard, or Stanford?

MIT definitely has the most penetration of the 'hacker' culture. If it came down to MIT vs Harvard, I would personally choose MIT. Out of all three, MIT tends to be less elitist, from my personal experience.

MIT or Stanford. If you want to be well rounded, read books.

If you're really interested in entrepreneurial pursuits, Stanford is the way to go. They've got better infrastructure and guidance around it than anyone else.

Also, Boston is horrible weatherwise. You'll really regret it your first winter out there.

If you go to MIT you can cross-register for courses at Harvard as well. That would get you out of the area where you grew up, give you a great engineering degree, and allow you to better round out your liberal arts. I don't know how well that would fit into your specific degree requirements, but it might be something worth exploring while you're making your decision.

MIT and Stanford will be more helpful if you are planning to be engineer in the long run. And by long run I don't mean just employment, I am talking more along the terms of your identity. Having said that I don't think you could go wrong with either one. But the question to ask given your situation is do you think your school is going to play a very large part in what you achieve. It might play a small part but your actions are going to determine most of the outcomes. How much do you think Elon Musk is what he is for which schools he went to? I contend there might be a very small part. Congratulations and good luck.

Heyy congrats on getting into all three schools!

I'm a CS concentrator here at Harvard and could give you some real advice when you come to visit; both the good and bad about coming here. Lucianoarango-at-college-dot-harvard-dot-edu

If you want to be a Senator, go to Harvard. You'll be playing beer pong with future big wigs.

Stanford and MIT are both great engineering schools. Stanford has a unique startup culture and great weather. MIT kids seem to dive deeper into the fundamentals, due to fewer distractions from class work.

I'd vote for MIT because your peers will have more of a engineering / programming mindset.

Do you want to do business and build startups or be in a workshop building cool toys?

If you want to build businesses then Stanford would be a great place to go.

Stay focused! Good luck!

My background: undergrad at UCSD, phd at MIT. Also taken courses at community college, san francisco state, private SF-based k-8, public high school (in marin county). I feel like I've sampled a wide range of US-types of education.

I'd consider if you have any idea whatsoever if you want to go to grad school or not. You'd be a fool to think you'd know now, but if you can project out a bit it helps.

If you want to go to grad school, that will end up mattering more because it's where you'll specialize. Undergrad is more for opening up your mind and creating early-stage networks. You'll get amazing networks at all 3 of those and ultimately can't fail. But the cultures are very different at each place, and I say that knowing 2/3 of those cultures very well.

Go to Harvard if you want to be a non-technical CEO. It won't be super rigorous (redonk grade inflation) but the surrounding egos will elevate yours and give you the confidence to do whatever you want (justified or not). That's something I saw in the transition from UCSD to MIT -- your peers will push you. There's also lots of good people running around, and your network will be super strong.

Go to Stanford if you want to be a technical CEO. You should probably leave the bay area for a bit, but you can also do that after college. It's not like Cambridge, MA is that crazy different in the same way that living outside the US would be, so don't think that level of geographic movement is so significant from years 18-22. Go study abroad your junior year for that (which I _highly_ recommend).

Go to MIT if you're more interested in being technical than CEO, but it's still possible. MIT culture values raw technical talent more than the other three (IMHO), and is very 'purist' in that respect. But people will be the most autistic compared to the other two, so if you want to learn to be a "normal" person go elsewhere. That said I loved MIT, and it was an amazing place to do a phd. It's full of super super smart people, and then normal smart people. Not many actually dumb people (all 3 will have that in different proportions), just many non-creative people.

Go wherever you get the most amount of free money. In fact, your position is so advantageous that it might be worthwhile to see if you can leverage them against one another to get some perks. I have no clue whether or not this kind of negotiation would work, given how competitive each of these schools is, but it might be worth a shot.

Stanford!

Having gone through a similar process, and coming out on the other end, my impression is that it really doesn't matter which school you go to.

All that matters is how you spend your time. If you are serious about entrepreneurship, and serious about going off the beaten path (this takes some introspection, with data that may take some time to collect), then the time you spend in school is really just a minor asset.

You need to ask the question - who am I and what kind of role can/do I want to play in creating a business. And your time should be oriented to that, as opposed to spending an excessive time acing classes.

Well you chose a rather appropriate username. Congratulations on getting into so many good schools!

If I had to do it all over again. I'd pick a place where there's a good state school with attractive girls and good pick-up basketball/soccer games and a good academic school with relatively open campus.

I'd then find a PT job doing programming and go to lectures at good academic school and then on weekends and in afternoon go to state school for parties and sports for well rounded education in theoretical CS, professional programming and personal liberal arts (not talking about the Hegelian dialectics, but how to hold you liquor, how talk to girls, how to drive and finish at the hoop, and budgeting and saving on your personal retirement plan/nest egg early).

But since youth is wasted on the young, I say Stanford. Since the youth craves some kind of redemption of respect but nowadays it seems like old East Coast prestige is out of style, there's still plenty of prestige at Stanford but you also get to play the 'SV rebel card' by going to Stanford, so you'll feel very secure and not have any "buyer's remorse".

Are there any differences in the amount of loans you will need? I would take that into consideration if the schools are offering a wide range of estimated costs.

I can't personally say much about those three schools though. I might prefer to go to college out of state, just to live in more of the country. But I'm sure all three schools have good study abroad programs if you want to travel.

Went to Harvard, had a bunch of friends and interacted plenty with people at MIT and would be happy to jump on the phone with you and give you a more in depth view of my experience. Email is in my HN profile.

It's a very difficult choice. I interview students at both Stanford and MIT and have spent time on both campuses. They feel very different to me personally. I feel that you will gain more just from leaving your comfort zone and moving to a new place than simply picking based upon what the school has to offer. If you wind up picking Boston, make the most of it, say hi to me when I'm on campus, and make sure you take a bus/train/plane and spend some time in NYC while on the East coast :) (edit: Of course you can still say hi at Stanford, too!)

Go wherever you find the best peer group. People you think are challenging and interesting and professors you get excited by.

For me it'd be between MIT and Harvard, particularly if I went to high school in California. You'll have friends that go to Stanford and if you really want the network more than anything get an MS there.

Just as an aside: Elon Musk went to Penn. You don't have to go to the school most widely known for what you want to do; any of these three will be fantastic.

I attended Carnegie Mellon and have worked with professors and given talks at MIT and Harvard. I don't know a lot about Stanford, except that I have never met anyone I actually liked who graduated from there (the same goes for Cornell, interestingly).

I'm not really the encouraging type, so I'll just try to address the negative points you put down for MIT and Harvard.

MIT: The curriculum at MIT absolutely is well-rounded. Did you know they have one of the best philosophy departments in the world? Also, check out the MIT Media Lab: they bring technology and creativity together in ways that no other organization can. The Media Lab's fellows range from engineers to comedians, and their director didn't even get a degree, but it's still one of the coolest places in the world to explore the confluence of ideas and application. MIT is also a leader in biology, chemistry, and medicine, so if you think you might want to apply your engineering education to one of those fields, MIT will definitely be a good place to park yourself for a few years.

Harvard: While you may hear more about Harvard Law and Harvard Medical School than their EECS department, that doesn't mean they don't have a top-flight program. In fact, when I was looking at grad schools long ago (for EE/applied physics), Harvard was easily one of my top choices because of the sheer number of professors there who have research interests in related fields. At the time, my interests were at the intersection of robotics and medicine, and there were no fewer than three professors there who would have been an excellent fit for Ph.D. studies in that arena (and, three is a pretty big number when it comes to picking the perfect Ph.D. advisor).

I also think staying in one place for too long can inhibit a person's drive to be creative. If I were you, I'd head to MIT or Harvard - they're both excellent schools, you'll get a fantastic education either way, and Boston is a really fun city. You'll also be a 6-hour flight away from western Europe... if you have a long weekend and some spare cash sitting around (hopefully from one of the many excellent Boston-area tech internships), London is just a bad night's sleep away.

One last thing, and I'm not 100% certain about this, but I've heard MIT and Harvard students can attend certain classes at a variety of schools in the area. So if you think your curriculum is lacking in art, you could, for example, take an illustration class at Mass Art. It works the other way around, too: my sister attended Mass Art and took a history class at Harvard one semester.

I went to Stanford for undergrad and am in business school at Harvard now. I'm incredibly grateful for both opportunities. But here's the thing: Stanford teaches you to love and to care and to have passion. Harvard teaches you to think and to act and to have impact. You should totally learn to do both, and you have time to do that - but if you pick one, go to Stanford.

I went to MIT for undergrad. When I was a senior in high school, I had the same hold up you did: "Will MIT neglect my humanities?" Short answer: no.

MIT has a surprisingly strong humanities and arts department. All students are also required to take a wide range of different humanities (though no single class is required).

I found the student body itself to be the best bulwark against intellectual and creative stagnation. The students there are self-motivated enough that they create culture and stimulate each other.

Finally, students at this place put vehicles on top of buildings and do ninja art installations. None of your other choices can claim that. How well-rounded can they really be?

I didn't go to any of these schools, but I still have an opinion. :-)

I think you should go to one of the Boston schools. Get out of the area where you grew up. All three of these schools are fine and academically, socially, and prestige-wise they all will serve your needs.

But your instinct to live somewhere else for a while is a good one, and distance from your family is helpful as well. Re-forging yourself is useful at that age (and several other ages down the road).

MIT '93 Mech E here (only ever worked as programmer, manager, or executive though). I agree with most of what's written, though I never found the winters to be unbearable (and still live in Cambridge now-love it here). If the weather is what matters to you, pick Stanford (duh), but that's an absurd way to pick a school, IMO.

MIT has great breadth available; it's all a matter of what YOU want to make it. If you want to graduate very unidimensional (deep excellence in engineering, skate by in all others), you can. If you want to be well-rounded, you can be, though not perhaps to the same extent of social network as Harvard. I really enjoyed the living groups situation at MIT (I was in a fraternity in Boston) and your living group choice makes a lot of difference in your experience here, at least IME.

I took a few humanities classes at Wellesley College. It was kind of a pain in the ass, and not worth it for the academic angle, but there were other factors involved...

Congrats on your situation. I'd repeat at MIT, I'd never have considered Harvard, and I was wait-listed at Stanford, eventually admitted, but I'd had my heart set on MIT, so when I got in there, it was an easy call and I couldn't be happier about my choice.

Berp.

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be?

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Yes.

And does not the same principle hold in the sciences? The object of science is knowledge (assuming that to be the true definition), but the object of a particular science is a particular kind of knowledge; I mean, for exam

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Percival is my dear old bird. Tomorrow is the young bird. God named them. I think I like Grace, our dog, now.

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ure than these. Aid me, friend Sancho, to mount the enchanted cart, for I am not in a condition to press the saddle of Rocinante, as this shoulder is all knocked to pieces."

"That I will do with all my heart, senor," said Sancho; "and let us return to our village with these gentlemen, who seek your good, and there we will prepare for making another sally, which may turn out more profitable and creditable to us."

"Thou art right, Sancho," returned Don Quixote; "It will be wise to let the malign

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I broke my collar bone in 1996 when I jump out the passenger door of a cop car.

Not really adding to the discussion here. Out of curiosity, do you already have a mech engineering degree given you mention it in your background?

That being said, congratulations on the admissions! :)