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I've had the absurdly good luck of being accepted to Stanford, Harvard, and MIT, and I'm having a hard time deciding which one to commit to. I know TL has a lot of smart people, and I'd appreciate some opinions or descriptions of colleges from current undergrads or alumni.
A little bit about me: I haven't decided what I want to major in yet, but right now I'm leaning towards mathematics or computer science. My dream after college (volatile and could very well change) is to work as a consultant. I currently live in the Northeast and my dad works in Boston. I am receiving no financial aid from any of these schools, although I will probably try negotiating with them with my scholarship to my state school.
If anyone has any advice, opinions, comments, questions--I'd really appreciate them!
 
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this is kind of like choosing between pie, cake, and an ice cream sundae.
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
Decide your major before you decide your school.
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Congrats! I'd go to MIT, but I guess you really can't go wrong.
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Papua New Guinea1058 Posts
Math or CS? MIT all the way.
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Congratulations and good luck!
On April 08 2015 12:37 lichter wrote:
Decide your major before you decide your school.
Given your options, I'd recommend choosing the school before choosing your major. All three schools have good programs in a wide variety of disciplines, but different atmospheres. If your goal is consulting, choose where you feel most comfortable, work hard enough to be a competitive candidate, study for whatever standardized test you decide to take, and you'll get your interviews.
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If you want to found a company right out of university, Stanford is probably the best choice.
Since it's so close to Silicon Valley, they place high value on entrepreneurship and teaching is more pragmatic.
If you consider an academic career, MIT might be the better choice because of their high density of world class CS professors.
If you are interested in climbing the social ladder, go to Harvard.
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MIT's CS program is significantly stronger than Harvard's, but I don't know where some people get the idea that MIT is better at math. At worst the two are even. Harvard CS has also improved in recent years, but I think it still has a way to go.
I don't know what recruiting season is like at MIT, but consulting is absolutely huge at Harvard. If you concentrate in something like Applied Math/Ec and do decently well, you should be able to get into at least one of MBB pretty easily.
In general, I think the sort of person who would aim for management consulting (assuming that is what you meant by "consulting") would probably do better at Harvard than MIT.
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if you care about your career, harvard. 100% for the name.. most schools teach similar material anyways, regardless of if it's a state or ivy league school.. but the fact of the matter is you could go anywhere in the world, in virtually any field, and say that you're a harvard grad, and still be offered a position.. even if it's for basket weaving, go to harvard if you have the opportunity.. people going into school really overvalue "academic prowess" and undervalue "school name" when evaluating choices, put yourself in the shoes of your recruiter in 4 years, they're likely not going to be like "hmm MIT was #1 and Harvard was #2 on the top 100000 list of CS schools world wide, should we hire this guy?" They're going to be like "I liked his shirt and I trusted his face, and he went to Harvard, give him a call back."
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Cmon let's be honest. Choose the school with the best SC Collegiate team.
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On April 08 2015 11:02 XXGeneration wrote:
I am receiving no financial aid from any of these schools
The cheapest one, then?
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I'd figure out a major for sure, heavily factor in price to your decision (do not assume a Harvard degree is a ticket to $100k/yr starting, and strongly push for aid), and definitely keep in mind that for networking, most of your connections will be locally based to the school, even with a place like Harvard. that's hwere the professors are, the places youll intern for etc etc etc. like if your goal is to live in cali, strongly consider Stanford.
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Lucky you. Good luck deciding
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On April 09 2015 01:58 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2015 11:02 XXGeneration wrote:
I am receiving no financial aid from any of these schools The cheapest one, then?
If even Harvard is not giving him any aid at all, he probably doesn't need to worry about the cost.
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that's silly you always need to worry about cost when you're talking about racking up six figures of debt
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Thank you for your replies!
On April 09 2015 02:43 QuanticHawk wrote:
heavily factor in price to your decision (do not assume a Harvard degree is a ticket to $100k/yr starting, and strongly push for aid),
I'm planning on contacting each school about my state school scholarship--hopefully it'll help me secure at least some financial aid. I'm definitely planning on working during the year, but obviously that probably barely pays for meal plans, never mind tuition.
On April 09 2015 01:58 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2015 11:02 XXGeneration wrote:
I am receiving no financial aid from any of these schools The cheapest one, then?
They're all basically the same price tier. I think Stanford is the most expensive at 66k, with Harvard and MIT sitting at around 63k.
On April 09 2015 14:00 QuanticHawk wrote:
that's silly you always need to worry about cost when you're talking about racking up six figures of debt
My parents have been saving up for a long while and have vehemently insisted that I not take a student loan and not worry about the price tag. They seem prepared to make the financial commitment to put me through college, and I'm really grateful for that. I'd love for the financial aid offices to help them out but I can only do what I have said above.
On April 08 2015 12:37 lichter wrote:
Decide your major before you decide your school.
I wish I could just decide my major that easily, but I honestly have no idea what I would really want to study, or if it would be the same thing five, even two years down the road.
On April 08 2015 15:37 nbaker wrote:
Congrats! I'd go to MIT, but I guess you really can't go wrong.
On April 08 2015 17:58 HornyHerring wrote:
Math or CS? MIT all the way.
I feel like one thing I've noticed is that MIT really seems to care about its undergrads, and that's something I haven't really seen from the other two schools. Even in its letters, MIT seems very casual and caring. Not to mention, being able to do some management in undergrad at Sloan would be chill.
On April 08 2015 21:56 gngfn wrote:
MIT's CS program is significantly stronger than Harvard's, but I don't know where some people get the idea that MIT is better at math. At worst the two are even. Harvard CS has also improved in recent years, but I think it still has a way to go.
I don't know what recruiting season is like at MIT, but consulting is absolutely huge at Harvard. If you concentrate in something like Applied Math/Ec and do decently well, you should be able to get into at least one of MBB pretty easily.
In general, I think the sort of person who would aim for management consulting (assuming that is what you meant by "consulting") would probably do better at Harvard than MIT.
If I was to look at which college I thought would help me career-wise the most, I would probably go with Harvard (you're right with the assumption). I know Harvard CS does have a lot of room for improvement, but I think there are options to cross-register for classes at MIT. Of course, at MIT I would also be able to cross-register for Harvard classes. I'm a little drawn to MIT's attention to its undergrads, however.
On April 08 2015 22:48 Endymion wrote:
if you care about your career, harvard. 100% for the name.. most schools teach similar material anyways, regardless of if it's a state or ivy league school.. but the fact of the matter is you could go anywhere in the world, in virtually any field, and say that you're a harvard grad, and still be offered a position.. even if it's for basket weaving, go to harvard if you have the opportunity.. people going into school really overvalue "academic prowess" and undervalue "school name" when evaluating choices, put yourself in the shoes of your recruiter in 4 years, they're likely not going to be like "hmm MIT was #1 and Harvard was #2 on the top 100000 list of CS schools world wide, should we hire this guy?" They're going to be like "I liked his shirt and I trusted his face, and he went to Harvard, give him a call back."
You sound a lot like my parents 
On April 09 2015 02:43 QuanticHawk wrote:
like if your goal is to live in cali, strongly consider Stanford.
I think I'm a little too drawn to the nice weather in Cali after all of this terrible NJ weather.
On April 08 2015 11:54 fluffy_pylon wrote:
this is kind of like choosing between pie, cake, and an ice cream sundae.
I wish I wasn't on a diet then.
On April 08 2015 22:52 lantz wrote:
Cmon let's be honest. Choose the school with the best SC Collegiate team.
LOL honestly I don't even play SC2, I loved watching BW when I was in middle school (I know right, who gets into such an old game with shitty graphics in middle school??) but I stopped following Starcraft once Flash and Jaedong switched over.
I'm gonna be visiting each school sometime within the next two and a half weeks, so maybe that will help me get a better picture of where I think I'll fit. I think right now I'm leaning towards Harvard, but the doubt in my mind is that I feel like the student body is much more annoying than at the other two schools. I know it'll sound silly, but my Facebook newsfeed always has some obnoxious Harvard post on it. For example, one guy posted a picture of him burning a Yale sweatshirt, and there were hundreds of likes and comments, all variants of "Fuck Yale". I understand the school spirit, but I feel like if any of them were accepted to Yale but not Harvard they'd be singing a different tune.
I'm just trying to figure out how valuable being happy is for me.
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Cross-registration is awesome and definitely a great option if there are particular MIT classes you want to take as a Harvard student. But that still doesn't give you the experience of being surrounded by people who are huge nerds about the same things as you, which was always the draw of MIT for me. Harvard's student body is a lot more diverse in its interests, but that's its own advantage, because you get exposed to lots of disciplines and ideas that you may not have known existed, and if something does draw you in, you can pretty much count on Harvard having a great program in it and/or being able to send you somewhere for grad school that does. MIT is a lot more specialized, so there are things you really just can't do there, and x-reg doesn't really help with that because you have to get the idea that you want to take that particular class from somewhere in the first place.
I definitely get where you're coming from with the idea that MIT cares about its undergrads more, but even if it is the case that Harvard pays less attention to undergrads, it's only because there's so ridiculously much going on that no one can help it. You'll have opportunities at Harvard that you won't find at any other university in the world, but you have to have the drive to take advantage of them.
I disagree with Endymion as far as the name value goes. It's true that Harvard holds more prestige worldwide, but MIT will turn heads anywhere an MIT student would want to go. Harvard would only have a significant advantage if you wanted to move to China and become an executive at a big corporation or something.
As for your last point, I assure you that nobody at Harvard cares about Yale at all unless The Game is coming up. What you're seeing on Facebook is typical behavior of any high school student accepted to a selective school with a rival (especially if the rival rejected him). There's none of that at the actual college.
Anyway, the bottom line is that you're in a great position and can't really go wrong with any of the three. Feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions about Harvard.
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EPT
