California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

University of Wisconsin-Madison

North Carolina State University

Tulane University

University of Pennsylvania (UPenn)

University of Chicago

Columbia University

University of California, San Diego (UCSD)

 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)

Brown University

Johns Hopkins University

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

 

Duke University

University of Michigan

Princeton University

Stanford University

Leland Stanford Junior University, or more commonly Stanford University, is a private research university in Stanford, California, and one of the world's most prestigious institutions,  with the highest undergraduate selectivity  and fundraising performance  in the United States.

Stanford was founded in 1885 by Leland Stanford, former governor of and U.S. senator from California and leading railroad tycoon, and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford, Jr., who died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Stanford was opened on October 1, 1891 as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. Tuition was free until 1920. The university struggled financially after Leland Stanford's 1893 death and after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. 

Stanford is located in northern Silicon Valley near Palo Alto, California. The University's academic departments are organized into seven schools, and its 8,180-acre (3,310 ha) campus is one of the largest of its kind in the United States with several other holdings, such as laboratories and nature reserves, located outside the main campus.The University is the top fundraising institution in the country, becoming the first school to raise more than a billion dollars in a year.

Stanford's undergraduate program is the most selective in the country with an acceptance rate of 5.07% for the 2018 Class. Students compete in 36 varsity sports, and the University is one of two private institutions in the Division I FBS Pacific-12 Conference. It has gained 105 NCAA championships, the second-most for a university, and has won the NACDA Directors' Cup every year since 1994-1995.

Ranking

Stanford occupies the number one position in numerous domestic college ranking measures, leading Slate to dub Stanford "the Harvard of the 21st century, and The New York Times to conclude that "Stanford University has become America’s 'it' school".From polls done by The Princeton Review in 2010, 2013 and 2014, Stanford is the most commonly named "dream college" for both students and parents (and in 2011 for students), while a 2003 Gallup poll found that Stanford is the second-most prestigious university in the eyes of the general public.

The Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings placed it third in 2014, and it has particularly held its second place for many years in the Academic Ranking of World Universities.

University of California, Berkeley (UCB)

Northwestern University

Yale University

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

It is one of the best universities in the world, and although you might feel a little disappointed about returning home, you can always learn enough to improve the situation in your home country's universities.Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a great place both to study and to learn more about how to work.

Ranking

MIT places among the top ten in many overall rankings of universities (see right) and rankings based on students' revealed preferences. 

For several years, U.S.News & World Report, the QS World University Rankings, and the Academic Ranking of World Universities have ranked MIT's School of Engineering first, as did the 1995 National Research Council report. In the same lists, MIT's strongest showings apart from in engineering are in computer science, the natural sciences, business, economics, linguistics, mathematics, and, to a lesser extent, political science and philosophy.

Harvard University

Harvard University 

Harvard University, which celebrated its 350th anniversary in 1986, is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Founded 16 years after the arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, the University has grown to an enrollment of more than 18,000 degree candidates, including undergraduates and students in 10 graduate and professional schools.

Ranking

QS World University Rankings, rank Harvard third, behind Massachuesetts Institute of Technology

Harvard is tied with Stanford University for second in the Times Higher Education World Rankings

However, when the QS World University Rankings and Times Higher Education World University Rankings were published in partnership as the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings, Harvard was ranked first between 2004 and 2009