Top university in your city/general area

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

There are those micless wretches who would argue Berkeley/Stanford.

UChicago and Northwestern would be another powerful 1-2 punch worthy of mentioning.

but based purely on reputation/prestige, i don't think the bay area or chicago (or anywhere else for that matter) can truly match the 1-2 punch of boston's Harvard/MIT.

i guess some might argue columbia/princeton for new york, but princeton's distance from manhattan really pushes the limits of the concept of "city".

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

UChicago and Northwestern would be another powerful 1-2 punch worthy of mentioning.

but based purely on reputation/prestige, i don't think the bay area or chicago (or anywhere else for that matter) can truly match the 1-2 punch of boston's Harvard/MIT.

i guess some might argue columbia/princeton for new york, but princeton's distance from manhattan really pushes the limits of the concept of "city".

If SF can lay claim to Stanford, NYC and Philly can both lay claim to Princeton. NY could arguably lay claim to Yale, too.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

If SF can lay claim to Stanford, NYC and Philly can both lay claim to Princeton. NY could arguably lay claim to Yale, too.

yeah, things get muddled because some of these top-level schools are pretty far-flung out in the boonies.

stanford is ~28 miles from downtown san francisco

princeton is ~45 miles from midtown

yale is ~70 miles from midtown


whereas harvard/MIT or Uchicago/northwestern are located within a single "city"

(yes, i know harvard, MIT, and northwestern are technically located within suburban municipalities, but they're close-in burbs that are part of the same urban fabric as their central cities, not far-flung satellite cities/towns like princeton or new haven).



LA also impresses with CalTech, UCLA, and USC all within a single urban area.



still, when you take the sum total of the prestige of boston's academic offerings, with harvard/MIT leading the way, i think most non-partisan observers would concede that it wins on this measure.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

still, when you take the sum total of the prestige of boston's academic offerings, with harvard/MIT leading the way, i think most non-partisan observers would concede that it wins on this measure.

Yeah, Boston is unparalleled. Between Boston and Cambridge, which together cover a land area smaller than Brooklyn, there are five schools in the US News top 40 national university list (Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Boston College, Tufts).

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

yeah, things get muddled because some of these top-level schools are pretty far-flung out in the boonies.

stanford is ~28 miles from downtown san francisco

princeton is ~45 miles from midtown

yale is ~70 miles from midtown

New Haven (Yale) is a decent sized area. Don't know anything about Stanford but Ithaca (Cornell), Dartmouth (Dartmouth) and Princeton are typical quaint far flung college towns.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by JManc

Lacrosse is a big deal in high school in Upstate NY as well and was biggest draw along with football and hockey.

I get the impression some teams use lacrosse, which is generally played in the spring, as a means to keep as many football players in shape out of football season as possible. But of course some lumbering linemen just don't have the body habitus and skills for lacrosse.

How it's done:

• Video Link

I went to Hopkins, my sister went to Maryland, so naturally we hated each other.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by JManc

Don't know anything about Stanford

Stanford is in Palo Alto in the middle of Silicon Valley. Sand Hill Rd, famous for being the site of tech company deals, runs alongside the campus and I-280, the best route between San Francisco and San Jose (MUCH less congested than Highway 101), runs not far from another side.

The nickname for the Stanford campus is "the farm" because once it was one but those days are long gone just as are the fruit and nut orchards of the Valley itself.

[craigs]

Stanford has lots of open space and backs up into the hills, but it is not at all in a far-flung, rural location like Cornell or Princeton. Stanford's campus is directly served by the downtown Palo Alto Caltrain station, making it the second busiest commuter rail station in the Bay Area.

The campus, downtown, etc. Note the winding creek in the upper left: that is the official "borderline" between the San Francisco MSA on the left and the San Jose MSA on the right.

source

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by craigs

Stanford has lots of open space and backs up into the hills, but it is not at all in a far-flung, rural location like Cornell or Princeton. Stanford's campus is directly served by the downtown Palo Alto Caltrain station, making it the second busiest commuter rail station in the Bay Area.

The campus, downtown, etc. Note the winding creek in the upper left: that is the official "borderline" between the San Francisco MSA on the left and the San Jose MSA on the right.

source

yeah, most of campus is in Santa Clara county, but SLAC (on Stanford-owned land) is in San Mateo County. Palo Alto Transit Center, in addition to being a major Caltrain stop, is also where VTA and Samtrans interchange (and Marguerite too, I guess).

Palm Drive is definitely set up to make campus seem a little detached from Palo Alto, and socially, it's definitely a bubble (virtually all undergrads, probably the majority of grad students, and a significant number of faculty live on campus).

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by craigs

Stanford has lots of open space and backs up into the hills, but it is not at all in a far-flung, rural location like Cornell or Princeton. Stanford's campus is directly served by the downtown Palo Alto Caltrain station, making it the second busiest commuter rail station in the Bay Area.

Cornell is primarily in a far-flung, rural location, though half its graduate schools are in Manhattan.

But Princeton is a dense, urban campus, with a NJ Transit station with frequent service to Manhattan right on campus. It's very tied to Manhattan, and much of the faculty lives in the city.

While Cornell is definitely in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by forests, gorges, lakes and waterfalls, it actually has very high quality urbanity, both downtown (which is pedestrianized) and in the collegetown area.

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4416...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4396...7i13312!8i6656

[JManc]

Cornell is pretty typical for a small Upstate town but being home to Cornell and Ithaca College has preserved and enhanced its urbanity.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by pj3000

True. Because other countries don’t have it. If Europe and South America had college soccer, it would be insanely popular. If Canada had college hockey (at the major level), it would be huge.

College basketball and football have long had their followings, but became huge national pastimes in the US because of the popularity and influence of the professional leagues and television/media. They became massively popular with the advent of cable TV in the 1980s, granting the ability to watch games played anywhere every day/night of the week. The advertising revenue followed, and the self-perpetuating cycle began.

College football used to be a big deal in Canada but support for it fell off a cliff a long time ago. Believe it or not, but the University of Toronto Varsity Blues football team had higher average attendance than the NFL back in 1950. Today, they'd be lucky to draw 2,000 people to a game. It took such a different trajectory in Canada vs the US. Population had a lot to do with it. In the US there were tons of very populated places with no pro football. College football filled the void. In Canada, we don't even have enough large metros to support the domestic pro league.

[SIGSEGV]

Hmm, I wonder if Bama fans are going to be able to stomach voting for Tuberville for Senator? Maybe Doug Jones has a chance after all.