Stanford Visit

So today I visited Stanford.

I am lucky enough to have a HS friend who lives 15 minutes away and great friends willing to lend me their car to make it there. I drove down the night before Visitation Day and crashed at my friend's house.

The day started with me given a parking pass and very inadequate instructions on how to reach the right parking structure (and no map). After a couple minutes of figuring out where I should go, I finally parked and made it to the orientation.

I think the initial reaction was dominated by the building. It is like CITRIS at Berkeley in its concept, but it is much bigger and designed more for the CEE department. It has all these features the lower energy and water use, which was explained to us on tours that were to come.

The program started with the department chair (a UCB grad) giving an introduction and overview, what you probably would expect. They had huge amounts of fruit salad and drinks that were just out to eat for breakfast. After introducing the department, each professor that was available did an intro and a brief talk about what classes they teach / research focus.

After breaking up into programs and meeting the other students (I'm in EES - enviromental engineering and sciences), we had a lunch. Much like the breakfast, it's obvious they have money, because it was pretty high quality food (they had bacon to put on sandwiches).

After lunch, everyone had a specific schedule that was broken down into 15 minute intervals, that told you waht to do. These included tours of facilities, meeting with grad students, and meeting with faculty. I really enjoyed meeting with the faculty, and they all seem like great people. That was perhaps my best experience from the visitation day.

On the whole, I need to determine if the academic benefits of going to stanford are worth 30-40k. I also have to weigh in factors such as friends / family, living conditions, do i want a new experience, etc. into my decision.

I have 3 weeks and counting to decide. If you have any thoughts please let me know! Berkeley and Stanford both have very similar programs academically and prestige-wise, but I'd love to hear your thoughts!