Stanford had to do all kinds of shit to make its way up the rankings, the Termans in particular, just pulling all the stops on the way to number 1. It got $80,

Stanford had to do all kinds of shit to make its way up the rankings, the Termans in particular, just pulling all the stops on the way to number 1. It got $80,000 in WW2 when in contrast Caltech got $120,000,000. As Steve Blank put it, DoD (then Department of War) had no respect for Stanford engineering. They just plucked Terman put him in charge at Harvard. Harvard Radio Lab. It used to be bombers didn't get through, Terman changed that, after WW2, "the bomber will always get through." Then he plucked 8 guys from the Harvard Radio Lab, made them Stanford professors, and that's when Stanford started getting...a little bit of respect. It helped his best students became strong entrepreneurs like he wanted them to be, AND were generous--David Packard becoming Stanford's greatest benefactor in fact, in particular donating directly to the Stanford Endowment so the University could do whatever it thought was best--and having a long-lasting string of successes. This longevity was based on Stanford engineering graduates. There's other colleges named after whomever, anybody, and they don't go anywhere. There's a lot of cooperation required, a lot of people refusing to let each and every other one of them down.