Viraj Mehta, a 17-year-old high school senior from Austin, Texas, received acceptance letters from both Harvard University and Stanford University. Like a lot of other students, he’s leaning westward.
Stanford, based near Palo Alto, California, received almost 8,000 more applications than its East Coast rival for the coming academic year. It accepted only 5.1 percent of applicants, making it more selective than Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Harvard.
