(Source: Stanford University)Our countdown of America's best universities is almost done. We've now arrived at number two, a relatively young institution that has made incredible strides in quality over the past couple of generations. Of course we're talking about...



#2: StanfordThe West Coast Ivy. Brains and tans. Nobel Prizes and palm trees. Stanford has it all. Its undergrads can get in and succeed anywhere, but they choose Stanford for its academic excellence, its reputed laid-back flavor, its gorgeous campus and nice weather, and, to some extent, its nationally-prominent athletic teams. At the graduate level, schools of law, medicine, business, engineering and education are phenomenal. Stanford Ph.D.s are in high demand, particularly those in computer science, psychology, economics, geology, political science, math, physics, anthropology and communications.

Add in Pac-10 sports featuring former luminaries such as Tiger Woods, Tom Watson, John Elway and John McEnroe, and you have a tradition most other elite institutions can't match.

Weaknesses? Uh, give me a minute. Let's see. Wait...nope, that's good too. Okay, I've got it. Some academic departments don't rank among the top five, and the great weather will distract you from your studies. Plus, they have those pesky earthquakes now and then. And the cost of living is high. And some of the athletes may have the student-athlete dichotomy backwards. I'm trying here....

The upshot? If you get accepted to Stanford, go, unless you can't bear the thought of leaving the East Coast or Midwest or South. Or if your ideal campus must be adorned with ivy, fall foliage and a blanket of snow from time to time.

Or if you get admitted to one other place. With all this going for it, Stanford clearly deserves the number two spot on my list. Only one university trumps it. And it probably always will. Stanford is fantastic, but it can't match my number one pick.

That's why it ranks second.