"A field trip by a whole board to another university is certainly unusual," Harvard Associate Provost Dennis F. Thompson says. "But I can understand why the Yale Corporation might want to take a trip to Palo Alto."

According to the Yale Daily News, on the retreat, the corporation members listened to three days of presentations about Stanford.

Madeleine F. Green '67, vice president at the American Council on Education says such collaboration can benefit higher education.

"To have three days of discussion with a university that is perceived as the 'competition' is unusual and probably a good idea," she says.

Yale also recently announced a massive investment in the sciences.

Now, administrators there are hoping for more students interested in science. In January, Yale Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Richard Shaw told the Yale Daily News, "Any kind of extraordinary investment in the future is going to have a huge impact on students' impressions."

Yale is hardly alone in its interest in Stanford: according to Stanford Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Robert M. Kinnally, university administrators from all over the world regularly visit the lush Palo Alto, Calif. campus to figure out what's behind the university's success. He sees about a dozen a year, and turns another dozen away.

"They want to know how we do things here," he says.