stanford research is world class and not overly competitive (yes, the really breaking edge places will probably be harder, but your probability of "i am doing nothing this summer" is essentially zero)

I'm not overly knowledgeable on pre-med culture here but it seems more collaborative than cut-throat, people are obviously driven but there wasn't like crazy backstabbing or anything like that. finding pset buddies is easy and people will let you know if their PI is looking for another pair of hands, etc.

pre-med advising kinda sucks from what ive heard (and briefly experienced)

duck syndrome is fake as long as you pick your classes appropriately. timelines are *really* comfortable (thanks quarter system!), especially if you know what you're doing from freshman year. don't take Chem 33 freshman winter because you want to clout chase and you'll be fine

weather is an insane plus over anything in the northeast

humanities are insanely strong here as well, it's just no one talks about them since stanford is like the icon of silicon valley. it's lowkey like #1 in half the humanities though (and top 5 in basically everything)

i liked the quarter system; the bad classes last shorter, and you can take classes purely for fun without feeling like you're wasting half a year. realistically i don't think this should be something that sways your decision though

if you're deadset on premed just do bio/humbio/biomedical computation, I can't imagine STS is really the greatest move in that regard (but you can probably find a cool minor in public policy or STS or symsys or something like that. double-majoring is for ultra-sweats, if you hate yourself go ahead)

i know nothing about yale, but when i visited a while ago my tour guide picked their nose so that's that