@weizhong I absolutely agree that Stanford has a much larger focus on practicality and impacting the real world. I think your statement about finding value in your awards, not just earning them is a perfect way to express that.
The only area where I disagree with you on this is that Stanford is unique in this sense. Stanford is very different in their focus on how academia is used by its students, but the academia is the foundation of an education at Stanford and any other elite university. The type of student you are describing is the optimal applicant, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t get into Stanford and instead an east coast school because they are student with dreams that align more with those schools compared to Stanford.
I think we can respectfully agree to disagree though 