Any Regrets About Stanford?

Colleges & Universities Stanford University
1

<p>I saw a similar thread on the Yale board, and it received some interesting responses.</p>

<p>Do you know anybody who regretted choosing to go to Stanford? What was the story? What did they do about it? Did they transfer? Did they regret it while they were there or after? What would have been a better choice/solution?</p>

<p>While things more specific to Stanford would be great, anybody who seemed to have any regrets would be helpful in getting an idea of any aspects of the school that may get to people for whatever reason.</p>

2

<p>My nephew got into Stanford ED several years ago and loved it, but he did regret not knowing whether he would have been admitted to Harvard.</p>

3

<p>Was Stanford’s program ED back then? </p>

<p>On a side note, why did Stanford change from ED to EA?</p>

4

<p>a friend regretted going there and transferred out</p>

5

<p>

</p>

<p>Yes, I believe the class of 2007 was the last class to be admitted by ED. Then Stanford switched to SCEA. I don’t know why, but it may have been because that is what the top-tier schools were doing in order to provide applicants with more freedom in the application process.</p>

6

<p>Okay, sounds good!</p>

7

<p>Since I contributed some stories of ancient regrets to the parallel Yale thread, I’ll chime in here, although my one story is really non-responsive.</p>

<p>My sister was an undergraduate at Stanford when I was in grad school there. She did NOT get good advising, at all, and wound up having to take an extra semester to complete her major requirements. (That was just the insult to injury; really she had hardly any adult input at all.) In general, her undergraduate education was shockingly mediocre, in part because she drifted around taking introductory courses, and in part because she didn’t realize that all the people who seemed so laid back were actually working behind closed doors, but not talking about it.</p>

<p>Did she regret going to Stanford? Not for a minute. She loved it. With one two-year gap in London, she’s lived in San Francisco since she graduated. Her college social network extended well into her 40s, and although she’s less close to her college friends now than she was 10 years ago, everything in her life really grew organically out of her college friendships. Even her (very well compensated) career stemmed from stuff she began in that 9th semester she had to take. So, really, it was all good. Just not so much educationally.</p>

<p>I wouldn’t even say anything about it, except that two years ago I went to a Stanford information session featuring a bunch of current students and recent grads. Someone else, not I, asked if the advising had gotten better, because historically it had been weak. They all looked at one another, and (politely) agreed that, no, it still sucked, but that didn’t matter because everyone was so smart and well-motivated.</p>

<p>Stanford back then (the 80s) was heaven for a self-starting undergraduate. It was a a great university without a great intellectual culture among the undergraduates, so basically anyone who was proactive at all about it could get all the faculty attention he or she wanted. But nothing encouraged students to do that; they had to choose that for themselves. I think that has changed a lot, though. At that time, no one would have taken seriously the proposition that Stanford was the equivalent of Harvard or Yale for undergraduates (socially, maybe, on the West Coast, but not intellectually). It also had lots of engineers – for whom it was great, of course, but most of them were a little disdainful of any activity that didn’t involve building something or drinking, or preferably both at the same time.</p>

8

<p>JHS, my daughter is a freshman. She told me last month, that she has not met her adviser yet. I told her, to do so as soon as possible. I don’t think she did. She does know what she wants to major in, and the classes she needs. This is the only private school that I know of, with such lax advising.</p>

9

<p>JHS, thanks for posting.</p>

10

<p>“Yes, I believe the class of 2007 was the last class to be admitted by ED. Then Stanford switched to SCEA”
Sorry, but Stanford has NEVER been ED. It was SCEA in 2006, and has been SCEA for many years.</p>

11

<p>Sorry Menloparkmom, but you’re wrong. Stanford did in fact used to have an ED program. </p>

<p>[Stanford</a> offers admission to 556 Early Decision applicants : 12/01](<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/01/earlydecision19.html]Stanford”>http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/01/earlydecision19.html)</p>

<p>And in relevance to this thread, how much of a bad thing is this whole lack of good advising? Is it a problem only with Stanford or can a similar phenomenon be found at HYPM as well?</p>

12

<p>Tyler09, two of your last threads have been actively searching negatives about Stanford… where’s the balance…?</p>

13

<p>Here is an article about the class of 2007 being the last to offer ED:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>(Sorry for the side-track)</p>

14

<p>^to Beef</p>

<p>I think I’ve got a grasp on the positive things about Stanford, and have posted/started threads about that two. This is me getting the balance.</p>

15

<p>I don’t know about the advising at H, P, and M, but the advising at Yale in my day was superb (and all faculty). I’m pretty sure they still have the same system.</p>

<p>If you are smart, organized, forward-thinking, and a little aggressive, you don’t really need advising at all. You read the catalogue carefully, you pay attention to the graduation and major requirements, you look for programs of interest, you find upperclassmen and talk to them, etc. If, however, you are among the 98% of teenagers who do not have ALL those qualities reliably, then having an adviser can be helpful. Maybe only a few students actually fall through the cracks, but if you are one of them (or paying a big piece of their tuition), it can be very painful. And making it to graduation, but without really taking advantage of the place, isn’t much better.</p>

<p>I’m sure at Stanford far more than 2% of the students don’t really need much advising. But some do. And even the best students . . . sometimes a good adviser can really do things for them. One poster here has a daughter who won a Rhodes, and he credits the daughter’s adviser (at a different college) with setting her on the track and putting her in a position to apply for it, suggesting stuff she wouldn’t have known to do on her own until it was too late to make a difference.</p>

16

<p>My opinion on Stanford’s advising programs is this: they will do as much as they can to help you, provided (1) you actively seek out their assistance, and (2) you do as much as you can on your own to answer your own questions.</p>

<p>I’ve seen my econ advisor once, the mandatory meeting I had with him when I first applied for the major. Since then, I’ve emailed him a few times with random questions, and he’s been more than willing to help me out. Other than that, I haven’t had any questions on my own, so I haven’t bothered him.</p>

<p>The vast majority of faculty will be more than willing to help you out, but they’re not mind readers, you have to be clear with exactly what help you need, and how you think they can use their position to assist you. I think a lot of times kids just come in saying their “lost” or something like that, and then expect their all-knowing advisor to have some sort of magic cure all. It doesn’t work like that in the real world, and college is as good a place as any to learn that.</p>