<p>Hi everyone, </p>
<p>Obviously Stanford is a school more inclined toward the sciences and mathematics, but don’t they want to have students who want to major in history and English, too? I am a hs junior, all A’s except honors geometry, honors alg. 2/trig, chem, and AP physics (noticing a pattern here…). 3.8 UW GPA. I am very very very heavily involved in journalism. My SAT math score is 660, which is not ideal, but my CR and W scores are both 740, so is it possible that I would have a solid shot at the school? </p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>Sadly, no. There are plenty of top scoring kids who also want to study liberal arts at Stanford, not just science and math. Unless you have some major national-level journalism awards or another hook, attending Stanford is probably not in the cards. There are plenty of great schools for you to go to with those grades and test scores, including many Top 25 LAC and National schools, but Stanford is not one of them.</p>
<p>@MrMom62 I appreciate you being honest haha. In general though, do you think that it’s easier for a liberal arts major to get into Stanford? Not necessarily me, but I would assume that more students apply that want to major in pre-med than classics. </p>
<p>@safizee I love Stanford too, but I think it’s unrealistic to expect to get in no matter who you are, really. By all means apply, but don’t expect anything out of it! I would put it on your list of schools to apply to (that is, if you don’t find another school you love better before apps season), but then forget about it, assume you WON’T get in and start finding matches you can rely on better. Your grades are good enough to guarantee you a chance, but beyond that… who knows? Good luck!</p>
<p>Also, Stanford’s departments excel pretty much around the board, I think. I’m not interested in journalism but their humanities and sciences departments both seem very strong, and they try to encourage a lot of diverse disciplines! So again, applying on the hope it might be easier for you is just a little unrealistic. Apply if you WANT to go there, and if you love the school!</p>
<p>Someone who is more knowledgable than me about Stanford admissions will have to answer your question, but if I had to guess, I’d say that like most elite schools, major has little to no effect on admissions. About the only thing I’ve ever heard is that certain majors make it HARDER to get in, not easier. It starts at pipe dream and only gets more difficult - there are no back doors to easy admission, other than being your standard legacy with large donation attached, developmental or recruited athlete.</p>
<p>Do you have any really major extracurricular achievements or awards (noteworthy at the state or national level)? @Data10 mentioned elsewhere going through Stanford decision threads and finding that admission mostly came down to high GPA and test scores (yours may barely meet the thresholds that s/he mentioned), plus some sort of major extracurricular achievement or award.</p>
<p>I may be wrong but I believe Stanford is one of those schools that essentially discounts major for admissions. All freshmen are admitted as undeclared and can declare a major after their sophomore year.
Anyone who knows more about Stanford’s admissions policies feel free to correct me. </p>
<p>The intended major isn’t nearly as important as significant involvement in that subject area. Being an English major may help but you need to demonstrate significant promise: getting published by magazines, winning major awards for your writing, etc etc. This young man I know had a 3.5 GPA in high school but had published a literary magazine with significant recognition for it (and he had gathered quite a many impressive awards for his writing). He was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania in ED. They just don’t want economics majors, you know.</p>