Couple of Q'S...

Colleges & Universities Stanford University
1

<p>I am looking at attending Stanford, but I have a couple of questions… Any info. will help, Thanx!!</p>

<li><p>I live in Texas, Will the cost be THAT much higher?.. </p></li>
<li><p>Average cost?</p></li>
<li><p>Gender Ratio?</p></li>
<li><p>Ethnic Ratio?</p></li>
<li><p>Location?</p></li>
<li><p>Weather?</p></li>
<li><p>Scholarships?</p></li>
<li><p>How hard is it to get in?</p></li>
<li><p>Unsure of my major, will that affect me my first couple of years at Stanford?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>THANX!<br>
Michael</p>

2

<p><a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/home/statistics/[/url]”>http://www.stanford.edu/home/statistics/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>has all the info you need…btw, tuition same instate as it is out of state.</p>

3

<p>thanx!..<em>didn’t know that!..(tuition)</em>…</p>

<p>I noticed the website said something about the SAT AND SATII Tests…
Are they a must??.. The site said they will accept either SAT, ACT… but they “strongly recommend” the SAT II Test for math and another subject… </p>

<p>Has anyone been accepted with just the ACT?.. Thanx, if you did… What was your score?</p>

4

<p>Answers ('cause I’m bored)…</p>

<ol>
<li>I live in Texas, Will the cost be THAT much higher?..</li>
</ol>

<p>Uhm, no. Stanford isn’t a state school, so costs don’t rise for out-of-state students. You’ll have to pay more to travel, I suppose, but if you’re really financially needy I’m sure they’ll take that into consideration when giving you your aid package.</p>

<ol>
<li>Average cost?</li>
</ol>

<p>A LOT…something around $45,000 is tuition. I don’t know what the average financial aid award is, but all you can do is hope they make it work for you. I know some kids who didn’t think they were gonna be able to go for financial reasons and were thrilled by how much Stanford gave them.</p>

<ol>
<li>Gender Ratio?</li>
</ol>

<p>I think it’s roughly even, w/a percentage point or two more males than females.</p>

<ol>
<li>Ethnic Ratio?</li>
</ol>

<p>Freaking AWESOME. Lots of diversity.</p>

<ol>
<li>Location?</li>
</ol>

<p>Ehh…Palo Alto is a small town in Northern California. Good restaurants but not that much else to do that I can see (but it’s safe), but it’s pretty. It’s also close to San Francisco and I don’t think it’s that hard to go there if you want. And San Francisco is the awesomest city ever.</p>

<ol>
<li>Weather?</li>
</ol>

<p>I’m from an hour and a half away, so Stanford might be different (I’m going there next year and don’t know offhand). But, in general, pleasantly hot in the summer (but it’s a dry heat, so no humidity), really really nice in fall and spring. Winters it rains, but not that much, and you get your perfect spring days at random points in the winters too. And it never EVER gets really cold.</p>

<ol>
<li>Scholarships?</li>
</ol>

<p>I don’t think the university gives merit-based scholarships, but it does give financial aid, and you can obviously get private scholarships if you apply for them.</p>

<ol>
<li>How hard is it to get in?</li>
</ol>

<p>Uhm, I think it’s a 12% admissions rate? Somewhere in there. Anyway, Stanford seems to me to be the least predictable of HYPS–your essays have to be really, really good.</p>

<ol>
<li>Unsure of my major, will that affect me my first couple of years at Stanford?</li>
</ol>

<p>Well, obviously it’ll affect you – it would affect you anywhere. But Stanford seemed to me to be the sort of place where it would affect you less negatively than many others. At Admit Weekend they talked a lot about going in open to changes; they told us to spend our first two years exploring and only pick a major at the end of our sophomore years (I think engineering might have to declare earlier). Plus, unlike most schools, Stanford doesn’t make you apply to the college of engineering if you decide you want to be an engineering major partway through your college career, which is really nice. (But if you want to be an engineering major, you really should decide that early ANYWHERE, just because of how many classes you have to take for the major!)</p>

5

<p>What’s the transportation like at Stanford? Are the bus passes expensive (do they have like one year bus passes or something)? I’m not really big on getting a bike, so I was wondering whether it would be really inconvenient just walking to places.</p>

<p>Oh, and how long does it take to go from Stanford to San Francisco?</p>

6

<p>I rode a public bus exactly twice while at Stanford. The campus shuttle is free, so you can use that anytime, but it’s not really that necessary. As people have said before, get a bike. There are people who don’t, but it’s the difference between a 15-20 minute walk, and getting up from your desk in your dorm, unlocking your bike, and being in your lecture hall in literally 5 minutes. If you’re going to a football game with your friends, everyone will ride their bikes from Wilbur to the stadium, and you don’t want to make people walk just so they can hang out with you. You can get one at Target for $75, blus $10 for the lock.</p>

<p>About 45 minutes from Stanford to the city on the Caltrain.</p>

7

<p><i>What’s the transportation like at Stanford?</i></p>

<p>Stanford has a free shuttle service, the Marguerite, which connects to Caltrain and lots of places you’d want to go, on and off campus. Caltrain is a regional Amtrak offshoot which runs commuter trains between San Francisco and San Jose. Palo Alto (where Stanford is located) is about halfway between the two, a little closer to San Jose. </p>

<p>What does this mean? Well, a five minute shuttle ride takes to the train, and you can get to San Francisco and San Jose within an hour on the train. Trains run about twice an hour, more during peak hours, less on the weekends. Check the schedules at <a href=“http://www.caltrain.org%5B/url%5D”>www.caltrain.org</a> for more information. </p>

<p>Using Caltrain and connecting shuttles, one can go to SFO and SJC airports. OAK is a little harder to do, because it’s across the bay. </p>

<p>In addition to Caltrain, Stanford sits along a major transit route, El Camino Real. Buses from two counties go up and down El Camino all night long, for very late night things. </p>

<p>The Palo Alto Caltrain/Transit hub, which is, as I’ve said, very near Stanford, also has a bicycle repair/storage/commute facility. It’s <em>very</em> easy to live in the bay area without a car. As an example, I’m an adult, and I’ve lived here for 5 years without a car.</p>

8

<p>Okay, the bay area basically has two seasons: The fall/winter rainy season, and the spring/summer dry season. This is sort of weird at first, because spring and summer is when it’s dry and <em>brown</em> and dead looking in places that are not watered, while fall and winter are when things turn green. </p>

<p>Fall/Winter starts sometime around the first of November and lasts until April or so. (This year, we’ve had a freakishly long rainy season – the first rain was the first week in October, and it rained <em>yesterday</em> here.) Rainy season doesn’t mean it rains every day – it means that about once a week or so, we get a day or two of rain. “Rain” here means mostly light drizzling to moderate showers. Thunder and lightning are such rare occurances that even one or two lightning bolts will make the evening news. For those of use used to stormy weather – thunder, lightning, torrents of driving rain – that happens so rarely here that it’s like, err, snow in Texas. </p>

<p>One of the most important things to remember about weather here is that it’s essentially a desert climate. The temperature changes more between day and night than it does from season to season. So, you can have an 80 degree day, but it may be 50 once the sun goes down. Layering is very important, especially when you travel into San Francisco or to the coast. </p>

<p>Most of the spring/summer, the sky is completely blue, without clouds, and it’s 70’s-80’s, with <em>very</em> low humidity. Also, winds off the coast that blow east keep any pollution moving to the Central Valley of California, so we don’t get much of a smog thing. It <em>does</em> get hot sometimes, usually for 3 days at a time, and most often <em>late</em> in the season. “Summer” here is usually around mid-September. Temperatures <em>do</em> sometimes get into the 90’s for a day or two, but it will still be cool at night, and the humidity is low. The biggest problem is that many places aren’t air conditioned because of the mild weather, so when it does get hot, it can seem worse because of lack of A/C.</p>

9

<p>what kind of private scholarships?
do they offer sports scholarships?
do you know anything about their gymnastics program?
sorry, only one more
are there any thread things you know of about these questions? :)</p>