thank you for the advice! I was considering safeties and as I will most likely qualify for national merit, I will apply to Uof Alabama and ASU and SUNY Stony Brook/Binghamton for my safeties. I suppose I didn’t pose my question well but I am not concerned with the acceptance rate for Stanford as nobody is a shoo-in. I was more wondering if using an REA on such a highly rejective school would be the right decision. It seems that REA does not improve chances much from what I have heard so I will certainly have to reconsider my ED1 choice.