<p>Well, I’ve just finished my ‘What makes Stanford a good place for you’ essay, and I mentioned that I first became interested when I heard about their new financial aid policies. I talk about how it would be the best thing to happen to me, because it’d be the best possilbe level of education for a price my family can handle. </p>
<p>What i’m wondering is wether that’s a good idea or not… I make it clear that I’m passionate about getting in, but I wanted to make it sincere and admit that money comes into play. So, is this a bad idea?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t write about it if I were you, but it’s your choice. It seems like Stanford already knows that its finaid is stellar, you don’t really need to tell them again. However, if this is why you got interested in the school, I think it might be okay.</p>
<p>ehh, doesnt really sound like a good idea. If I was an admissions officer and some applicant said that he mainly wanted to go to my school because of financial aid, I wouldn’t be impressed.</p>
<p>One piece of advice for the “Why Stanford?” essay: BE SPECIFIC. Research a bit and then sprinkle your essay with some facts about the university. For example, I spent some time talking about how I liked how Stanford was really diverse and multicultural. But this in and of itself is rather vague and plenty of schools are very multicultural. So, I delved deeper and mentioned the various sculpture gardens (like the Papua New Guinea one) and the vast collection of east Asian literature they have in Meyer library.
Things like that that let the adcoms know that you know a lot about their school. So if you want to talk about financial aid, try to find something specific about Stanford’s financial aid that makes it different from HYP’s (although like other’s have said, this probably isn’t the best topic and it’s not like Stanford’s aid is really all that unique amongst its peer institutions).</p>