Question on "Why Stanford" Essay

zenkoan
Tue, 30 Nov 2010 14:32:36 +0000

Schfinx, it’s fine to discuss the work of a grad school prof if that work is meaningfully correlated with your own interests and with the experience you would seek at Stanford. If, OTOH, the reference were to come across as mere name-dropping or otherwise as a random association of some kind, it would be disadvantageous–so it all depends on what you intend to write and the relevance of that prof’s work to your personal aspirations.