Questions about Applying

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I haven’t seen anything to suggest Stanford prefers well rounded students to a greater degree than other selective colleges. I am not saying it’s false, but it would be good to confirm whether Stanford has actually said this or you are just guessing based on well rounded students you have met.

A student’s full app often does not come across well in casual conversion. I was probably one of the least well rounded students in my HS, so much so that there was a 300 point difference between my math and verbal SAT scores (800 vs 500) and a similar difference between tech vs English in GPA + course rigor, choice of ECs, LOR selections, etc. Nevertheless, I was accepted with far weaker overall stats than the vast majority of the more common, well rounded applicants.</p>

<p>I’d expect that excelling in a particular field instead of being well rounded and pretty good at everything fits with Stanford Admission’s comments about showing a passion. It’s better to be genuinely passionate about a specific focus and really do amazing things in that focus than to just fill up a list of typical ECs to show you are well rounded. Ignoring test scores, I think the OP does this well with her Intel award, research, published paper, patent, and starting a science camp. She strikes me as the type who is likely to do continue to do amazing things in this field, both in college and beyond, as well as the type of app where Stanford would be inclined to look beyond stats to see potential (but not necessarily to the point of ignoring a 550 in math with a prospective engineering major).</p>