Stanford Admissions Attitudes?

youngster9
Wed, 15 Jul 2015 01:53:41 +0000

I am a Stanford Class of 2019’er, here are my 2 cents.

I am going to have to disagree a bit with @weizhong Sorry, I hope we can still be friends on campus

I think the students who go to the Ivy League also have incredibly unique personalities and drives that rival Stanford students. Each elite university, in my opinion, is looking for three key components in their admitted students, qualifications, unique personality/drive, and fit to the university’s ideals.

Qualifications are the basic needs for a college student at these schools, such as being able to handle the academic rigor and stress of an elite university. (A vast majority of applicants clear this hurdle which is measured by ACT/SAT scores, GPA, etc.)

Unique personality/drive is what @weizhong was talking about. Having extracurriculars that show your passion or devotion to something can show this. Having a personal story that shows your courage, integrity, etc. can show this. Or even having a dream that you strongly want to make into a reality can show this. There are an infinite number of things that can show this, do it in your own way that makes sense to you. For your application this would be your essays, which are supported by your extracurriculars.

Now, lastly and most importantly is fit. Which is whether the above unique personality/drive meshes with Stanford. This isn’t something you can fake. If you decide to morph your “personality/drive” to align with the university you are applying to, you will most likely be seen through. So you will need to be introspective and objective in deciding which university you belong at.

Now that that rant is over Here is the answer to your question in terms of fitting what I see as the Stanford ideals.

A few of the values I have seen Stanford espouse have been teamwork, intellectual vitality, empathy, and blurring the line between disciplines. These come from one of the assigned readings Stanford has given us pre-frosh this summer, The Innovators by Walter Isaacson. Also Stanford’s motto is “The wind of freedom blows.” This can be taken in an intellectual sense IMO, meaning Stanford wants students that are intellectual explorers who passionately seek out knowledge. Stanford is a place where students like this can have all the resources necessary to seek out the knowledge they want.

This has been a pretty wishy washy post with very few concrete answers and I’m sorry about that. At the end of the day the admissions process is extremely subjective and unpredictable. But if you have qualifications, a unique personality/drive, and fit you have a very good chance of being admitted.

You probably already have, but check out: http://admission.stanford.edu/basics/selection/index.html

That is Stanford’s Undergraduate Admissions website. Read the stuff they have written and watch some of the videos Stanford has posted online on youtube, even the videos that aren’t relevant to admissions. Through this try to get a feel of what Stanford is and if you think you are a fit, then craft your application in a way that shows that with passion.

Good luck and remember that you can do great wherever you go!