<p>I am sure you are correct sally305. College confidential threads say students at Stanford are dumb. It must be so! The university must accept the most anti-intellectual 7% of applicants the adcoms can find.</p>
<p>Another issue-angle. </p>
<p>[Egalitarianism</a> Among the Elites | Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com//blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/egalitarianism-among-elites]Egalitarianism”>Egalitarianism Among the Elites)</p>
<p>@sally305 - how is that first link you provided a thread about anti-intellectualism? Two out of 29 posts made a comment about it and other people disagreed with it.</p>
<p>yea…and that’s why my K2 turned down H et al to attend Stanford starting next week…K2 truly must be an idiot…</p>
<p>Congrats Gravitas. Don’t you already have a kid at Stanford?</p>
<p>collegedad2013, re #100: I understand that the first lines that were linked were not the opening lines of an intellectual vitality essay. I just don’t care for many of them.</p>
<p>The comment about a student’s essay on shopping serving to indicate “intellectual vitality” came from a post on the Stanford forum, and I took it to be genuine. I think that a person could easily demonstrate liveliness while writing about shopping. For a high school student to demonstrate “intellectual vitality” that way? Call me skeptical (at least as I understand “intellectual vitality”).</p>
<p>Thanks texaspg…no. K2 will be my first…K1 is at the “other” school back East…</p>
<p>Good lord. I said THIS:</p>
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<p>Snowdog and collegedad, tell me where in that statement did I make the case against the presence of intellectualism at Stanford. Some people say it has it and others don’t. Why so defensive? Stanford is a big, prestigious school and can stand up for itself.</p>
<p>Gravitas - I guess you are headed there this weekend then? The convocation is amazing. </p>
<p>Over the past year, I have attended some events where the provost openly admitted that he did not get in when it was 40 percent admit rate (someone on CC checked it out and found that it was 25% back in 70s or early 80s) and the kids being admitted now are ridiculously smarter compared to him. I suspect at 5.5% admit rate one has to be even more impressive. </p>
<p>I do feel for OP and his/her kid that he is not happy at Stanford. At the end of every quarter, I ask my kid that question to make sure I did not miss any signs. Despite all the stress and short short quarters, I still get an yes. However, if I got a No, I would start checking the alternatives. I don’t see that happening at this point since the kid is more worried about getting into grad school at the same school (med school has astronomical odds compared to undergrad).</p>
<p>I do think at Stanford no one discusses the meaning of life. The climate is so great, they are too busy living it. Most of intellectualism is spent on wondering how to create killer apps or perfecting singing/dancing/running etc since the physical aspect seems to drive them as much as being nerdy. A kid I know loved basketball and used an algorithm working at one of the Stanford startups to determine that the defined 5 positions in basketball are really useless and there are 13 types of different players who should be recruited on each team. Now he attends med school, gives TED talks around the nation, and is a Consultant for Miami Heat and written about in papers. To me, that is intellectualism at its finest, doing something you love.</p>
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<p>That’s actually a really nice sentiment.</p>
<p>texaspg. Yes we are…actually the NSO starts next Tuesday…and we are really looking forward to a wonderful convocation and sendoff…</p>
<p>…speaking of intellectualism…each “school” including Stanford and its peers have a particular “intellectual flavor” or overall “vibe” that attracts each individual student…to choose “it” over the “others”…and sometimes, infrequently, there will be students who feel they made the wrong choice…</p>
<p>…and for every student at Stanford that wants to transfer to another institution or drop out to start a company…there are 100 students clamoring to take that student’s place and transfer “in” to Stanford for the privilege to study and learn with some of the best minds…</p>
<p>I don’t know about you Gravitas but I am planning on attending the Stanford ASU game on Saturday to boost my own intellectual curiosity. :p</p>
<p>It is rather interesting but I don’t hear many students “dropping” out to start companies. They get a lot of support from the school in that regard and so it helps to stay rather than leave.</p>
<p>I think the essays about mustard are a lot more interesting and varied than the ones the Common Application features - how many essays can they stand reading about how much you learned from grandma? or losing the big game? or winning it? My older son didn’t apply to U of Chicago, but he actually liked the idea of writing about his favorite math equation, and had ideas about what he would say. While he procrastinated for weeks on what to write for his MIT essays. (How did your family/school etc influence who you are?)</p>
<p>As to the OP, I think he may be suffering from the grass is green elsewhere syndrome. The funniest story I know about transferring was a friend of mine freshman year who transferred to Harvard and then after a year transferred right back to her original LAC with a new appreciation of its virtues.</p>
<p>texaspg. sorry…not “drop out”…what I meant to say was their liberal “leave of absence” policy to try your hands at whatever endeavor you wished…a startup, marine corps boot-camp, travel the world, dig ditches…and to return to the Farm after being “refreshed”…</p>
<p>[Stanford</a> Daily | I?m, Like, Totally Profound: I?m dropping out of Stanford.](<a href=“http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/03/09/im-like-totally-profound-im-dropping-out-of-stanford/]Stanford”>I'm, Like, Totally Profound: I'm dropping out of Stanford.)</p>
<p>…and I agree with bookworm…why all the hate for “recruited athletes” either at Stanford or Harvard on the other thread bashing Harvard “recruited athletes”…</p>
<p>…our K2 is not an athlete whatsoever…and yet K2 truly respects the astounding accomplishments of the Olympic/professional level athletes K2 will be attending school with…</p>
<p>I would absolutely support the decision. Although competitive as a candidate, my son decided not to apply to Stanford after visiting and ultimately chose our state flagship over several top 20 national schools. It was painful for me to accept at the time. I came to accept that it is not my life, nor my decision. Finances were of no consideration; however, there will be money to fund graduate education as a result of his choice. He is happy, socially well adjusted, doing well academically, and will be better connected if he desires to work in our state. Frankly, the Stanford-and-similar grads we know largely have lifestyles we do not envy nor wish our children to pursue. No school is for everyone; the true test of an individual is having the courage to make a decision at odds with conventional wisdom.</p>
<p>Getting back to the original issue here (since I just looked at this thread for the first time): A really close friend of my wife’s in college felt very oppressed by all of the privilege, entitlement, and sense of superiority at Yale. She transferred to her home-state flagship after sophomore year, which (luckily for her) happened to be the University of Michigan. She was much happier there, and has gone on to have the career she aspired to as an academic social historian, teaching at Harvard for a stint before going on to tenure (and a pretty great life) at another state flagship.</p>
<p>Just a data point, but a comforting one, I hope.</p>
<p>“An essay about shopping that demonstrates intellectual vitality? What, channeling Elle Woods of Legally Blonde?”</p>
<p>You might be surprised. I wrote my Yale Law supplement about pie crust and got in. The theme of an essay is just the lens the writer uses to look at the real topic.</p>
<p>Aw, JHS, you spoil all the fun of going off on a tangent . . . but, yes, interesting example.</p>
<p>JHS - Any idea what she thought about the “meaning of life” discussions at Yale?</p>
<p>I was going to add … for the Original Poster</p>
<p>If your son is just homesick and wants to be ‘home’ then he might want to look into a three year undergrad degree from Stanford and apply to schools near home for his graduate degrees. I’m not sure this is possible now as he switched his major, but he can look into it. </p>
<p>He will be in school for only 8 months a year. So that would equate to 16 more months on campus. Tolerable. </p>
<p>If he can fly home on the holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spring Break and Summer, then he can enjoy the best of both worlds for at least the next 21 months.</p>
<p>Also… parents should visit him. Bring ‘home’ to him. It may be an added expense, but the overall savings of only taking three years at Stanford may help.</p>