Admit Weekend impressions of one family

Colleges and Universities A-Z Stanford University
1

Typing on iPhone so keeping to the point.

  1. Campus so big that several thousands more people and events didn't create an impression that campus was crowded.
  2. Campus so big we had to walk too much.
  3. Weather was nice.
  4. Stanford guesthouse was pretty nice. Good shuttle and bus service.
  5. Student sit down and chants on stage during the Welcome event not so nice.
  6. Inviting the non- profit alum Kline guy at the Closing event was good and effective. Loved him and his deceased mom but too much time was given to him. Q & A section not needed for this kind of event.
  7. Loved the career center meetings and presentations. Highlight for me.
  8. Dorm tours and cafeteria eating experience were helpful.
  9. Students seemed nice overall.
  10. The Arts & Humanitues Quad tour by the student who is involved in Theater and Science & Tech major was good.
  11. Heard from another parent who went to Brown Admit Weekend that Stanford one was better organized.
  12. Heard from one parent who went to Harvard Admit Weekend that they did not seem to want parents to attend. I feel maybe they did not want too many people?
  13. Didn't overhear conversations of great intellect, which is not a bad thing.
  14. Cafeteria food was not that bad.
  15. Should have had an OOS parent on parent panel. I say this even though I am in CA.
  16. Could have improved on several points regarding how they did events and there.
  17. Dish hike was nice.
  18. Did get a sense Residence staff care and students are collaborative.

Overall, glad I came. But would not want to do it again. Accepted offer of admission but committed before coming.

Nothing blew me away except for campus size and maybe weather and how many bicycles there are. Nothing came up that concerned me.

2

Impressions from another parent at Admitted Students Weekend…everyone was so nice! Every employee was super kind and helpful. Whenever I stopped a student to ask for directions (that was often), the student always stopped, took out BOTH headphones, and politely gave the directions. Most of them asked if I needed any other help. Also, the current students kept yelling out to the Profros to come to the school. They were so enthusiastic to the Profros. My child did say her dorm host was also so kind. She left her dorm room unlocked the whole time so my daughter could get in the whole time she was there. There was so much to do. My daughter tried to do as much as she could and she loved everything that she heard. She is an arts kid and was very happy to hear about how much importance that they are putting on the arts.

The campus is enormous. The President of the Parent Club suggested renting a bike for OOS students so that you don’t have to store it for the summer. Maintenance is included for rentals. I do agree that there should have been an OOS parent on the panel. I met a couple OOS parents who had older kids at the school. I am sure they would have loved to have spoken.

One of my big questions is about SPOT and move in. If your kid does SPOT, do they return to you the day before move-in? It took a lot of questions to different people before I got the answer. No. The SPOT kids return to campus and sleep in tents around the Oval the night before move in so that they are on campus, but they do not return to the parents. This does make move in a little hard for the OOS families. So, the SPOT kids wake up on campus, get the keys, start moving in, have to leave campus to go buy all of their stuff, continue moving into the room and still make it Convocation by 4 pm. That seems like a lot. I think I may arrive in Palo Alto the day before and do the Bed, Bath and Beyond pick up without her.

I saw a dorm room in FloMo. It was bigger that my older daughter’s double room at another college. On Friday afternoon, I went by Stern and there were kids playing beach volleyball, basketball, etc. It was nice to see the students relaxed and having fun.

When I was not with my child, I went into town. There is so much to do and so many great restaurants!

I didn’t mind the protesters for the most part. Apparently, it is very common for protests to happen during Admitted Students Weekend. The only thing that bothered me was when Dean Shaw was interrupted trying to do the primal scream. He clearly had a script he was following and that was disrespectful. My suggestion to the protesters is that they should have had printed material and handed it out because most of the auditorium (myself included) didn’t quite understand what they were protesting other than immigration.

The only negatives that my daughter had to say was that the shower in FloMo stunk and that their meal cards should have been set to swipe them into the dorms. On Friday night, she had to wait outside FloMo for 20 minutes before any current student came by to let them in.

Does anyone know how many Profros there were on campus? I was very impressed with the entire weekend.

3

@websensation Told you campus was big, which is why a bike came so highly recommended by everyone :wink: Imagine doing all that walking every day for 4 years!

Glad you started to get a sense of how supportive the dorm staff was–just wait until NSO when you get to meet your son’s RAs, PHE, and RCC!

And like I said, the food thing is all relative, despite how much students complain. It really wasn’t all that bad. They should go to some of the hospital and health sciences cafeterias where I rotate to get some perspective on cafeteria food haha. It just got repetitive after four years is all. That being said, they usually do usually do one of their nicer meals for Admit Weekend and Parents Weekend, but it’s not unrepresentative of the norm.

@bwaygirl1 The restaurant scene is great, isn’t it? Since Palo Alto itself does have a large well-off retired community, a few of the nicest restaurants on University Ave are also a bit pricey, so your daughter will always be happy when you visit to take her out to places like Tamarine :slight_smile:

Sorry that both of you (and everyone else at Admit Weekend) had a bad experience with the student activists. Speaking as just a former student, I found almost all student activism at Stanford to be done in very poor taste and ineffective. That scene only started getting noticeable during the end of my time there, and is still represents only a very VERY small minority of the student body, according to my underclassmen friends still on campus. Even last year, they say there were really only 2 or 3 times–including one event during NSO–when they saw a student activist event on campus, and one was simply a camp-out in one corner of the Main Quad that didn’t inconvenience anyone else.

4

Do students complain about the food? I’ve eaten on campus and though it was decent. I can’t believe it’s worse than at other schools. I recommend getting a bike. The campus is expansive.

5

@bicoastalusa Like I said, it’s not bad, it’s just repetitive (menus sometimes repeat as often as 1 wk). College students love to complain about everything is all :slight_smile: It’s better than some schools, and not as good others.

6

Just an FYI, across El Camino Real (from Football stadium) there’s a nice one story commercial village of shops and restaurants called Town & Country Village. There are many nice slightly less expensive (than University) cafes, taco/burger-type and other restaurants. Some are real popular like Gotts, Sushi House, Village Cheese House, Tin Pot Cremery (have no idea why ice cream is so popular everywhere here, lines always), Kirk’s Steakburgers, and burritos and pizza too.

There’s no shortage of areas to visit locally, like California Avenue in midtown PA and Castro St. in Mountain View.

Weather is now low-to-mid 80’s.

7

Your weather announcement explains why ice cream is so popular. You wouldn’t expect it to be as popular at U Chicago which experiences cold temperatures for nearly half the year.

8

Mid 70’s last night. But I’m talking about in the winter too. Year round. I keep commenting to my family “why are there always lines at every ice cream joint.” Just amazes me. Another line I’m always repeating is “are they handing out $20 bills?”

9

@websensation, totally agreed. Accepted the offer before admit weekend . My D and I love the school however I will visit the campus only move in day and graduation day.
TOO HUGE. I don’t want to do it again , either . :slight_smile:

10

Lunch food at “Local Union 2476”, a local restaurant at the University Avenue area was terrible. Better food at Chipotle. Not worth the money. That was the only local restaurant I tried because didn’t have time. Back at home.

Seemed like my kid had a good time, which is all that matters at the end. Again, I felt that Stanford staff did have a good system in place to take care of our kids, which is all that matters for me and my wife.

At the end of the day, I felt there were opportunities at Stanford for various types of personalities to do ok and find his or her space or happiness with a decent amount of support, as long he or she is not a complete hermit. All students there seemed to me decent, and none seemed to give off bad vibes.

Hard to find parking spaces also. Restaurants are kinda expensive for students though. Frankly, there are better restaurants at cheaper places near where I live. “California Grill” food much better than most restaurant food there for me.

One suggestion to Stanford. Serve some nice food and wine to parents for FREE at least once. I mean, parents spend a lot of time and money to visit, so Stanford should serve a little better food imo at least at one event. Food served to parents at some events were not bad but were not good either.

11

Stanford did serve better food than usual for Admit weekend. The students look forward to this event every year because they know food quality goes up.

12

After two years there, my son still loves the food. There’s a lot of variety, even though some things (like chicken) can get repetitive. And there are special meals (on Mardi Gras, for example) that he’s raved about.

He has also never had a bike there and does fine without one. He just has to allow enough time to walk from one place to another. Some distances can take a while (20 minutes, maybe), but dealing with a bike can also take time and be a hassle.

13

My DD came home from admit weekend sunburned and much more enthusiastic about attending Stanford next year. She’d been a little underwhelmed by the kids she’d met at our local admit reception and was energized by connecting over the last few days with so many kids who share her interests.

She characterized the Casino and Zombies vs. Hogwarts events as ‘sort of lame,’ but loved the concerts and improv events. On the panels, she’d have liked to have heard from students with a broader range of interests – athletes, engineers, artists – like the students she met in the dorms and around campus who were really varied and incredibly friendly. Instead, the panels were ethnically diverse but dominated by social justice this and social justice that, which is fine as far as it goes but just a small piece of what people do there. She heard about the protest but said she was in an auxiliary viewing space and couldn’t see or hear it on the video feed. She also commented on the surprisingly high number of local students. Practically every panel had at least one person from the Bay Area, sometimes more, even though most admits were from other regions.

Overall, though, as I said, she returned feeling happy and fortunate to be going there next year.

14

@Planner, my son has also never had a bike there! This is his 5th year at Stanford finishing up a co-term and he has survived just fine. Yes, he does have to allow some extra time to get where he wants to go, but it really has not been a problem for him. He is not a bike rider and has never really had a desire to learn. He even lives slightly off-campus this year and has still managed.

15

@Era991 To clarify, I don’t mind college students protesting outside the building, but to come on stage and interrupt the Dean’s speech with chants is just rude, ineffective and undermined effectiveness of whatever protesting they were doing. I protested myself when I was in college against my university’s investing in South Africa. So I want to inform that I am not against protesting at all by students.

I would think that without a bike, classes one after another must have been near each other. I timed myself during the Admit Weekend, and sometimes I found that it took 14 minutes to go from Tressider area to let’s say Wilbur Hall. Otherwise, it takes less than 7 to 9 minutes to get around near Main Quad. Now, without a bike, you might get overrun by a bike rider if you are walking. Some students were whizzing by me on bikes. Lol A majority of bike riders were without helmets also. I could imagine some bike riders hitting walkers if they go fast. If you go slow or at medium pace, I can’t imagine getting into accidents though because campus is relatively flat, although there are slight uphills here and there, especially since the majority of campus doesn’t allow cars.

A biggest inconvenience of bike riding is, I would think, riding bike when it rains and making sure it doesn’t get stolen.

I would assume students leave their bikes outside their dorms mostly rather than bring them into their rooms because their rooms were not that spacious, right?

16

The bikes are always kept outside. They don’t get stolen if you buy a decent lock. Riding in the rain is a pain. But there had been a drought for six years prior to this year so it really wasn’t a problem I imagine.