<p>Congratulations to everyone who got into Stanford! I hope to see many of you here. If you have any questions before making your decision, I might be able to answer them.</p>
<p>Please don’t judge me 
I am sane.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>What is the success rate of sneaking pets into Stanford? Like when do they check?</p></li>
<li><p>Can you stay at Stanford during the summer? I want to get an internship there for the summer, but don’t know if I can find a place to stay or as a matter of fact, if I can even get an internship lol. </p></li>
<li><p>What is the best thing about Stanford? In your opinion.</p></li>
<li><p>What is the worst thing about Stanford? In your opinion. </p></li>
<li><p>Do most people eat out or make their food at Stanford? During the times I’m there, there’s only been a small gathering of restaurants. Do you get tired of the food often? </p></li>
<li><p>How far away are student dorms from classes?</p></li>
<li><p>What’s your main mode of transportation? I’ve seen a lot of bicycles?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Sorry for my weird questions. Super excited though. If you have any deep dark things you want to tell me about for Stanford, please do too :)</p>
<p>Is the workload overwhelming? And is there grade inflation/deflation?</p>
<p>My friend attends Stanford but just finished the first two quarters so correct me if your experience is different. The quarter system is faced paced so not much down time. But the advantage is the ablility to take more classes. Bikes are the main mode of transport making a 5-10 minute ride to class preferable over a 10-20 min walk. The campus is flat but spread out. The people are awesome and very friendly. Dorm food is fine and you can mix things up by eating at different dining halls. Arillaga has healthy choices others have their specialties such as standard fare at Stern, Asian choices at Wilbur and some special themed nights. At all colleges dining hall food can get repetitive so you can also do late night snacks and use meal plan dollars at a few Stanford owned cafes. You are correct, there is a dearth of restaurants on campus- Just Subway and Panda. But others a medium bike ride away.</p>
<p>Hope that helps. Congratulation and enjoy Stanford!</p>
<p>Tony that’s so great you are willing to take Stanford questions. That shows just how friendly Stanford students are! Any advice for doing well in math 51?</p>
<p>@Wendeli:
- I don’t know, but I wouldn’t try my luck. They definitely check during winter break (they once complained that I was using a thumbtack to attach a calendar to the wall but didn’t fine me), but it’s not like you would leave your pet in your dorm over break. So I’m not sure.
- Yes, Stanford offers summer housing to students.
- Location. It’s easy to find jobs and internships (especially tech-related) in the Bay Area, that often pay $100K+ right out of college. Plus it’s convenient to get to grocery stores, malls, and restaurants all within 5 miles by bike. It also has great weather. I’m from SoCal, which I find slightly too hot in the summer and too dry in the winter. Stanford gets a decent but not excessive amount of rain in the winter, and is about 5 degrees colder than SoCal year-round.
- The administration has been a bit out of touch with students lately. They’ve enacted a bunch of changes (nothing major) that many students are displeased with, such as contracting an outside company to manage the food trucks, ending the student-run Suites dining program, and proposing to ban double-booking classes (i.e. classes that occur at the same time).
- People eat at dining halls the majority of the time. Ricker is the best IMO; they have dim sum on Sunday and Indian food on Thursday (not sure if this will still be the case next year). Wilbur is also pretty good, with pho (a Vietnamese noodle broth) every day.
- On average, 0.5 mi to 1 mi.
- Bikes are near-mandatory. You can buy bikes at the campus bike shop or bring your own bike. There are also places in the Bay Area. I got mine in Redwood City, though there are bike shops in Palo Alto and Menlo Park (albeit more expensive). With a bike, you will almost never need a car, and if you do, there’s an hour-based rental program called Zipcar.</p>
<p>@fortheluvofprada: There’s a lot of work due to the quarter system. As for grade inflation, for a typical intro class I’d say there’s 10% A (or sometimes A+), 20% A-, 30% B+, 20% B, 10% B-, and 10% C+ or below. For a more advanced class, the grading is a bit more lenient, with somewhere around 10% A+, 30% A, 20% A-, 30% B+, and 10% B or below.</p>
<p>@foreveroptimist: The Stanford University Mathematical Organization (SUMO) offers tutoring Monday and Wednesday nights to all students in the MATH 50 series, including 51, 52, and 53.</p>
<p>What is the residential system like? How are the dorms?</p>
<p>@tony1337</p>
<p>do you have any idea how lenient Stanford is on transfer credits, do they easily accept college work from a community college or is it a battle? I know there is a cap on AP+transfer credits.</p>
<p>With so many people taking AP credits and having some previous college work, do people try to get Sophomore standing right away or try to graduate early?</p>
<p>@AustroHungarian:
Stanford is really big, so there’s enough on-campus housing for everyone. About 96% of undergrads live on campus. Freshmen fill out their preferences in June before school starts. For upperclassmen, there is something called the draw system. Basically, students are assigned numbers between 1 and 3000 indicating their order of precedence in choosing their housing. The person with number 1 gets first pick, etc., though in practice it’s all electronic, so you just submit your preferences, get a draw number, and get assigned a dorm. There are three tiers that you can use: 1, 2, and 3, and you use each of them once. Tier 1 gets you a number from 1 to 1000, tier 2 gets 1001 to 2000, and tier 3 gets 2001 to 3000. (In case you were wondering why the math doesn’t add up, i.e. there are 7000 undergrads of which 96% live on campus, but only 3000 numbers, people can choose to draw together, with the same number, to guarantee that they get put in the same housing.)</p>
<p>I’ll give you a tour of the dorms that take freshmen, from west to east.
- At the very west we have Governor’s Corner, which includes Sterling Quad and the Suites. The only freshman dorm there is Freshman-Sophomore College (FroSoCo) in Sterling Quad. I lived there for two years, and enjoyed it very much. It tends to be more diverse than other places and also have more techie people. Another really nice feature is two-room doubles, where you share an outer door with your roommate but each of you has a separate room. It’s not exactly a suite; you enter the outer room to get into the inner room. This way, you can study with the light on without disturbing your sleeping roommate. You also get an awesome dining hall, Ricker.
- Next we have Lagunita (Lag). There are two four-class dorms, two three-class dorms with single-gender floors, and Ujamaa (African-American theme). I’m living in one of the four-class dorms right now. Definitely consider this place in your upperclassman years, where you can get huge singles with a tier 1 or, often, with a tier 2. For freshmen, you’ll have to live in a triple (though it’s quite large).
- Then there is Roble, four-class dorm, pretty similar to Lag.
- Now we’re at the center of campus.
- A little to the south is Florence Moore Hall (FloMo), which is on a hill. It has a bad reputation among upperclassmen, but is great for freshmen. The food is excellent here as well.
- Further to the east is Stern, which has six all-freshmen dorms as well as Casa Zapata, a Latino-themed dorm. Here there are one-room doubles, as in the conventional one room, two people inside.
- Finally there is Wilbur, which has six all-freshmen dorms as well as Okada, an Asian-themed dorm. This has one-room doubles as well.</p>
<p>@collegedad2013:</p>
<p>I haven’t taken any community college classes in high school, so I don’t know. However, I have transferred AP credits, which is very easy and free to do (assuming your kid takes at least one AP test this May). Before taking the test, s/he can list a school to send results to. College Board and Stanford will take it from there on. You can transfer up to 45 credits from AP or community college. The list of all accepted tests is here: [AP</a> Credit Chart | Student Affairs](<a href=“http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/registrar/students/ap-charts]AP”>http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/registrar/students/ap-charts).</p>
<p>Sophomore standing doesn’t really mean anything, and gives you no advantages. You still can’t have a car on campus as a freshman regardless of standing, and you don’t need sophomore standing to declare a major.</p>
<p>Most people love it so much here that they stay for all four years even if they can graduate early. I could graduate this spring as a junior if I wanted to, but I’m staying. This also allows students to enter tracks like double major, major/minor, honors, and coterm (I’ll explain the last two). In an honors program, you spend much of your senior year working on a thesis, allowing you to do in-depth research in your field. A coterm (short for coterminal) program is a five-year program that enables you to get both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree, which can be in the same department or different departments. Some people complete it in four years. (I am coterming in math and computer science and plan to finish in four years.)</p>
<p>Awesome, thank you Tony! You are giving great advice about Stanford. Go Cardinal!</p>
<p>Do you mind sharing your major and your experience I that dept. Also how easy is it to get research as an undergrad or internship?</p>
<p>hi - can’t seem to find this stat - but do you know what the acceptance rate from stanford undergrad to med schools is?</p>
<p>Tony1337, I see that you mentioned you are coterming in math and CS. What was your work load like? Are there any clubs or activities you enjoyed/recommend?
Do you know your plans after graduation? Best wishes with everything!</p>
<p>How fast was your admissions packet delivered ?</p>
<ol>
<li>What is the student personality in general? (I know this is a hard question).</li>
<li>How do students interact with each other? Are they willing to just sit down and work on homework together, or is it an every man for himself type of school?</li>
<li>How big are intro classes? Are they all taught by professors?</li>
<li>Is there a definite sorority/fraternity presence on campus? I know about 25% of students are in one, and (as of right now) I’m not too fond of Greek life.</li>
<li>How accessible are professors?</li>
<li>Is it easy to leave the campus? I remember when I visited, I could not find my way around at all.</li>
</ol>
<p>That’s all for about now, thanks so much!</p>
<p>@Tony1337</p>
<p>Thanks for doing this!</p>
<p>Question on the language requirement.
I know it is one year, but I was wondering how difficult it is. How does that one year compare to a high school language class? My DS took 3 years Spanish but was not very proficient.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Do you know anyone who has done a double major and a minor at Stanford? Did that person have to sacrifice sleep and a social life?</p>
<p>@foreveroptimist: Depends on the field. I only know about opportunities that concern me. For math, there is a program called SURIM ([Stanford</a> Undergraduate Research Institute in Mathematics](<a href=“http://math.stanford.edu/~surim/]Stanford”>http://math.stanford.edu/~surim/)), but you can also look at REUs ([US</a> NSF - REU - List Result](<a href=“Search Results for REU Sites | NSF - National Science Foundation”>REU Sites | NSF - National Science Foundation)) if you want to do research at another university. For computer science, there is CURIS for on-campus research ([Stanford</a> CURIS](<a href=“CURIS”>http://curis.stanford.edu/)), or you can do an internship at Google, Facebook, Palantir, Dropbox, etc. There is always the option of finance for quantitatively inclined people, of course. Each program by itself is pretty difficult to get into (though significantly less difficult for Stanford students), but if you apply to several, you will almost certainly get into at least one.</p>
<p>@verylumpy: I don’t know. I’m not a bio person.</p>
<p>@foreveroptimist: I take anywhere between 15 and 20 units a quarter. If you love math, I’d highly recommend Stanford University Mathematical Organization (SUMO). Not sure what I want to do after graduation, but probably software, finance, or academia.</p>