Current Student...ask Away

<p>How hard is it to walk on to a Varsity sport? (Football in particular. Do you know of anyone who has walked-on?) I'm guessin' you have to make it to Summer Camp if you want to walk-on...</p>

<p>I have a relative who walked on to football at Brown, but I'll bet it doesn't happen at Stanford.</p>

<p>I know that there are students who walk on sports where most players are recruited. I'm not sure how difficult it would be to walk on the football team in particular. If you've played for a while and you're very good it's possible that it wouldn't be that difficult.</p>

<p>it's pretty impossible to walk onto most sports at stanford. i know someone who walked onto the baseball team, but they are 4 string and didn't play at, and it's baseball, meaning more players needed (to do absolutely nothing). there are 105 players on the football team, 85 on scholarship, so it's pretty big. maybe if you are really good, you could walk on. i'd say that and baseball are the "easiest" to walk onto.</p>

<p>oh, and crew is always in need of walk ons, so i guess that's the only sport that is actually easy to walk onto.</p>

<ol>
<li>How many hours do you guys work in a week? Do any of you work more than you need to?</li>
<li>What can I do at Stanford if I don't want to go home for the summer? Can I do something during this summer, i.e. before freshman year?</li>
</ol>

<p>Thanks for all your help. I really appreciate you taking the time out to answer my (silly) questions! :)</p>

<p>just a general Q:
have any of you had to fight for a class you wanted - i.e. community-college things like showing up at a full class and begging the professor to add you, or can you always get the classes you want?</p>

<p>and also, how many people were in your largest class so far?</p>

<p>I think I probably end up studying somewhere around 30-40 hours/week. On one hand that feels like a LOT of time, but on the other hand this quarter I've been doing little more than eating, sleeping, and studying. That's what happens when you take 60 series physics and take classes/audit classes that add up to more than 20 units. </p>

<p>If you are here for the summer you could take classes or do research. You might be able to take classes on campus the summer before freshman year, doing research is probably more difficult to set up. You could probably also work somewhere on campus doing... something. There are a bunch of summer program plus I'm sure there's a bunch of administrative work/making phone calls/sending out tons of mail/etc. that needs to be done. </p>

<p>You can pretty much always get the classes you want. You do have to apply for the intro seminars. If you don't get it, if you go the first day of class there's a chance that you'll be able to get into the class anyway so it's worth a shot. Other than that, I've never heard of people having problems (with the possible exception of activity classes like Social Dance). </p>

<p>My largest class so far was without a doubt IHUM lectures which probably had about 150 students. The size of the classes really isn't a problem. The big lectures are, well, lectures so you wouldn't get to ask a whole bunch of questions anyway. (If you insist upon it you still could, you might upset a bunch of your classmates though) In my math and physics classes there have been about 40 students which is a good number. You can still ask questions at any time, in fact every 10 minutes or so the profs usually check to see if there are any questions. The IHUM seminars and PWR classes each have about 15 students which is small enough that you can have discussions and get lots of feedback from your TFs/profs. I went to a very small high school where I had many small classes and was worried that I wouldn't like the large classes as much. It isn't a problem at all. It is kinda weird for me to walk by my profs and realize that they probably don't even recognize that I'm their student. (If you take the initiative you can actually get to know profs pretty well, they are very welcoming and are happy to answer questions during office hours, I just haven't really taken advantage of that yet)</p>

<p>


Sorry. I meant work as in working in a job.</p>

<p>


That's quite encouraging. I would prefer taking some classes this summer...and then maybe doing research next summer. I've never had any exposure to research before so I'm just a bit hesitant. Don't wanna make a bad first impression at Stanford ;)</p>

<p>I'm guessing Admit Weekend is the right time to find out about this stuff.</p>

<p>Viz classes:
I am currently in two classes with five students or fewer. My philosophy intro sem has three students and my german literature course has five. Both are absolutely wonderful. In fact, there's little point to office hours because you can just grab the prof before or after class.</p>

<p>Profs are also quite amazing about research. i took an intro sem with a poli sci professor who is one of the leaders in his field (David Laitin, ethnic and civil conflict) and I am now doing paid research with him. I don't know whether my professor represents the standard, but he is incredibly flexible. He tells us to take our time with our work and explore what may look like dead ends for the sake of pedagogical advancement. On his dollar :).</p>

<p>I will echo marlgirl in warning you that it's ALL TOO EASY to wayyy overload yourself. You think, 'oh, twenty units - that's not so bad' and can find yourself in pretty hot water. But that is a fact of life in college:
just as buffet dineries make it all too easy to load up on food and gaint the freshman fifteen, so an acadamic and extra-curricular smorgasboard makes it all too easy to overload.</p>

<p>


Somebody told me that Stanford has a big DC++ hub...they could be wrong though.</p>

<p>


How many units should I take in my first quarter (ideally speaking)?</p>

<p>You need 180 units to graduate, so the normal pace is 15 units per quarter. It depends on the classes you're taking also. The Physics 60 sequence, the Math 50 sequence, and Chem 31X are some of the more demanding classes than freshmen often take.</p>

<p>Asaatvik,
there's no clear number. It depends first of all on how much time you plan to have - how many extracurricular acitivities/clubs/sport will you be involved in, and of course on the courses themselves. You could take a 20 unit schedule as follows:
IHum, PWR, Math 51, Physics 60s and you would DIE.
Or you could take SLE, Math51, A 5 unit introsem and an acitivity class and do just well (as I did)... So it's not unequivocally true that 20 units kills...</p>

<p>Because you will soon discover that the unit numbers are often arbtirary. Just about every 3-unit upper division math or engineering course will require many times more work than your 5-unit IHum. Etc... Just be reasonable, and err on the side of caution the first quarter.</p>

<p>Actually lki, to be honest I don't think IHUM, PWR, Math 50's and Physics 60's would be that hard. First of all, PWR is only 3 units, not 5, and IHUM can be really easy or really hard depending on the professor. If the person likes math and science it would certainly be difficult, but doable. </p>

<p>I took 20 units (albeit 6 of them were introsems) and I was fine my first quarter.</p>

<p>Doesn't anyone take Math 41, 42? You guys keep talking about the 50 series...</p>

<p>I would say the majority of students have credit for AP Calculus, so they'd take the 50 series instead of 41 and 42. There's also the 19, 20, 21 sequence which covers the 41, 42 material in 3 quarters.</p>

<p>Do you use a student discount card or something? Like these:
<a href="http://www.studentadvantage.com/discountcard/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.studentadvantage.com/discountcard/&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.isic.org/sisp/index.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.isic.org/sisp/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Thanks</p>

<p>IHUM, PWR, Math 51, and 60 series physics would be quite difficult the first quarter. This quarter I have IHUM, PWR, Math 52, and 60 series physics and although I'm not dying I hardly have any free time. PWR is 4 units but far more work than IHUM which is 5 units. 60 series physics is 4 units but more work than IHUM and Math 52 combined (that'd be 10 units).</p>

<p>I know we've already talked about housing a lot, but I was wondering if people could share there opinions on singles vs. doubles/triples/quads. Do we even get a choice as freshmen?</p>

<p>I don't really have any opinions on single/double/triple/quad, as I have only been able to experience living in a double. You don't get a choice as a freshman, though. Chances are you'll get a double. Some freshmen will live in Branner and get triples; some will get (two-room) quads in Roble. There are also a few one-room quads in FloMo. (From what I'm told, they're very careful about who they put there, so if you get a one-room quad, you'll probably love your roommates.) Maybe two or three lucky freshmen will get singles. I know there's at least one in J-Ro.</p>