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This is excellent to hear! Pretty much the only basis for my interest in Stanford is a great experience I had several weeks ago at an academic conference which featured quite a few Stanford professors, phd students, and grad students.</p>
<p>I am assuming you are a University of Chicago student or alum…I recently had the pleasure of attending one of Professor W.J.T. Mitchell’s lectures on the Abu Graihb photographs (and I was lucky enough to have the closing comment :P). Furthermore, I greatly enjoyed UChicago’s high school Model UN conference the two times I attended, especially the incredible sense of humor of the college students running the committees. The University of Chicago would be a candidate for ED were it not for its location. It’s actually the only school in the midwest to which I am applying. Although I am sure the south side of Chicago would be a new living environment, I am somewhat eager to discover a new region of the country since I’ve had little to no substantial traveling/vacation experiences.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I would still love to go to UChicago. And as money dictates where I go to school more than location, UChicago is still one of my top choices being in such close proximity (just a few CTA train rides away). </p>
<p>Thanks very much for the insights unalove (and everyone else, this post was more directed toward her post)!</p>
<p>One last question. I should first clarify that I do not expect to get into Stanford, Columbia, or Chicago. It’s somewhat silly to be discussing this when the odds are astronomical, which is somewhat what this next question deals with. I’ve taken the SAT twice: once in May and once in June. I did dreadful on the May test date as I had gotten back from a track meet at 11 the night before and received very little sleep. Therefore, I immediately signed up for the June SAT test date. All of my scores went up for the June testing (150+), but I know I can do better if I get the chance to do a little prep (review arcane math and grammar rules). Additionally, odds are that my score will go up for at least one of the sections since June was in a sense my first “true” sitting of the test. Schools advise not to apply ED/EA if your application is not completely ready. Should I try to improve M-750, CR-730, W-710 and just apply RD only? Or will Stanford overlook slightly low scores for SCEA?</p>
<p>Once again, thank you everyone so much for the insights, links (kyledavid80), and advice.</p>