<p>I was just reading through some reviews of the undergrad. education at stanford, and most of them were blatently and mockingly negative. Advising system, diversity, location, etc were all being bashed. So if there are so many horrible things about Stanford, why does anyone go there?</p>
<p>Students and alumni: Why did you pick Stanford? Was your experience there positive or negative; why?</p>
<p>what?????? where did you read the reviews, at the uc berkely website? stanford awesome. its one of the top universities in both undergrad and grad education. diversity? stanford's extremely diverse. if you want to go by race it has the highest hispanic population of any of the top schools in the country. <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/home/stanford/facts/undergraduate.html#profile%5B/url%5D">http://www.stanford.edu/home/stanford/facts/undergraduate.html#profile</a> its probably the most diverse top school. in the nation, by every standard (except in weather, in which case it's always nice and warm).</p>
<p>location. have you seen stanford? its beautiful. and its in cali. go tot the website and look at the pics. i'm gonna be a freshman and i've visited stanford twice and it was excellent. i can't really say anything bad about it. i can't even properly defend stanford because it defends itself. i can't believe anyone would think stanford is horrible. weird.</p>
<p>what reviews were you reading again?</p>
<p>studentsreview.com</p>
<p>Do any current students have any opinions?</p>
<p>haha. studentsreview.com is whack. look up harvard and look how it did. even worse than stanford. </p>
<p>you have to remember that this source is horrible. 52 students are on stanfords survey. 71 on harvards.</p>
<p>52 students out of the 13,000 that are currently going to stanford. how reliable is that going to be? and how do you know these people were/are actual students. i strongly suggest you don't go by this website because its not credible at all. and usually only people unsatisfied with a school would take the time to bash it.</p>
<p>That's very true.</p>
<p>I was just skimming through it and because i am interested in Stanford, I was suprised at how bad the reviews were.</p>
<p>But anyway...what are the GOOD things then?</p>
<p>the campus is one of the most beautiful campuses i've ever seen. excellent spanish style architecture. 2nd largest campus in the world, though the "main" campus is very close, so don't worry about walking 8 miles to class. the education speaks for itself. one of the top school in the nation for..everything. great school spirit and athletics. great research oppurtunities. all the professors i've met were extremely kind and helpful during admit weekend. small class sizes. quarter system so you have the oppurtunity to take more classes and experiment with things you might not be able to explore at a school with a semester system. more laid back atmosphere and attitude than other top schools. ivys are so cut throat and competitive. stanford's competitve of course, just not in the psychotic, obsessive way other schools are. </p>
<p>there's just so much that's great about stanford. you should def. visit.</p>
<p>i know...i really want to visit, but it's too far away</p>
<p>studentsreview . com was discussed in the old archived College Confidential discussion forum at </p>
<p>Since the above link might not work, you can get to the discussion by going to </p>
<p><a href="http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/%5B/url%5D">http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/</a></p>
<p>Then </p>
<p>Select "Individual Schools"
Select "US News Top 25"
Select "Stanford University"
On that page is the topic "Yet Another Reason to Love Stanford" (you'll have to use your web browser's "Find on this page"); it's about the 80th topic on that page or something.</p>
<p>Stanford is not bad at all. I don't understand why some people like to bash Stanford. </p>
<p>I did my master's degree there. I enjoyed my stay at Stanford tremendously. Everything is almost perfect there. At first, I thought that there would be snobs because everyone there was so bright. But then I found that they were very friendly and humble, on the whole. </p>
<p>There is great diversity too. I am from Singapore myself. And the weather is great. I did my undergrad in Hawaii and the weather at Stanford is cooler but just as nice.</p>
<p>yes stanford is terrible. No one should go to stanford!</p>
<p>LOL just kidding. Don't worry about studentsreview.com It is a bunch of ********, and not just for stanford, for most of the top schools.</p>
<p>I remember reading the reviews when trying to pick schools in April, they were awful. Not very reliable though since most of the reviews seem to be from students who had nothing better to do with their time than find faults in the school. It's probably their fault they had a bad time at Stanford - the college experience is what you make of it.</p>
<p>i really like stanford a lot, but, I have heard that the school is more focused on technology like computer science, etc. and not so muhc on liberal arts curriculum. is this true? is it at all similar to brown, which i really like.</p>
<p>haha ^^^that is so not true at all.</p>
<p>Stanford offers a specialized education with the liberal arts. You can be a technie or a fuzzie. The university is a research school so of course technology is important. But hey, at least it's not MIT. Stanford has some of the most diverse and interesting classes like Gay Autobiographies or Understanding the Welfare System. The humanities program that I am in called SLE (Structured Liberal Education) is a combination of comparative philosophy, historical and political thoughts, and literature. Like one of those "great books" classes, it's a blend of Yale's Directed Study and Columbia's core curriculum.</p>
<p>Yeah, Stanford is excellent in both the humanities and the sciences -- you might think of it as more "tech oriented" than the other top schools, but that's just because it's so <em>good</em> at tech stuff, not because it's <em>bad</em> at other things. The other reason you might think that is that Stanford emphasizes research and innovation and things of that nature -- but they do it in the humanities, too (like the Martin Luther King Jr. papers project, which a lot of my humanities-oriented acquaintances at Stanford think is really cool).</p>
<p>Here's a breakdown of the General Ed requirements:
-1 year (3 quarters) of Introduction to the Humanities
-2 quarters of general writing
-1 quarter or writing in your major
-2 quarters (1 each) of humanities and social sciences
-2 quarters (1 quarter in any two) of world cultures, american cultures, and gender studies
-3 quarters (1 each) of math, natural science, and technology</p>
<p>...which comes out to 10 quarters of "fuzzy" stuff and 3 of "techie" stuff.</p>
<p>(And I'd like to second astaticsoliloquy's praise of SLE, which I hope to be in as well)</p>
<p>"The humanities program that I am in called SLE (Structured Liberal Education) is a combination of comparative philosophy, historical and political thoughts, and literature. Like one of those "great books" classes, it's a blend of Yale's Directed Study and Columbia's core curriculum."</p>
<p>Ewww you're in SLE. Weirdo. (haha you'll see what I mean once you get on campus)</p>
<p>What I don't understand is what would be the symptoms of a tech emphasis? Humanities kids are and will always be the ones with small classes while techies get the giant lecture halls. Almost every department at Stanford has some nationally/internationally renowned professor. I can't see any way in which humanities are being shortchanged.</p>
<p>stanford must be so "bad" if more than 20,000 kids apply this year.</p>
<p>yea the title of this thread is retarded. I am sorry but it is obviously not "SO BAD".</p>
<p>Nevertheless, prospective students should check out the link in my earlier post (above), which referred to the discussion on the College Confidential archived boards at <a href="http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/messages/8/80946.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/messages/8/80946.html</a>. It's got information external to studentsreview.com. If your browser has problems with restricted cookies, follow the steps I wrote out earlier.</p>
<p>it's surely better than any community college :)</p>