*Official* Stanford REA 2015 Applicants' Discussion Thread

<p>^ I’ve actually never used Rosetta Stone, but from what I’ve heard it’s not a very good language learning resource… Chinese grammar is actually very easy. There’s no conjugation involved – it’s just a matter of saying the verb and then saying when the action took place, like “昨天” (yesterday) or “下个星期二” (next Tuesday). I think the hard part is the vocabulary… you have to really practice writing out the characters and sounding them out. Being a native speaker myself, I’m not aware of any REALLY helpful resources in regards to Mandarin since it was essentially handed to me when I was born lol. Good luck though :D</p>

<p>@ripemango</p>

<p>I started off German using Rosetta Stone, but it only takes you so far. You will need other resources.</p>

<p>From my experience, it is a great aid to start off, but that’s it.</p>

<p>I’d bought a Level, but after seeing how it worked I didn’t bother buying the later ones. For example, it shows the picture of a cat with headphones on, and gives a caption: Die Katze hoert zu.</p>

<p>I had no idea what the “zu” was doing at the end of the sentence, and I had to run off to a friend who knew better.</p>

<p>I’d say it’s great for building vocabulary, though.</p>

<p>And as for the incredibly complicated German grammar, and the ahem… <em>lovely</em> noun conjugation, it will simply make no sense at times unless you think really really hard. If you only use Rosetta Stone.</p>

<p>^ There is a lot of confusion in regards to German grammar… even the der/die/das thing is known to confuse native speakers! </p>

<p>My friend used Rosetta Stone for a while to start out with learning French, but he was really disappointed because it didn’t teach him any grammar or how to construct a sentence (basically, it was all a game of “click on the picture that matches the word”). I recommended him to use other resources :p</p>

<p>^</p>

<p>der/die/das… Although I know it quite well in German, in Hindi the gender gets utterly confusing. :S</p>

<p>hahaha… that is <em>almost</em> so true :stuck_out_tongue:
(you get to speak and type at times)</p>

<p>A friend of mine recommended “Tell me more” series (Tell Me More German, for eg)
but I haven’t tried it yet… </p>

<p>I recommend the wikipedia books on foreign language. They’re lovely.</p>

<p>^ Really? I love Wikipedia – especially looking over its weekly statistics and searching for the revision history of any given article, just to see the pranks that people might have pulled off while anonymously editing it – but I wasn’t aware that it had its own foreign language books! :D</p>

<p>sarbaraj- aap hindi mein baat kar sakte hain? :)</p>

<p>Je peux parler en francais. Mais seulement un peu. I forgot, you see. </p>

<p>Jason- cool video. </p>

<p>fledgling- I really want to learn German, Spanish and Mandarin. But Mandarin is supposed to be ridiculously tough.</p>

<p>kaira07, do you speak Hindi too? :slight_smile: And as for your comment regarding Mandarin, it’s not really so tough grammar-wise… the vocabulary is a pain though. You just have to remember all the strokes… but Chinese is a very beautiful/aesthetically pleasing language imo :stuck_out_tongue: I’ve recently taken an interest in calligraphy.</p>

<p>Yes Hindi is my native tongue! Though i speak English a lot more. My French was good once upon a time. </p>

<p>Calligraphy? That’s pretty cool. I took a course in it once.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>It is cool :stuck_out_tongue: And what do you mean about your French being good “once upon a time”? Aren’t you still taking French in school?</p>

<p>Unfortunately, in our school system, once you come to eleventh grade you only learn one language -English. :(</p>

<p>^ Oh… so you’re an international student?</p>

<p>Yes. That’s why i did Yale SCEA not Stanford. Yale’s need blind.</p>

<p>^ Oh… that makes sense now. :slight_smile: But in that case, why are you posting here? :p</p>

<p>@kaira07
haan. :)</p>

<p>And about the 11th grade thing, same here. But we didn’t get any foreign languages in lower schooling either. </p>

<p>@fledgling
that’s mean :p</p>

<p>BTW, need-blind or not, it is almost the same for international students… Comparing the acceptance rate, that is. Talking about need, Stanford also commits 100% of demonstrated need to all admitted applicants.</p>

<p>Yale gave away $5 million more than Stanford last year. But I think they also have more international applicants, so the percentages might even up.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Haha, yeah, in retrospect it doesn’t exactly sound very nice. I’m just curious as to why she’d be posting in this thread if she wasn’t applying here SCEA… didn’t mean it in a bad way at all :)</p>

<p>@fledgling</p>

<p>check out the former posts. People there simply aren’t interested.</p>

<p>^Exactly. And I’m doing RD.
Fledgling is mean. :stuck_out_tongue: I’m going to go away now.</p>

<p>What we have discussed/blabbered about till now v. 5</p>

<h1>Good lucks to everyone</h1>

<h1>Wulfran’s EC</h1>

<h1>fledgling’s CommonApp is complete!</h1>

<h1>3 Deadly Supplements</h1>

<h1>REA vs. RD Acceptance Rate</h1>

<h1>Music Supplement</h1>

<h1>Schools we may apply to in RD</h1>

<h1>Student Stats</h1>

<h1>Where we live</h1>

<h1>To submit or not to submit (way before the deadline)</h1>

<h1>Yale Wars v 2… still to catch up</h1>

<h1>Activities Section too small</h1>

<h1>The Recommendation</h1>

<h1>Resume (DON’T attach)</h1>

<h1>Stanford bipolar syndrome hits fledgling, Jasonvdm and sarbaraj101</h1>

<h1>Languages: Rosetta Stone, Wikibooks</h1>

<h1>fledgling’s post; kaira07’s anger :p</h1>

<p>Sarbaraj- I know they meet demonstrated need of admits, but just to be safe, I’d rather go with the need blind school.</p>

<p>^</p>

<p>ur choice :)</p>

<h1>300… yay :D</h1>

<p>BTW, anyone up for MSN?</p>