My vote is for Stanford. It’s a great deal to have a list of college admissions that are T10s under your sleeves now. She has rocked it. Looking forward to hear what you finally chose.
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Thank you.
Any tips? Was accepted to MIT and Stanford and can’t make a decision. Very similar aid and looking to study Finance/Economics in most likelihood. Thank you!
Tour both if you can. One of D’s friend is admitted to both, she is attending CPW at MIT campus next week followed by Stanford’s admitted students days later.
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If Stanford is holding in-person admit weekend I’d strongly recommend attending. Great information for students and parents and great experience for students.
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Is Stanford doing something for admitted students other than the weekend at the end of April? Unfortunately my daughter has a competition that weekend so we’re hoping there may be some events for admitted students earlier, even if less formal/comprehensive. I don’t see anything online other than the virtual events and in-person end of April weekend though.
It looks like there will be many virtual events throughout the month leading up to the in-person event the last weekend of April, which appears to be the only non-virtual admitted student event. But if you are able to, I highly recommend going to the campus anytime this month and taking a self-guided tour. It’s a beautiful campus and, I hope, you’ll get a good sense of it. There are always a lot of people strolling around, students hanging out in the sun, playing basketball, biking. During the week, current students staff a table at the Visitor Center doors from 9:00am-1:30pm. More info here: https://visit.stanford.edu/
Enjoy!
Just booked flights to go during admitted student days for my son and spouse.
Son is deciding between Princeton and Stanford. Hope the decision is clear after these visits.
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Two great schools, two beautiful campuses, likely impossible to go wrong!
Congratulations to your son!
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Thanks! Did not want him to go so far (we are on the east coast), but have gotten over it and just want him to pick the one that feels right to him.
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I hear you! We started off the process hoping our son would stay on the West Coast, then, ugh, we couldn’t not let him apply back east! Grateful Stanford was his top choice; he was happy, as were we, to cancel our plans to tour accepted east coast schools when he got the Stanford nod on Friday. I have to warn you—while Harvard in the springtime is a lovely place, Stanford in springtime feels magical! California sun is enticing!
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@Zacharyjones2003 @ss2022 @JMXC21
My D is a Junior at Stanford and loves it there. She had a number of friends deciding between Harvard and Stanford or Princeton and Stanford. Only one ended up at Harvard. Stanford Admit Weekend sealed the deal for her. Her final three were Stanford, Princeton and Rice. I hope this year’s admit class gets to have the full Admit Weekend experience. The other things that made a difference to her: the overall “super smart/interesting/but still incredibly NICE and KIND people” vibe, the more collaborative feel v. Princeton, and the weather. Feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions.
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Thank you! And congrats to your son!
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Thank you so much! Will be sure to reach out!
My son is also torn between Harvard and Stanford. We plan to go to the admitted days for both (and also to Yale as they are paying for him). Stanford is on 28-30 April - is not it too close to decision day. How will somebody decide, maybe we’ll still be on the plane coming back home on the 1st May.
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You may want to double and triple check to be sure, but I think that since May 1 is on a Sunday, Stanford’s decision day is Monday May 2.
I agree, it is a short turnaround time. It is going to be a tough decision, but things were clearer for my D after attending the admit events. From what I have seen, Stanford’s Admit Weekend is always the very last weekend before National Decision Day. I guess Stanford wants to be fresh on your mind when making the decision! There were some things that helped differentiate each school. For her, Stanford had terrific engineering plus the ability (and space in your schedule) to easily take classes in a wide range of pursuits outside the engineering school. She is very “both brained”—an engineering student who also loves liberal arts. It was also a draw that it had big D1 sports. Her high school did not have football, and she has really enjoyed the big game spirit around so many excellent Stanford Athletics teams and being on Axe Comm. The weather was also a big draw. Funny not so funny story, but on her way to Cornell Admit Diversity Hosting, she and two other girls from Texas got stranded in the Chicago airport due to a snowstorm in Syracuse. It was a fiasco because she was still 17 and they could not rent a hotel room in her name. They got there a day late and very snowy road ride in a van from the Syracuse airport. The difficult travel to get there and being snowed in (in April) sealed Cornell’s fate.
In our experience, March and April as a whole were a blur of one event after another once all the decision were out—March was Mosaic Weekend at Vanderbilt, SMU President’s Scholar finalist weekend, and University of Texas Dedman Scholars finalist weekend, then in April, Princeton Admit Days, Cornell Diversity Hosting for admits, and finally Stanford Admit Weekend. She probably would not have gone to the March events had she known that she would get in to Princeton and Stanford and gotten a full free ride offer from Rice. Nonetheless, maybe all of that “trying on the shoes” was good, because when she got to Stanford, the shoe fit. She had loved Rice for a long time and it WAS hard to turn down the full ride (she waited until 2:00am on National Decision Day to finally pull the trigger), but in the end, Stanford was the best fit for her.
I hope this helps in some small way, and I hope your child gets that “right fit” feeling.
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My D was admitted in 2019, pre-COVID, so I can’t say for sure if this will happen this year and I can’t say if there will be one in your area, but Stanford hosted several Regional admitted student receptions. It was a lovely opportunity for the admitted students in our area to meet each other and Alumni at the beautiful home of an alum. Their Regional Admissions Officer was there too to answer questions.
Thanks so much! If something like that is offered we’ll definitely go. In the meantime I’m working on bending the time-space continuum to see if she can get out there for the actual admitted student event. 
Is your daughter enjoying it/happy with her choice?
Congratulations!
I thought you had to withdraw the applications once you were accepted by universities you applied early? Did I miss anything? Thanks.
You’re thinking of ED (Early Decision). REA is Restricted Early Action; if you apply under REA, you can’t apply to any other private college under their Early Action, Restrictive Early Action, Early Decision, or Early Notification plan. You can still apply to public universities as long as it’s not under an early binding plan and you can apply to any other college RD (Regular Decision). At Stanford, at least, if you are deferred from REA to the RD round, you may apply to another school during ED2.