Stanford Transfer Applicants 2009

Transfer Students
701

<p>Wow this message board gets pretty juicy, doesn’t it?!</p>

<p>For those who are curious about why a non-traditional student would find acceptance when others would not, let me just say that I’m as shocked as any of you. I do NOT have perfect SAT’s- though my reading score was 780, my math was abysmal to the point where I can’t even bring my fingers to type it in here. I have about a 3.75 GPA from a community college where I have been taking a range of courses over the past two years- from African Art to Physics to Spanish. I am entering Stanford as an Art History major/Communication minor.</p>

<p>I dropped out of high school at age 15 because of several factors: I was the victim of a pretty atrocious violent crime, I had an unstable home life, I developed drug addictions in order to cope, and I finally decided to leave home and move to NYC to live on my own at that very young age. I went to a good public high school, and was smart, but life threw a bunch of difficulties my way and I dealt with them in the way that I knew how at the time, like SO MANY young people have to do. I went to 10 schools by the time I was 15, and lived in countless apartments in three of the largest cities in the country. Because I was a child, all of those circumstances were out of my control.</p>

<p>However, if you ask me why I got accepted to Stanford when thousands of hard-working kids with 4.0’s and years of academic prep did not- it is because I made the most out of the crappy circumstances I had in life. I did not go to college (and my mom had been a high school dropout too so it wasn’t a big deal,) but I managed to talk my way into some great jobs. I had never taken an English or journalism class, but I have published articles and essays in books, newspapers, and magazines. I did not go to film school, and could not even afford to purchase my own video camera, but I co-produced a documentary that showed at film festivals worldwide.</p>

<p>The point here is this: you DO NOT NEED to go to the “world’s best college” or whatever in order to live a fulfilling and productive life. You can teach YOURSELF about Noam Chompsky’s theories, how to play guitar, how to publish a zine or an article in the paper. You can start your own business, you can get married, you can get involved in an inner-city organization that helps people in need, you can discover punk rock or gay culture or feminism and it could rock your world, you can decide that you want to change everything and be an artist when you’re 60 years old. Everything has been done before, and everything is possible. Going to Stanford might be necessary if you want to be President of the United States, but that’s about it.</p>

<p>That said, I do feel very lucky to have been given the opportunity to go, and for free. Stanford’s policies on diversity and need-blind tuition assistance are really wonderful and fair, and I feel honored with the chance to get a super high-quality education at a respected school. But if I had been rejected, you know what? I wouldn’t have given a ****. Seriously. Because there is a whole gigantic world out there full of worthy and interesting people who could not care less whether or not you even went to college at all, much less if you went to a “top tier” university. And you know what else? I don’t regret dropping out of high school and waiting until I was 30 to go to college. Because in all those years, I LIVED. I went to Europe, I was in a band, I lived in activist communes and on women’s land, I worked every sucky minimum wage job you can think of- and now I know what REAL LIFE is like, for the majority of the people out there. In fact, to all the kids who have done nothing but work so so so hard all their lives in school, my advice would be to take a break. And live. You might not even know what you’re missing.</p>

<p>I hope that this letter helps someone feel better about their rejection email, and helps put things in perspective. I know it’s hard when you work towards something for years, but in the long run- you’re not screwed, and it WILL NOT make or break your chances in life. If anything, taking a break from school and devoting some time to participation in the everyday world might actually help your chances of acceptance to a fancy institution down the line. That’s just my opinion…</p>

<p>Good luck to everyone!</p>

702

<p>lion, i wanted to say i’m very sorry about what happened to you and being singled out.
however, i saw that representative from Stanford did post in a couple of the threads about the login and i gotta say, you kind of made some bad moves:

  1. this is a public forum, you don’t even have to be a member to post here.
  2. you made so many posts in that forum and i’m not sure if you included the info that you said in your app (about your father) on the board, but it may have been easier to see which one you were. (After all, there were only 23…)</p>

<p>i would have to say it was unfair, but you know what they say, “curiosity killed the cat.”</p>

<p>i would be interested as well as a supporter if you continued a discussion with stanford about maybe a way to work this out. (if there is…)</p>

703

<p>You should have known that hacking into Stanford’s computer system was wrong. You’re old enough to know better. I don’t believe for one minute that you thought it was OK. Stanford not only has the right to factor in student behavior outside of what is provided in the actual application material, they have an obligation to do so.</p>

<p>I’m not going to reread anything, I’ve spent about an hour with this thread and have found it curiously fascinating. The idea that someone told you outright that you were one of the 23 transfer applicants admitted is not something that actually happened. My understanding is that no one explicitly said that to you, it is something you inferred and that is not the same thing.</p>

<p>I too will try to stop writing. But like any addict there might be a next time.</p>

704

<p>"I too will try to stop writing. But like any addict there might be a next time. "</p>

<p>~hilarious</p>

705

<p>Pea, I have followed this thread, and it was mentioned numerous times that the SunetID thing worked for lionthreelion, and hence it’s obvious that he WAS accepted, it’s not an inference by any means (Stanford uploads the IDs and private info of admitted students to the Sunet thing, rejected people and waitlistees do not get access there, as it has been used for past 2 years and is clearly known). Moreover, this was used for the past two years and Stanford didn’t do anything, so majority of the people accepted this as a no-big-deal way to check for status. No one ‘hacked’ into Stanford’s system - lion and other people just typed in their IDs to see if the thing even works – technically, Stanford is supposed to upload the IDs after or right on time when the acceptances are sent. They were uploaded earlier, at least for last two years, a number of people have been checking their decisions this way, and I am pretty sure Stanford would have noticed it earlier.</p>

706

<p>we should all move on.
the college admission process is entirely opaque and subjective. if you think that’s cruel, think of what harvard did to me and 1,300 others last year - our applications were thrown out even before they were read. and i didn’t think we were in any way responsible for the overcrowded housing issue at harvard.</p>

707

<p>oh yea. i was one of the harvard applicants. i had 2 letters of recommendation from tenured professors at the grad school level within harvard, and didn’t even get a chance.</p>

<p>liontreelion. no good can come out of pursuing this. just enjoy northwestern. you’ve said on this thread before that you only applied to stanford because you liked northwestern so much, and stanford was the only school that was going to make you happi-ER. thus, you are already happy at northwestern. maybe this is a blessing in disguise and you get to develop solid friendships with your classmates and professors, resulting in better recommendations for grad school. the bottom line was statistically speaking you didn’t expect to get into stanford from the beginning. you planned to stay at northwestern just in case. you should follow your original plan.</p>

708

<p>I work in computers. Going by the SUNet trick to prove that liontree was accepted is not proof to me. It was a trick that seemed to be reliable but it doesn’t prove anything to me. For instance, a computer system that works one way one year might be changed to work another way the next year. No one came out and told liontree that he was admitted either.</p>

<p>liontrree might have been accepted, this all might have played out like he thinks, that may be how it happened. But that is not clear to me. Only 23 students were accepted, he might not have been one of them. Going to the Stanford’s system and gaining access without permission is hacking into it. The one mitigating factor in my mind is that no one was trying to access other applicants information, just their own.</p>

709

<p>oh another possibility for why you were singled out: maybe you repeated logged into SUnet in disbelief after getting in, and tried to fiddle around with the various buttons, whereas other applicants either logged in and were rejected and stopped, or they logged in to see it once.</p>

710

<p>I have to jump in here - I’ve seen numerous times people saying that since people have done this before and Stanford has not said anything that it must be ok. Well if you look at the posts from the freshmen decisions this spring, they posted the very same warning but no one took it seriously (below). Even if you didn’t believe it was actually from Stanford, wouldn’t you start thinking MAYBE it was wrong?! If you didn’t know it was wrong - YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN. </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/681746-important-message-dean-admission-financial-aid.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/681746-important-message-dean-admission-financial-aid.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

711

<p>LOL, the fact that “albaniankeeper” has only one post and created his username just to respond to 48th page of this thread, for some reason seems fishy to me. </p>

<p>Just an ~observation.</p>

712

<p>wahoomb, just as nahs I popped it to write a message, I have been reading up until now.</p>

<p>@ nahs, I couldn’t find that message on the website. Could you provide a link? If Stanford knew that students tried to access their decisions before, then why not close the loophole? And no one from the regular decision pool got punished (if that message is legitimate that is, because I could not find it on the website). And okay, it was wrong, we got it, why punish a student who probably didn’t see that warning (the lion is a transfer applicant), and disregard anyone else who used the loophole?</p>

713

<p>@albanian, the link to the posting from the RD pool is in my last post; the new warning message had a link to a similiar message on the Stanford website for “verification” (probably because no one believed the last warning was real). The website posting is gone now - presumably because they have released all their decisions and there’s no need for it anymore? Last time no one believed it was real and even made fun for a grammatical error - this time they fixed the grammar and actually took action!</p>

714

<p>nahs, the old message (<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/681746-important-message-dean-admission-financial-aid.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/681746-important-message-dean-admission-financial-aid.html&lt;/a&gt;) did not have a link to Stanford’s website, so no one took it seriously. The new one, on the contrary, did. The second thing is, as I said, no one got punished from RD pool even for checking AFTER this message was released. The lion is a transfer applicant, and probably did not see this message since it’s for RD’ers and was removed (if it ever was there) from the website, and he got punished for checking Sunet BEFORE the warning for waitlisted/transfer applicants appeared. No one else, but him. See the injustice?</p>

715

<p>the injustice is all in your head.</p>

716

<p>@albanian - No I don’t see the injustice. A.) We don’t know no one got punished from RD - only that they are not stupid enough to talk about it on CC. Besides maybe because it was the “first” warning they gave people a pass - sounds just, not unjust, to me. B.) Who says lion was “punished” at all? He simply wasn’t admitted - admission is not an entitlement that was taken away. And C.) It doesn’t matter when the infraction took place compared to the warning. If you get caught shoplifting and, as a result, the store puts up a sign saying that shoplifters will be prosecuted, no reasonable person could argue that you shouldn’t face any consequences because the sign went up afterward. Really, is there NO personal responsibility anymore?</p>

717

<p>a) Ok, we don’t know that, but there were people who wrote that they did check, but got in, without facing any punishment. Why punish the lion, but not everyone? That’s not just b) As it was said a number of times in this thread, his SunetID was uploaded to the database of the current students. Your ID gets there only if you are admitted (waitlist/reject doesn’t work). That’s why everyone on that SunetID thread who checked their statuses got an acceptance letter after receiving a message that their id is recognized as a “student ID”. So the lion did the same, got a positive response from Sunet (where, as I repeat, your ID is uploaded only if you are admitted), and got a decision a day later after everyone else, saying he is rejected. Are you telling me that Stanford randomly uploaded a rejected student’s id and then removed it? I am not even mentioning the email that implied the Sunet thing affected his admission. C) your analogy is not quite correct - there is NO LINK to stanford’s website in that message, you can’t really say if it was “shop” or someone pretending to write on it’s behalf. In addition to that, the “shop” was “robbed” for past 2 years, and there were no warnings, and a number of people on these forums who checked their statuses via Sunet got in and are attending. The lion is not. Isn’t that injustice?</p>

718

<p>“However, this doesn’t change the fact that I was accepted initially (again, see my response to missyujin for the evidence).”
-lion</p>

<p>Okay then, you were initially accepted. It still does not change the fact that S has the right to change decisions up until the decisions are released, and even after they are released. If the only other thing is wondering if your admission status was changed because of the SUnet id, then ask. If they say yes, then what? They are well within their right to deny someone for reasons outside a person’s application.</p>

<p>As for your sabotage scenario, stuff like this has happened before. But S would of course check the validity of the claim. And if the claim was in fact true, whatever it was, they are also still well within their right to deny you admission.</p>

<p>The application isn’t necessarily the only thing admission is based on. We’re living in the Google age, information is accessible. And lion, no matter how you want to say it, it’s obvious through your posts that you were trying to log in to see your admissions decision. You wanted to take information that wasn’t yet yours to take. Just because someone else has done it, doesn’t make it right.</p>

<p>And once again remember, there were many other excellent applicants in the pool. I’m sure S would be happy to give a place to someone who deserves it and didn’t take steps to try and cheat their admissions system.</p>

<p>Judging by the raucous that this SUnet id has caused, why S would not want anyone to try and check is apparent.</p>

719

<p>albanian - you’re not actually lion are you? You sound a lot like him. He’s been oddly absent for a while and you just came on the scene about the same time. pathetic.</p>

720

<p>nahs, no, I am not lion. Will you respond to a), b), and c)?</p>