<p>I called the admissions office recently, and the unprofessional response I got leads me to believe that my call may have been fielded by an undergraduate working as an assistant. Does anyone know whether this could be the case?</p>
<p>I’m almost 100% positive this is the case. Students are working in offices all over campus - plus, this is application reading season. However, that’s no reason for the answering person to be unprofessional.</p>
<p>I’ve had a similar experience. </p>
<p>It isn’t so much “unprofessional” as “unhelpful.” At least in comparison to Stanford’s peer institutions.</p>
<p>they are often quite unhelpful but yes they are students
they hire students at the admissions office
during reading season, i believe they hire more</p>
<p>Xombie: in what way have you found the Stanford admissions line unhelpful?</p>
<p>Also, it’s a mix of students, admissions staff, and admissions officers answering phones. More students than not, but students that know quite a bit about admissions/talk to the admissions officers all the time.</p>
<p>I haven’t ever called the office, but the student who called me to answer questions a few weeks ago was certainly unprofessional. I don’t really mind, of course, but he could barely get through a sentence for the first minute or so without bursting into laughter and talking to someone in the room with him. He said he was a Native American Studies major, so maybe he was just calling the Native admits, and therefore didn’t have much practice/training? I don’t know.</p>
<p>Like I said, it doesn’t bother me. I am starting to get bugged by the maniacal focus on my Aleutian background, though. My grandma was born and raised in an Aleutian village, but she left and converted to Catholicism as a teenager. So even though I definitely consider it part of my heritage, I don’t really see myself as an Aleut. But, based on half the stuff I’ve received so far, Stanford does! :/</p>
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<p>I feel the same way, except I’m African American. I don’t think it’s just Stanford. I’ve gotten letters about the black community at Stanford, as well as numerous gigantic books and letters from other schools about it. I get it. I’m black and there’s a black community at Stanford. I have NO INTEREST IN IT. Please stop contacting me about it! Ugh! It’s really a turn off. If Stanford were more aggressive than WashU about the whole black thing, it’d be a serious make or break factor. Thankfully (?), they’re about the same.</p>
<p>D is Native Hawaiian. Yes, they are insistent about offering their support for the “ethnic” students. D strongly rebuffed the rep on the phone when he called to see why she had not RSVP’d to the Native orientation program offered over the summer. Having said that, she eventually found her way to the Native Center in the first quarter. She is enjoying herself but her participation is on her terms. My advice, for what it’s worth, is to take what you want and ignore the rest.</p>
<p>@applicannot </p>
<ol>
<li>congrats on getting into stanford</li>
<li>If I could offer a piece of advice (as a now 5th year masters student at Stanford, who is also african american), I would try to be a bit more open to the black community reaching out to you. I too didn’t feel much need to join a black community in college when I was picking schools (and wash u, stanford, and harvard reached out to me the most about it). I certainly haven’t spent much time at the black community center, nor have I been a part of the black student union and similar groups. That said, it is still true that most of Stanford’s campus is still clueless (beyond standard political correctness) and/or blissfully unaware of race issues both in the US and specifically at Stanford. Having a black community that is (potentially) a “home away from home” has become more and more important for me as I spend more time at Stanford. And for me, this “black community” is really just a core group of 3-4 black friends, complete separated from my academic pursuits (math/engineering).</li>
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<p>My freshman/sophomore years I spent almost no time with black people at stanford. While there were certainly people that were critical of this (conscious) decision of mine, I wanted to focus on parts of my life other than the fact that I was a minority. As it turned out, the exact opposite happened. I learned so much about what it meant to be a minority–and more specifically black–by constantly being put in situations where my race was a primary point of differentiation between my peers and I. There are sooooo many things that I would have never noticed as a high school student/freshman in college that I think about all the time now. And I mean all of this in a personal, rather than academic, sense. I haven’t taken any African/African American Studies, or Comparative Studies in Race/Ethnicity classes at Stanford.</p>
<p>Anyway, I know it seems like you’ve been bombarded with stuff from the black community @ Stanford, but if you would be interested in hearing me out in a more complete/articulate way than what I can do on this forum, I’d be happy to schedule a call with you. I also am happy to talk about anything else about Stanford (or other schools you are considering) you are interested in. Just let me know.</p>