At Stanford admissions brief they said 80% would be admitted if they just looked at grades and test scores. There’s gotta be something else they need to look at and anyone who has that dream school mentality is just setting themselves up for heartbreak. Don’t do it. Parents encourage your kids there is more than one path to success.
And OP you are the 1%. I’m not telling anyone to give up their dream but let’s say you had applied to MIT and gotten in there,mould you have rejected it because it just wasn’t Stanford? Always keep all options open.
Your story is inspirational, and it makes me realize that it is still possible to be successful
I think you are very intelligent and i myself am really nervous because I’m scared I won’t get into any of my top schools
I’ve been constantly thinking about it so thank you so much
I’ve been looking for stories like yours
@sadiebug OP meant the system was broken because OP graduated HS with a 1.xx GPA.
This post does not jive with your posting history.
@Recker12 - I believe you said recently:
“I feel like I am going to end up in baruch then unemployed like rest of those whiny college graduates form bottom feeder schools”
Yes school matters. But students can overcome the school they go to by being extraordinary. By the way, Baruch seems to do very well with placement: http://poetsandquantsforundergrads.com/2015/01/07/the-top-feeder-schools-to-google-goldman-sachs-and-more/
Stanford puts the applications in a pile and pulls them out like playing go fish. If the person’s stats are good enough they get in. If you never get picked from that pile you won’t get in. Legacies, celebrities and minorities probably get pushed to the front of the line, though.
@VanillaDazzle: That’s pretty cool how Stanford Admissions works! Too bad you can only say that legacies, celebrities, and minorities PROBABLY get pushed to the front of the line. I was hoping they used Crazy Eights or maybe Pig to help pick which ones from those groups get in.
Hi Jerski, I made specifically made an account just to reply to your post. I just want to say thank you so so much for sharing your story with me. You made me cry!!! :’) Anyways, as an 11th grader who just got done with SATs and is dealing with “junior year stress” I really needed this. Thank you so much!!!
What you think of as your dream school at 17 or 18 years old may change in the future. Twenty years from now, you may wonder why you were ever interested in that particular dream school. If I had to do it over, I would not want to attend the school I was certain at age 17 was my dream school.
OP’s story demonstrates that there are many smart kids in high school who for one reason or another just doesn’t try in high school until later at certain point in their lives, they turn themselves around and try very hard. For me, I maintained 2.9 gpa from my high school to graduate level school and then saved up my energy when I started my own business in the real world. I do agree with some posters that studying or going to good school is not the only way, but the important thing is to work hard when you are young in an endeavor you like. For me, I couldn’t motivate myself when it came to getting good grades, although I was motivated to build a successful business. My family and friends all thought I would end up as a bum because I was so lazy when it came to studying, so they were definitely surprised when I became very diligent about establishing and running my own business. I think one reason I didn’t expend too much time trying to get high gpa in schools was because I always knew I wanted to set up my own business rather than work for someone, so good grades were not needed.
Kudos to OP for turning his life around. I was telling my wife recently that I sure am glad that our kid was addicted to the online game when he was in 8th grade, so by the time he was a 9th grader he stopped playing online games and put in an effort towards his academics and ECs and got admitted to the same school as OP – Stanford University, which was his dream school also.
I also am amazed by the hard stats of so many accomplished students who get denied or wait-listed at certain colleges. It sometimes appears to me that the stats of those who got rejected are higher than those who got accepted.