Also, I have another question. When you apply to a college, if, for example, computer science was that colleges top major, does that mean it would be harder to get in if you go for that major?
At Stanford, you’re accepted into the university as a whole. There is no restriction on what majors or classes you can pursue as an undergraduate. Other universities are different.
While students can major in whatever they want at Stanford (unlike some schools where there’s a separate admissions process for popular majors like CS), I do think that a student’s likely major has some impact on admissions. I know students often change their major once they’re on campus, but still there’s a good chance that someone focused on performing arts will likely stay somewhere in that realm, same for STEM, etc.
Stanford doesn’t want to be known as just a CS/engineering school, and in recent years has been pretty open about making sure it gets a good number of students with a strong focus on humanities and social sciences.
Maybe this is oversimplifying, but I would guess that all else being equal, someone with a strong focus in a field that’s unusual at Stanford, such as classics, is going to find it a bit easier to stand out in the applicant pool than someone focused on a field like CS, where Stanford is already very strong and has many applicants.
^^ Agree!