@Mikewazowski33, God knows I’m no expert. I don’t have any direct connection to adcoms, and I can’t speak with absolute authority. But, for what it’s worth, here’s my 2 cents:
- When you apply to a school like Stanford, you are applying to the university at large, not to a specific major or program. If you are lucky enough to be accepted, you can do whatever you want. They will be committing to and investing in you as a person, not for a specific skill set (unless you are an athlete on scholarship) or program, even though specific skills and past experiences may have influenced their decision to accept you. There is a tacit understanding that people will evolve in different ways when they are thrown into the melting pot and exposed to such a fabulous collection of resources, and no one expects that you will just continue to do what you have done in the past. So if you get in and decide that CS alone is just what you want to do, that's fine. I'm certainly not suggesting that you have to do a program of study that isn't where your true interest lies.
My brother and I were both serious classical musicians, with very strong academic credentials. We were at a Julliard level, and many of the people we played with went on to Julliard or similar top conservatories and to have successful careers in music. Because of our other interests, neither of us wanted to go the conservatory route. My brother ended up going to Harvard, I went to Stanford. Both of us planned for music to be a major part of our undergraduate experience, but we both found that pursuing music performance at the same level with the same focus was very difficult in a setting where there were so many other opportunities and directions. My brother even took a semester off from Harvard to go to a conservatory to make sure that he didn’t want to give up music as a focus; but in the end we independently both cut back significantly on our music, and it wasn’t a major part of our undergraduate experience. There was no intent to do this when we applied, that was just how things worked out.
- With that said, there's a difference between what you end up doing, and how you position yourself when applying. Stanford is deluged with people wanting to study CS, and many of them have done incredible things. Your qualifications as a CS applicant don't make you stand out from the crowd, and in order to increase your chances of admission you need to differentiate yourself. Your theatre background is by far your best chance of doing this.
Stanford’s CS/engineering excellence has become a bit of a two-edged sword for the university. On the one hand, those areas bring in tons of money and attract top applicants. On the other hand, they have tended to become the tail that wags the dog, and Stanford seems concerned about becoming the “MIT of the West” rather than the “Harvard of the West”. To that end, they are trying to attract more people with interests in the humanities and the social sciences, and to create programs that would allow people to bridge those areas with CS/engineering. The Stanford Summer Humanities Institute was created a few years ago in part to attract potential candidates with humanities interests.
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2015/01/14/stanfords-summer-humanities-institute-brings-talented-humanities-students-to-campus/
The CS + X joint major is another endeavor in this direction. It’s a 6 year trial joint major program that was started for 2 reasons: (1) there are a lot of people with humanities interests who end up going into CS or engineering because they think that’s more likely to be practical and get them jobs, and the university wanted to create a path whereby they could continue in the humanities without sacrificing that; and (2) the “digital humanities” is a tremendous emerging area of interest in its own right. As they note in the webpage for the program: “Intersecting opposites create altered perspectives, fresh intellectual possibilities and new strengths. … Our goal is to give Stanford students the chance to become a new type of engineer and a new type of humanist.”
It’s a “joint major”, not a double major, meaning it’s a specifically designed program which streamlines some of the requirements and is a bit friendlier than doing 2 independent majors. For some details about the program, check out their website and FAQ page:
https://undergrad.stanford.edu/academic-planning/majors-minors/joint-majors-csx/csx-faqs-students
I don’t think you need to worry about what you actually end up doing right now. If you are fortunate enough to be accepted you may end up liking this kind of opportunity, or you may decide to go straight CS, or do something else altogether. But for the purposes of maximizing your application chance, I would personally recommend pushing your theatre background as hard as you can, and considering discussing the idea of combining CS and the humanities given that it is an area of interest for the university. If your theatre work is at a level that you can submit an arts supplement, do it; it emphasizes your humanities qualifications as an applicant. And if there is a way to work this into your essays (including the 3 supplemental short essays that Stanford requires) or interviews, then you should try to do so. It doesn’t commit you to anything.
It’s all about differentiation. As a straight CS applicant you don’t stand out. As someone with dual CS and theatre interests who is interested in “altered perspectives” and “fresh intellectual possibilities” created by “intersecting opposites”, you do.
Again, I have no direct input, and getting in to Stanford is extremely difficult no matter who you are. But this is what I would personally do if I were in your place.
