<p>We all know Stanford is amazing. But nothing is perfect. What are some things about Stanford that is not ideal?</p>
<p>Sometimes it gets TOO awesome, other than that... nothing really</p>
<p>Beef: Cut the sarcasm. (Haha, I've been practicing. :P)</p>
<p>OP: I'd imagine the price pretty much sucks. Having to pay $50000 always sucks, even if it's to a great university like Stanford.</p>
<p>The low acceptance rate kinda sucks lol.</p>
1 Like
<p>^ Ya, Stanford Slaughter is always bad, but only to those that don't get in.</p>
<p>When I got called by a current student, I asked her what she didnt like about Stanford. The only thing she could think of was the weather in the winter( quite rainy i guess).</p>
<p>I've found a lot of problems, but my SCEA rejection might serve as a bias xD</p>
<p>1) Too far from San Francisco. The Caltrain takes 45 minutes to an hour, and if you plan on going a lot, it seems like the ride would eventually get annoying. In the view book, one student said they've been to SF over 10 times, but that's the exception rather than the norm. </p>
<p>2) No college town. Palo Alto is awesome, if you're a grad student or older. There are just a couple of things to do, and it's so suburban. The town closes around 8pm, so you're pretty much stuck on campus most of the time.</p>
<p>3) The "Stanford Bubble." ItÂ’s a mixture of 1 & 2 that keeps all of the students on campus for a majority of the time. Although permeable, it serves as a barrier to the outside world. It has its good effects, as in keeping Stanford a paradise, but it seems like you're stuck in heaven. A vast majority of students love this part, as less than 3% of all undergraduate students live off campus.</p>
<p>4) To quote a student who was deciding between both schools... "At Stanford, there seemed to be one type of student. At Cal, there was no certain type of student." Yes, regardless of who you are, you will fit in. Just be warned about the cliquish aspects of social life.</p>
<p>5) 50k a year! Sure they give good aid, but still, for a vast majority of people accepted, they're paying a huge chunk of change. For an endowment rivaling many countriesÂ’ GDP, they donÂ’t give as much as they should.</p>
<p>6) The thought that anyone of your classmates could have been different, and that luck had a role in your admittance. Quoting an admissions officer, "We could have thrown out all the students we accepted, and chosen a new class from the ones rejected, and we would have a stronger class."</p>
<p>7) It's immaculate. You know the signature palm trees that dot the Stanford campus? It turns out that nearly every single one of those palm trees was shipped over 500 miles from Southern California, with some costing up to $3000 a piece. With every lawn luscious and verdant, and every building on the campus well kept, it seems as if something weird is going on. The Stepford Wives anyone?</p>
<p>8) The fellow students are all like you. Top of their class, and in a million activities. Do you think that would change once you reach college? No. Everyone is the same as before, but this time they're trying to act cool about it. Sure, you'll see a jock doing a keg stand on Saturday night, but on Sunday morning he's completely buried in the latest homework assignment in the library. Stanford students are like a swimming duck... calm and collected on the surface, but paddling furiously underneath the water. There is a lot of pressure to act cool and chill, in contrast to the ivy leagues.</p>
<p>9) To summarize another post, Stanford isn't a typical college experience. You have a lot of students trying to have the high school life they never did, since they were devoted to studying or sports. You have a lot of students who are completely dedicated to their career, doing the things that would get them a lucrative job right after graduation. (Silicon valley being .2 miles away doesn't help matters) But most of all, Stanford is a primarily graduate institution. If you look at the numbers, most of the students on campus are grad students, almost at a 2:1 ratio.</p>
<p>10) You will have someone hold your hand though everything. Not doing well in a class? All you need to do is talk to your advisor, and that will get cleared up. (BTW, Stanford hasn't given a failing grade in decades [really], so that shouldn't be a worry) You can drop classes off of your transcript all the way up until the final exam. Hand holding is evident in so many other ways, like laundry service being included with your room. For a VERY independent student, Stanford may seem like too much of a pre-packaged summer camp.</p>
<p>11) It's Stanford. Just listen to the name... Stan-ford. You will be following in the footsteps of a ton of pioneers, one of the worst presidents in history (which the central Stanford tower was named after), and a lot of just average people. For the rest of your life you will have the Stanford stigma attached to your name, for better or worse.</p>
<p>12) I've heard from one person that there is something weird going on with the student’s psyche. They said that there was an odd depression going through the people who have everything going for them, and who really don’t have a whole lot to complain about.
 Take this one the way you want, since it's not too concrete.</p>
<p>13) The weather in winter. Stanford is truly a paradise in summer, but could you imagine the same place with constant rain and clouds? It's a really odd, slightly distressing sight.
</p>
<p>14) ItÂ’s a huge campus. There are thousands upon thousands of bike racks on campus, as everything is spaced so far away that it takes a bike to get there in only a few minutes. With all the bikes comes people who have road rage when riding, and the bike police giving you a citation for the most trivial mistake.</p>
<p>15) ItÂ’s not the school to go to if youÂ’re into sports. They routinely get clobbered in recent history, and their mascot is the color [not the bird] cardinal. (Unofficial mascot is the tree) Stanford has Gaieties, a satirical play before the Big Game v. Berkeley. Cal has a big bonfire where they burn an effigy of the tree, and tell stories. Not to always compare these two schools, but this is a major difference that just shows how Stanford is just a bit odd.</p>
<p>16) The administration is a pain. I have a friend who was accepted SCEA, and he hasnÂ’t received his financial aid packet almost two months later. There is a lot of red tape, and a majority of the staff seem more concerned with protecting the Stanford name and endowment than the needs and desires of the student population.</p>
<p>17) Stanford is ideal, and thatÂ’s one of the biggest problems in itself. Stanford is a truly wonderful place to go, but once youÂ’re out, you donÂ’t truly ever want to leave it. ThatÂ’s one of the reasons why the alumni association is so strong. ThatÂ’s the reason why Condoleezza Rice is going back to being a typical Poly Sci professor after being Secretary of State. One person said that leaving Stanford was like waking up from a beautiful dream. They cherished their time there, but then they were thrown in the real world, left almost defenseless after being protected for so long.</p>
<p>supereagle: Ya, it rains quite a bit in NorCal during the winter, though not as much as normally in recent years.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Good god. I guess you're right about some of that stuff, but most of what you say is attributable to every college, university, corporation, or other bureaucratic entity. </p>
<p>Stanford can be pretty insular, which you don't really notice at first because everything is so new, but can get old by the end of your four years there. The best remedy for this I've found is having a car. This lets you get off campus whenever you want, even if its just to run a quick errand, which, although it sounds pretty trivial, can maintain a lot of the normalcy you might otherwise miss out on.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wow holy crap, someone has something against Stanford. Again, probably attributed to your rejection from Stanford but still ...</p>
<p>killthefifi: your number 10 is totally incorrect. Dropping a class after a certain date results in a W on your transcript and cannot be done up to the exam.<br>
And where on earth did you get the idea laundry service is included? The washers and dryers in the dorms are free to use but there is no laundry service. You're confused with Davidson.<br>
Also, your impressions of advisors is wrong also.<br>
I was planning to write that a bad thing about Standford is its poor pre-major advising. Very poor.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Good god. I guess you're right about some of that stuff, but most of what you say is attributable to every college, university, corporation, or other bureaucratic entity.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You're completely correct about that! I guess I was just trying to show that Stanford isn't the dreamland some people portray it to be, but rather just another institution with its own set of problems.</p>
<p>Everyone goes on and on about how wonderful it is, but most people just skim over the negatives. After working so hard for this, and being so coldly rejected, I eventually got tired of being reminded daily of the joys of Stanford, so I started to keep track of the darker side. :]</p>
<p>curious77, I apologize for making a few mistakes. I was going off an old NYTimes article for dropping classes, because what I said was true a little more than a decade ago. I also misread the part regarding laundry.
I read about advisors from a 2004 Stanford Daily article, and I quote,
"They [Cal students] actually have to do some hard work to get good non-inflated grades across the bay. They sink or swim over there. If we don’t swim, we get to sit down with our friendly advisors from the UAC for milk, cookies and a pep talk at the CoHo."</p>
<p>Someone's bitter... denatonium benzoate bitter...</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And that sums that post up.
But seriously killthefifi, towards the beginning of the list I could agree with and understand your points. And then around #10 and on, you went off and lost me...</p>
<p>These threads may help the OP:
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/620715-what-don-t-you-like-about-stanford.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/620715-what-don-t-you-like-about-stanford.html</a>
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/422311-what-don-t-you-like-about-stanford.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/422311-what-don-t-you-like-about-stanford.html</a></p>
<p>Aberdeen15, there's a reason why I said that in the first line. I wanted to let the OP know to take my post with a grain of salt while reading the entire thing. I'm just trying to show Stanford not sugar coated.</p>
<p>^it needs more than a grain of salt, but I agree that its a good disclaimer. we need a middle ground between sugar-coated and bitter...i thought the threads i linked to came as close as i've seen, for the most part.</p>
<p>
[quote]
17) Stanford is ideal, and that’s one of the biggest problems in itself. Stanford is a truly wonderful place to go, but once you’re out, you don’t truly ever want to leave it. That’s one of the reasons why the alumni association is so strong. That’s the reason why Condoleezza Rice is going back to being a typical Poly Sci professor after being Secretary of State. One person said that leaving Stanford was like waking up from a beautiful dream. They cherished their time there, but then they were thrown in the real world, left almost defenseless after being protected for so long.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>in all seriousness, this "reason," if anything, makes me want to go to stanford even more. sigh. :(</p>
<p>I don’t usually post (lurk), but I feel as though i should reply to some of the above claims so as not to mislead students--specifically killthefifi’s points.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Yes, Stanford is suburban; in other words, not in a city, but close to one. San Francisco is a train ride away, but when you’re actually going, it’s not bad, especially if you have friends to hang out with. Downtown Palo Alto is better than people make PA out to be. San Jose is really nearby too (closer than SF, and larger than SF too). I also wanted a more urban campus (like really, I’m from a very rural town in Texas where there’s little to do), but now that I’ve been here for a while, it’s completely fine.</p></li>
<li><p>"At Stanford, there seemed to be one type of student. At Cal, there was no certain type of student." Completely wrong. There’s no one type of student on Stanford’s campus. End of story.</p></li>
<li><p>Stanford gives about as much aid as Yale or Harvard (there’s a reason that Stanford ties with Yale in cross-admits and barely loses to Harvard). </p></li>
<li><p>“The thought that anyone of your classmates could have been different, and that luck had a role in your admittance.” True at so many other schools too.</p></li>
<li><p>A lot of that crap about the palm trees is complete lies—many of the palm trees were, if you can believe it, planted. Not to mention, even if they were brought elsewhere, what’s the problem? Stanford’s campus is beautiful, and it’s not as if it’s always bringing more trees. There are actually too many trees, since you’ll often see trees in planters set aside because they’re doing construction where the tree was planted originally.</p></li>
<li><p>The students around you are not all like you, in the slightest. Far from all were at the top of the class, and not everyone was in a million activities (I’d say those students are in the minority).</p></li>
<li><p>“You have a lot of students trying to have the high school life they never did, since they were devoted to studying or sports. You have a lot of students who are completely dedicated to their career, doing the things that would get them a lucrative job right after graduation.” Exactly true at other colleges!</p></li>
<li><h1>10 is where you show how little you know about Stanford. “Not doing well in a class? All you need to do is talk to your advisor, and that will get cleared up.” That doesn’t make sense—your advisor isn’t meant to help you out with those sorts of things, except maybe to point you in the direction of a tutor. And if you don’t do well after that, well, that’s your problem. You can NOT drop classes off until the final exam—the drop deadline is about a month into the quarter. There’s hand-holding if you want it, but otherwise, you have a ton of opportunities, and you have to have the drive and incentive to pursue them.</h1></li>
<li><p>“A lot of just average people”?? You mean, people who didn’t become superstars? Sure, but the same can be said of Harvard et al. It’s not a problem. There is no “Stanford stigma”—unless of course you’ve been rejected.</p></li>
<li><p>You’ve obviously never been at Stanford in winter. It rains a few times, but on most days even in December and especially January, you can still go outside in shorts and a t-shirt. Not kidding—I remember being amazed at this at first. Stanford is actually less a paradise in summer, since it can get somewhat hot.</p></li>
<li><p>There are thousands upon thousands of bikes, but not bike racks... and the campus’s size is huge for a reason: it has lots and lots of infrastructure to do amazing things, like teach tons of classes or do top research. It's really not a problem.</p></li>
<li><p>If you’re into sports, Stanford is kind of school you’d want to go to. There’s a reason it’s been #1 for the past 14 years in the director’s cup (which measures overall athletic achievement).</p></li>
<li><p>There’s a lot of red tape at any school, even the small ones. Using one example, a strange one at that (not getting a financial aid package for two months? Must be a glitch that your friend should check out), doesn’t prove your point.</p></li>
<li><p>Walking away from Stanford is just as exciting as going to Stanford, because you’ve been offered plenty of opportunities beyond Stanford. That’s a crappy “downside” of Stanford.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>It’s really obvious that you don’t know really much of anything about Stanford.</p>
<p>There are other threads about the negative side of Stanford, just look for them.</p>
<p>By the way, the comment “They [Cal students] actually have to do some hard work to get good non-inflated grades across the bay. They sink or swim over there. If we don’t swim, we get to sit down with our friendly advisors from the UAC for milk, cookies and a pep talk at the CoHo,” was totally tongue-in-cheek, if you didn’t realize.</p>
<p>For everyone who complains about the weather in winter is blowing it WAY out of proportion. I've been counting and during the fall it rained exactly twice and during the winter I can count the number of days it's rained on my fingers. It doesn't rain 'all the time' it's just that people here are horribly spoiled by perfect weather. People here sunbathe in January and complain if it rains for two days in a row. Believe me, I come from the midwest where you LITERALLY say goodbye to blue sky for four months every winter. There may be things to complain about at Stanford but the weather is definitely not one of them (unless you are one of those people that are sentimental for subzero weather).</p>
<p>About the weather: This year is NOT normal, people! It really does rain, on average, one to two days per week in winter. And I don't ever remember having shorts-and-t-shirt weather in January before.</p>