<p>I am only a high school freshman, but after some research, I have concluded that Stanford is my dream college. The best part is, I have been there before and I love the campus and would live to California.</p>
<p>I don't know if I have a chance to get in though. I don't really excel at anything and don't do any national competitions. Here is just some information about me that may influence the decision.</p>
<p>All A's except for one class due to teacher (My teacher might change next semester, so is GPA calculated from every year?)</p>
<p>Due to being new, there's no NHS (if one is made, I will surely be on it)</p>
<p>Tennis</p>
<p>IB program, school offers no APs</p>
<p>No Hooks</p>
<p>In 7th Grade, got 1600 SAT Score without doing any previous work</p>
<p>Competition Math (Not on a National Level Though)</p>
<p>I know my chances look slim, but what exactly can I do that can influence Stanford to accept me. Being part of IB, I will need 150 Hours. What are some ideal places to volunteer? What are some other reasonable things that can improve my chances? I am looking into Business/Engineering!</p>
<p>The only problem is that I don’t even know what I love! I love tennis (when I have a good day) but I know I will never reach the level to be recruited by a college. I guess I could say I really like math, but not that advanced. I have seen some calculus courses and the such, and I can’t stand them. I am taking a Management elective course, and really like it, but it is starting to disinterest me and plus, how do I show interest in it?</p>
<p>You won’t have to “show” interest. It’ll be natural. It’s obvious to everyone around me that photography is one of my many passions. I just do everything I could possibly do with photography.</p>
<p>Lol at the Hitler videos. There’s even one called “Hitler gets rejected from college”. Though I have a feeling I’ll be sympathizing with him come December 15th…</p>
<p>Don’t be that pessimistic, good things will happen to you if you believe that they will. Imagine,
Minnie Mouse-I got in!
That would be great in my opinion.</p>
<p>Well, it doesn’t look that random to me. In fact, it makes perfect sense. </p>
<p>They are taking the best people in the planet. If anything shows them that, they take you in. They are looking for people who will solve this global warming problem or establish something as revolutionary as Google (Google’s CEO studied at Stanford too) or be the next president of the US. Look at famous Stanford alumni: Herbert Hoover, Condoleeza Rice, the guys who established Google, Yahoo, Wipro, Dell, HP, the guys who invented Laser, IQ Test, GPS, MRI, who did the first heart transplant, the guys who are winning Nobel, Pulitzer prizes, fellowships to very very prestigeous societies of engineering, bla bla bla. Even if they aren’t that great, at least they are extremely innovative; they are building cocktail shakers that are extremely elegant, introducing street car plans that are going to revitalize a part of a city, and that have been accepted by Mayors, the list is endless.</p>
<p>And obviously for this, we need to be human beings. I think we can agree on the fact that to get great grades and SAT Scores, all you need to do is work hard. No offense, but even a computer can do that; what is our value as a human being? Being passionate, having a goal or a dream and working towards it no matter what, having a resolve to change the society. Stanford is looking for that in our essays, our ECs and our recos. </p>
<p>And even great recos sometimes just give a succinct message that ABC is a great student-again, not enough to be stanford material. ECs sometimes just show that we can work hard which is again not enough. So the message is pretty clear-we need to show that we are human beings with potential to be great at life. Not just students with great numbers and recos which show just that. Show that you are a unique being with a goal in life and you will stand a chance.</p>
<p>Google’s CEO at the moment is Eric Schmidt, who went to Princeton for undergrad and Berkeley for his MS and PhD. He did teach at the Stanford Business School, though.</p>
<p>If you meant Sergey Brin, he went to my high school, then the University of Maryland, then to Stanford for a PhD, but dropped out and got an MS instead as a reward for the work he’d already done.</p>
<p>Larry Page, on the other hand, went to Michigan, then Stanford, in much the same manner as Brin did.</p>
<p>Sorry. <_< I just don’t like it when people use examples from graduate schools to tout how excellent the undergrad programs must be. It’s a sore spot of mine.</p>
<p>At some point I think we’re going to have to accept, though, that the cream of the crop in a nation of 310 million (plus international applicants!) is significantly more than Stanford could possibly admit. I really do feel like some portion of this must be random, or based on factors so minuscule as to be nearly random.</p>
<p>I thought Larry Page had done his undergrad at Stanford. My apologies. But I didn’t just refer to Stanford’s undergrad, I was referring to Stanford as a whole.</p>
<p>I’ve seen that this claim that Stanford “invented the MRI” before. Perhaps Paul Lauterbur of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign would have disagreed. Certainly the Nobel Committee did.</p>
<p>…and regarding the “who did the first heart transplant.” Norman Shumway was the first to perform the procedure in the US (at Stanford). But Christiaan Barnard (of South Africa) might disagree that this was the first human heart transplant. Barnard did study with Shumway though… at the University of Minnesota.</p>
<p>(None of this is meant to disparage Shumway’s (or Stanford’s) pioneering contributions btw, but it’s a little silly to throw around these “facts” when they’re wrong.)</p>
<p>Stanford focuses a lot on having a cohesive, talented, and intellectually diverse class, so individual admission decisions may seem arbitrary, but when you look at the overall class, it is very apparent that they did a great job in selecting students</p>