What made you choose Stanford?

It would really be interesting to see how the registrar will treat the credits you have accumulated from college while in high school…in many ways even though you got in “officially” as a new freshman you can technically be viewed as a “transfer” student because of all your dual-enrollment credits from college…keep us posted!

Only a freshman but already identified Stanford as one of my top choices (I will try not to dwell on it becasue it’s such a long shot and probably going to be disappointed). Having said that, it is everything I look for in a university, visited last summer and loved the atmosphere there, everyone is sooo kind. Hope they choose me ( it’s a slim chance)

My son chose Stanford primarily because he’s planning to go into computer science. He also wanted a liberal arts education and has strong interests in a couple of nontechnical fields. Stanford’s Silicon Valley location was a big plus, mostly because of the job/internship possibilities in computer science but also because of the weather. After making his decision, he learned even more about the school and is now really excited by how open Stanford is to students combining all sorts of different interests, not just in their existing programs (which he was already aware of) but even outside of them. There’s a real openness there to innovation and to students “making their own Stanford.” As a parent, I’ve been very pleased to hear about Stanford’s efforts with freshmen in particular in terms of fostering community, helping students transition from high school, etc. I also like that Stanford now offers courses on how to design/live a happy, fulfilling life—apparently these are very popular, and I’m guessing many students will find them useful not only in college but afterwards.

I want to major in business at Stanford. Stanford being the number 1 graduate school of business. But every student needs a plan B and if that major doesn’t work out, I’d switch to engineering which Stanford has a great program in.

Stanford doesn’t have an undergrad business program, only graduate.

But it is one of the top feeders to top business schools anyway.

With a 5% admission rate very few applicants are “choosing” Stanford. It’s far more accurate to ask why Stanford chose you. A few exceptional applicants also get into Harvard but not many. The highest yield among all colleges proves this point.

I fell in love with the campus and the psychology program. I am getting in no matter what.

  1. The campus is beautiful.
  2. It's in California, so I don't have to go out of state.
  3. Awesome research university.
  4. But most importantly, the type of person they are looking for is me. I love learning and my curiosity is immeasurable. Hopefully they will see how much I want to go there :)

I went to Stanford long ago. Coming from the east coast, it had a strong reputation, but it hadn’t quite achieved HYP status. I chose it because:

  1. It seemed less pretentious and more balanced than the Ivies.
  2. It came across as more flexible, interdisciplinary and innovative.
  3. It exuded a freshness and newness compared with the tradition-laden Ivies.
  4. I liked the idea of going across the country and experiencing a different environment.

I wasn’t disappointed, and I think most of those elements still exist.

I still have a scrapbook from elementary school where I wrote that I wanted to go to Stanford, so maybe subconsciously I’d already made the choice. There’s a lot of logical reasons. The name will get you a job interview anywhere and the classes will make you capable of doing the quality of work needed to stay in whatever job you want.

But one of my favorite memories that really helped me decide on where to go was during admit weekend.

My room host and her group of friends were amazing. There are a lot of admit weekend traditions that all students experience like being welcomed by house hosts (hohos), a concert and lots of fun activities. My room host went above and beyond though by taking us roofing (climbing roofs on stanford), visiting some of the cool spots of campus (echo chair next to memorial church, magnetic part of the building, the place where the stanford experiment happened). Afterwards it was around 2 am and we went for late night where they paid for us to binge on brownies and chicken tinders. The secret spots on campus made it a little bit more magical, but the warmth of everyone I met there was just overwhelming. It’s not fake or made up either. I still love the people on campus and it makes surviving the difficulties of school so much more enjoyable.

And yes a lot of students actually do have a choice. I almost went to Columbia bc they tried exceptionally hard to keep me (paid for a plane ticket, took us on a tour to Google/Goldman Sachs, tour of NY, talk with some CEO, basically VIP treatment), but it just didn’t click as much. Probably since everyone on that campus didn’t bother to talk to us or acknowledge our existence. Hope that helps someone out there decide on where they want to go.

My DD is choosing to go to Stanford for the same reasons I did 25 years ago. Personal attention, respect for undergrads, approachable faculty, smaller classes, world class research in just about every field, and kids who know how to have fun (and yes, party) and yet still work hard when necessary. Oh, and an amazing dorm-based community that not only includes social activities but many speakers who come to your lounge and have dinner with you while talking about the Nobel Prize winning book they wrote.

And the campus is amazing. Take a hike to the Dish and look down upon the campus on a warm January afternoon and you won’t want to leave ever either.

My son was admitted REA and is interested in Stanford’s CS + X program, which is an interdisciplinary combination of computer science plus a humanities major. As a musician, this is appealing and unique among the schools he applied to, with the exception of Carnegie Mellon.

best and most complete university in the world. no contest. Stanford has no weaknesses… and I knew I could change my major (which a majority of students do) relatively easily and Stanford would be strong in that discipline no matter what it was. These days Stanford is a leader in interdisciplinary studies which is an exciting future growth path for humanities (how it relates to tech, innovation and our modern world).

The newly published yield data for class of 2019 (Students who enrolled in fall 2015)

Stanford University 80.4%
Harvard University 79.8%
Brigham Young University 79.8%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 72.8%
University of Alaska—Fairbanks 70.2%
Princeton University 67.7%
Yale University 67.2%
University of Pennsylvania 64.3%

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2017-01-18/universities-colleges-where-students-are-eager-to-enroll

IMO because Stanford is the BIG fish in the West, they will be in demand from many applicants who want to come to CA to study, especially for the nice weather and CA atmosphere. Therefore, Stanford will continue to outpace HYP in these categories. I also would not be surprised to see Stanford endowment overtake Harvard within 20 years. This would be huge, given Harvard has 200 years head start. Also, Stanford is going to gradually increase their class size. Because they have a lot of land and money, Stanford will stay in top 5 for very long time. In short, I think Stanford’s reputation will be even higher in future. One thing that surprised me is that Stanford has one of the biggest campuses in USA at around 8200 acres, and a lot of that is undeveloped. That’s a huge advantage when you are trying to improve your university.

@websensation At this point I do not think Stanford is really competing with Yale or Princeton, it is past that. The real competition is Harvard and we will see in the coming decades how this will play out. I agree Stanford is more forward-looking than Harvard and that will give it an edge in the future. But Harvard has had a 250+ year head start as you say. Internationally the cachet of the Harvard name is still higher than Stanford’s but that might not be true for much longer. The difference is small and getting smaller. Harvard, Stanford and MIT are the US universities with the biggest international recognition and prestige at this point with Harvard still being at the top but Stanford fast approaching.

@ewho The yield figures for the class of 2020 look like this

Stanford University 82.78%
Harvard University 79.2%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 74%
Yale University 69.6%
Princeton University 68.7%
University of Pennsylvania 67.8%
University of Chicago 66%
Columbia University 62.3%

Couldn’t find the 2020 data for BYU and UAF.

The way I look at it, people in the know all know how hard it is to get into top 10 schools and certainly HYPSM. It is really irrelevant to argue which is a better school. But no question that as far as the brand name goes, it is still Harvard number 1 and probably Stanford 2. But since Stanford really has no peer in the West, it will continue to have even a bigger brand name. IMO if Cornell was located near a city, it would be top 7 immediately. Note having a bigger brand name does not mean it’s a better school.

^ It is very hard to make such a claim about Cornell. Cornell lacks strength across the board in all different disciplines. Who knows what would have happened if it was closer to a city. Probably it would have helped but no one can really say by how much. Brand strength can be helped a bit by shrewd marketing but at the end of the day it mainly comes from the strength of the school, and especially the strength of its grad schools, its research output and the success of its alumni. That is why Harvard and Stanford are the two top us brands.

Of course all of the top 10 schools are super hard to get in. But Harvard and Stanford do occupy the top spot in peoples minds these days, they are the “it” schools. Given that there is such obsession with dream schools it is unhealthy for students to think in these term, however this is how it is.

The shift has already happened in the last decade. Stanford is the gold standard by which all universities are striving for… When countries around the world look for a university model Stanford is the one they choose. No one is saying how can we be more like Harvard… or YP or ivy league.

These days countries are asking how can we replicate Stanford and Silicon Valley in our backyard.

France is building a super University modeled directly on the Stanford model… with tight alliances between industry and academia along with an industrial park to spur startups.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Paris-Saclay

Cambridge built an industrial park modeled after Stanford’s industrial park to create it’s own mini Silicon Valley.

Cornell and Harvard are just 2 examples of regional schools that are beefing up their tech/engineering options to emulate/compete with Stanford.