<p>Essays>Passion>Character>Test Scores>School Grades>(Affirmative Action)>Extracurriculars>Volunteering>Recommendati ons>Job Experience</p>
<p>there. does that seem better? :P</p>
<p>What is character but something that is demonstrated through your recommendations and essays? Similarly, what is passion besides an outgrowth of your extracurricular activities and essays? Moreover, doesn’t volunteering fall under extracurricular activities? </p>
<p>And recommendations are definitely more important than is given credit for – I think it’s easy for us to discount them because we don’t get to read them and thus have no idea whether they impacted our application positively or negatively.</p>
<p>on a shorter note then:</p>
<p>Essays>Extracurricular>Test Scores>School Grades>Recommendations>(Affirmative Action)>Job Experience</p>
<p>this is not easy lol</p>
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<p>That’s because it’s not supposed to be laid out so easily. I would “discount” teacher recommendations as I would transcript and test scores: they are very, important, but most Stanford applicants are going to have good to great recommendations. Knowing that Stanford has a commitment to low-income, first generation students (and geographical diversity), I would put the list as something like this.</p>
<p>Transcript (grades + courses taken)
Essays
Tips (first gen, low-income, geo. diversity)
Test Scores
Extracurriculars
Recommendations
Affirmative Action</p>
<p>I would leave out job experience. Job experience is really an extracurricular, anyway. Aside from that, job experience is important for responsibility (i.e., character –> essays) and it’s mostly something to encourage/boost low-income applicants (which I included).</p>