<p>If you are from California you may want to try ED. Honestly my S applied and was deferred. He had 2340 etc. great recomendations/EC’s and graduated second in his class. Before he applied I spoke with counselors at his HS and asked them about their record of getting kids intio Stanford- one in fifteen years. In that same time kids got into Princeton, Harvard, Duke, U-Penn, Brown, Cornell…great schools. Stanford just really never took kids from this HS and it is a top 125 in the US. They tok kids with lower scores …and Alums. They turned down our schools Valedictorian and that person was as perfect a student as is possible on paper. Stanford like Harvard and Yale are real stretches for anyone and being perfect as a student does nothing to get you in. Saying you want to attend does nothing to get you in. If I had to advise someone I would say that unless you have a holy grail of a hook, apply RD and save the ED for a reach school your HS counselor feels is best and one that has a good history of knowing your HS and taking kids from there. With that said- lots of great schools and if you are a great student you will do well in one of them. Don’t think that if you don’t get into your first choice you won’t love the school you attend. Now I will admit that Stanford has one of the nicest Campus lay outs I have ever seen, coupled wth great weather. God Luck</p>