Do I have a good chance to get into Stanford?

Hyperleo7 wrote:

Hi, I know the admission process is often luck of the draw because Stanford is such a top notch college and by no means am I a Grant Fisher. However I have a 31 ACT top 3% in my class of 462 (one B freshman year got me ). I'm apart of NHS and I do community service quite alot. I'm good enough to make it to state in xc (16:00) but considering they just placed 2nd at nationals I dont think it helps. I placed 6th at state in wrestling (138). Last I split a 1:53 on the 4x800 relay in track and ran a 47.9 open 400m. This year I'm hoping to run around a 47.5, 1:51 and 4:09. If I hit these marks will I be a good candidate. If it's any help I'm a Latino/african american mix and my family makes $45,000 a year.

I am going to give it to you straight, bother.

1) Your ACT is at Stanford's 25% range (middle 50% is 31-34).

2) With that low of an ACT (low for Stanford, not low in general...actually great in general), you WILL need to have a hook like being a recruited athlete. Seems like your best bet is as a 400/800 runner. Have you been in contact with the coaches? If not, you need to do that now.

3) Stanford should LOVE to get you as an athlete if you actually get your times down to your goals. The main reason is that they will NOT have to give you athletic scholarship money. Because your family makes just $45,000 a year, you will get a full ride (tuition and room and board) from Stanford. Your family can make up to $65,000 and get that actually.

4) IF you don't plan to participate in varsity sports at Stanford, you WILL be denied admission...the competition there is just way too tough for a guy with no hooks who has a 31 ACT. I hope you took some honors or AP classes.

I lived on campus while my wife was a graduate student at Stanford. It is an amazing place, so do all you can to get in there.

Good luck.

Flagpole wrote:

3) Stanford should LOVE to get you as an athlete if you actually get your times down to your goals. The main reason is that they will NOT have to give you athletic scholarship money. Because your family makes just $45,000 a year, you will get a full ride (tuition and room and board) from Stanford. Your family can make up to $65,000 and get that actually.

If this is true, that is ridiculous. People making $45-60k can afford to pay for college. It really shouldn't even have anything to do with your family's income. You're 18. Get a job or take a loan.

My school doesn't offer ap classes but I've taken ever honor class available. I definitely plan on running there if I'm offered I just didn't know if a 47 mid and 1:51 would be good enough. I'm taking the ACT again in the spring and I'm aiming for 32-33. I might have misunderstood but your saying if I hit these times and for lack of a better term stay poor I should have a good chance of acceptance.

Hyperleo7 wrote:

Good luck.

My school doesn't offer ap classes but I've taken ever honor class available. I definitely plan on running there if I'm offered I just didn't know if a 47 mid and 1:51 would be good enough. I'm taking the ACT again in the spring and I'm aiming for 32-33. I might have misunderstood but your saying if I hit these times and for lack of a better term stay poor I should have a good chance of acceptance.[/quote]

Yes. You will almost certainly be able to get in if you run those times in time this coming year.

Why are you set on Stanford? For undergrad, they aren't an amazing school. UCLA and UC Berkeley are almost certainly better academic schools for undergrad. However, they don't have as strong of an alumni network to artificially "boost" the reputation as Stanford. Not that Stanford isn't a very good school, of course it is, but just saying you shouldn't set your sights onto a single school. Increase your chances of getting some money by contacting other good schools. I do think UCLA and UCB would both be good schools for a 4/8 runner. I don't think I'd want to go to UCB as a distance runner, the training seems to hit a lot of people poorly, with only a few of the runners really excelling there.

There are a handful of other schools you might also consider as well. The biggest reason to talk to multiple schools is that while your goal times definitely should generate interest from some top schools, it also depends on what they currently have on the team. If they are already strong in the events you run with a fast underclassman or two and a good upperclassman or two, they won't offer you anything. If that is a spot they see they will need somebody to score points within a few years, that increases your chances of getting help to go there.

The biggest benefit of stanford of course is their ridiculous amounts of "academic" money that magically just happens to find its way to athletes.

I had a friend get in with a partial running scholarship a few years ago with similar times and scores. He had a 3.8 gpa (top 10-20% of our class, so worse than you), 31 act, 1:51 800 and 4:13 mile at the time of admission. He also was state champion in the mile, so that helps as well. I doubt getting recruited has become that much harder over the past few years, so you should still be within their range of recruitment worthy times.

Well my father is an immigrant from El salvador and he didnt even graduate high school. As the first generation and first person to attend college I wanted to "do it right" and set the standard for the rest of the family. Since he's a contractor our income fluctuates greatly from $20,000-$50,000 and there is 5 people in our home, I don't think there would be any way for him to help pay for college at all. So that "academic money" and fully paid tuition would be very helpful. Stanford has been my dream school since I was 12 years old.

kjbh wrote:

If this is true, that is ridiculous. People making $45-60k can afford to pay for college. It really shouldn't even have anything to do with your family's income. You're 18. Get a job or take a loan.

I think it might be tough for families making 60k a year to pay 60k in college costs a year. Cuz then they'd only have 0$ left for everything else.

sdfsdfsdfsdfsdf wrote:Why are you set on Stanford? For undergrad, they aren't an amazing school. UCLA and UC Berkeley are almost certainly better academic schools for undergrad. However, they don't have as strong of an alumni network to artificially "boost" the reputation as Stanford. Not that Stanford isn't a very good school, of course it is, but just saying you shouldn't set your sights onto a single school. Increase your chances of getting some money by contacting other good schools. I do think UCLA and UCB would both be good schools for a 4/8 runner. I don't think I'd want to go to UCB as a distance runner, the training seems to hit a lot of people poorly, with only a few of the runners really excelling there.

The problem with all three of these schools, but moreso with Cal and UCLA, for undergrad is that you'll end up with TAs basically teaching the introductory classes of 500+ kids, which can be an unpleasant experience. None of the three is a particularly undergrad focused school, but I think Stanford probably handles undergrads the best of the three. It's certainly a little harder to get lost in the mix at Stanford, but it's remarkably easy to do so at Cal or UCLA if you're not extremely proactive.

A lot of it also depends on what you want to major in--Cal engineering is pretty rough as an undergrad, and I can't imagine anyone having a good time with Cal EECS while also training for track. I have friends who have transferred to less stressful environments--like Stanford, Princeton, and Columbia engineering--because they couldn't deal with the Cal EECS "cutthroatness."

Finally, Palo Alto, LA, and Berkeley are all stressful places in their own way, but the stress comes from different sources. With LA and Berkeley, there's a genuine physical safety issue--I wouldn't go places alone at night, and I wouldn't run alone. You'll also need a car in LA, and need to be comfortable with the public transit in Berkeley. In Palo Alto, you're probably getting a similar degree of mental stress that you'd get if you were in Cal EECS: Palo Alto has a very strong culture of success, and you're surrounded by a LOT of money all the time. You'll also struggle to live in PA on a normal student budget, so make sure you get a good meal plan worked out.

Palo Alto is, however, an excellent and safe place to run and train. UCLA and Cal are great if you love cities. All three are excellent universities and respected throughout the world.

Good luck with whatever choice you end up making. Note that, in order for you to get into Stanford, the coaches will have to want you, and they generally aren't too fond of walk-ons. Make sure you're talking with them AND OTHER COACHES ASAP

Just to inform everyone, I dont actually live in California, Im open to options around the country... I plan on having physics as my undegrad and then going on to med school. I actually was thinking about being a decathlete in college due to the fact that I'm pretty sure I could run 10.high with training (11.30 at a rustbuster meet in February) and having decent strength for the throwing events. Ultimately if I get accepted I'm open to anything the coaches want me to do.

Stanford actually gives people whose families make less than $125,000 a full ride

LOL Stanford is a lot better than UCLA and Berkeley, both for undergrad and grad

lol............ wrote:

LOL Stanford is a lot better than UCLA and Berkeley, both for undergrad and grad

Based on what? Undergrad is undergrad as far as education goes. You guys need to get over this myth that says otherwise.

You have a great chance at getting in for all the reasons that were previously listed. Admission shouldn't be a problem, as stated before, and your ACT score is pretty good. Good luck, you seem very driven and I hope you get in.

Take a look @ University of Washington in Seattle

Flagpole I think you are missing the main element here - the guy is African American/Hispanic - you have to toss out all the regular yardsticks when you have that. Plus he is lower middle class.

The average handout for AA students is around +400 points on the SAT - So his ACT is plenty good enough to get in to just about any school in the country.

Actually I wonder if he is a troll trying to get someone to complain about how much easier it is for AA/Latino students to get into college. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now.

Ototyk wrote:

lol............ wrote:

LOL Stanford is a lot better than UCLA and Berkeley, both for undergrad and grad

Based on what? Undergrad is undergrad as far as education goes. You guys need to get over this myth that says otherwise.

Stop telling yourself that. Probably went to North Central.

kjbh wrote:

Flagpole wrote:

3) Stanford should LOVE to get you as an athlete if you actually get your times down to your goals. The main reason is that they will NOT have to give you athletic scholarship money. Because your family makes just $45,000 a year, you will get a full ride (tuition and room and board) from Stanford. Your family can make up to $65,000 and get that actually.

If this is true, that is ridiculous. People making $45-60k can afford to pay for college. It really shouldn't even have anything to do with your family's income. You're 18. Get a job or take a loan.

BULLSh!T

You must be very very old if you think that's possible.

maybe back in the heyday, but college is very expensive.

from 30 - even 70k a YEAR

this is insane, he'd be paying off loans until he died.

lol............ wrote:

LOL Stanford is a lot better than UCLA and Berkeley, both for undergrad and grad

Where I work, when hiring engineers, UCLA or Cal grads would get hired before stanford. I guess it depends on how you define "better," though. I'm defining better in terms of the education received. School rankings take into account factors that don't include the education received. They include data on alumni donations, research grants, admission rates, and other metrics to try to grade the school overall, not the education itself. Stanford's rankings are artificially inflated by all three of these. When we are hiring, we don't care about those things, we care only about the education.

We are also wary of GPA at Stanford. Unfortunately, Stanford GPAs are inflated due to their grading policy. This makes it hard to really know if the candidate's GPA was high because of their own merit or because of the school.

In my experience working in the engineering field, most companies would mirror our preference for UCLA or Cal grads over Stanford, although obviously Stanford grads are hardly looked upon as a poor candidate, just not quite on par with UCLA or Cal grad, all else being equal.

The same could be said of Caltech, MIT, or Harvard grads. All would be slightly ahead of Stanford grads.

If you look at the metrics used by the school rankings, you'll see that I'm right. If you were to remove those factors, Stanford (and a few other schools) drop from the very top of the rankings to slightly behind the top tier public universities and a handful of other private schools that remain on top.

Just because you pay the most for your education doesn't mean it is the best.

Now if you are discussing grad school, Stanford comes back up IMO, because the massive endowments help immensely to bring in some faculty that might otherwise choose other schools. Unfortunately for the undergrads, this also means it is heavily skewing tfor faculty more interested in research than teaching, which I think is the root of the problem that makes their undergrad education slightly below the other top tier universities.

Feel free to rebuttal with actual thought. From your response earlier though, I suspect you went to Stanford and have drank the kool-aid. From the intelligence of your response, I think we can guess as to whether you are a victim or benefactor of their inflationary grade policies.

Btw, regarding the grade inflation, here is a good article covering it, from Stanford's website:

You're not getting in.