Central Coast! wrote:
Other possibilities...
Doesn't like The Bay Area?
Doesn't vibe with Stanford teammates or students?
Finds Stanford a tad too rigorous or intense and wants a more chill collegiate experience?
Not happy with Stanford's move to the ACC?
Really wants to work with Vanhoy?
He is a Psychology major. A doctorate is required to practice. As others have speculated, SLO may be a debt avoidance measure (if not getting a 100% ride at Stanford). There is no reason why he couldn't return to Stanford for grad school. Grad school is what counts in this field.
My guess is this is 99% driven (if not 100%) by running. Vanhoy is a really good mid-D coach, with a particularly amazing success story with Aidan McCarthy (Lester's HS teammate) going from 1:59 to 1:46. On the other hand, I don't think Ricardo Santos is proven for mid-D. Case in point, Lester has been running a lot more cross country races than a lot of people would think makes sense for a guy who appears to be a pure 800 runner and starts to drop off pretty hard after 1500.
Not liking the Bay Area is not it because Lester is from the Bay Area.
To someone else who posted about this, Stanford is on the quarter system, not semesters. 12 quarters to graduate. He has spent 7 quarters at Stanford unless he was also enrolled during summer quarters, so it's doubtful that he has already graduated.
Not very many psych majors actually become psychologists, so I wouldn't assume that that's his goal. Plus highly doubtful he'd have the grades to return to Stanford for grad school (they don't make huge concessions for recruited athletes like they do for undergrad).