Do I have a good chance to get into Stanford?

telling the truth on it wrote:

The Reality.

We live in Indiana. My son ran sub 16, had an ACT of 33 and a 1510 SAT. We make $73,000 combined. Took every AP class offered and was ranked number 1 in his class, nailed every class but sacrificed a lot to do it.

Call me a liar, which many of you will, but he applied to Stanford and got denied. Zero, Nothing, Zilch, denied. What a lot of you are missing is it's a crapshoot. Who you know? Who will make a phone call for you? How many people apply and how many get turned down. Telling him that he'll probably get in is a guess at best.

Who would call you a liar? Only 6000 kids are undergrad at Stanford. So 1500-ish get in. Everyone is that or better.

What's amazing to me is people actually think they'll get in.

Much better odds to get into grad school there.

The.Donger wrote:

Much better odds to get into grad school there.

That depends on what program you are applying to. When my wife went to graduate school at Stanford, her program accepted just 2% of those that applied.

I take issue with the very last portion of your statement, Flagpole. One does not simply "go there" just because they have the right stats. Stanford can be picky and reject most tippy top students. And many kids who do have 36/2400/4.0 wouldn't be happy to go there. Some are upper middle class kids who are turning down full rides at other top 30 schools to pay $70k for Stanford. Others wouldn't shine at Stanford and would be too stressed. It's all about fit. This idea that you necessarily should go to the top college you get accepted to is often untrue. Also, Stanford won't admit most students who have the stats of an admitted student.

IMHO you can get a high quality education at about 100 different schools across the country if you are intelligent and work hard enough. The idea that 4 or 5 tower over the others is a myth. Stanford is a good school (my father went there btw), but I don't know that it is any better than 50 or so other schools across the country[graduates tend to make more money than at some other schools due to economies of scale (ie. the exorbitant cost of living in Palo Alto)]. To not call Notre Dame elite, in spite of the fact that it has the same average ACT score as Stanford is interesting. Private colleges like Stanford, MIT, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, etc. are all better for grad school unless you can get a substantial scholarship to go there as an undergrad. Otherwise, you are better off going to a state college for a quarter of the cost while getting good grades and working on entrance exams for graduate / medical school. Going to some of those elite schools as an undergrad is typically not worth the stress or the money as they tend to be pretty cutthroat, whereas the grad schools tend to be more professional. In summary, it is not the end of the world if you don't get into Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. as an undergrad. If you are smart and work hard, you will do well at whatever school you end up attending.

Very good points Portland Girl, but Flagpole is never wrong and will twist what you said to make himself sound right. The guy several posts ago whose son didn't get it, is correct as well. There are 1000's of kids who are just as smart but don't get in. Now anyone cannot realize that is beyond me as it's just common sense. Now I understand, flagpole's (I don't have a clue who he actually is) wife or girlfriend went there, she's surely smart, so everyone else isn't smart enough if they didn't get in. That's BS plain and simple, even with the extra curricular activities outside of school, there's no guarantee as you can still get denied.

It is much easier to get in as a recruited athlete so I would focus on getting better with times. Secondly, a 31 ACT can be improved on and I think you can definitely get a 32-33. Just study a bit and take practice exams.

Also, don't major in physics and try to go to medical school. Major in something else more useful like comp sci/engineering/business or just do chem/bio if you're set on medical school. Your mind may change later but I did undergrad physics and, though it was interesting, it is really for people who want to go to graduate school in the field. I'm just saying to explore the variety of majors that are available to you.

Very good advice Magoo:). Nice post.

magoo wrote:

It is much easier to get in as a recruited athlete so I would focus on getting better with times. Secondly, a 31 ACT can be improved on and I think you can definitely get a 32-33. Just study a bit and take practice exams.

Also, don't major in physics and try to go to medical school. Major in something else more useful like comp sci/engineering/business or just do chem/bio if you're set on medical school. Your mind may change later but I did undergrad physics and, though it was interesting, it is really for people who want to go to graduate school in the field. I'm just saying to explore the variety of majors that are available to you.

PortlandXCGirl wrote:

I take issue with the very last portion of your statement, Flagpole. One does not simply "go there" just because they have the right stats. Stanford can be picky and reject most tippy top students. And many kids who do have 36/2400/4.0 wouldn't be happy to go there. Some are upper middle class kids who are turning down full rides at other top 30 schools to pay $70k for Stanford. Others wouldn't shine at Stanford and would be too stressed. It's all about fit. This idea that you necessarily should go to the top college you get accepted to is often untrue. Also, Stanford won't admit most students who have the stats of an admitted student.

Hmm. I don't disagree with all of that. Let's find out what and also where you are wrong:

1) Stanford can reject most "tippy top" students. Yep. We agree. I was telling the OP back in 2015 (and others too) that he was not a slam dunk to be accepted there. Not sure why you are suggesting I think all great students get accepted there. I even later said I know a National Merit Scholarship winner who was rejected and that Stanford regularly rejects those with perfect SAT and ACT scores every year. So, though we agree here, you were wrong that we didn't.

2) The OP clearly wanted to go to Stanford at the time which is why he was asking if he could get in. I accept as a given that any student wanting to go to any college will determine (do the research) if it's a good fit for them or not.

3) Middle class students do NOT pay $70,000 a year to go to Stanford. if their family makes $125,000 or less and are accepted, they get FULL TUITION. In pretty much all areas of the country, that is at least middle class. Make $65,000 a year and you will get a full ride there if accepted (tuition plus room and board). AND, Stanford is need blind. That was a statement from you that shows you don't know what you think you know.

4) Never anywhere did I say that a student should go to the top college they are accepted to. You didn't say I did, but in a bunch of statements from you that were supposed to show how I was wrong, it is certainly inferred that you believe I did.

5) Finally, the SAT is back to a 1600 for the top score, so the 2400 you mentioned doesn't apply anymore.

So, perhaps next time you can teach me something, but you failed here. Good luck! I love to learn.

Michiganian wrote:

Very good points Portland Girl, but Flagpole is never wrong and will twist what you said to make himself sound right.

The guy several posts ago whose son didn't get it, is correct as well. There are 1000's of kids who are just as smart but don't get in.

Now anyone cannot realize that is beyond me as it's just common sense.

Now I understand, flagpole's (I don't have a clue who he actually is) wife or girlfriend went there, she's surely smart, so everyone else isn't smart enough if they didn't get in. That's BS plain and simple, even with the extra curricular activities outside of school, there's no guarantee as you can still get denied.

Dude, I admit when I am wrong when it happens. Clearly I was wrong about Trump becoming President (at least for now).

Things for you...

1) You say I will twist words to make it sound like I am right and then you praise a poster that I vehemently agreed with. Weird.

2) My wife went to Stanford, and I never said that everyone else who didn't get in wasn't smart enough to get in, and I said several times what you said immediately after that which is that Stanford is a reach for EVERYONE, meaning of course that there is no guarantee you will be admitted there.

3) Go back to the crux of my main argument at the beginning of this thread, and that was that Stanford students on average are smarter than UCLA students are on average. That is indisputable. Are there some students at UCLA who are as smart as some students at Stanford? Of course. As a whole though, Stanford wins this game, and easily.

magoo wrote:

It is much easier to get in as a recruited athlete so I would focus on getting better with times. Secondly, a 31 ACT can be improved on and I think you can definitely get a 32-33. Just study a bit and take practice exams.

Also, don't major in physics and try to go to medical school. Major in something else more useful like comp sci/engineering/business or just do chem/bio if you're set on medical school. Your mind may change later but I did undergrad physics and, though it was interesting, it is really for people who want to go to graduate school in the field. I'm just saying to explore the variety of majors that are available to you.

The OP started this thread in 2015 and is now at Johns Hopkins.

1) Your specific comment that I was quoting said something like "every student who has the stats should go there," implying that the only reason one shouldn't go is if they don't have the stats. Yes, I was nitpicking.

2) You were extrapolating from his specific case and making general statements that clearly do not apply to everybody.

3) I brought up the specific case of upper middle class kids. For example, Johnny has a 4.0 and a 1560 and his mom and dad make $250k a year in a suburb of Seattle. He applies to Stanford and to University of Chicago and Rice as well. He wins the Trustee Distinguished Scholarship at Rice, reducing his tuition there to $13k a year, as well as the Provost Scholarship at University of Chicago, reducing his cost of attendance significantly below the cost of Stanford. His EFC is just too high for him to get any financial aid at Stanford, but he can attend two similarly outstanding universities at a fraction of the cost. I agree that Stanford is cheap for most true middle class kids. Upper middle class kids have an entirely different set of financial concerns when it comes to elite universities.

4) You said a variety of statements that implied it over and over throughout the thread.

It's funny how smug you are when you completely misunderstood my comments. Have a nice day!

Wow, you've got real issues.

I used to have a friend like you, key word is used to. He was never wrong, ever.

He lost many friends, not just me yet he wasn't smart enough to figure out why. I don't know if you have kids or not, but God bless them for having you as a Dad.

No clue how old you are either, but good luck with the rest of your life.

Michiganian wrote:

Wow, you've got real issues.

I used to have a friend like you, key word is used to. He was never wrong, ever.

He lost many friends, not just me yet he wasn't smart enough to figure out why. I don't know if you have kids or not, but God bless them for having you as a Dad.

No clue how old you are either, but good luck with the rest of your life.

I am often wrong. Just wasn't here with regard to our discussion.

Contact the coaches, train hard, keep up the good grades, and re-take the ACT. Contact some other schools too so that A you have options and B Stanford knows other people are interested in you. Your 400/800 times are great. Hope you end up going to college somewhere you love!