[akiddoc]

My daughter was just rejected and is probably going to Pomona. Wash U and Dartmouth are the other options. 1% chance X 2 of getting into Princeton or Yale off the wait list. There are 10,000 kids applying to Stanford with SAT's over 2300 and 4.0 unweighted GPA's. 15,000 valedictorians. Everyone has 5's on their AP tests. Athletes, artists, musicians. 5% get accepted. 15% of the legacies are accepted. That is the state of affairs.

I applied to only one college in 1974. Lived in Canada and didn't really know any better. My parents refused to pay for a UCB application. Said it wasn't that good a school. If I had not gotten in, I would have attended the U of Manitoba. On my first paper, 1st quarter at Stanford, I received a 2 out of 5. Intro to Philosophy with Mothershead. Shocked me to the core. Taking that course wasn't a smartly planned move, but in the end it changed the course of my education. My Philosophy TA took a liking to me and coached me through the course. I gradually learned to write a semi-coherent paper. I entered the final with a B-, but aced the final for an A. Same thing happened in Physical Chem. Aced the final after coming in with a B. That TA taught me what was expected of a college student at Stanford. I took a lot of philosophy courses at Stanford, which put a drag on my GPA, but my interviewer from Yale Med was totally impressed that I had taken all of those classes and let me in. Funny how one choice at the beginning of freshman year can change your life.

http://historicalsociety.stanford.edu/pd...sheadJ.pdf

[akiddoc]

My daughter was just rejected and is probably going to Pomona. Wash U and Dartmouth are the other options. 1% chance X 2 of getting into Princeton or Yale off the wait list. There are 10,000 kids applying to Stanford with SAT's over 2300 and 4.0 unweighted GPA's. 15,000 valedictorians. Everyone has 5's on their AP tests. Athletes, artists, musicians. 5% get accepted. 15% of the legacies are accepted. That is the state of affairs.

I applied to only one college in 1974. Lived in Canada and didn't really know any better. My parents refused to pay for a UCB application. Said it wasn't that good a school. If I had not gotten in, I would have attended the U of Manitoba. On my first paper, 1st quarter at Stanford, I received a 2 out of 5. Intro to Philosophy with Mothershead. Shocked me to the core. Taking that course wasn't a smartly planned move, but in the end it changed the course of my education. My Philosophy TA took a liking to me and coached me through the course. I gradually learned to write a semi-coherent paper. I entered the final with a B-, but aced the final for an A. Same thing happened in Physical Chem. Aced the final after coming in with a B. That TA taught me what was expected of a college student at Stanford. I took a lot of philosophy courses at Stanford, which put a drag on my GPA, but my interviewer from Yale Med was totally impressed that I had taken all of those classes and let me in. Funny how one choice at the beginning of freshman year can change your life.

http://historicalsociety.stanford.edu/pd...sheadJ.pdf