How I got into Stanford (stats, activities, etc. + advice!)
Okay just so we’re clear, this isn’t a step-by-step guide on how to craft a successful application. Everyone is different, and there are a lot of factors, like essay content and letters of recommendation! Not to mention the school you apply to, the time you apply to it, etc… I was accepted at Stanford, but also was rejected from a LOT of schools. But, with all that said, I wanted to share the stats, activities, and some other elements of my application because when I was applying, I was constantly looking for examples students that had similar experiences to mine, so hopefully seeing an example will help someone, whether you can identify with it or just want a picture of what one application looked like.
But first… a book recommendation… Becoming Ms. Burton by Susan Burton highlights some really serious issues with racism and other faults in the mass incarceration system that I think are vital to be aware of. The account deals with her journey from incarceration and addiction to recovery, but it’s not one of those nice clean-cut sugarcoated stories where someone goes to prison, learns their lesson, abandons their old world and is ‘reborn’. Instead, it deals with the realities about how cyclical and self-perpetuating the incarceration system is, and how difficult, if not impossible, it can be to come into a society that is prejudiced against you and is already pointing you back towards prison. Not only a story of immense courage and ground-breaking, the book has implications for policies and programs that might facilitate rehabilitation rather than feeding the racist cycle.
Alright, now that I’ve given you some food for thought (and free time — we all have room to educate ourselves during any time, and what better time than when we’re quarantining) I’ll get straight into things.
Stats
SAT
Composite: 1350
Evidence-based reading and writing: 740
Math: 610
Essay: (19)
I swear to god I could rant all day about how classist the standardized test system is (for full rant with sources, see here), but the bottom line is while different people have differing levels of test anxiety/extenuating circumstances, generally, the more preparation you get for these the better you do. This obviously benefits affluent people who not only have the money for prep classes to hold them accountable, but more time outside of jobs etc. to devote to studying. Anyway Khan Academy has some good free prep for SAT which raised my scores like 100 points with steady practice over a month, but in the end it still wasn’t as high as others’ in my class. And I was spitefully gleeful when Stanford accepted me with a 1350 anyway.
ACT
Composite: 29
English: 34
Math: 25
Reading: 35
Science: 22
Writing: 11
I was honestly just stunned that I did worse on science than maths on this test.
GPA
3.99 (unweighted)
I don’t have much to say about this (cue rant)… GPA is. So. Different. at every school, it’s probably super hard for admissions officers to tell much about your skill from it honestly unless you demonstrate a particular extreme. Please don’t kill yourself to keep it up, and though the general anxiety and stress of high school can lead you to funnel your pent-up frustration into either fruitless procrastination or compulsive and excessive test prep (or both), just remember to be careful and take care of yourself. You won’t have a lot of free time to try out new things and figure out what you like after you finish school and get a job so… make the most of it.
Activities
- Listen to Your Art: Community service
I’ll probably make a separate post going into more depth on my activities, but basically, I was a member of and, in my senior year, co-lead this organization to raise money for the Trevor Project and in general awareness for mental health concerns in at-risk LGBT youth.
- West Sound Globe: Journalism/publications
I co-founded and was co-editor-in-chief of this digital press my senior year.
- Philosophy Club: Academic
I joined this club when it was started in junior year, and then led it in my senior year. This was one of the most ‘me’ clubs because I loved the conversations and questions it got into. However, be careful about taking on leadership positions in too many clubs — I felt really stretched thin taking on this many along with my part-time job.
- Writers group: Other clubs/activities
I led a little writers group through high school.
- Mud Pie: Journalism/publication
I was an editor for my school’s literature and arts magazine, Mud Pie, throughout high school. Funny story, when I first heard of this club, I had no idea what it was and was SO confused when my choir members would joke about ‘Mud Pie.’ Another fun story, we created propaganda to get people to submit their art and writing and plastered it all over the school.
- QSA (Queer-Straight Alliance): LGBT
I was part of this the first three years of high school, and then led it senior year. My favorite part was helping organize speaking and presentation information when our school led the local Youth Rally for Human Rights, as well as contributing to smaller campus initiatives like day of silence.
Essay (personal statement)
Prompt
Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
Topic
I’ll made a separate post sharing my personal statement and the other short essays I submitted to Stanford, but in general I talked about how my love of books in combination with my economic background led me to a greater understanding of inequality in the world. I used it as a place to talk about the special role books play in how I see the world, as well as how I find myself fitting into it. Just a general tip for this part — use a good mix of specific memories/anecdotes/passions and broader interests or themes in your life that relate to other parts of your app.
High school courses (11th & 12th)
I took higher level humanities courses. The exam results (the criterion for these was changed anyway because of COVID-19) affected offers from schools in other countries, but not Stanford or any US schools.
11th & 12th (IB program)
IB Biology SL (standard level)
IB French HL (higher level)
IB History HL
IB Language and Literature HL
IB Maths SL
IB Art HL
IB Theory of Knowledge (S2 11th, S1 12th)
12th
Advanced music (S2)
Academic interests
So you have to list your ‘academic interests’ when you apply to Stanford, and it’s sort of like saying your potential top three majors (no commitment). I chose the following:
- Classics
- Creative Writing
- Slavic Languages and Literatures
I’ll DEFINITELY be going into writing, they have a fantastic minor for it at Stanford and it’s what I’d like to do. I’m going to wait and try out a BUNCH of classes to figure out what to do for my major, probably something interdisciplinary and thought-provoking that will complement the writing.
Additional information
For some reason in all the YouTube videos about college apps, I rarely saw this section come up. Why does no one tell you that they give you miles of space on your application to divulge any other information you’d like them to know?!
I included the following to better inform other parts of my app:
- More info about my family’s economic situation
- My family’s cultural/linguistic background (since I’m Greek this spoke to some things I mentioned in my essays)
- My educational background (I homeschooled before high school)
- My IB essay topic (gender roles in Homeric epic, if you’re curious. I’m SO glad I included this because the feedback note I got from my admissions officer directly referenced it when talking about how I made interdisciplinary connections)
It’s just a good space to clarify extenuating circumstances behind your stats, background info for your essays, etc. Think of it as though someone asked you, “Is there anything else you think the person reading this application needs to know about you?”
Admissions feedback
I received some feedback on my application. I don’t want to disclose the letter verbatim to preserve the admissions’ officer’s privacy of course, but there were a couple themes about what Stanford admissions officers were looking for in applicants I thought were interesting.
The first one was mature qualities like intellectual curiosity and an active thirst for knowledge, seeking out information in the world around you. They were impressed by interdisciplinary connections, like those made in an essay I mentioned I had written, and also highlighted open-mindedness as a positive quality.
Advice
Letters of recommendation
Realize that you are crafting your teachers’ letters of recommendation every moment you have them in high school. This doesn’t mean you should strive to appear perfect around them all the time, or kiss up or all that. Quite the contrary. Be willing to recognize your mistakes — and even talk about them in greater detail — in order to improve future work. Be fun to work with, keep an open mind, be open to collaborating with other students. Being reliable and willing to take feedback by themselves will take you a LONG way.
Tell a story with your application
Your application tells a story about a key protagonist, you, and that character’s life (whose interests and attributes might just line up with those the school thinks is a good pair for it). How many exciting memoirs do you read that tell literally. everything. about the main character? None of them, right? Same goes for every piece of fiction — they usually zone in on a particular space of time that was significant in some way or another to the character(s) in question. In a similar way, you don’t have to tell the admissions officers EVERY detail of your life — and frankly, you won’t have the space to do so effectively. Instead, tell a story about where you are now, perhaps with references to key moments in your past, but ultimately with the focus on the student they are considering admitting: present you.
Let them get to know you. What challenges do you face that push you toward physical, academic or psychological ‘death’? How do you overcome those challenges? Readers like to worry and get surprised, and admissions officers don’t want to see a bland timeline, they want to see some of the unique things that make you tick. If you try your best to write a good story of yourself, think of it like a book proposal — it will probably get a lot of rejections, but a publishing house (metaphorical admissions office) might just see promise that it will become successful through the specific programs and opportunities of that institution.
