What is Stanford like?

Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There isn’t a lot of joy at any of the top 20 schools. It is what you get when you select almost exclusively for extreme competitiveness and outstanding project management skills, which under current admissions criteria is who gets in. The quirky creative geniuses who have a joy of learning but who don’t start using Google Calendar at age 8 to schedule their lives are going elsewhere.

I’m an alumni FWIW.


So where are those creative geniuses going now? Brilliant but not with a nonproft at age 12.


Public R1 universities.


Nah. Privates like Bard & Oberlin


+1
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:OP it sounds like your child might want to use the early bullet on Duke instead. After visiting many campuses of top schools it feels like Duke is the only of the uber-elite schools left with a semblance of school spirit/fun on campus. Stanford had that decades ago, but no longer.


Princeton still has it, except people there are gratified when the basketball team makes the Sweet 16 and people at Duke are disappointed if their team doesn't make the Final Four.


I went to Duke on athletic scholarship. I was a poor kid and no matter where I went because of athletics and academic the wealthy and often unpleasant students did not matter to me because again, no social life no matter what. Duke isn’t that much different than Stanford. My daughter was a physician there. Both are comopetituve and wealthy. Other child went to Princeton - it was more intense than Duke - that’s for sure. My kids were not poor so likely did enjoy social life - as I intended,
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My daughter is graduating from Stanford in the next few weeks (well, technically she graduated last year but she stayed on campus for another year for a coterm — more on that later) and we all really regret the decision.

She was a Black woman in CS — the amount of racist, sexist comments and actions that have been thrown at her have really demoralized her. Stanford’s undergraduate student body is ~6% Black (already lower than peer schools), and the percent plummets in CS. She was the only African-American woman in her graduating CS class (there are a few more Black girls who majored in CS in her year, but she told me that they were all international students), and her CS classes were overwhelmingly white and Asian (the few non-Asian minorities in her CS classes were almost all men).

The summer after her sophomore year at Stanford, DD had an internship at a FAANG. Many of her white/Asian classmates commented that she was “unqualified” for such an internship (because someone with a 3.8 as a CS major at Stanford is definitely not qualified) and was a “diversity hire.” Students are VERY competitive about internships/med school admissions; CS is by far the most popular major on campus (something like ~20% of undergrads major in it), and Bio is the next most popular.

It’s not a particularly creative campus. Not a ton of emphasis on the arts. DD majored in film studies but is co-terming (basically taking a fifth year to complete a double major) in CS. She told me that the arts community at Stanford is not particularly active with the exception of a few student acapella and theatre groups. Many of her CS classmates looked down on her for also majoring in film studies, saying that she should instead double major in something useful like Math or Economics… Um, she’s already co-terming in CS! It’s a very sterile, soulless, and risk-averse place.


It’s also a pretty socially dead campus, with much of the social life happening in Greek life (which only 20% of the school is in). The non-Greeks at the school have a much more tame social life, with a lot of studying, grinding, and striving. It’s not a laid back place at all.

I also think that DD was a poor fit for Stanford culturally.

We live in a pretty racially diverse neighborhood in Brooklyn where a lot of parents work in creative fields. DH and I aren’t in creative fields (we work pretty straight-laced corporate jobs), but most of our friends have an artistic or creative career (or at least a serious hobby in the arts). For high school, DD went to a performing arts magnet high school in NYC — she was really happy in an environment where being quirky, creative, inclusive, artistic, and most importantly, encouraged to fail were all valued traits. Yes, she spent her high school years academically focused and playing a sport. But she also was very active in student theatre, goofed off with her friends making short films, visited sketchy artist studios in Brooklyn (I was not thrilled about this), and spent a lot of weekend nights in terrible DIY basement shows. Stanford students couldn’t relate to this at all — their idea of fun is going to football games, frat parties, building robots, or catching up on problem sets in the library on a Friday night.

She was not happy about how over scheduled and perpetually stressed her classmates were — despite the advertising, the “laid back” California vibes aren’t there at all. It’s a super intense, careerist, and fast-paced (due to the quarter system) pressure cooker of a school. I’ll never forget when DD called me her freshman fall asking if it was normal for college students to have to schedule meals with their classmates nearly a week in advance, with a few kids even asking her to “send me a Google Calendar invite for lunch together for next Tuesday!”


She was relieved when COVID hit in the middle of her sophomore year and she was sent home. Her junior year was all online, and she was thrilled that she didn’t have to step foot in Palo Alto that year. She ended up living with her best friend from high school for her entire junior year at college (2020-2021). Her best friend went to Bard, so my daughter and her friend rented a group house in the Hudson Valley for that year with a couple of my daughter’s bestie’s friends from college. She was really happy to be in a more laid-back and artistic environment where there was a lot of creative energy, spontaneity, and warmth (and no talk of Leetcode or FAANG internships).

It wasn’t all bad though. She has a very nice job lined up for her after graduation (Product Manager at a unicorn tech company with a lot of Stanford alumni and ex-FAANG workers) that she mainly got through networking with Stanford alums.

Why on Earth would she want a soulless tech job after dealing with those types at Stanford? Sounds like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.


3 common reasons:

1. $$$
2. Marriage.
3. $$$


PP here with the unhappy Stanford daughter. I don’t understand why you’d fit marriage into this, but yes, money was the main factor. DH and I make enough to cover DD’s Stanford tuition, but we can’t give major financial support beyond that — no money for grad school, no downpayment on a house, etc.

DD wants to be doing film in the long run, so she took our advice and will be working in tech for most of her twenties to build a nest egg (downpayment on property, kickstarting retirement funds, saving up for daycare if she chooses to have kids) until she hits her thirties.

BTW, there’s a big difference between going to college with these tech types and just working with them. DD had to live with these soulless people for four years, which is a lot more intense than just seeing them at work (and her company is letting her work entirely remotely, so she won’t even have to see her coworkers in person).


May I ask if she decided to stay in CA or move back to the East Coast? I imagine that plenty of students stay out West but can of course utilize the impressive alumni network worldwide. Has she found that her fellow classmates who have graduated have calmed down a bit and are nicer to interact with from her perspective or are they still stressed and constantly striving? Thanks! I was a grad student in the '90s and the vibes among grad students were very different from the undergrads but probably less pronounced than today.


She is moving to the East Coast, but not back to NYC — she’s moving to a smaller city known for having a lot of artists.


Baltimore? Pittsburgh?
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My daughter is graduating from Stanford in the next few weeks (well, technically she graduated last year but she stayed on campus for another year for a coterm — more on that later) and we all really regret the decision.

She was a Black woman in CS — the amount of racist, sexist comments and actions that have been thrown at her have really demoralized her. Stanford’s undergraduate student body is ~6% Black (already lower than peer schools), and the percent plummets in CS. She was the only African-American woman in her graduating CS class (there are a few more Black girls who majored in CS in her year, but she told me that they were all international students), and her CS classes were overwhelmingly white and Asian (the few non-Asian minorities in her CS classes were almost all men).

The summer after her sophomore year at Stanford, DD had an internship at a FAANG. Many of her white/Asian classmates commented that she was “unqualified” for such an internship (because someone with a 3.8 as a CS major at Stanford is definitely not qualified) and was a “diversity hire.” Students are VERY competitive about internships/med school admissions; CS is by far the most popular major on campus (something like ~20% of undergrads major in it), and Bio is the next most popular.

It’s not a particularly creative campus. Not a ton of emphasis on the arts. DD majored in film studies but is co-terming (basically taking a fifth year to complete a double major) in CS. She told me that the arts community at Stanford is not particularly active with the exception of a few student acapella and theatre groups. Many of her CS classmates looked down on her for also majoring in film studies, saying that she should instead double major in something useful like Math or Economics… Um, she’s already co-terming in CS! It’s a very sterile, soulless, and risk-averse place.


It’s also a pretty socially dead campus, with much of the social life happening in Greek life (which only 20% of the school is in). The non-Greeks at the school have a much more tame social life, with a lot of studying, grinding, and striving. It’s not a laid back place at all.

I also think that DD was a poor fit for Stanford culturally.

We live in a pretty racially diverse neighborhood in Brooklyn where a lot of parents work in creative fields. DH and I aren’t in creative fields (we work pretty straight-laced corporate jobs), but most of our friends have an artistic or creative career (or at least a serious hobby in the arts). For high school, DD went to a performing arts magnet high school in NYC — she was really happy in an environment where being quirky, creative, inclusive, artistic, and most importantly, encouraged to fail were all valued traits. Yes, she spent her high school years academically focused and playing a sport. But she also was very active in student theatre, goofed off with her friends making short films, visited sketchy artist studios in Brooklyn (I was not thrilled about this), and spent a lot of weekend nights in terrible DIY basement shows. Stanford students couldn’t relate to this at all — their idea of fun is going to football games, frat parties, building robots, or catching up on problem sets in the library on a Friday night.

She was not happy about how over scheduled and perpetually stressed her classmates were — despite the advertising, the “laid back” California vibes aren’t there at all. It’s a super intense, careerist, and fast-paced (due to the quarter system) pressure cooker of a school. I’ll never forget when DD called me her freshman fall asking if it was normal for college students to have to schedule meals with their classmates nearly a week in advance, with a few kids even asking her to “send me a Google Calendar invite for lunch together for next Tuesday!”


She was relieved when COVID hit in the middle of her sophomore year and she was sent home. Her junior year was all online, and she was thrilled that she didn’t have to step foot in Palo Alto that year. She ended up living with her best friend from high school for her entire junior year at college (2020-2021). Her best friend went to Bard, so my daughter and her friend rented a group house in the Hudson Valley for that year with a couple of my daughter’s bestie’s friends from college. She was really happy to be in a more laid-back and artistic environment where there was a lot of creative energy, spontaneity, and warmth (and no talk of Leetcode or FAANG internships).

It wasn’t all bad though. She has a very nice job lined up for her after graduation (Product Manager at a unicorn tech company with a lot of Stanford alumni and ex-FAANG workers) that she mainly got through networking with Stanford alums.

Why on Earth would she want a soulless tech job after dealing with those types at Stanford? Sounds like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.


3 common reasons:

1. $$$
2. Marriage.
3. $$$


PP here with the unhappy Stanford daughter. I don’t understand why you’d fit marriage into this, but yes, money was the main factor. DH and I make enough to cover DD’s Stanford tuition, but we can’t give major financial support beyond that — no money for grad school, no downpayment on a house, etc.

DD wants to be doing film in the long run, so she took our advice and will be working in tech for most of her twenties to build a nest egg (downpayment on property, kickstarting retirement funds, saving up for daycare if she chooses to have kids) until she hits her thirties.

BTW, there’s a big difference between going to college with these tech types and just working with them. DD had to live with these soulless people for four years, which is a lot more intense than just seeing them at work (and her company is letting her work entirely remotely, so she won’t even have to see her coworkers in person).


May I ask if she decided to stay in CA or move back to the East Coast? I imagine that plenty of students stay out West but can of course utilize the impressive alumni network worldwide. Has she found that her fellow classmates who have graduated have calmed down a bit and are nicer to interact with from her perspective or are they still stressed and constantly striving? Thanks! I was a grad student in the '90s and the vibes among grad students were very different from the undergrads but probably less pronounced than today.


She is moving to the East Coast, but not back to NYC — she’s moving to a smaller city known for having a lot of artists.


Baltimore? Pittsburgh?


Richmond is considered to have that rep.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My daughter, who's white, quit CS during her first year to do political instead. She got great grades but found the culture and department to be stressful and alienating as a woman from a low-income Midwestern background. Her best friend, Asian American from CA, stuck with CS but took 6 years to graduate and enjoyed her English and Classics classes a lot more. Of course, it all worked out; DD got into a T14 law school and best friend is a Product Manager at FAANG but neither enjoyed college very much.


PP with the unhappy Black daughter here. Yes, “neither enjoyed college very much” really resonates — the happiest students at Stanford tend to be either the Greeks or the ones who are happy with the competitive, fast-paced, and achievement-oriented culture.

And the athletes! My son and his teammates had a blast at Stanford and have gone on to do well in a variety of fields, as have their friends from other teams. Both the general alumni network and the athlete one are very strong.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My daughter is graduating from Stanford in the next few weeks (well, technically she graduated last year but she stayed on campus for another year for a coterm — more on that later) and we all really regret the decision.

She was a Black woman in CS — the amount of racist, sexist comments and actions that have been thrown at her have really demoralized her. Stanford’s undergraduate student body is ~6% Black (already lower than peer schools), and the percent plummets in CS. She was the only African-American woman in her graduating CS class (there are a few more Black girls who majored in CS in her year, but she told me that they were all international students), and her CS classes were overwhelmingly white and Asian (the few non-Asian minorities in her CS classes were almost all men).

The summer after her sophomore year at Stanford, DD had an internship at a FAANG. Many of her white/Asian classmates commented that she was “unqualified” for such an internship (because someone with a 3.8 as a CS major at Stanford is definitely not qualified) and was a “diversity hire.” Students are VERY competitive about internships/med school admissions; CS is by far the most popular major on campus (something like ~20% of undergrads major in it), and Bio is the next most popular.

It’s not a particularly creative campus. Not a ton of emphasis on the arts. DD majored in film studies but is co-terming (basically taking a fifth year to complete a double major) in CS. She told me that the arts community at Stanford is not particularly active with the exception of a few student acapella and theatre groups. Many of her CS classmates looked down on her for also majoring in film studies, saying that she should instead double major in something useful like Math or Economics… Um, she’s already co-terming in CS! It’s a very sterile, soulless, and risk-averse place.


It’s also a pretty socially dead campus, with much of the social life happening in Greek life (which only 20% of the school is in). The non-Greeks at the school have a much more tame social life, with a lot of studying, grinding, and striving. It’s not a laid back place at all.

I also think that DD was a poor fit for Stanford culturally.

We live in a pretty racially diverse neighborhood in Brooklyn where a lot of parents work in creative fields. DH and I aren’t in creative fields (we work pretty straight-laced corporate jobs), but most of our friends have an artistic or creative career (or at least a serious hobby in the arts). For high school, DD went to a performing arts magnet high school in NYC — she was really happy in an environment where being quirky, creative, inclusive, artistic, and most importantly, encouraged to fail were all valued traits. Yes, she spent her high school years academically focused and playing a sport. But she also was very active in student theatre, goofed off with her friends making short films, visited sketchy artist studios in Brooklyn (I was not thrilled about this), and spent a lot of weekend nights in terrible DIY basement shows. Stanford students couldn’t relate to this at all — their idea of fun is going to football games, frat parties, building robots, or catching up on problem sets in the library on a Friday night.

She was not happy about how over scheduled and perpetually stressed her classmates were — despite the advertising, the “laid back” California vibes aren’t there at all. It’s a super intense, careerist, and fast-paced (due to the quarter system) pressure cooker of a school. I’ll never forget when DD called me her freshman fall asking if it was normal for college students to have to schedule meals with their classmates nearly a week in advance, with a few kids even asking her to “send me a Google Calendar invite for lunch together for next Tuesday!”


She was relieved when COVID hit in the middle of her sophomore year and she was sent home. Her junior year was all online, and she was thrilled that she didn’t have to step foot in Palo Alto that year. She ended up living with her best friend from high school for her entire junior year at college (2020-2021). Her best friend went to Bard, so my daughter and her friend rented a group house in the Hudson Valley for that year with a couple of my daughter’s bestie’s friends from college. She was really happy to be in a more laid-back and artistic environment where there was a lot of creative energy, spontaneity, and warmth (and no talk of Leetcode or FAANG internships).

It wasn’t all bad though. She has a very nice job lined up for her after graduation (Product Manager at a unicorn tech company with a lot of Stanford alumni and ex-FAANG workers) that she mainly got through networking with Stanford alums.

Why on Earth would she want a soulless tech job after dealing with those types at Stanford? Sounds like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.


3 common reasons:

1. $$$
2. Marriage.
3. $$$


PP here with the unhappy Stanford daughter. I don’t understand why you’d fit marriage into this, but yes, money was the main factor. DH and I make enough to cover DD’s Stanford tuition, but we can’t give major financial support beyond that — no money for grad school, no downpayment on a house, etc.

DD wants to be doing film in the long run, so she took our advice and will be working in tech for most of her twenties to build a nest egg (downpayment on property, kickstarting retirement funds, saving up for daycare if she chooses to have kids) until she hits her thirties.

BTW, there’s a big difference between going to college with these tech types and just working with them. DD had to live with these soulless people for four years, which is a lot more intense than just seeing them at work (and her company is letting her work entirely remotely, so she won’t even have to see her coworkers in person).


May I ask if she decided to stay in CA or move back to the East Coast? I imagine that plenty of students stay out West but can of course utilize the impressive alumni network worldwide. Has she found that her fellow classmates who have graduated have calmed down a bit and are nicer to interact with from her perspective or are they still stressed and constantly striving? Thanks! I was a grad student in the '90s and the vibes among grad students were very different from the undergrads but probably less pronounced than today.


She is moving to the East Coast, but not back to NYC — she’s moving to a smaller city known for having a lot of artists.


Baltimore? Pittsburgh?


Richmond is considered to have that rep.


We demand a zip code! We can't derail this thread further without one.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My daughter, who's white, quit CS during her first year to do political instead. She got great grades but found the culture and department to be stressful and alienating as a woman from a low-income Midwestern background. Her best friend, Asian American from CA, stuck with CS but took 6 years to graduate and enjoyed her English and Classics classes a lot more. Of course, it all worked out; DD got into a T14 law school and best friend is a Product Manager at FAANG but neither enjoyed college very much.


PP with the unhappy Black daughter here. Yes, “neither enjoyed college very much” really resonates — the happiest students at Stanford tend to be either the Greeks or the ones who are happy with the competitive, fast-paced, and achievement-oriented culture.

And the athletes! My son and his teammates had a blast at Stanford and have gone on to do well in a variety of fields, as have their friends from other teams. Both the general alumni network and the athlete one are very strong.


PP here. Yes, the athletes are quite happy too — they’re a tight knit group.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My daughter is graduating from Stanford in the next few weeks (well, technically she graduated last year but she stayed on campus for another year for a coterm — more on that later) and we all really regret the decision.

She was a Black woman in CS — the amount of racist, sexist comments and actions that have been thrown at her have really demoralized her. Stanford’s undergraduate student body is ~6% Black (already lower than peer schools), and the percent plummets in CS. She was the only African-American woman in her graduating CS class (there are a few more Black girls who majored in CS in her year, but she told me that they were all international students), and her CS classes were overwhelmingly white and Asian (the few non-Asian minorities in her CS classes were almost all men).

The summer after her sophomore year at Stanford, DD had an internship at a FAANG. Many of her white/Asian classmates commented that she was “unqualified” for such an internship (because someone with a 3.8 as a CS major at Stanford is definitely not qualified) and was a “diversity hire.” Students are VERY competitive about internships/med school admissions; CS is by far the most popular major on campus (something like ~20% of undergrads major in it), and Bio is the next most popular.

It’s not a particularly creative campus. Not a ton of emphasis on the arts. DD majored in film studies but is co-terming (basically taking a fifth year to complete a double major) in CS. She told me that the arts community at Stanford is not particularly active with the exception of a few student acapella and theatre groups. Many of her CS classmates looked down on her for also majoring in film studies, saying that she should instead double major in something useful like Math or Economics… Um, she’s already co-terming in CS! It’s a very sterile, soulless, and risk-averse place.


It’s also a pretty socially dead campus, with much of the social life happening in Greek life (which only 20% of the school is in). The non-Greeks at the school have a much more tame social life, with a lot of studying, grinding, and striving. It’s not a laid back place at all.

I also think that DD was a poor fit for Stanford culturally.

We live in a pretty racially diverse neighborhood in Brooklyn where a lot of parents work in creative fields. DH and I aren’t in creative fields (we work pretty straight-laced corporate jobs), but most of our friends have an artistic or creative career (or at least a serious hobby in the arts). For high school, DD went to a performing arts magnet high school in NYC — she was really happy in an environment where being quirky, creative, inclusive, artistic, and most importantly, encouraged to fail were all valued traits. Yes, she spent her high school years academically focused and playing a sport. But she also was very active in student theatre, goofed off with her friends making short films, visited sketchy artist studios in Brooklyn (I was not thrilled about this), and spent a lot of weekend nights in terrible DIY basement shows. Stanford students couldn’t relate to this at all — their idea of fun is going to football games, frat parties, building robots, or catching up on problem sets in the library on a Friday night.

She was not happy about how over scheduled and perpetually stressed her classmates were — despite the advertising, the “laid back” California vibes aren’t there at all. It’s a super intense, careerist, and fast-paced (due to the quarter system) pressure cooker of a school. I’ll never forget when DD called me her freshman fall asking if it was normal for college students to have to schedule meals with their classmates nearly a week in advance, with a few kids even asking her to “send me a Google Calendar invite for lunch together for next Tuesday!”


She was relieved when COVID hit in the middle of her sophomore year and she was sent home. Her junior year was all online, and she was thrilled that she didn’t have to step foot in Palo Alto that year. She ended up living with her best friend from high school for her entire junior year at college (2020-2021). Her best friend went to Bard, so my daughter and her friend rented a group house in the Hudson Valley for that year with a couple of my daughter’s bestie’s friends from college. She was really happy to be in a more laid-back and artistic environment where there was a lot of creative energy, spontaneity, and warmth (and no talk of Leetcode or FAANG internships).

It wasn’t all bad though. She has a very nice job lined up for her after graduation (Product Manager at a unicorn tech company with a lot of Stanford alumni and ex-FAANG workers) that she mainly got through networking with Stanford alums.

Why on Earth would she want a soulless tech job after dealing with those types at Stanford? Sounds like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.


3 common reasons:

1. $$$
2. Marriage.
3. $$$


PP here with the unhappy Stanford daughter. I don’t understand why you’d fit marriage into this, but yes, money was the main factor. DH and I make enough to cover DD’s Stanford tuition, but we can’t give major financial support beyond that — no money for grad school, no downpayment on a house, etc.

DD wants to be doing film in the long run, so she took our advice and will be working in tech for most of her twenties to build a nest egg (downpayment on property, kickstarting retirement funds, saving up for daycare if she chooses to have kids) until she hits her thirties.

BTW, there’s a big difference between going to college with these tech types and just working with them. DD had to live with these soulless people for four years, which is a lot more intense than just seeing them at work (and her company is letting her work entirely remotely, so she won’t even have to see her coworkers in person).


May I ask if she decided to stay in CA or move back to the East Coast? I imagine that plenty of students stay out West but can of course utilize the impressive alumni network worldwide. Has she found that her fellow classmates who have graduated have calmed down a bit and are nicer to interact with from her perspective or are they still stressed and constantly striving? Thanks! I was a grad student in the '90s and the vibes among grad students were very different from the undergrads but probably less pronounced than today.


She is moving to the East Coast, but not back to NYC — she’s moving to a smaller city known for having a lot of artists.


Baltimore? Pittsburgh?


Richmond is considered to have that rep.


We demand a zip code! We can't derail this thread further without one.


Mom of the unhappy daughter here. Obviously I’m not naming the city, but it was chosen in part because there’s no major tech presence — DD did not want to be surrounded by people like her former classmates or her soon-to-be coworkers.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My daughter, who's white, quit CS during her first year to do political instead. She got great grades but found the culture and department to be stressful and alienating as a woman from a low-income Midwestern background. Her best friend, Asian American from CA, stuck with CS but took 6 years to graduate and enjoyed her English and Classics classes a lot more. Of course, it all worked out; DD got into a T14 law school and best friend is a Product Manager at FAANG but neither enjoyed college very much.


PP with the unhappy Black daughter here. Yes, “neither enjoyed college very much” really resonates — the happiest students at Stanford tend to be either the Greeks or the ones who are happy with the competitive, fast-paced, and achievement-oriented culture.

And the athletes! My son and his teammates had a blast at Stanford and have gone on to do well in a variety of fields, as have their friends from other teams. Both the general alumni network and the athlete one are very strong.


PP here. Yes, the athletes are quite happy too — they’re a tight knit group.


Stanford is one of the places where the recent athletes don't seem to do quite as well professionally though. There are wonderful exceptions but it was too bad when I was on campus how concentrated athletes, especially in sports like football and basketball, were in certain majors. What is Science, Technology & Society anyway?
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My daughter, who's white, quit CS during her first year to do political instead. She got great grades but found the culture and department to be stressful and alienating as a woman from a low-income Midwestern background. Her best friend, Asian American from CA, stuck with CS but took 6 years to graduate and enjoyed her English and Classics classes a lot more. Of course, it all worked out; DD got into a T14 law school and best friend is a Product Manager at FAANG but neither enjoyed college very much.


PP with the unhappy Black daughter here. Yes, “neither enjoyed college very much” really resonates — the happiest students at Stanford tend to be either the Greeks or the ones who are happy with the competitive, fast-paced, and achievement-oriented culture.

And the athletes! My son and his teammates had a blast at Stanford and have gone on to do well in a variety of fields, as have their friends from other teams. Both the general alumni network and the athlete one are very strong.


PP here. Yes, the athletes are quite happy too — they’re a tight knit group.


Stanford is one of the places where the recent athletes don't seem to do quite as well professionally though. There are wonderful exceptions but it was too bad when I was on campus how concentrated athletes, especially in sports like football and basketball, were in certain majors. What is Science, Technology & Society anyway?


I am an alum and I disagree with this. Their alumni athletes do very, very well, probably because they tend to be excellent students too. In some ways they fit the current Stanford mold well: exceptionally competitive and exceptionally project management oriented.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:My daughter is graduating from Stanford in the next few weeks (well, technically she graduated last year but she stayed on campus for another year for a coterm — more on that later) and we all really regret the decision.

She was a Black woman in CS — the amount of racist, sexist comments and actions that have been thrown at her have really demoralized her. Stanford’s undergraduate student body is ~6% Black (already lower than peer schools), and the percent plummets in CS. She was the only African-American woman in her graduating CS class (there are a few more Black girls who majored in CS in her year, but she told me that they were all international students), and her CS classes were overwhelmingly white and Asian (the few non-Asian minorities in her CS classes were almost all men).

The summer after her sophomore year at Stanford, DD had an internship at a FAANG. Many of her white/Asian classmates commented that she was “unqualified” for such an internship (because someone with a 3.8 as a CS major at Stanford is definitely not qualified) and was a “diversity hire.” Students are VERY competitive about internships/med school admissions; CS is by far the most popular major on campus (something like ~20% of undergrads major in it), and Bio is the next most popular.

It’s not a particularly creative campus. Not a ton of emphasis on the arts. DD majored in film studies but is co-terming (basically taking a fifth year to complete a double major) in CS. She told me that the arts community at Stanford is not particularly active with the exception of a few student acapella and theatre groups. Many of her CS classmates looked down on her for also majoring in film studies, saying that she should instead double major in something useful like Math or Economics… Um, she’s already co-terming in CS! It’s a very sterile, soulless, and risk-averse place.


It’s also a pretty socially dead campus, with much of the social life happening in Greek life (which only 20% of the school is in). The non-Greeks at the school have a much more tame social life, with a lot of studying, grinding, and striving. It’s not a laid back place at all.

I also think that DD was a poor fit for Stanford culturally.

We live in a pretty racially diverse neighborhood in Brooklyn where a lot of parents work in creative fields. DH and I aren’t in creative fields (we work pretty straight-laced corporate jobs), but most of our friends have an artistic or creative career (or at least a serious hobby in the arts). For high school, DD went to a performing arts magnet high school in NYC — she was really happy in an environment where being quirky, creative, inclusive, artistic, and most importantly, encouraged to fail were all valued traits. Yes, she spent her high school years academically focused and playing a sport. But she also was very active in student theatre, goofed off with her friends making short films, visited sketchy artist studios in Brooklyn (I was not thrilled about this), and spent a lot of weekend nights in terrible DIY basement shows. Stanford students couldn’t relate to this at all — their idea of fun is going to football games, frat parties, building robots, or catching up on problem sets in the library on a Friday night.

She was not happy about how over scheduled and perpetually stressed her classmates were — despite the advertising, the “laid back” California vibes aren’t there at all. It’s a super intense, careerist, and fast-paced (due to the quarter system) pressure cooker of a school. I’ll never forget when DD called me her freshman fall asking if it was normal for college students to have to schedule meals with their classmates nearly a week in advance, with a few kids even asking her to “send me a Google Calendar invite for lunch together for next Tuesday!”


She was relieved when COVID hit in the middle of her sophomore year and she was sent home. Her junior year was all online, and she was thrilled that she didn’t have to step foot in Palo Alto that year. She ended up living with her best friend from high school for her entire junior year at college (2020-2021). Her best friend went to Bard, so my daughter and her friend rented a group house in the Hudson Valley for that year with a couple of my daughter’s bestie’s friends from college. She was really happy to be in a more laid-back and artistic environment where there was a lot of creative energy, spontaneity, and warmth (and no talk of Leetcode or FAANG internships).

It wasn’t all bad though. She has a very nice job lined up for her after graduation (Product Manager at a unicorn tech company with a lot of Stanford alumni and ex-FAANG workers) that she mainly got through networking with Stanford alums.


Sounds like a terrible fit, but not surprising whatsoever. I guess she wanted the name more than a good fit.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My daughter, who's white, quit CS during her first year to do political instead. She got great grades but found the culture and department to be stressful and alienating as a woman from a low-income Midwestern background. Her best friend, Asian American from CA, stuck with CS but took 6 years to graduate and enjoyed her English and Classics classes a lot more. Of course, it all worked out; DD got into a T14 law school and best friend is a Product Manager at FAANG but neither enjoyed college very much.


PP with the unhappy Black daughter here. Yes, “neither enjoyed college very much” really resonates — the happiest students at Stanford tend to be either the Greeks or the ones who are happy with the competitive, fast-paced, and achievement-oriented culture.

And the athletes! My son and his teammates had a blast at Stanford and have gone on to do well in a variety of fields, as have their friends from other teams. Both the general alumni network and the athlete one are very strong.


PP here. Yes, the athletes are quite happy too — they’re a tight knit group.


Stanford is one of the places where the recent athletes don't seem to do quite as well professionally though. There are wonderful exceptions but it was too bad when I was on campus how concentrated athletes, especially in sports like football and basketball, were in certain majors. What is Science, Technology & Society anyway?


I am an alum and I disagree with this. Their alumni athletes do very, very well, probably because they tend to be excellent students too. In some ways they fit the current Stanford mold well: exceptionally competitive and exceptionally project management oriented.


The academic profiles of Stanford's revenue-generating or close to revenue-generating sport athletes also don't stack up well with the Ivy League athletes in those sports, so it isn't shocking they might not do quite as well. Science, Technology & Society has been big in football for a while. The athletes have a lot of academic support though, which Stanford doubled down on after some trouble with the Lopez twins.
Guys like Andrew Luck and Christian McCaffrey have done better than just about anyone in their years too
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My daughter, who's white, quit CS during her first year to do political instead. She got great grades but found the culture and department to be stressful and alienating as a woman from a low-income Midwestern background. Her best friend, Asian American from CA, stuck with CS but took 6 years to graduate and enjoyed her English and Classics classes a lot more. Of course, it all worked out; DD got into a T14 law school and best friend is a Product Manager at FAANG but neither enjoyed college very much.


PP with the unhappy Black daughter here. Yes, “neither enjoyed college very much” really resonates — the happiest students at Stanford tend to be either the Greeks or the ones who are happy with the competitive, fast-paced, and achievement-oriented culture.

And the athletes! My son and his teammates had a blast at Stanford and have gone on to do well in a variety of fields, as have their friends from other teams. Both the general alumni network and the athlete one are very strong.


PP here. Yes, the athletes are quite happy too — they’re a tight knit group.


Stanford is one of the places where the recent athletes don't seem to do quite as well professionally though. There are wonderful exceptions but it was too bad when I was on campus how concentrated athletes, especially in sports like football and basketball, were in certain majors. What is Science, Technology & Society anyway?

Stanford is a powerhouse for Olympic athletes (296 medals) and they have won at least one national championship for 47 consecutive years and counting.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My daughter, who's white, quit CS during her first year to do political instead. She got great grades but found the culture and department to be stressful and alienating as a woman from a low-income Midwestern background. Her best friend, Asian American from CA, stuck with CS but took 6 years to graduate and enjoyed her English and Classics classes a lot more. Of course, it all worked out; DD got into a T14 law school and best friend is a Product Manager at FAANG but neither enjoyed college very much.


PP with the unhappy Black daughter here. Yes, “neither enjoyed college very much” really resonates — the happiest students at Stanford tend to be either the Greeks or the ones who are happy with the competitive, fast-paced, and achievement-oriented culture.

And the athletes! My son and his teammates had a blast at Stanford and have gone on to do well in a variety of fields, as have their friends from other teams. Both the general alumni network and the athlete one are very strong.


PP here. Yes, the athletes are quite happy too — they’re a tight knit group.


Stanford is one of the places where the recent athletes don't seem to do quite as well professionally though. There are wonderful exceptions but it was too bad when I was on campus how concentrated athletes, especially in sports like football and basketball, were in certain majors. What is Science, Technology & Society anyway?


I am an alum and I disagree with this. Their alumni athletes do very, very well, probably because they tend to be excellent students too. In some ways they fit the current Stanford mold well: exceptionally competitive and exceptionally project management oriented.


The academic profiles of Stanford's revenue-generating or close to revenue-generating sport athletes also don't stack up well with the Ivy League athletes in those sports, so it isn't shocking they might not do quite as well. Science, Technology & Society has been big in football for a while. The athletes have a lot of academic support though, which Stanford doubled down on after some trouble with the Lopez twins.
Guys like Andrew Luck and Christian McCaffrey have done better than just about anyone in their years too


Their academic profiles might not match the Ivies, but you are flat-out wrong about their outcomes. They do exceptionally well and also as a group are some of the wealthiest and most regular donors to the school.

Maybe you don’t have visibility into the alumni? You said you were “on campus” — what does that mean? Because I don’t know any alumni that would say what you did about the outcomes of the athletes.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My daughter, who's white, quit CS during her first year to do political instead. She got great grades but found the culture and department to be stressful and alienating as a woman from a low-income Midwestern background. Her best friend, Asian American from CA, stuck with CS but took 6 years to graduate and enjoyed her English and Classics classes a lot more. Of course, it all worked out; DD got into a T14 law school and best friend is a Product Manager at FAANG but neither enjoyed college very much.


PP with the unhappy Black daughter here. Yes, “neither enjoyed college very much” really resonates — the happiest students at Stanford tend to be either the Greeks or the ones who are happy with the competitive, fast-paced, and achievement-oriented culture.

And the athletes! My son and his teammates had a blast at Stanford and have gone on to do well in a variety of fields, as have their friends from other teams. Both the general alumni network and the athlete one are very strong.


PP here. Yes, the athletes are quite happy too — they’re a tight knit group.


Stanford is one of the places where the recent athletes don't seem to do quite as well professionally though. There are wonderful exceptions but it was too bad when I was on campus how concentrated athletes, especially in sports like football and basketball, were in certain majors. What is Science, Technology & Society anyway?


I am an alum and I disagree with this. Their alumni athletes do very, very well, probably because they tend to be excellent students too. In some ways they fit the current Stanford mold well: exceptionally competitive and exceptionally project management oriented.


The academic profiles of Stanford's revenue-generating or close to revenue-generating sport athletes also don't stack up well with the Ivy League athletes in those sports, so it isn't shocking they might not do quite as well. Science, Technology & Society has been big in football for a while. The athletes have a lot of academic support though, which Stanford doubled down on after some trouble with the Lopez twins.
Guys like Andrew Luck and Christian McCaffrey have done better than just about anyone in their years too


Their academic profiles might not match the Ivies, but you are flat-out wrong about their outcomes. They do exceptionally well and also as a group are some of the wealthiest and most regular donors to the school.

Maybe you don’t have visibility into the alumni? You said you were “on campus” — what does that mean? Because I don’t know any alumni that would say what you did about the outcomes of the athletes.


+1 many of Stanford’s athletes go on to successful careers. The closest comparison is Duke and many of their athletes go on to success in business and other endeavors (as we saw in recent news with the group of Duke athlete alumni making that $7B bid for the Washington Commanders), Stanford is likely the same. It shouldn’t be too surprising as first and foremost Stanford and Duke are crème-de-la-crème universities, with athletics second.
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