What is Stanford like?

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

Of all top 20 schools? No wonder you are joyless. It must have been exhausting to get all those degrees so you could make such sweeping statements!

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

You have to be a particular type of student to thrive at Stanford. It's not like a state school where there is a diverse and large student body to have a niche for everyone. If you're not socially savvy, ambitious (to the point of seeking to be the best, and nothing less than that), self-driven, focused, and interested in coupling entrepreneurship and technology towards your academic and extracurricular pursuits, you will not like Stanford. Too many students have Stanford as their dream school, drawn to the allure of some laid-back counter to the Ivies away when in some ways it's more stressful.

If you are that forementioned student,
Stanford will give you access to an unparalleled level of opportunities and connections no other place on earth could match. If you're not that student, be honest with yourself about if you can handle that pervasive atmosphere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our valedictorian was insanely qualified (including a perfect score on AP CS - only something like 300 students a year do this), applied REA, and was deferred and then rejected. Also an unhooked full pay white guy. So, I would really think about whether your child wants to do this, as if you REA at Stanford you can't ED anywhere else.

What were his USACO results?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our valedictorian was insanely qualified (including a perfect score on AP CS - only something like 300 students a year do this), applied REA, and was deferred and then rejected. Also an unhooked full pay white guy. So, I would really think about whether your child wants to do this, as if you REA at Stanford you can't ED anywhere else.

What were his USACO results?

Is that a joke?

[Anonymous]

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.

The vast majority of the Honors students at UMD are doing STEM/pre-med and are equally interested in some drone career.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Find the college that currently resembles what Stanford was 25 years ago. Let us know if you have any ideas.

[Anonymous]

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

[Anonymous]

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.