Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you. Nobody ever talks about the fairy godmother. I mean, Cinderella must have felt pretty good, getting transformed from a dusty little ragamuffin into a splendid princess, but if you ask me, I think the person who got the biggest kick out of the whole affair must have been the fairy godmother. And why do I think this? Well, it’s...

Virtually all of Stanford's undergraduates live on campus. Write a note to your future roommate that reveals something about you or that will help your roommate - and us - know you better. Dear Roomie, Hope you enjoy the HELLO cupcakes! I may have zested the lemon a tad too zealously, but the tang is phenomenal. I was thinking we could make little "treasure chests" to get to know each other a little better. Pick a shoebox and fill it...

Tell us what makes Stanford a good place for you. Tell us what makes Stanford a good place for you. My dream is to understand the mind. I want to comprehend the chemical composition of thoughts, the molecular recipes for emotions, the construction of dreams. The workings of the resilient brain and how we can practically apply this knowledge have been something I have been considering for a long time. I'm interested in knowing how the brain works because I...

Stanford students are widely known to possess a sense of intellectual vitality. Tell us about an idea or an experience you have had that you find intellectually engaging. Fruits. The underappreciated gems of the world. Sparkling vermillion and streaked emerald, fuzzy and seedy and sometimes segmented. Glorious. Although this may seem bizarre, I became interested in chemistry because of fruits. Before this revelation, chemistry was just another subject to excel at. I plugged and chugged into gas laws equations and...

I started out wanting to study biology and chemistry, but realized that college classes, and Stanford college classes, have a lot more to offer. In my science classes, I was struggling to learn at the...

I am a first-generation student (my parents immigrated here from Vietnam). Although they are English-speaking and present in my life, I have always been a pretty independent student from middle school and beyond. When it came to college applications, I applied to places based on reputation and what my friends were talking about. To be honest, I looked over brochures and checked...

Busy, Perfectionist,...

I was fairly surprised to gain admission to Stanford. At my high school, the only "elite" college acceptances my year were: Yale (recruited gymnast); Stanford (2 girls including myself), and Princeton (myself and rumored track recruitment). Other top schools were UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego, USC, of which we had a couple people go to each (2-6 people per school). At my high school, most of the students are focusing on passing high school or attending community college, or perhaps a California state...

I couldn't afford one of these, and just relied on reputation of colleges and my friends' conversations to decide what colleges to apply for. I figured...