Each deferral request is reviewed on a case by case basis and there is no guarantee that any request will be approved. Should I still apply? A: All PhD students are fully funded. PhD applications will be considered for a limited number of fellowships. These awards are competitively allocated and are based on academic merit and research potential.
Most MS students are self-funded and do not receive fellowships. A: Yes, though it is quite rare for a first-year MS student to secure an assistantship. Most MS students support their first few quarters with loans, and search for assistantships once they have built relationships with faculty in ME or other departments. There is no central database for available assistantships. Students must contact faculty members directly to inquire about assistantships.
Campus tours are offered through the Visitor Center. While these tours are primarily for prospective undergraduate students, they are open to anyone and offer an excellent overview of campus. The Department of Mechanical Engineering does not offer any tours of our facilities nor do we provide individual counseling to prospective graduate students. We are a very small office so are unable to meet with prospective students or accept drop-in visitors.
The best way to reach us is via email at Mechanical stanford. A: All of the faculty members have public pages with contact information on the Stanford online directory, and many provide links to their labs.
These websites are a great place to start. All ME faculty contact information is available on the People tab on our website. A: No, Mechanical stanford.
Stanford University link is external. Admissions Frequently Asked Questions. Main navigation Skip to main content Secondary Navigation. Main content start. Q: I am currently getting my BS degree.
Can I apply for the PhD program? You do not need to share why you are declining an interview. If you or someone in your family knows the interviewer who contacts you, please clarify that with the interviewer so that we may attempt to match you with another volunteer. To maintain a fair and unbiased interview program, we ask that you do not network with those who may know your interviewer. Where do interviews take place? During the —22 application cycle, all interviews worldwide will be conducted via video chat.
Applicants and volunteers will identify a mutually agreed upon platform for the interview. In a typical year, the majority of Stanford interviews are conducted in person; an interviewer will invite you to meet you in a public place, such as a coffee shop, food court or library. In-person interviews will not be permitted during the —22 application cycle. No interviews are offered on the Stanford campus. When do interviews take place?
Interviews for Restrictive Early Action applicants occur during the first few weeks of November. Interviews for Regular Decision applicants occur from mid-January to mid-February.
During these times, please frequently check the email address you provided on your application. What should I expect? How should I prepare? Since the interview is meant to be an informal conversation, no formal preparation is needed. We want to hear a 'voice'—that's a critical component. For the alumni of a school that resides on the forward boundary of the digital frontier, where arrays of 1s and 0s have transformed life as we know it, this is unsettling.
Even perfect test scores don't guarantee admission. Far from it: 69 percent of Stanford's applicants over the past five years with SATs of —the highest score possible—didn't get in. Moreover, applicants aren't just competing against other stellar scholars. They're also competing against circumstances.
So one year, being a tuba player might be really important. And another year, well, there are already these five even better tuba players and we don't need another. Cardinal head football coach David Shaw, '94, doesn't sign quarterbacks only. He tries to build a team. So, too, does Rick Shaw. That's where the word "holistic" comes in. Stanford, in addition to wanting superior scholars, also wants to bring in a pre-built community populated by kids from every stop on the geographic, socioeconomic and talent spectrums.
They are taking the personality, the talent. They are taking the contributions that aren't always obvious at first glance. I see it firsthand with my own students who apply—who gets admitted and who doesn't. Shaw acknowledges that part of the evaluation is subjective, which makes a denial of a superior candidate all the harder to accept.
There's not a constituency that isn't upset. That's not only true for alumni children. My consolation prize is that I know those kids are going to be fine. They may be disappointed for a while, but they will wind up at very good schools and do very well.
On the wall in her office is a large map of the United States. I try to really paint the picture of the vastness and the talent in a Stanford admissions pool. That's 5, of these very best kids, just in one country.
Stanford can only take half of those kids, because they don't have the space. They don't have the beds. Bigham reminds her parents that when a university gets done filling its institutional priorities, be they linebackers or physicists, goalkeepers or astronomers, there are even fewer spots.
One of Stanford's biggest priorities, as it is at most universities, is the bond of legacy. The percentage of alumni children admitted to Stanford is roughly three times the overall percentage of acceptance: somewhere in the mid to high teens. Nevertheless, there are many more 'no's' than 'yesses' each year. It is, says Stanford Alumni Association President Howard Wolf, '80, "the point at which the University is most vulnerable in its relationship with its alumni.
Shaw is a strong advocate for considering legacy status in the overall student assessment, but emphasizes that it is only relevant if the student is competitive in all other aspects. Yet he and his colleagues understand that no amount of explanation, no description of the rigor and meticulous attention given to evaluating prospects will console the family of a talented student who is denied entry, especially if Mom or Dad is a Stanford alum. Parents, Etchemendy feels your pain.
The provost was a legacy who got the thin envelope from the Farm. And I didn't get in. It was a crushing experience. I feel very acutely what these kids feel like when they don't get in. I'm very sensitive to that. I have two children in college and one in high school.
For many American parents with teenage children, the college decision looms like a signal moment that will help shape their kids' lives.
The USAMO series is so prestigious that I've known Stanford students whose main spike was placing within the top 1, or 2, in this competition. Most importantly, though, hundreds of thousands of the most mathematically strong students participate in it , making a top ranking really impressive.
The best way to sign up is to ask your high school math teacher. If your high school doesn't do this competition, you should either aggressively petition them to do it or search for a neighboring high school that will accept you as a guest. If you don't meet these basic thresholds, I would think very hard before making the USAMO series your spike—the series is, after all, just a much harder version of these standardized tests in nearly the exact same format.
The USAMO series will be a definite spike for you if you manage to make it into the top 1, or 2, spots. Now, what if you're good at tests and competitions—but not math? Many students are strong in STEM but aren't exceptional when it comes to solving timed problems.
Some get anxious from the pressure, whereas others just don't do well on tests, even if they're brilliant at STEM. These students might instead be found writing their own computer programs for months at a time or working on a science experiment for weeks.
Like most science fairs, the ISEF requires you to do research and present your findings. Think of it like this: whereas winning your high school's local science fair is like winning a meter dash in your town, winning the ISEF is like winning the meter dash in the Olympics. You can't apply directly to the ISEF.
Instead, you have to start out first in a regional science fair. If you do well in that, you can advance to the next ISEF rounds. You can read about the competition's judging criteria and a real winner's experiences on the official website.
Some of the key factors to winning include being innovative and original. You have to be rigorous, but not nearly to the degree of professional science research. Being interesting is the name of the ISEF game. What does a winning ISEF project look like? Here's an excerpt from the profile of the 1st place winner :. Studying satellite images and data from the Descartes Labs , Lillian successfully forecasted crop yields for every country within Africa.
To show originality for the ISEF, you must tackle a problem that's interesting to the scientific community. Since few high school students have a good overview of the academic science literature, it's important for any student to have a professional academic scientist or engineer as their mentor.
This will ensure that you work on a problem the field considers important. Also, good mentors with previous experience will know which problems can be done by students and which would be too complicated or time-consuming.
After you choose your field and mentor, having the tenacity and focus to put your creative thinking toward the problem is key. Students who have historically had a lot of trouble staying focused or finishing projects should be wary. But with the ISEF, tenacity and the ability to stick to a project for hundreds or even thousands of hours from start to finish is absolutely crucial.
Ranking in the top for the ISEF would definitely qualify as a spike for you. There are many more STEM competitions besides the two above. These competitions require you to work with logic very intelligently, and all require memorizing and being familiar with some facts. I personally participated in each one of these while in high school. Here's a quick overview of how they work. The Math Olympiad is special because it's the most competitive, with the highest number of people doing the first round.
Because so many people prep for the Math Olympiad, the field has changed so that a good part of doing well on it is having tons of practice so you'll know immediately which equations you need to pull out when you see a particular mathematical expression. Biology requires the most memorization. In fact, most early rounds are about recalling the text of Campbell Biology in a timed fashion.
Chemistry is a happy mixture of using logic to solve problems and memorizing a moderate list of information to help solve those problems. The hands-on portions of both Chemistry and Biology require you to be good at following memorized procedures.
On the other hand, Physics and Informatics have a lot of hands-on sections that require a ton of resourcefulness and novel problem solving. In these other competitions, I'd say that qualifying for the top will make the competition a spike for you in the eyes of Stanford. But not all spikes need to be in explicitly ranked STEM fields. You could discover a new protein with significance to medical research; there wouldn't necessarily be a competition for the discovery, but if the discovery is qualitatively stunning enough, it can count.
For your Stanford spike, you could brainstorm an amazing discovery, such as a biological process, an electrical engineering discovery, or something else entirely. Or you could build something new, such as a computer program, a cool robot, or a fun electronics project. Whatever the case, make sure that your project is impressive. Qualitatively, the project should be as good as or better than a ranking within the top 1, on the Math Olympiad. Stanford is all about engineering, and they would love to see you build something of your own!
As you can see here, there are tons of competitions and ways through which you could show off your special STEM skills. Beyond the top few listed above, you can also brainstorm your own fields. Once you have a competition or field in mind, it's useful to evaluate how prestigious it is. Remember that the less prestigious a competition or field is, the higher you have to rank in it to be afforded the same credit.
To estimate prestige, first look at how many people participate—the more people who participate, the more impressive it'll be on your Stanford application.
Next, look at the skills of the average participant: the more skilled the people coming in are, the better. Stanford is one of the most difficult universities to get into, as are UC Berkeley and Cornell.
But all these schools follow the same pattern of being highly ranked and having a slight engineering tilt—and all have a common admissions pattern. Because these three universities are so prestigious, it's critical to keep in mind the three truths :. So if your focus is outside STEM, you should be the best you can be in that area and, if possible, try to tie that work into some potential interdisciplinary work with STEM.
If you're already in STEM, you'll want to strongly consider entering a prestigious math or science competition to show off the high degree of your skills. In the end, make sure that you're putting forward your absolute best Stanford application possible! If you're applying to Stanford, it's important to know everything there is to know about the school. Get started with our complete guide to Stanford University and then read our best tips on how to write great Stanford essays , including a stand-out roommate essay.
As you know, strong test scores are an important part of your Stanford application. Aiming for a top score? Already got some great extracurriculars? Then check out our college admissions and test-prep guide designed specially for students like you!
We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:. These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.
Fred is co-founder of PrepScholar. He scored a perfect score on the SAT and is passionate about sharing information with aspiring students.
0コメント