You and Stanford - Printable Version
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Re: You and Stanford - Spiny_Norman - 06-20-2013
(06-20-2013, 04:41 PM)Publius link Wrote:Spiny, as a football fan why were you even considering Yale or Duke?
Publius, my world had expanded since I was 5 years old. By the time that I was in HS, I paid attention to college basketball too. Duke had captured my fancy when they went to the NCAA final my senior year with Gene Banks, Jim Spanarkel and Mike Gminski. I liked the way they played. This led me to research the school and discover that the rest of it seemed pretty good too.
In my prior post, I skipped over the single most important factor in my decision to pursue admission to Stanford - Tom Watson. My passion in high school was golf. Tom Watson was my role model, not only as a player and a person. But he was a golfing midwesterner like me. And he married a nice Jewish girl from Kansas City! I wanted his life. I figured that I could start with Stanford.
Re: You and Stanford - Nan3cy - 06-20-2013
Spiny, my mother once sat next to Tom Watson at the wedding dinner of the son of a family friend. (The friend had been chairman of the Master's.) Mom said Tom was "a very nice young man." ...
Re: You and Stanford - Hey - 06-22-2013
Im a legacy, unfortunately I wasnt accepted. Despite that, Ive always identified with Stanford as my home school and Im in awe of its academics. Im among the purists who were recently afraid of Stanford becoming a football factory, but so far Im very pleased how theyve kept their priorities straight.
My dads story is much more interesting. He was born in 1943 in Palo Alto and was raised there. His family had a hard time paying bills, and he was very motivated to be certain that would never be a problem for him once he was on his own.Â
He knew Stanford was a great school, but school wasnt easy for him and there was no way he could afford it. He was good at sports, and when he wasn't working or studying, he spent all of his free time playing basketball so he could get a scholarship. In his senior year he was MVP of the Peninsula League while at Paly, and they also won the league title (under Clem Wiser, who also coached Jim Harbaugh when he was there). He had a GPA of 3.0, the lowest allowable GPA possible for admissions, but that was good enough for the basketball scholarship. Â
He started every year on the team, and every year they finished second in the conference to Woodens UCLA team (two of those teams were the national champions). The bummer was that back then only the first-place team from each conference got to go to the NCAA tournament. He was second team all-conference his junior and senior years to Gail Goodrich twice, and Walt Hazzard and Jim Jarvis. He remained among Stanfords all-time career free throw leaders until the mid-80s.
His other notable experience was that in 1965 his picture was in the nationally-published Look magazine as his fraternity was one of the first to allow an African American into their house. The national chapter suspended their charter for that. Eventually, the national chapter changed their minds, elected new leadership, and let them back in.
Re: You and Stanford - Nan3cy - 06-22-2013
And I'm thinking the fraternity was ATO, originally Alph Tau Omega, but while I was in undergraduate school it was a local Alpha Tau Omicron. One of the first African-American guys in the house (there are three in the 1966 yearbook) was Ira Hall, who was a B-school classmate of mine in the 70s.
Re: You and Stanford - Roberton3 - 06-22-2013
I was totally unaware of Stanford when I was applying to colleges. In hindsight, that seems strange: my father was born in Oakland and grew up on the west coast, my grandfather went to Kal, and my great-uncle went to Stanford, and yet I didn't even think about California schools. I'd grown up on the east coast, and had never been west of Chicago. And I only thought about schools in a narrower area than that: every college I applied to was in either New York, New Jersey, or New England. So while my undergrad school's teams are named after a shade of red that begins with "C", I spent those years in Cambridge, not Palo Alto.
But during a summer when I was about halfway through college, I joined my parents on a vacation to California, and while staying with family friends in Los Altos, we made a quick visit to the Stanford campus. The campus was empty for the summer, but it was still gorgeous, and not at all like any college campus I'd seen before. And I discovered that Stanford has one of the top PhD programs in my field. So when I applied to grad school, one of my applications went to Stanford.
My grad school decision came down to MIT or Stanford. Staying in Cambridge would have been easier, and my undergrad professors were all encouraging me to go to MIT. But my senior year of college was the snowiest year on record in Boston. The Boston Globe ran a graphic each day showing the total snowfall so far, superimposed on a picture of Robert Parish (the Celtics' 7-foot center). After the snow completely covered him, they switched to a picture of him dunking. And when the snow got past the top of the backboard, they gave up and stopped running the graphic. My decision was made.Â
Re: You and Stanford - Hey - 06-22-2013
Kent Hinckley is my dad and he and Clay Raaka played at the same time. I believe Clay also had some rebound records that lasted until the 80's as well. They both ended up as neighbors 20 years later for a while and played tennis together on weekends.Â
My dad was a part of Sigma Chi, Alpha Omega chapter, and they ended up starting their own fraternity. They changed their name to Sigma Chi Omega after the disagreement in 1965. Eight years later or so the original fraternity welcomed them back.Â
The guy they took in is named Kenneth Washington. My dad said it wasn't part of any movement, everybody just liked him. The publicity that came from it seemed silly and they didn't really concern themselves with it. Here's a brief clip I found on the situation:Â
http://newspaperarchive.com/albuquerque-tribune/1965-06-08/page-29
Back then the Sigma Chi house and the Delt house was for a lot of the basketball players. But all the stories I keep hearing about are about the football players in the Zate house.
Re: You and Stanford - Nan3cy - 06-22-2013
Right, I forgot that Sigma Chi was in the same situation as ATO at about the same time...
Re: You and Stanford - 81alum - 06-22-2013
I had no intention of going to Stanford all the way through my junior year of high school. I had free tuition at a small college where my father taught, and I just assumed I would go there. My high school orchestra (we were located in Idaho) visited Stanford on a field trip at the end of my junior year, and I had about a one hour stroll around campus. That next fall, remembering the beautiful campus and having heard about first-class academics, I decided to include Stanford on a short list of schools to which I applied (liberal arts colleges like Pomona and Lewis&Clark being the primary competitors.)Â
In the late 1970s Stanford had a need-blind admission policy, and middle-class financial aid was more widely available than it is now. I was accepted, and by the time financial aid was figured in Stanford was the least expensive university for me other than my father's (free) college. I doubt that I would have chosen to attend today, given the brobdingnagian debt I would have been expected to take on. When I graduated in 1981 I had 0 debt and had paid little more than my work study earnings for four years.
Seeing the campus and hearing more about academics were what prompted me to apply. Athletics were not an attraction. In fact, had I known that Stanford had a major football program I might actually have been dissuaded. I was thoroughly anti-athletics at the time, and wanted to go somewhere where it was possible and respectable to be an intellectual first and foremost. Universities that emphasized athletics seemed to me to be exhibiting the wrong values. I was sick and tired of being the star student at my school and getting less respect than the lowliest football players. Or so I thought.
During my freshman year I was introduced to Stanford football by a couple of dorm mates who became managers for the football team. That was Bill Walsh's first year. I began to see the "intellectual" side of football. By the end of the season I was attending every game and trying to call the plays from the stands before Walsh did, seeing how close I could come to the actual calls. "Flare pass to Francis to the wide side! Sweep left to Nelson! Stop and go to Lofton!" Etc. I absolutely loved the idea that Walsh, through innovative and creative strategies, could get his team to win games against much better athletes. It taught me that football is just as strategic and tactical as it is physical, and that was the side of the game that hooked me. If Stanford had been winning through superior physicality and using boring and uncreative plays I would never have become a convert. That is just who I was at the time.
That is how I came to Stanford, and how I came to Stanford athletics.Â
Re: You and Stanford - pauloalto - 06-22-2013
I went to Stanford because Wellesley has a pretty campus.
In my world everyone went to the University of Iowa and rooted for the Hawkeyes. It was Aunt Gertrude who first widened our horizons when she suggested to my older sister "Pru, you have good grades. Why don't you apply to Wellesley? It has a pretty campus." Pru had never heard of Wellesley, but she applied and got in. She went, thinking she would attend for two years to see what it was like before transferring back to Iowa. Four years later Pru (who was about to graduate from Wellesley) says to me "You have good grades, you should look at the east coast schools." So I applied to two top-level eastern schools.
Having done my homework, I knew I should apply to at least 3 schools, so I asked my father where else I might go. He said, "Why not apply to Stanford? It has a good engineering school and your mother and I haven't been to California in some time." I had never heard of Stanford and I had no idea what an engineer was. So of course I applied. Stanford was the only school to accept me, so off to Stanford I went.
It took me years to feel really at home out here, but in retrospect, it was absolutely the best place for me. Where else could I have stopped out for years at a time and simply shown up again at registration? My true love of Stanford sports, it turned out, was similarly slow to develop. It was only when I discovered women's basketball that I was completely hooked. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jennifer, Katy, Trisha, Sonya, Stacy and Julie!
A roundabout path, but one ending up in the right place.
Re: You and Stanford - Hank 91 - 06-22-2013
The best part about reading this thread is how many similarities jump out. Like some of you, I wasn't the top student in my class. My GPA was only somewhere around 3.8, but my SAT score was high. So how did I get in? Affirmative action. When I took the PSAT at the end of my sophomore year, I checked two important boxes, one indicating that I was black, the other allowing the testing service to send my score to colleges around the country. I received a flood of brochures and pamphlets from schools near and far, and I eventually came to understand that I would have a lot of options. I've never been good with deadlines, so instead of narrowing my choices before sending out applications, like any sensible person, I simply applied all over the place: Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Michigan, C al, and local UCLA.
The pull of college football was strong. I was born in Michigan, so I understood exactly what Spiny Norman meant when he wrote about the power of "The Victors." At the time Michigan had a rolling admission policy, meaning they'd notify each applicant as soon as they looked at the application. I got my acceptance letter to Michigan in January, and it was still so close to football season that in my mind I was already headed to Ann Arbor. What could be better?
I'd soon find out. I still remember when the Stanford letters arrived. A classmate of mine returned from a weekend visit to Stanford and told us that the Admissions Office had mailed out acceptance letters on Saturday. Knowing they were likely sitting in our mailboxes that Monday afternoon, several students left school early to find out. When I got home and found the thick envelope, I was thrilled. My first call was to my dad at work, and I'll never forget his first response: "Too bad you can't go." He wasn't trying to burst my bubble -- he was and still is incredibly proud of me -- he was just being practical. In his mind, it was too expensive. My mother, thank god, thought otherwise.
A few weeks later I had narrowed my choices down to Stanford and C al. As a Southern California kid, I just couldn't see heading to the Midwest or east coast. So we took the trip north, stopping first for the C al tour. Like Farm93 would discover two years later, much of that tour was devoted to talking down Stanford. For me, the moment was an anti-Stanford joke one of the student tour guides told. Even at seventeen it all seemed so transparent to me. If there's so much energy being devoted to debunking the idea that Stanford is better than C al, might there not be some truth to it? (Six years later my sister would attend C al. Even at her graduation, Cal professors were making snide remarks about Stanford. It was rather sad.)
The Stanford tour was amazing, but I was glum and downcast the entire time. I obviously didn't understand what it meant to be paying $20,000 a year (at the time), so I pouted. When my parents asked what I thought, I even said, "It doesn't really matter what I think because I can't go here." I wonder now if that was what pushed my mom over the edge. What's funny is that I don't remember the conversation when they told me they'd send me to Stanford, I was suddenly just going.
Like many of the rest of you, it's impossible for me to quantify the impact that decision has made on my life.
Re: You and Stanford - FarmBoy - 06-25-2013
If I've read this thread right, I am going to reveal myself as the first (and only?) of those insidious "legacy" kids everyone (especially those folks across the Bay) seem to believe account for 50% of Stanford undergrads with no real qualification for attending other than Daddy and Mommy's donations... I'm actually kind of surprised there aren't a few more.
I have to admit, I pretty much assumed I was going to Stanford from an early age. My parents' diplomas hung in our house, we visited campus several times (despite living on "back East"), my older sister attended 7 years before me and then my older brother, who was just a year ahead of me as well. I grew up watching Big Game (when broadcast locally.) My parents stayed in touch with a lot of their Stanford friends and we get together with them. It seemed to me that Stanford was just a place people went.
It wasnt until I was a Junior in high school that my nativity and arrogance were swept aside and I realized holy crap, getting into Stanford is really difficult and Ill be lucky/blessed/fortunate/ecstatic if accepted. Part of me wanted to rebel against my Stanford fate and I focused my energies on Yale for a while, but by winter of my Senior year, I was all Stanford. (Actually, the school I really wanted to get into was Deeps Springs College to eventually transfer to Stanford, but that was a real long shot for those of you familiar with the school.) I remember staying up late to watch Brevin Knight almost get a quadruple double over US.C and watching some mud bowl football games. I remember being excited when Adam Keefes team won the NIT only for one of my classmates to quickly deflate me with congrats on being the #65 team in the country. I was hooked on Stanford sports long before I attended.
I went to a very competitive public high school where it seemed the top 10% of the class attended Ivy League quality schools (6 grads from the year ahead of me went on to Stanford), so it was very clear to me what I needed to do to make myself an attractive candidate to elite schools. I killed myself taking something like 8 AP classes my junior and senior year and got involved in everything I could. Looking back, its amazing to consider the random outcomes that probably made a difference in my application. For some reason, I was accepted to a very prestigious summary program in science over at least a half dozen kids in my class who were better qualified (most went on to get BS/MS/PHDs in hard sciences while I ended up in business) and I really believe that program was a brobdingnagian differentiator in my application.
One Spring day, I remember learning that other kids in my class had already heard from Stanford the day before and I decided to play hookie and check the mail. I dont remember a fat envelope; if I recall correctly, it was thin, but there was no ambiguity since Congratulations! was written on the back of it in bold red block letters. I was elated. Legacy or not, I new the value of what I was receiving by heading West.
Re: You and Stanford - CowboyIndian - 06-25-2013
(06-25-2013, 07:57 AM)FarmBoy link Wrote:It wasnt until I was a Junior in high school that my nativity and arrogance were swept aside
So now you are a humble member of the undead?
Re: You and Stanford - stupac2 - 06-25-2013
(06-25-2013, 07:57 AM)FarmBoy link Wrote:If I've read this thread right, I am going to reveal myself as the first (and only?) of those insidious "legacy" kids everyone (especially those folks across the Bay) seem to believe account for 50% of Stanford undergrads with no real qualification for attending other than Daddy and Mommy's donations... I'm actually kind of surprised there aren't a few more.
I'm a legacy, my dad has a master's. I was actually born while he was getting it.
It's hard to be certain, but I think that made the difference for me getting in. (My grades weren't the best, but I had as many AP's as possible in my school and a great SAT score, and I did have a few weird achievements to my name, like winning the Rhode Island Chemistry Contest. It's obviously impossible to know, but comparing myself to my peers I definitely felt more like a bubble student.) Not sure how I feel about that, but it is what it is.
Re: You and Stanford - Farm93 - 06-25-2013
(06-22-2013, 11:55 PM)Hank 91 link Wrote:At the time Michigan had a rolling admission policy, meaning they'd notify each applicant as soon as they looked at the application. I got my acceptance letter to Michigan in January, and it was still so close to football season that in my mind I was already headed to Ann Arbor.My Michigan acceptance letter came on December 24th. As my second choice school it was a very good Christmas present. That winter I got to watch Michigan make their amazing run in the NCAA basketball tournament. Life was good.
Re: You and Stanford - Hank 91 - 06-25-2013
That '89 run was fun, especially considering how it all went down with Freider taking the ASU job and then getting fired immediately by Schembechler. Of course, I was a Stanford sophomore at the time, so I was still recovering from the sting of Siena. I'll be sure to let you know when I'm completely recovered from the sting of Siena.
Re: You and Stanford - Bruce Wang - 06-26-2013
(06-25-2013, 05:16 PM)Hank 91 link Wrote:That '89 run was fun, especially considering how it all went down with Freider taking the ASU job and then getting fired immediately by Schembechler. Of course, I was a Stanford sophomore at the time, so I was still recovering from the sting of Siena. I'll be sure to let you know when I'm completely recovered from the sting of Siena.
I wasn't even a Stanford student and I remember that game! Back in high school, I picked Stanford to go pretty far in the tournament that year just because I thought Stanford was super cool. The kid who ran the pool made fun of my pick after I handed in the bracket, explaining that Siena's team had a deceptively bad record because the team had the measles and was back to full strength for the Tournament. Little did I know that would be my first taste of the bitter pill that can be Stanford MBB.
Re: You and Stanford - Hank 91 - 06-26-2013
The only good that came out of that Siena debacle for me was that 19 years later I wrote a piece about it for an on-line contest in which you were supposed to write about your strongest tournament memory. Even though I didn't win, my piece made the top four and I won a $400 prize -- which I used a week later to buy a plane ticket to San Antonio for the Final Four. Everything came full circle.
Re: You and Stanford - PrinceLightfoot - 06-26-2013
I was also one of those who was completely unaware of Stanford until I began applying for colleges.
Even though my parents are my inspirations for success, they had little insight on how to review and compare universities. Mexico only requires a 6th grade education before leaving the schooling system. It was actually my grandmother on my father's side that urged all her children to continue their education in the United States...those stories that speak about a family of eight living in a two or three room home were a reality for both of my parents. Long story short - my father learns english, serves during the Korean War and obtains citizenship, obtains a GED after serving, attends UTEP (El Paso, TX) graduating with a degree in Electrical Engineering, marries my mother (who also learned English and obtained a GED), and obtains a job that lands my family with two brothers happily in the middle class. Needless to say, this is quite an accomplishment given the size of the obstacles that had to be traversed.
Resilience and perseverance were taught to my brothers and I from the beginning. The result of that teaching created three extremely competitive children particularly in academics and the arts (although, I killed them athletically). Once we entered school, we each saw it as a fun game to be "better than everyone else". Another long story short - my older brother (three years my senior) graduates salutatorian and his love of computer programming lands him at MIT. My parents for some reason thought I would attend UTEP, but did not understand how deep the sibling competition ran. I knew that my younger brother (also a Stanford alumnus) was destined to be valedictorian of his class, so any conclusion that had me finishing "last" compared to my brothers was inconceivable. Sounds petty when I think about it now, but it is true! My grades freshman year were above average but they weren't "perfect". Starting my sophomore year I decided to improve my academic performance.
My senior year arrived and had decided that MIT and Harvard were just not for me. I found Cambridge to be very depressing! My application choices were decided by speaking to my older brother and friends - Penn, Princeton, Rice, and Arizona (safety school) were chosen. One day, one of classmates had a Stanford brochure, and I asked if I could review the material. I was fascinated not only with the academics it was boasting but also the location and the beauty of the campus displayed. I promptly contacted Stanford for an application.
When the acceptance letters came in 1993, my family decided to visit Stanford during Pro Fro weekend. That weekend sold my younger brother, my parents, and myself on Stanford. The visits to other universities were canceled. My appreciation and fanaticism for Stanford athletics was born only after joining The LSJUMB.
Re: You and Stanford - akiddoc - 06-27-2013
Well, my parents both attended Stanford. Father got 3 degrees in Physics. My mother 2 degrees in English and Education. I was born at Stanford Hospital. I just always figured I would be going. My father was the LSJUMB manager and played in the band for years. I used to ride on Timm Williams shoulders on the sideline during football games in the late 50's. We moved away when I was 5 and eventually ended up in Canada. I applied to one school. I had no idea how foolish that was. My mother said I would never get in because I had not climbed Mount Everest or achieved any other similarly outrageous accolades, even though I was first in my class until I got senioritis my last semester. The SAT was offered one day per year in Winnipeg. Had to take the SAT and 3 SAT subject tests in one sitting. Only 20 kids from the entire province took the test. (One was a star athlete friend who got a track scholarship to UW and is now a Chemistry prof at GT.) Got the fat envelope. Flew to SFO and got held in customs for 4 hours. Strip searched, almost taken to prison because someone with the same name was wanted by the FBI. Did not matter that he was 50 and I was 18. When my grandfather contacted immigration they said no such incident occurred (he was waiting for me to come out of customs for all those hours). Was afraid to cross the border again for years. Got on campus early to join LSJUMB. The most exciting 4 years of my life.
My 5 brothers and sisters followed me and for years we were tied with the McCalls for the largest nuclear family to ever attend Stanford. I think we have 16 degrees from Stanford. I always lose count. (Some other family broke the record recently with 2 parents and 7 kids attending.) We all accumulated a lot of debt but it was worth it.
Now I'm on pins and needles regarding my daughter's coming application. She had some disappointing grade erosion junior year in HS just past but has awesome extracurriculars, some brobdingnagian SAT scores, and attends one of the toughest high schools in the country. None of my legacy nephews have gotten in. None. And 2 were outstanding students. My son won't get in - planning on a music conservatory. She's probably the last hope for extending the family connection. She has attended most home football games since she was 2 years old. Sure wish Dean Fred was still there. He would probably take her based on football attendance.
Re: You and Stanford - Nan3cy - 06-27-2013
Good luck to your daughter, akkiddoc. If she went to most home games from 2002-2006 she deserves extra points just for the strength of her stomach and ability to handle psychic pain...