How to get into Stanford

SEP 27, 2016

A guide. Time to read: 17 minutes. Time to implement: Days. How long might the benefits last? The rest of your life.

Reading this guide will teach you strategies you can use to increase your odds of success when applying to Stanford. This guide was written by a Stanford graduate who has read the notes on their application file.

This document has been viewed by >100,000 people.

Oct 2025: I’m biased but I now think that “The Movie Method” is the best guide written anywhere about getting into Stanford. Link: The movie method. It’s imo better than this guide, which is also very good!

What do I know about admissions?

I’ve read the comments on my application made by the admission officers! (How?). Reading them made me better at identifying what Stanford looks for.
I’ve talked to a bunch of my friends about their applications (many entrepreneurially minded ones).
I ask every student I become friends with deep questions about their background to understand them (and as a result, I learn what Stanford saw, too). 99% of students don’t do this.

Stanford may want to admit you if they had perfect information — but they don’t. They just know what you write in your application.

I suspect that every year there are hundreds or thousands of students that apply to Stanford where those students are as good or better as the students that Stanford admits, except for one thing. Stanford admits the applicants that are able to communicate their greatness, and unfortunately, Stanford has to reject the applicants that cannot communicate their greatness.

If it’s not on your application, from Stanford’s perspective, it doesn’t exist.

Therefore, knowing what Stanford wants is critical — because then you can make sure that you write about those things! And they’re often non-obvious. Many times I’ve seen people with great attributes that would make Stanford want them, but they didn’t realize those things were worthy of inclusion.

My goal with this guide is to level the playing field, so that no applicant ever gets rejected because they didn’t know which things about themselves were most important to include in their application packet.

Step 1: Understand what Stanford wants

They are trying to figure out:

1) Are you likely to have a big impact on the world

2) Will you have a positive impact on the Stanford community (other students, etc)

Which things indicate to Stanford that I’ll have a positive impact on the world and Stanford?

Seek to demonstrate: a) Intellectual Vitality (roughly = taking significant responsibility for your own learning process, and/or learning about things that you truly care about in a mature way) b) Purpose, Passion, and Meaning c) Challenges Met & Overcome d) Character e) Leadership. Also curiosity, energy, independent thought, independent action, intelligence, ability to get things done/solve problems/make useful things/create value. See below for how to demonstrate this — the short of it is: “use stories/data/objective and contextualized facts”.

What does it mean to add value to the Stanford community? A great proxy: “is this someone who would be super fun to sit next to at breakfast and is this someone I could have a fascinating conversation with?” (Thanks CW)

As an aside, the skill of seeing a situation from the perspective of the other individual/organization will be useful for the rest of your life, if you become good at it.

What’s an example of how I can demonstrate curiosity, energy, intellectual vitality, and more?

These excerpts show the sort of thing that would leave a strong impression on an admissions committee. The goal is to be the sort of person where someone can authentically write something of this strength about you.

“He gave off a confidence and sense of belonging that many students do not get even in their first year here. I asked him what kind of entrepreneurial pursuits he had engaged in and was further surprised to hear that he had several ongoing and very profitable business ventures. He was ahead of most of the people in the room.”

“He was obviously a sharp young man. His vision extended beyond his academic hopes, however. After discussing some of my plans for entrepreneurship the following year (this year), such as ___, _ gave me incredible feedback, enthusiasm, and even additional ideas that we have chosen to implement. I cannot think of any other person who has actually affected the course of some aspect of this university before attending. And as with everything, he did it with absolutely no expectation of receiving anything in return, but rather just as a demonstration of his character and excitement.”

“If you accept _, there is absolutely zero chance that he will be someone who never ventures out of his room. He is exploding with energy, is someone who has long been able to balance a very busy school life along with a life full of extra-curricular business activities, and is someone who cannot help but to engage with and inspire those around him.”

“As a leader of _, he is someone who I would love to have on any one of my teams; as an aspiring entrepreneur, he is someone who I would love to get advice from; as a junior at Stanford, he is someone who I know will add to the community and live up to Stanford’s name, and as a person, he is someone who I look up to and would love to become better friends with.”

Step 2: Optimize for what Stanford wants

If you’re young and have a few years before applying

I believe the best thing to do with your time is to work out the answer to the following question, and then once you’ve worked out the answer to begin working on it:

Step one: What am I uniquely good at (or if you are early in your life, which is likely, what things could I become uniquely good in 5 years based on my traits).

Step two: What things could I therefore be excellent at that are good/useful for the world?

Step three: What things could I be excellent at, that people demonstrate they want, based on how they spend their money/time?

Step four: Of the answers to step two and three, which things are other people not working on and are not going to start working on in the next 3–4–5 years?

Lastly — what is the intersection of all of those answers?

Also, read the book “How to Be a High School Superstar,” and see the Stanford Mentoring Course:

Stanford Mentoring Course

If you’re applying now, and don’t have a few years

How much do scores matter? What’s the bar?

Rough SAT bar for full consideration: 1380/1600. This is a general guideline, it’s not official, nor is it certain. People have got in with lower scores and will continue to do so. Ideal would be 740+ for math, and 720+ for EBRW.

Probably not worth studying more than 4–5hrs a day for ~10 days or so. More than that would be very marginal improvements. But, you should be extremely methodological in your studying process — doing lots of practice tests, identifying what errors you make and why and getting to the root cause of your mistakes, identifying the best etc.

Mistakes I made

Trying to write “flowery”/beautiful essays, while it wasn’t my thing

I did research online for the “best college essays” and saw all these beautifully written essays, and tried to emulate that.

What I didn’t realize:

Best essay possible: You have a way with words, and write an essay with great style and great content
Great essay: You don’t have a way with words, but you realize that, so you write an essay with great content
Bad essay: You don’t have a way with words, but you think that admission officers are looking for beautifully written essays, and you write an essay with mediocre content and with a bad attempt at beautiful writing

I should’ve done option #2, but instead did #3. I know that it didn’t help me — I read the notes my admissions officer wrote (thanks FERPA), and I got in in spite of the essays where I did this (one admissions officer noted “IV everywhere — though ironically not present in IV essay”).

I shouldn’t have bothered trying to come up with a bunch of metaphors just because I thought that’s what they wanted.

Vital: Understand how the process application readers use

Once you make the “first cut”, they divide up the applications and a bunch of “application readers” get applications.

Each admissions person will choose an applicant and they will pitch to the room as to why that applicant should be let in to Stanford.

This demonstrates why a lot of people who have really high scores but don’t have any specifically unique achievements don’t get in. Because if you are looking at one of those kids, what do you say? “Oh, he’s just like all the other 1000 applicants with great scores and tons of clubs a few science/research things and maybe some sport and nothing else. I really think he should be admitted guys.” Not too convincing.

What you want: “holy shit we have to admit this kid, look at what XYZ said about them” “look at this thing they did” etc.

The “Keynote” exercise for college applications

Try the following exercise. Say you have a 1600/1600 SAT kid, top of class, runs a ton of extracurriculars, etc, but nothing that unique — there are many of these. And you have some Intel Science Fair kids, and again let’s say that these kids all look the same as one another. But these kids are impressive.

How would you pitch yourself to get in instead of these kids?

Make a powerpoint slide deck that pitches yourself! This is extremely important.

Step 1: Come up with characteristics/attributes you have that you want to demonstrate. Use the list at the very top of the guide for some examples (e.g. intellectual vitality, leadership, curiosity, ability to create value, etc).

Step 2: For each of the description points/characteristics, come up with 2–3 stories/facts/data points of things you’ve done in the past that demonstrate the qualities you decided to pitch to be true — stories, facts, or objective and contextualized data points. Make sure that someone else reading this would understand it, even if they didn’t know you or have specific knowledge on the topic. Example attributes may be: thoughtful, ambitious, energetic, inspiring, etc. Stories/facts/data points can be things you’ve built (e.g. “built X which has Y many users”), thoughts you’ve had/reflections (“after thinking about it for X long, I came up with Y conclusion”), things other people have said (“Y person is Z!”), achievements (“did X, which is significant given the context Y”), ways you spent your time (“spent Y days doing Z”), and so on.

Note: Once you’ve demonstrated that you’re a high achiever with a bunch of facts/data points that show you’re impressive, your next main objective will be to show authenticity (i.e. honesty around why you’ve done what you’ve done) in the things you’ve done and show deep interest and curiosity. Avoid just being a resume list of achievements. You should focus on your most impressive, and most authentic interests (no problem if they are different things).

Step 2.5: “The Authenticity Test”

Sam Altman on Twitter

As startups have become a resume item, "Does this company seem authentic?" has become one of my most important filters.

This advice was intended for startups, but it’s also excellent advice for applying to colleges.

The better the school you’re applying to, the more important this test is.

The college version would be “as doing cool things for college has become a resume item, “does this activity seem authentic/meaningful to the person/deeply valuable to the recipients” has become an important filter.

How to know if something is authentic? Ask yourself. Why did I do this thing? Why was it interesting to me?

How to show authenticity? Thoughts and feelings are objective data points! If you had specific feelings and thoughts about things you’ve done, those should be counted as data points. e.g. “Every day, I spent 2 hours thinking about X.” or “I would constantly be thinking about Y before I went to sleep each night, for about 3 months.”

Step 2.75: Value-add

Another great data point/fact to include is value created by the things you’ve done. Stanford wants people who will add value to the world. I want people who will add huge amounts of value to the world to get accepted! So show Stanford that you can create value. A way to do this: For each thing that you’re talking about (where relevant), talk about how other people have benefited. “Customer/people stories” are objective facts and should be counted as data points.

Step 3: Follow the “essay process” below which will show you which stories/facts/data points are worth writing about, and which ones should be left out. To be clear: you will only be writing 10-25% of the results from the keynote exercise in your essays, the rest should not be written about.

This can be as simple as: attribute is curiosity -> data point is: I think about X every day since Y happened, and I’ve come up with these three plans, and have built this thing that is now used by 100 people to do Z. Or attribute is strategic -> I wrote a plan for myself that is X pages long. Or full of ideas -> I have a file of ideas that is Z pages long.

Think about why Stanford would lose value by not having you, and then make sure they can see that. They don’t know you. If it’s not in the application, it effectively doesn’t exist. Perception is reality, and their perception is entirely shaped by the application packet.

Because I sure as hell am not going to believe you if you say it without a story — because I have 10000 kids who said stuff and used stories from their past to demonstrate that they are true, so I’m not going to trust empty words.

Essay Process: Extremely important — What process should I use for writing essays?

This is about how to write good essays. Writing good essays mainly consists of identifying good topics/content. This process shows you how to pick good essay topics (topics are based around stories/data points/facts).

Do the “keynote” thing above.
Show the keynote to 5+ people. Ask them to pick out the stories/facts/data that seem coolest/most interesting. Also ask them to pick out the stores/facts/data that they believe demonstrate the most a) Intellectual Vitality (roughly = taking significant responsibility for your own learning process, and/or learning about things that you truly care about in a mature way) b) Purpose, Passion, and Meaning c) Challenges Met & Overcome d) Character e) Leadership. You don’t have to have some for all of a-e, but the more the better. You should also pick out the ones that you think are coolest/most interesting to you! This should give you 10+ topics/potential essays.
For the topics that other people select based on the criteria above, write draft bullet point essays expanding on the fact/story/data point (this is assuming you’re not an English major who is going for the super beautiful essay type — see above on “my mistakes” for a note about that)
Find friends of your parents or anyone who is willing to be brutally honest or who doesn’t know enough about you to know which essays would be yours — e.g. you can find people to do this on Craigslist (if you meet up, do it only in a public place, or just do Skype calls or phone calls). Show them this and read it yourself: http://www.slideshare.net/xamde/summary-of-the-mom-test. Show them these bullet point draft essays — i.e. there should be a few ‘anonymous people’ one of which is you (or more than one if you have enough different essay topics to appear to be multiple people) and the rest of which are admitted Stanford students where you were able to find a *full set* of essays for online and then you turned their essays into bullet points to give a fair comparison. Don’t tell them who any of the people are and ask them to rank the people *in order* of a) how much value they guess you’ll add to the world b) how energetic, independently thinking, and good of a person they seem to indicate c) whether they would prefer the person in this essay over someone with perfect test scores and leader of every club d) how much they think they would enjoy and learn from a lunch with the person e) Intellectual Vitality (roughly = taking significant responsibility for your own learning process, and/or learning about things that you truly care about in a mature way) f) Purpose, Passion, and Meaning g) Challenges Met & Overcome h) Character i) Leadership. Then, you should also ask them *why* they gave the rankings they did — remember, you want them to either be willing to be brutally honest, or you want them to not be able to know or guess which anonymous person’s set of essays are yours — so it’s important to not get defensive and not make them feel bad for their rankings i.e. don’t have a super sad and disappointed face when they show their rankings. Just ask honest questions to understand their rankings. You should make sure that at the end of the process you honestly believe the person is able to answer a strong ‘good’ to the question “did that person feel bad or good about the feedback they gave?” — do this by not letting them know that they ranked your essays low or otherwise making them feel like they hurt your feelings. Use these rankings to choose which topics/stories/data points/facts are worth writing about, and which ones aren’t. This process is the single best way to improve your application packet. Essay topic/content selection is responsible for 95% of the quality of the essay, the actual writing/stringing together words is responsible for the other 5% (unless you’re writing beautiful English major style essays).
Repeat and refine until you have convincing essays/application

What is objective and what is contextualized?

“I won X award” is objective, but not contextualized. “I won X award, awarded by Y institution that you know about, that has Z applicants and accepts X people” is objective and contextualized. I can immediately understand that this is significant.

“I built X thing” is objective, but not contextualized. “I built X thing, and it solved Y problem, and it currently has Z users and makes $X each month” is objective and contextualized. People understand money and number of users and can assign it significance.

“Never being satisfied with my current abilities, always striving to get better and feeding off of the successes of those around me” could apply to millions of people, but the degree to which it applies can only be ascertained with facts/data (i.e. Elon Musk made millions of dollars, then started another company to do X vs this person failed a test and then tried harder and passed the test — both could abstractly be described as striving to get better, the devil is in the specifics).

It’s hard for me (I presume admission officers know more here, but why not make it easier for them) to assess the significance of most ECs (extra curriculars)/awards, i.e. they all look the same to me, standard award for excelling high school kid, or standard “created and led club”. It’s hard for me to tell if any of them are truly impressive, because I don’t know the details/context of all of these things.

Describing “I am determined” is useless. An admissions officer can read that but have no way to compare that to the 1000s of other kids who say the same thing. A story that shows how determined you are gives them something real to work with. Saying “I am interesting” is useless. Prove it with stories, talk about things that interest you and how you’ve explored them.

Generally good format for ad info explanations and essays:

(Thanks CM!)

Short format = “I wanted to do X because of Y.” Then, insert some [Data points or stories that are contextualized and show it was impressive.] /The end

And longer for essays

Backstory
What did you want to accomplish?
At the most deep level, why did you want to accomplish that
What were your internal and external struggles
What was the wall you hit — the big challenge
What was the epiphany you experienced
What was the plan you created
What conflict did you experience while executing the plan
What was your end result
What was the inner transformation you experienced by the end?

Thanks DB!

Important tip for getting essay feedback — present people multiple options and ask them to choose which one they’d admit, don’t present one option and ask for feedback.

Write 5 very different essays, have someone pick the one they’d most want to admit.

Don’t ask for feedback on a single essay.

You have much more room for improvement by finding a BETTER essay/topic etc, rather than refining a single one.

I built X thing / I did X research / I self-learned X thing. Is that impressive?

The question is: How well does it work? Where is it now being used? What problems does it solve for people? How much value has created?

Why did you give a shit? What made you care enough to do it? Or if was just following an interest, what made you interested/curious enough, what was the path to get here?

If it’s something you learned: What did you learn? What made you want to learn that? What have you used the knowledge to do?

Use objective things. Stories of customers or people using it to solve problems. Statistics on the number of users.

Thousands of applicants have built things or done research and can make it sound like it might be interesting, but admission officers know this — they look for people that have done things that are truly significant. Make it easy for them to spot you if this is you!

How do I know if an attribute/achievement/thing about me is significant and worth including (in ECs, or essays)?

Answer these questions:

Do you think there a bunch of other kids who might have done this?

Why does this indicate that you will be more likely to have a big impact on the world?

Why does this impact that you will be more likely to be a super positive influence on the Stanford community/other students?

Which things should I remove from my application to make it stand out?

Look over your application, and remove every single thing that could have been written by anybody at your school or any college student, and could describe hundreds or thousands of other applicants. Then add in things that uniquely represent you. Be brutal about it. Remove all the non-unique things. It’ll be helpful to get family friends to help out and give you an objective viewpoint, unless you’re very good at looking at yourself objectively (which is an extremely useful skill).

Is this essay good?

An essay/story/attribute is good if the officer who reads it would be better able to make an argument (which means them having facts, stories, contextualized data, or some strong emotional pull) to another admissions officer that you should get the spot, and not the person that they just read about.

The best Stanford essays I’ve seen

Stanford Supplement - Short Essays - Stanford Essay

and

My World, My Dreams - Stanford Essay

Thanks FA

What is a good way to write essays if I’m not excellent at beautiful writing?

Be honest and direct in your essays. Say whatever it is that you think. This type of integrity helps applications. The test for whether a sentence is authentic if it’s not a fact/story/data: “Is this something I have thought to myself many times?” or “Is this the sort of thing I’ve talked about with other people in person or online frequently, or if not would it be characteristic of me to say this?”

Short syntax sentences are easier to remember and easier to quote. They force you to write well. An amazing exercise is to write your essay, then go read it to someone verbally. Then ask them to say it back to you from memory as if they were you, and record what they say. Every sentence they don’t include you should take out or rephrase. The fact that they didn’t remember it means it didn’t stick in their brain and therefore it was a waste of space in your essay.

— Thanks to CW

It is possible to get to the point where your essay is so good someone can repeat it back to you with 80% accuracy. It just takes a ton of work. And doing this exercise with ~50 people. Try doing this exercise with at least 10 people.

Should I apply?

The cost of applying is insanely low compared to the potential upside.

This decision could very well impact the rest of your life.

Next step

Order the book ‘How to be a High School Superstar’ by Cal Newport.

Step 1: Find a ‘buddy’ from your school to go through the keynote exercise and the essay process with side by side. You won’t really be reviewing each others stuff, because you’re too biased, but you’ll be helping each other both find people to review your essays and keynote exercises — and you can have the same set of people review both of your anonymous essays/applications at the same time.

Step 2: Start going through the keynote exercises and then the essay process.

Ask any questions in /r/GetIntoStanford on reddit.

Then watch these videos in full

If you’re not familiar with the college application process, read through the Khan Academy Guide. Thanks PL.

Very important: Read this post on how application readers read student applications — https://www.reddit.com/r/GetIntoStanford/comments/9xhts3/instructions_for_harvard_application_readers/. It’s basically a cheat sheet on how to properly “chance” yourself. Which can also help you identify areas for improvement and make sure that anything of relevance to their scoring systems is included somewhere in your application. If you have something that could improve your score on one of those dimensions, make sure it’s included!

Reddit threadwww.reddit.com

You should watch all 6 of these case study videos.

Also useful: https://web.stanford.edu/dept/news/stanfordtoday/ed/9801/9801fea501.shtml, thanks gchoe

I suggest subscribing to /r/GetIntoStanford on reddit. I also recommend signing up to the email newsletter ‘Ambitious News’ if you’re ambitious.

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