Stanford University

Date: Oct 28 2003
Major: Psychology (This Major's Salary over time)
I transferred into Stanford after a year at UCLA. Though there were a few bumps in the road, my overall experience at Stanford is one I would not have traded for the world. I learned so much from my fellows students, learned about diversity, learned how to engage in some really heavy discussions, learned about life, love, on and on, at Stanford. My most memorable experiences included 3 months overseas at the Austria campus and another 3 of travel at the end of my senior year (I delayed my graduation by a quarter just to do it, even though I had enough credit to graduate on time and I would owe a bit more after graduation). I also loved many weekend trips to San Francisco in small groups. The best friends I have ever had and have are my Stanford friends, even though many not from my same year. I was pre-med and a psychology major; the psychology courses were topnotch and given by topnotch people. Not so the biology and chemistry courses. You would think that at Stanford at least someone could think of a way to make organic chemistry interesting, relevant, or even understandable—the professors who taught that were absolutely awful (I hope things have changed in the past 30 years). Had wonderful Shakespeare, Beethoven, Russian lit, art history classes. Foreign language and physics were also good. But virtually all bio classes were disappointing considering we had some big names teaching them. Of course, many of these profs are probably gone, one way or another. But, I did get into med school and probably, coming from Stanford was a help. I'm on the East Coast now and my youngest son is a senior in high school. I'm encouraging him to apply even though it's kind of far.