Stanford Diversity Weekend

This past weekend, I went to 2 diversity events hosted by Stanford's admissions committee. The first event was called XX Factor and the second was Many Voices. The goal of these events was to help potential applicants get to know Stanford GSB a lot better. I am so glad I went because these events totally changed my perspective as far as goals in life. I have the following impression from this weekend:

Stanford students love to dream and think big, but they are also very grounded.

On Friday, I sat in on an operations class in the afternoon. The admissions office was apologizing to me ahead of time that the class would be boring because it was the end of the semester. I thought the class was a good time. There's a TA that logs class participation and students seemed engaged. There was also a Friday happy hour event hosted by a student run organization but paid for by the GSB. I went to this event hoping to meet some GSBers. At first I was very intimidated but then I told myself that this was my one big chance to get to know the school via students. So I dove into the crowd and started talking to people and they were all very nice. I told them that I was a perspective student and asked if they'd be willing to answer some of my questions. Of course everyone said yes. Some even gave me their card.

I went to a women's conference the next day. My key takeaway from women's conference is that Stanford's first essay should be real easy to people, at least that's what everyone on the current student panel seemed to think. Also, I learnt that many Stanford students go into GSB not knowing what they want to do. Then they leave still not knowing what they want to do. That was quite freeing.

The second day was a minority day and I don't think I met one person whom I did not like. The agenda was the same as the previous day. I did get a better understanding of the extent to which the entrepreneurial spirit runs in the GSB. It runs pretty deep and inspired me to want to start my own business. There's always been things that I've wanted to do but didn't quite know how. I felt very empowered and inspired after listening to the alumni panel and current students. Before this weekend, I wasn't really considering applying to Stanford. After this weekend, I think Stanford is my #1 choice in B school!