How to Get Into Stanford: A Giant Guide

Nice to meet you—we’re the Stanford grim reapers. 

As a college consulting company that works primarily with STEM students in California, we have the bad job of telling dozens of families each year that Stanford just isn’t in the cards. 

You might think it’s enough to be at an academically rigorous high school with a great GPA, solid resume, and depth in CS, engineering, or business. 

Unfortunately, you (and everyone you know) probably looks about the same. Good grades, a solid resume, and a record of achievement in your subject. These are the necessary but not sufficient conditions to get into Stanford.

It’s not uncommon for high schools in California to have 50+ students apply to Stanford with their restrictive early action (REA) option. When that happens, effective chances of any given app making it go down, down, down. 

But every year we work with students who do get into Stanford—we had five successful apps last year. We know what actually works with Stanford admissions and what doesn’t. 

This guide is a straight look at what it takes: the application rounds, the kinds of profiles that are actually competitive, and the strategies that—based on experience—move the needle.

Our Stanford Strategy

Here’s what we’ve learned after reading thousands of essays and sitting through hundreds of calls: the students who actually get in almost never sound like they’re trying to.

That’s the paradox.

Stanford rewards authenticity, but it has to be earned authenticity. Not the kind you reverse-engineer after reading Reddit threads about “intellectual vitality,” but the kind that grows naturally from years of being interested in things for their own sake.

You can’t fake that or cram it into an essay. You either live in a state of curiosity or you don’t.

Every year, we meet families whose kids have flawless resumes—research internships, Science Olympiads, polished leadership titles. But when we ask why they pursued those things, the answers tend to fall apart. There’s no interior logic or engine. 

Stanford can smell that right away. They’re looking for students who radiate genuine intellectual vitality, so going through the motions is not enough.

Before we talk about essays or angles or “hooks,” we look for the throughline—the question that moves you when no one’s grading, watching, or rewarding you. Sometimes it’s buried deep, under the noise of what you thought you were supposed to do. But when we find it, everything else—your activities, essays, recommendations—starts to cohere around it like a magnetic field.

That’s the heart of the Stanford paradox: you can only win by being real, but “being real” requires a level of self-awareness that most seventeen-year-olds haven’t been asked to develop.

And therein lies the work.

We help students slow down and interrogate their own choices until they can actually see the pattern behind them. The moment that clicks—the point where a student suddenly understands what connects everything they’ve done—is the moment their application starts writing itself.

From there, we focus on tone. We strip out the polish that makes essays sound fake. We rebuild voice. We teach you how to write like you think.

The irony is that the most successful Stanford essays read almost offhand. They feel effortless, alive, a little uncontained. When you’ve spent enough time thinking about your ideas, the performance becomes unnecessary and falls away.

The students who get in don’t need to pretend to be interdisciplinary because they’re already making connections across fields. That’s just how they think.

That’s what we mean when we talk about intellectual authenticity. It’s simply a pattern of mind that we teach our students to adopt.

And when it’s real, it shows up everywhere: in how you write, what you’ve built, and how you talk about your world.

That’s who Stanford actually admits. And that’s what we walk you through in this guide. 

How Hard Is It to Get Into Stanford?

Let’s start with the question that hangs over every ambitious California junior: how hard is it, really, to get into Stanford?

Short answer: harder than you think. Long answer: still harder than that.

Stanford admits less than 4% of applicants. Here’s how it breaks down, from the 24-25 Stanford Common Data Set:

Total Applications: 57,326

Total Admitted: 2,067

Overall Admit Rate: 3.6%

Waitlist: 483 applicants were offered a spot on the waitlist and 25 were subsequently admitted

At this level, every single detail of your application has to work perfectly together.

Stanford Requirements

Stanford offers two rounds: Restrictive Early Action (REA) and Regular Decision (RD).

The names sound familiar, but REA has one brutal catch: if you apply REA to Stanford, you can’t apply early to any other private university — no Harvard, no USC, no Yale. You’re committing your one early application to Stanford.

Deadlines:

• REA: November 1
• Regular Decision: January 5
  
  

Regardless of which application plan you choose, you’ll apply to Stanford by filling out the Common Application, which includes:

• Personal Statement
• Activities Section
• Transcript 
• School Report and Counselor Letter of Recommendation
• Letters of Recommendation from two classroom teachers
• Optional: One Additional Letter of Recommendation
• Standardized Test Scores (SAT or ACT)
  
  

Stanford also requires you to submit several supplemental essays in addition to your personal statement. But we have a whole other section on the Stanford supplemental essays, so take a look there.

Stanford GPA Requirements

There’s no official “minimum GPA” to apply to Stanford. But in practice, your GPA decides how much attention your application actually gets.

Admissions officers have to read tens of thousands of files every year. They don’t start with your essay about building a weather balloon or your start-up internship—they start with your transcript. And if your GPA doesn’t clear a certain bar, your application probably won’t make it to the discussion table.

It’s not that they have anything personal against you. To get through all the applications submitted, admissions officers have to move quickly. 

So, instead of asking “What GPA do I need to apply?” the better question is: “What GPA gets taken seriously?”

According to Stanford’s Common Data Set:

• 73.3% of enrolled students had a perfect 4.0 GPA.
  
  
• 92.8% had above a 3.75.
  
  
• Only about 7% of enrolled students had anything below that.

And yes, you might look at that 7% and think, maybe that could be me.

Maybe—but probably not.

Most of those students fall into special categories that meet institutional priorities: recruited athletes, legacy admits, or students tied to major donors or specific programs. Unless you fall into one of those buckets, a GPA below 3.7 is going to hit a brick wall in Stanford’s first academic review.

That tells you everything. Let’s look at a couple screen-grabs from Stanford’s Common Data Set to get a clearer picture.

From Stanford CDS 2024-2025

In this first chart, we see that 73.3% of enrolled first-year students (AKA students who were admitted and decided to attend Stanford) had a perfect 4.0 GPA. A full 92.8% had above a 3.75. 

Another metric we can look at is high school class rank. Of those who submitted class rank, 100% were in the top quarter and 97.8% were in the top 10%.

From Stanford CDS 2024-2025

So what should you take from all this data? Two points:

1. The most competitive applicants to Stanford are at the top of their class and have perfect or near-perfect GPAs.
   
   
2. If you want to be competitive at Stanford, your metrics should fall within the upper ends of those ranges. 
   
   

Keep in mind that these ranges do not account for another important consideration in college admissions: course rigor. 

A GPA without course rigor means very little, especially at an uber selective school like Stanford. A 4.0 full of easy classes won’t stand up against a 3.95 packed with APs, IBs, or dual-enrollment courses. Stanford wants the best within context. They want to see that you took the hardest courses available and crushed them.

Example: 

A student who’s earned a 4.0 unweighted GPA in all regular-level classes will likely not be competitive at Stanford. 

A student who’s earned a 3.98 unweighted GPA in a full IB Diploma courseload, on the other hand, might be competitive. 

Learn more about course rigor and school groups here.

The students who get real consideration at Stanford are academic outliers—top of their class, near-perfect GPAs, and coursework that shows they pushed themselves as far as their school would let them. If you want to have a chance of being admitted yourself, your profile should look similar.

Stanford SAT Scores

Stanford has returned to requiring SAT or ACT scores. You will self-report your highest SAT or ACT scores on your applications, but you can send official scores if you’d like. If you are admitted, you’ll be required to submit your official scores.

So what counts as a “good” SAT score when you’re applying to Stanford?

Again, we can look to the Common Data Set.

From Stanford CDS 2024-2025

Among enrolled first-year students, the middle 50% percentile was:

• SAT: 1510 - 1570
• ACT: 34 - 35

The “middle 50%” means that 50% of students scored within that range. For the SAT, for example, 50% of students got a 1510-1570. Another 25% scored at or below 1510, and the remaining 25% scored at or above 1570. 

Since testing is now required, your standardized test scores will become an important part of your Stanford application. Just as with GPA, to be competitive, you want your scores to be within or above the middle 50%. That means that a competitive SAT score at Stanford is at least a 1510, preferably closer to 1570.

So, Who Gets Into Stanford?

Here’s where the Stanford grim reaper starts to descend.

So far, we’ve identified a few traits of Stanford’s first-year enrolled students:

• The vast majority have an unweighted 4.0 GPA
• Nearly all of those who reported rank are in the top 10% of their class
• 75% of those who submitted SAT scores scored above 1510

From these numbers, it’s safe to say that Stanford’s most competitive applicants have near-perfect GPAs, standardized test scores, and course rigor. 

Those average stats alone cut a whole lot of students from serious consideration.

Even still, these numbers only tell us a partial story. Strong academics are required but not sufficient to be competitive at a school as selective as Stanford. 

Among the 55,000+ rejected applicants, thousands had perfect or near-perfect GPAs. Some were even Valedictorians.

What sets the admitted applicants apart from the rejected ones, then?

The answer lies in extracurriculars and application strategy. 

But before we get into that, we have to understand what Stanford prioritizes in the application review process…

What does Stanford look for?

Want to know a handy trick? You can look at the Common Data Set for any school to get a sense of how they rank the relative importance of different aspects of their application. 

This isn’t a totally infallible way to see what’s going on inside the admissions process—these rubrics change from year to year and aren’t entirely transparent or consistent between schools. However, they give you a good barometer, and often line up with the truth. 

Here’s what Stanford looks for when evaluating applicants, in their own words (or form entries):

From Stanford CDS 2024-2025

The most important factors in Stanford application review are:

• Rigor of secondary school record (i.e., How challenging are the courses you’ve taken? Were the majority honors, AP, IB, or dual-enrollment? How did they compare to the courseloads of your peers?)
• Class rank
• Academic GPA
• Application Essay
• Recommendations
• Extracurricular Activities
• Talent/ability
• Character/personal qualities

We’ve already talked about GPA and class rank, so now we need to talk about extracurriculars, essays, and application narrative—all of which contribute to the sense of talent and character Stanford admissions officers are trained to look for throughout your application.

Extracurriculars

Stanford wants to see what you’ve dedicated yourself to and the impact you’ve had. 

There isn’t a “right” activity for you to participate in to get into Stanford. Although some activities are more impactful than others, what’s most important is your achievement, leadership, or growth in that activity.  

Stanford Admissions Officers also value students who will take advantage of all of Stanford’s opportunities. For instance, someone who has shown research interest in high school is likely to dive into research at Stanford, and a high school student leader will probably engage in campus organizations. 

The most successful applicants are able to point to ways they’ve made a difference in their school or community. Doing so resonates with Stanford’s ethos of “students who will make a mark on the world.” 

And remember, quality > quantity: projects that you’ve poured your heart into (like building a DIY electric car, or writing a collection of poems) are much more compelling than a long resume of random club memberships.

Personal Qualities, Fit, and Intellectual Vitality

Stanford’s admissions office talks a lot about fit—but not the kind most families imagine. “Fit” doesn’t refer to whether you’d “fit in” socially, or whether you’re the kind of student who writes nice thank-you notes. In an admissions context, “fit” refers to whether you fit the culture of energy that defines the place.

Stanford is a school built around movement. Every year sees new ideas, new experiments, new ventures, new ways of thinking emerge from its students. The university prides itself on being a community of bright, collaborative, relentlessly curious people who actually like working together. That’s the cultural current you’re trying to step into.

Admissions officers look for a mix of traits—integrity, kindness, open-mindedness, resilience, etc.—but one trait is most important and cuts through every essay and recommendation: intellectual vitality.

You’ll see the phrase everywhere on Stanford’s website and prompts. It’s the single most important trait in their review process and helps admissions officers identify the students who best “fit” Stanford’s academic culture.

We’ve seen this play out over and over again.

We have sales calls every week with families who dream of Stanford. They’ve got a perfect GPA, 1570 SAT, a shelf full of awards. But when we ask the student what they’re interested in—what actually keeps them up at night—they go blank. They can list activities, but they can’t explain what intellectual questions they need to find answers to. There’s no spark.

That’s a problem. 

Intellectual vitality has nothing to do with IQ or the research projects you’ve undertaken to pad your resume. We (and Stanford AOs) can identify a student with high intellectual vitality by looking at the way your mind moves. The students who have it can’t help themselves. They see something interesting and start pulling on the thread until the whole thing unravels. They make connections across fields that aren’t related at first glance. They read and write like people who’ve been thinking about something for a long time.

Admissions officers can spot it instantly. They’ve read ten thousand essays that pretend to be curious (“Ever since I was five, I’ve been fascinated by…”). That’s when the grim reaper starts to appear again. The ones that work feel electric. You can hear a mind turning gears.

You can learn to identify it too:

• The kid who mapped the bee population in their neighborhood to track the effectiveness of their new native species garden.
  
  
• The student who taught herself to weld after her robot’s bolted-on hand kept falling off.
  
  
• The writer who translated all of Hamlet into Gen-Z slang to argue that the moods Shakespeare evokes transcend time and place.

Intellectual vitality is where raw curiosity meets follow-through.

And Stanford loves that. It’s what drives research labs, start-ups, and dorm-room debates, the same kind of energy that helped develop antibody therapies and build Google.

So intellectual vitality gets your admissions officer’s attention. But intellectual vitality itself isn’t enough. 

Stanford also looks for people who know how to put their intellectual vitality into action. 

The university was founded on the idea of “promoting the public welfare,” and that still runs through its DNA. The most successful applicants use what they learn to make things better, whether that’s mentoring younger students, designing open-source tools, or tackling a problem in their community.

This all comes back to “fit.” To fit into Stanford’s culture, you need to have high levels of intellectual vitality and care about using your talents to help others.  

Because at the end of the day, Stanford wants people who make the place feel more alive, who bring ideas, kindness, momentum, and intellectual excitement in the best possible way.

Strong academics are the price of entry. After that, Stanford looks for energy, including  real curiosity, character, and investment in making a specific, positive impact.

The Stanford Litmus Test

If you want to know whether you actually fit what Stanford looks for, ask yourself three questions.

1. When was the last time you got obsessed with something?
   We mean genuinely, can’t-stop-researching obsessed. Not doing something for a grade or becauseit looked good on a resume. If you can’t name something right away, that’s your sign to start exploring your interests before you apply.
   
   
2. Could you talk for ten minutes about what fascinates you without using the word “passion”?
   The number of times we see the word “passion” in an essay is too many. Real curiosity has texture. You can describe it, trace where it came from, and explain what you’re still trying to figure out. Don’t give the same generic, cookie-cutter answer as everyone else.
   
   
3. Who benefits from what you care about?
   Stanford is full of people whose curiosity spills over into the world. Stanford students, faculty, and alumni use their ideas to make things, help others, or push a field forward. If what you’re chasing doesn’t touch anyone else yet, that’s fine, but you need to think about how you would take that next step (bonus points if you can point to a specific Stanford resource that would help you get there).
   

Stanford Supplemental Essays

Stanford’s supplements are where strong students often stall out.

Not because they can’t write—usually they’re pretty strong writers. But because they try to sound like the kind of person they think Stanford wants, instead of showing how they actually think.

Stanford’s prompts question how your mind works. AOs want  to see if your curiosity comes from within you or if you’ve simply followed what other people have told you to care about.

At Sierra, we see this every season. Brilliant students with flawless transcripts—and then these essays come along, and the air just goes out of the room. The writing’s technically fine, but it’s lifeless. No spark, no curiosity, no sign of an intellectually vital mind behind it.

You’ll write eight prompts total for Stanford: three short essays (250 words each) and several 50-word short answers.

1. The Intellectual Curiosity Essay

Reflect on an idea or experience that makes you genuinely excited about learning.

This is the make-or-break question.

If your essay opens with “Ever since I was five…” or leans on the word passion, you’ve already lost them. 

The students who get this right  show their curiosity. They don’t try to describe it.They write like they actually think when no one’s grading them because their topic comes straight from their heart and mind.

We tell our students: if you’re doing this right, you’ll sound a little obsessed. Possibly unfinished. Definitely human. That’s what Stanford wants to see—the friction of a real mind at work.

2. The Roommate Essay

Write a note to your future roommate that reveals something about you or that will help your roommate—and us—get to know you better.

Most people overthink this one. They aim for clever or cute, which results in hundreds of essays that read like they came out of the same Reddit thread: “I can’t wait to grab boba after studying in Terman…”

Stanford doesn’t care about that. The point of this prompt is to make sure you’re a real person with warmth, perspective, and a sense of self that isn’t swallowed by the college process. They literally want to make sure you’ll be a good roommate.

At Sierra, we push students to strip away performance here and show texture: your weird habits, small routines, or quirks that make you likable. This essay may also be another place to include part of your story that doesn’t appear in other essays. The goal is to show that you are a friendly 17-year-old who will bring life and meaning to the residential community at Stanford.

3. The Community / Contribution Essay

Describe what aspects of your life experiences, interests, and character would help you make a distinctive contribution as an undergraduate to Stanford University.

This is where Stanford wants to see if your curiosity translates into community action.

This doesn’t mean that you have to have already changed the world. But again, the idea of “fit” comes into play. Stanford is looking for people who take ideas and move them out of theory and into the world. Your job is to show how you “fit” into that mold.  

We’ve seen students write beautiful essays about small things: running a local composting project, translating stories for relatives, mentoring a younger kid through robotics. These essays work because they’re real and grounded in experience and reflection.

You need to make it clear that the way you think and the way you act are connected.

Stanford’s Short-Answer Questions

After the main essays, Stanford hits you with several 50-word prompts designed to get a lot of information from you quickly (and to force you to condense your thoughts).

They look small, but they can be challenging because you have so few words to work with

At Sierra, we call them the x-ray section because your answers reveal what’s really going on underneath your application. You’ll typically get questions like:

• What is the most significant challenge that society faces today?
  
  
• How did you spend your last two summers?
  
  
• What historical moment or event do you wish you could have witnessed?
  
  
• Briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities, a job you hold, or responsibilities you have for your family.
  
  
• List five things that are important to you.
  
  

How to Approach The Stanford Short Answer Questions

Forget storytelling. You don’t have the space.

Rather than trying to explain a whole story, focus on one vivid detail or a list of 2-3 concise points in each. 

Example: for the “historical event” question, you might name the event that relates to some part of your cohesive narrative and one compelling reason you wish you’d seen it. These prompts should collectively add a bit of interest or depth to your application, so use them accordingly.

“List Five Things That Are Important To You” - Stanford’s hardest short answer question

This last short answer question in particular tends to trip students up. It’s not a trick question or meant to get at something deeper than what it’s asking. Take it at face value, think about what else you need to add to your application, and make a list that tells a little story for each. 

Example: 

• My grandfather’s dusty Beethoven record collection.
• Our robotics team’s battered toolbox, which I organized for efficiency and tool preservation.
• Long morning runs through Lincoln Park that ease me into each day.
• Sunday dinners with my family’s too-spicy curry.
• My red 1994 Toyota Camry, finally purchased after years of babysitting.

Like the roommate essay, try not to overthink the short answers. Don’t try to be overly quirky or clever, but do be authentic and thoughtful about what information you want to convey to admissions officers through your answers.

Stanford CS Acceptance Rate

Working with mostly STEM students, we get this question a lot. There’s good news and bad news.

The good(?) news: Stanford does not admit by major, so there is no Stanford CS acceptance rate! While you can indicate your academic interests on your Stanford application, Stanford admits students to the entire university, not to a particular school or college. 

The bad(?) news: This doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily easier or harder to get into Stanford as someone who wants to study computer science. 

Let’s return to the Stanford Common Data Set one more time, this time in section J. Disciplinary Areas of Degrees Conferred. Section J tells us, in a roundabout way, what majors are most popular at Stanford by looking at the percentage of degrees awarded in each academic field. This data doesn’t refer to specific majors (e.g., “engineering” could mean any of Stanford’s 10+ engineering majors), but we can get a sense of what academic areas Stanford students tend to congregate in.

From Stanford CDS 2024-2025

So the ten most popular academic areas at Stanford are: 

Even though Stanford doesn’t admit by major, nearly a fifth of Stanford’s students study some kind of computer science, and over a third study CS or some kind of engineering. 

Should these facts affect your application strategy? 

Yes. One of the main jobs of admissions officers is to build a class based on institutional priorities. Stanford doesn’t want 100% of their students majoring in CS or engineering = admissions officers have to strategically choose students with different academic interests, even if you’re not being admitted by major, even if you end up changing your mind later on.

This does not mean that you should indicate a different academic interest in your application just for the sake of being different. Admissions officers can see right through that.

It does mean that the story you tell in your application needs to show how you fit within Stanford’s institutional priorities…

Stanford’s Core Mission

From its founding in 1885, Stanford has framed higher education as a force for human welfare and possibility. Leland and Jane Stanford founded Stanford “to promote the public welfare by exercising an influence on behalf of humanity and civilization,” a charge that still guides it today. Stanford interprets this mission through several commitments:

• Creation and sharing of knowledge. Stanford prepares students “to be curious, to think critically, and to contribute to the world.” Their approach blends liberal education with cutting-edge research across seven schools.
  
  
• Openness and innovation. The campus culture values “freedom of thought,” cross-disciplinary exploration, and the rapid movement of discoveries “from labs and classrooms out into the world.” This mindset is shaped by Stanford’s roots in American West ideology.
  
  
• Service and leadership. Students are expected to become “engaged citizens,” embracing diversity of thought and working for the common good, which are values that echo the Stanfords’ original vision of a co-educational, nonsectarian university.

For you, an applicant, this means Stanford looks for evidence that you not only excel academically but also work to use your knowledge in service of society.

Research & Innovation: “Building Tomorrow”

Stanford pairs its mission of public service with a one of the biggest research enterprises in the country:

• Global Impact. More than 6,699 inventions and 3,029 U.S. patents have emerged from federally funded Stanford research, spawning 400+ start-ups, 350,000+ jobs, and $11+ trillion in market value from the top 30 Stanford-founded companies.
  
  
• Discovery & Impact. From antibody therapies for cancer to the original internet protocols (TCP/IP), from recombinant DNA to the Google page-rank algorithm, Stanford research has transformed entire industries.
  
  
• Leading Innovation. Stanford leads the way in research. Current projects range from generative AI for the genome to reimagining global food systems and new treatments for neurodegenerative disease.
  
  
• Innovation Infrastructure. Stanford houses a vast ecosystem of labs, centers, and institutes. The Office of Technology Licensing helps move discoveries into the marketplace. And 21 world-class libraries support research across every field.

For students, this means unparalleled opportunities to contribute to discoveries that reshape science, society, and the economy. For your application, think about the ways Stanford’s approach to “building tomorrow” can help with your own research and academics interests.

Tying Everything Together in Your Application

Stanford admissions readers look for applicants who embody these values. That’s why our Stanford strategy revolves around intellectual authenticity. When writing your essays:

• Demonstrate intellectual curiosity and cross-disciplinary thinking. Highlight experiences where you bridged fields or questioned disciplinary assumptions. Stanford values “expansive inquiry” and interdisciplinary innovation.
  
  
• Connect your stories to service and impact. Show how your goals align with Stanford’s mission to “promote the public welfare” and translate ideas into action.
  
  
• Highlight your research and impact. If you’ve conducted research, built a prototype, coded a new tool, or even simply pursued independent inquiry, explain how you want to extend that at Stanford (e.g., collaborating in the Doerr School of Sustainability, Bio-X, the d.school, or another of Stanford’s interdisciplinary hubs to build on what you’ve already done).
  
  
• Consider real-world outcomes. Stanford wants to see not only discovery but also application. Show how you have turned (or intend to turn) ideas into action. That might look like launching a start-up, shaping policy, or creating art that changes how people see the world.

In essence, Stanford’s priorities revolve around groundbreaking research for the public good, interdisciplinary education, and cultivating an inclusive community. As you write essays, reflecting these themes and implicitly infuse them across your application.

Conclusion

Stanford admits fewer than 4% of applicants, and nearly all of them are extraordinary on paper. What separates the ones who get in is that their applications make clear sense: a strong academic foundation, a clear intellectual thread, and a sense of direction that connects what they’ve done to what they want to do next.

This guide has covered how Stanford actually evaluates applicants, including GPA and rigor, test scores, extracurriculars, essays, and fit with Stanford’s institutional priorities. It’s meant to give you a realistic sense of what’s required to be competitive and how to approach each part of the process strategically.

If you understand those pieces and build an application that aligns with them, you’ll have done everything you can to give yourself a real shot.