Admit weekend opens Thursday for students accepted to Stanford’s Class of 2020

Admit Weekend is designed to encourage prospective freshmen to begin to explore Stanford's academic, residential, athletic and social scenes by offering them a wide variety of activities and programs that showcase the university's breadth and depth.

Stanford will welcome nearly 3,000 prospective freshmen, parents and guests for Admit Weekend 2016, which opens Thursday morning with tours galore – of Bing Concert Hall, the Science and Engineering Quad, Stanford Stadium, Cantor Arts Center and the campus itself.

Recent Admit Weekend

Admitted freshmen head toward their temporary homes in Stanford dorms as they begin the campus experience during a recent Admit Weekend. (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

More than 1,300 admitted students are expected to attend the three-day event.

The event continues Thursday afternoon with an official welcome from Provost John Etchemendy, Richard H. Shaw, dean of admission and financial aid, and Harry J. Elam Jr., vice provost for undergraduate education. A panel of undergraduates will share stories about their intellectual journeys at Stanford.

The April 28-30 event ends Saturday with a “What Matters to Me and Why” presentation by Scott Forstall, a former Apple Computer executive who collaborated with company co-founder Steve Jobs for two decades and led the creation of software for products such as the iPhone and the iPad. Forstall, a Stanford alumnus, earned a bachelor’s degree in symbolic systems in 1991 and a master’s degree in computer science in 1992. In 2015, he won a Tony award for producing the Broadway musical Fun Home.

Admit Weekend is designed to encourage prospective freshmen to begin to explore Stanford’s academic, residential, athletic and social scenes by offering them a wide variety of activities and programs that showcase the university’s breadth and depth.

Many of the admitted students will share dorm rooms with current students so they can experience Stanford’s residential life firsthand.

Student community centers, residence halls and departments will host open houses.

So will Sweet Hall – the heart of undergraduate education on campus and the home of Bing Overseas Studies, Introductory Seminars, Thinking Matters, the Program in Writing and Rhetoric, and Undergraduate Advising and Research.

Panels of Stanford undergraduates will talk about studying overseas, LGBTQ life on the Farm, their experiences as first-generation college students, and the research they are conducting at the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute.

There also will be panels discussing women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), computing resources on campus and the career landscape.

On Friday, President John Hennessy will take the stage to field questions from students and family members during his always-popular question-and-answer session.

Stanford offered admission to 2,063 students from around the world for the Class of 2020. Admitted students have until May 2 to accept the university’s offer.

The university has created a website for the Class of 2020, Stanford Admitted Students.

Admitted students can get a taste of life in the classroom by attending Academic Expos – seminars taught by faculty members, including:

  • Adventures in Environmental Fluid Mechanics: From Coral Reefs and Kelp Forests to Wind Turbines and Managing Freshwater Flow into San Francisco Bay.
  • The Economic Case for Climate Change.
  • From Mbube to The Lion King: South African Music, Globalization and the Ethics of Borrowing.
  • Lights, Nano, Action: New Optical Materials and Methods to Visualize Nanoscale Phenomena.
  • Is Your Laptop Racist? The Politics of Technological Objects.

Admitted students can get a taste of social life on campus through a variety of special events, including an a cappella concert, a picnic, a party featuring the latest hip-hop, rap and reggae, and Ice Cream Galore.

The weekend includes several “parents only” events, including tours of residence and dining halls, an alcohol education panel, and a parent breakfast.

Parents are invited to join members of the Parents’ Club of Sanford University for a mixer on Thursday evening. On Friday afternoon, Stanford administrators and parents of current students will host a “coffee-table talk” on how students can make the most of their Stanford experience.