Austin Scholar #169: My freshman year at Stanford
& is college worth it?
Hey, y'all!
This week from Austin Scholar...
Austin’s Anecdote: My freshman year at Stanford
Is college worth it?
Scholar’s Sources: What I’ve been thinking about…
I’m now officially done with my freshman year at Stanford! It’s crazy how fast time flies. I won’t say too much here, because most of my reflection is going to be in the anecdote for this week, but I do want to thank all of y’all for allowing me that break during finals and move out week – my stress levels were astronomical and I didn’t think I could write something worthy of publishing on top of everything else.
We’re back, though, to the regularly scheduled programming. I’ve got quite a few newsletters lined up about academic results from Alpha and 2 Hour Learning that will blow your mind, so stay tuned.
Austin’s Anecdote: My freshman year at Stanford
College is a bundle of different things—academics, teachers, classmates, roommates, dormmates, friends, clubs, sororities, fraternities, sports, special projects, the surrounding environment, guest speakers, parties, and that’s not even an exhaustive list. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect going in, but the parts I ended up loving most were actually totally different from what I’d imagined.
I came in super excited to sit in a Stanford classroom with Stanford professors. Growing up without traditional teachers and using AI tutors, I’d been told I was missing out. And since I was about to go to one of the greatest learning environments in the country, I was ready to see if they were right.
Spoiler alert: not really.
Some professors were fantastic (and the group discussions couldn’t be replicated), but others were dramatically worse than AI. After my first year here, I’m convinced that for most of education, personalized AI tutors utterly crush the classroom lecture model. However, while the classes can be underwhelming, the tests are brutally hard. They definitely live up to Stanford’s reputation for rigor.
Classmates, roommates, and dormmates are the best part of Stanford, hands down. I was bracing for the “death of the Ivy League” hype (that Ivy admission standards aren’t what they used to be), but my peers are super smart, driven, and downright kind. Coming from Alpha, I had sky-high expectations for my friends, and wow did Stanford deliver. I’ve had unforgettable experiences with my fellow frosh:
Doing a group project with Rintaro Sasaki, a freshman who’s revolutionizing college baseball
Staying up until 2 a.m. with my dormmates, debating the immigration op-ed one of them was publishing in the Stanford Daily
Watching classmates swing between supporting the protesters on a food strike and making fun of them
Seeing two friends drop out of Stanford to launch what they’re convinced will be a world-changing AI startup
Meeting folks in my math class who also got an 800 on SAT Math, but in seventh grade
People here are legitimately next-level.
Stanford also brings in the world’s heavy hitters as guest lecturers. Interested in startups? We’ve had Sam Altman, the CEO of Nvidia, and the head of DoorDash speak to us. Politics? Hillary Clinton. Entertainment? Marvel’s CEO and the band Coldplay. Social media? JoJo Siwa. They’re all so approachable – by the time they finish speaking, they’ve made you genuinely think, “If they did it, why can’t I?” After you meet enough of these legends, you start to feel like your classmates doing the same thing (see: my drop-out-to-found-an-AI-unicorn friends) could be totally plausible.
So far, we’ve discussed that academics were… meh. But the people and inspiration? They were amazing. But how was the rest of the experience? How did I grow?
Well, before I left for Stanford, my parents told me, “Explore everything.” That was the best advice ever. I didn’t lock into a major; I tried literally everything that I thought I could be interested in:
Figure skating club
Investing club
Sports analytics club
ASSU student government
Sororities (yes, I got hazed)
Epic parties and spontaneous trips to San Francisco
Intro to Computer Science, Data Science, Symbolic Systems, Math, and English classes
This whirlwind year helped me discover parts of myself I didn’t know existed. My dad still can’t believe I became a Pi Phi angel, and I can’t believe I’ll spend my entire summer learning to be an investor.
Is Stanford “Oppressively Woke”? I get this question all the time. The culture is definitely California-left-wing and not exactly centrist. But I grew up with the Alpha “both sides” culture, where we debated every issue from all angles, so I don’t find it oppressive. It’s just how the world is.
My generation is staring down insane uncertainty: AI is reshaping jobs, relationships, the economy, even the future of education. What will humans do? Which skills will matter? While none of us have firm answers, there’s no better place – or better crew – to figure it out with than at Stanford.
Overall grade for Freshman Year: A
Is college worth it?
There’s endless debate about college’s future (see Scholar’s Sources). The big question I get now is: Is college worth it? Is Stanford worth it? After one year, I can tell you: college is exactly what you make of it. I have friends in Austin who see it as four years of partying—and I worry: will they be ready for an AI world when they graduate?
If you want to get the most out of college, I think there are two important questions you have to ask before you go: