As the end of March draws inexorably nearer, so too does an even more important time in the life of prospective college students around the country — the end of April. Across the country, high school seniors are cutting class, loitering irresponsibly and will soon be making those time-honored pilgrimages to their possible new schools.

The onslaught of Stanford Admit Weekend activities — and all the clever, rhyming abbreviations you ever wanted — are scheduled for April 27, and the weekend is sure to be an event. Current Stanford students are encouraged to help out all the eager young ProFros soon to flood campus, as hosts and as guides. RoHos, HoHos (yes, really) and MoFo’s abound.

While it’s still up for debate as to whether Admit Weekend is actually a constructive use of anyone’s time, there are a lot of things to do during Admit Weekend that no ProFro should miss! Here are some tips on how to approach Admit Weekend and maximize your Stanford experience:

1. Take this chance to memorize campus.

In terms of understanding Stanford as an institution, Admit Weekend is definitely a great opportunity to see White Plaza and Tresidder Union. The food, ebullience and general order of events you will experience are more or less useless as a gauge for the future, but the geography of campus is unlikely to change!

2. Start networking.

Rarely will you find a situation better designed to encourage bonding than at Admit Weekend!

Where better to start a community than among thousands of extraordinarily competitive teenagers, all of whom have just discovered that they are among the most special five (excuse me, 4.8) percent of high school seniors, many of whom are coming up on the high-pressure deadline of choosing their home for the next four years and most of whom will inevitably ask the question, “So where else are you deciding between?”

Friends who strain-their-personalities-to-the-limits-of-human-capacity-in-order-to-appear-likeable-and-attention-worthy-amongst-peers-each-more-elite-and-distinguished-than-the-next stay together!

Get everybody’s Snapchat and phone number, start a group text to find people living near your temporary dorm, and then continue to receive weird notifications and see all the Snapstories from people you do not know long after Admit Weekend is over.

Also, there’s definitely a sliver of a chance that you’ll identify, meet and win the heart of that one Stanford community member destined to be the mentor that will change the way you see the world and teach you the lessons that will take you to greatness. So you should totally get on that during your two-day stay.

3. Use your time wisely.

Take advantage of Stanford’s amazing academic facilities to catch up on all your second-semester-senior work. It’s important that you learn to manage your time well because as we all know, it won’t be the same in college. Green Library is an oasis of productivity and serenity, and the beautiful wide open lawns that smatter the campus are prime spots for you to ignore your already irrelevant high school classwork and simply enjoy having an excuse to skip class and travel to exotic Palo Alto.

4. Experience the dining halls.

As a Stanford freshman, you will be eating at campus dining facilities more often than you might imagine right now. So you might as well take advantage during Admit Weekend because it’s going to be a while before dining hall food is that fresh again.

5. Go to all those “parties” that are scheduled for 11 p.m.

Campus is dry for Admit Weekend, so you know all those ProFro “parties” will be a great time! Enjoy dark sweat chambers, uncomfortable small talk and lukewarm and horrifyingly sober attempts at dancing with the full power of your mental faculties — it’s unlike anything else.

6. Go to information sessions and fairs.

The best possible thing you can do at Admit Weekend is overload your brain with far too much information to ever be sifted through by a human and to collect an inordinate number of fliers, handouts and stylized bookmarks advertising literally every single activity you could ever do on Stanford’s campus.

You’ll tell yourself that you’ll remember the important details, which you won’t. You’ll promise to look the rest up later on the website (you’re not sure which one because there are approximately 8,000, but you’re sure you’ll be able to figure it out), which you also won’t do, but it’ll make you feel better knowing you could.

Keep all those papers and leaflets since maybe you’ll use them when you finally get to campus to enroll! Proceed to toss them all into the recycling bin after you’ve been on campus for a month, and realize that you still have no idea what the hell to do even though you received near-identical handouts again at NSO.

 

Admit Weekends are designed with a lot of great intentions! They produce good results for some people at some schools in some circumstances, probably. Somewhere, they could even help kids make informed, self-aware decisions and reduce the anxiety of making a significant choice.

So if you are not that kid at one of those schools in one of those circumstances, take comfort in the fact that most other people aren’t that kid either, and your decision probably shouldn’t be based solely on an Admit Weekend experience anyways!

 

Contact Maximiliana Bogan at ebogan ‘at’ stanford.edu.