In this issue:

Congratulations to Improve Your English students Evan Ye, Yvonne Ye, and Irene Hsu! All three students submitted their work to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Their writings have been chosen to compete at the national level.

Evan Ye
      “Ocean’s Message,” Personal Essay/Memoir – Silver Key

Yvonne Ye
      “Permission to Excel,” Persuasive Writing – Gold Key
      “Verisimilitude,” “War and Peace (of a Cake),” “Dandelion Wish,” Poetry Collection – Gold Key
      “The Grandfather,” Short Story – Silver Key

Irene Hsu
      “Gently, Into the Night,” Short Story – Gold Key

The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards are sponsored by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers. The first contest was held in 1923; past winners include Andy Warhol, Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote, and Joyce Carol Oates. Teens in grades 7-12 are encouraged to apply. According to the Alliance, the awards “continue to be the longest-running, most prestigious recognition program for creative teens in the U.S. and the largest source of scholarships for young artists and writers.” For more information, consult their website. (The deadline for California submissions is usually mid-December.)

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THE FARM
Stanford University

A world-class educational institution, Stanford University offers top-notch graduate, undergraduate, and professional programs in a wide variety of fields. Whether a student’s interests lie primarily in the natural sciences, engineering, social sciences, or humanities, Stanford provides students access to many of the world’s foremost scholars and research facilities.

Stanford University was founded in 1891 near Palo Alto, California. Built on land previously used to raise horses belonging to Leland Stanford, a wealthy industrialist and politician, the core of the campus features architecture in the Spanish Mission style, distinctive for its use of light sandstone masonry and red-tiled roofs. As the modern campus covers over 8,000 total acres on mostly flat terrain, students typically get around on bicycles, skateboards, and even in-line skates.

Stanford is a world leader in research and development in science and technology fields. Stanford professors have won 27 Nobel Prizes, and 17 Nobel laureates are part of the current faculty. Recently, seven Stanford researchers in computer science, physics, neuroscience, and economics were named 2012 Research Fellows by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which awards grants to rising stars in the sciences and economics who are considered to be potential Nobel Prize winners. This number is the greatest of all the universities in the country, including Harvard, Yale, and Caltech. Leaders in industry as well, Stanford professors and engineers have been instrumental in the creation and development of the Silicon Valley. For example, the founders of Hewlett-Packard (HP), Google, Yahoo!, and Cisco are all Stanford alumni. Its strength in science and technology research is a major reason why Stanford ranks among the top world universities, coming in at number three in lists published by both Times Higher Education of London and Jiao Tong University in Shanghai. Stanford also has an outstanding reputation as an undergraduate educational institution, consistently placing in the Top 5 among national universities in US News & World Report’s Best Colleges rankings.

While programs in science and technology fields receive the greater share of Stanford’s media attention, those in the humanities and social sciences are also among the best in the world. In the English department’s Creative Writing program, students hone their craft with prominent poets and fiction writers. The Stegner Fellowship Program is among the most coveted of all academic writing workshops and has produced authors who have won major competitions, including the Pulitzer Prize, the top literary award in the United States.

The English Department also oversees the Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR), through which every undergraduate must satisfy the university’s writing requirement. In this three-quarter sequence, students develop skills in critical thinking, analysis, written argumentation, oral presentation, and research. Stanford expects all of its graduates to be able to communicate their insights in their chosen field of study, whether it be biology, engineering, economics, or music.

Stanford offers advanced research opportunities in both technical and non-technical fields. In addition, all students of all majors complete the Introduction to the Humanities program as part of their general liberal arts education. In the Introduction to the Humanities program, students consider approaches to humanistic inquiry from diverse perspectives in addition to the perspective of a single department. Beginning in the academic year of 2012-13, the “Thinking Matters” portion of this required three-quarter sequence will be expanded to include offerings in environmental science, social psychology, and political philosophy. Through close reading of primary texts and discussion in small groups of no more than 15 students, Introduction to the Humanities seeks to engage Stanford freshmen, according to its website, “in exploring fundamental and enduring questions about what it means to be human.”

Currently, a freshman’s only alternative to IHUM and PWR is a residence-integrated program called Structured Liberal Education (SLE). Since 1974, SLE has taken 90 students from each freshman class and pooled them into one dorm for a yearlong course that makes its way through the greatest hits of the Western canon. With three days a week of two-hour lectures, followed by dinner, followed by two hours of small-group discussion, SLE offers students a unique learning community within the university.

“SLE made you get over the notion that it was impossible to read and digest 300 pages in one day,” says Teresa Kim, IYE tutor. “It’s sink or swim when you have one weekend to read Don Quixote, the next to read Summa Theologica, and then feel genuine relief to hear, ‘This weekend you get a break. Just read Inferno—you can skip the introduction—and write this six-page paper.’ To get that lesson as a freshman, though, is worth the first year’s tuition. After that, nothing that a professor assigns daunts you.”

For students who apply to Stanford, a letter of acceptance is often a dream come true. As the top choice of many students, Stanford makes sure that its admissions standards are among the most competitive of all universities. Those who choose to attend Stanford will master their academic fields and maybe start a company or two along the way.

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