Larry Chiang’s Advice for Getting Your Kid Born in 1999 or 2000 in to Stanford

by Larry Chiang

Pay close attention to the BS urban myths that claim luck. I think you can engineer your own luck.

One clear path of engineering your luck is via entrepreneurship. The Farm is incredibly entrepreneur focused. There are very few mentions of rec letters helping. It is in my opinion that they do not help from a GSB prof, ENGR prof or world leader. My insight is that the admit committee is looking for your StackOverflow / GitHub account work.

It really helps if you went thru a high school program on campus that is an actually engineering class called ENGR145. It is a class on Tech Entrepreneurship. If you want to get in, you should probably set the curve for that class. Yes, you’re going to be in class with undergrads and grad level students, but setting the ENGR 145 curve is very possible if you make the first time you take ENGR145, the second time you take ENGR 145 by studying E 145 on your own. Read the books and self-study like the way you taught yourself to code and then publish to GitHub -StackOverFlow.

Oh, playing a varsity sport your sophomore year in high school helps a lot. This way the Stanford coach calls your house to recruit you.

The math. Is it only 6 or 800 that get in?! One third come from Asia and pre-pay two years tuition and leave it in escrow. One third play a sport. One third are from some USA state. The math comes out to 10 kids per state.

Oh wait, my math is wrong. I guess that’s why I played a sport super good. I also entrepreneur real good too ( I was recruited to teach ENGR 145 )

If youre an eighth grader… set your intention that Frosh Soph and Junior years need to be perfect cliche perfect. Summer after your junior year in high school, take ENGR145 (appx Jun25-Aug4). Pre study ENGR 145 May 10-Jun25 on your own. Take a summer sports camp the same summer you study E145.

If you set the curve at ENGR 145, you will be launching at tech conferences like TechCrunch, GigaOm, VentureBeat, AlwaysOn, Xconomy. It is very possible and E145 makes presenting at your high school actually seem harder because old people at the tech conferences find kids doing demos, COOL. Presenting in high school is stressful because of the parental unit trolls

Impress on the sports side.

Impress Stanford on the engineering side

Impress Stanford on the entrepreneurship side.

Then, also remember to apply to your backup plan in Cambridge.