Today I will write about life at Stanford University.  Much of this info comes from the monthly STANFORD for alumni, but I've also visited a bunch of times after graduating. One of the miracles of my life was that I even went there at all.  I was an average student most of my life.  Perhaps growing up in Kakaako, a lower-class portion of Honolulu, was partly responsible.  Maybe wanting to be like one of my gang was not personally productive.  Whatever, by the time I was a sophomore at McKinley High School, I was put in a lower level English-Social Studies group, as our school system placed students by performed capability. Around that time, Bishop Estate essentially kicked our neighborhood out of our homes to pave the way for all those tall buildings you now see in Ward Village.  Kalihi was not much of an improvement, plus I had to catch the bus to get to McKinley High School.  In most ways, I was sort of alone for the first time in my life.  Yes,...

  First a few newsworthy items: Emmanuel Macron beat Marine Le Pen by 16 percentage points . Biden had 4.5% more votes than Trump in 2020.   Mind you, the electoral votes determine who becomes president. If Biden had 45,000 fewer total votes in the right proportion in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, Trump would today be president.  This is a percentage of only 0.05%. Similarly, if Trump in 2016 had 78,000 fewer votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Hillary Clinton would have won the presidency.  A percentage difference of only 0.06%. While you sometimes need to appreciate the context of what politicians and their aides say, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reported after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv that  Russia is failing . So on to my topic of the day, read this  Quora  entry to give you some hope about applying to and getting admitted into Stanford University: Ivy...