Songs that feel like a Stanford acceptance

“All The Stars” by Kendrick Lamar and SZA — Melita D’Souza ’29

I opened my decision with my twin sister. Her screen loaded a few seconds before mine, and I saw the red confetti fall for her first. Then mine did too. Everything paused in that moment. All the work and waiting felt worth it. I had other colleges to choose from, but Stanford was always my dream, even when I wasn’t sure I could reach it. “All The Stars,” with its floating, cinematic quality and gradual emotional release, captures that overwhelming feeling of relief.

“You Get What You Give” by New Radicals — Audrey Chang ’28 

This song, as reflected by its bright yellow corresponding album cover, is one of my go-to happy anthems and encapsulates how I felt when my twin sister and I got into Stanford. I actually didn’t listen to this song for a while — it was on my study playlist when I was writing my college apps, and by that point, I had serious listener fatigue. But then the week before decisions, it came on the radio, and I swore it was a sign of good luck that we would “get what we gave” to get to our dream school. Now I’m more than a little superstitious about it.

“Golden” by Harry Styles — Jacqueline Larsen ’29

Hearing this song always gives me a light and airy feel: the soft and high-pitched instrumentals, the effortless rhythm and the chorus that seems to open up and expand. When I opened my acceptance letter, everything felt lighter. The stress, the waiting, the constant second-guessing — all of it was lifted. My Stanford decision also came at the onset of spring in earnest, and “Golden” pairs perfectly with that feeling of warmth and stepping into something new. 

“Shut Up and Dance” by Walk the Moon — Megan D’Souza ’29

I could not believe my eyes when I saw the confetti fall down the page. Suddenly I pictured a future I could never imagine for myself before, in a different state with new friends and endless opportunities. At first, I wanted to think about it all, to plan out every detail from what classes I would take to how I’d decorate my dorm, but this new information was also overwhelming. So I just let myself take it in and — as “Walk the Moon” advises — let my internal monologue “shut up.” I reveled in the excitement and enjoyed the pure euphoria, no longer worrying myself over the little things.

“Zimzalabim” by Red Velvet — Dayanara Yepez Ramirez ’28

Within twenty-four hours, I sat next to a stranger on a bus for eight hours (possibly falling asleep on them…), spiritually died in an airport waiting room surrounded by suitcases for three hours, tried to sleep through a four-hour flight, and finally arrived at my grandma’s house in Mexico after a cramped one-hour drive. My hair was greasy, my skin sallow from lack of sun, and nobody knew my results would come out in two hours. I opened the portal secretly in the dark, and when the screen sprinkled confetti, I fell onto the mattress in disbelief — my streaming the only nutrients my putrid skin had experienced in eons. 

Everything felt like a fever dream. My sister and cousin, playing in the living room, stared at me as I walked out crying, unable to explain. As if things couldn’t get more eccentric, both my parents were preoccupied with… feces. While my mom changed my baby brother’s diaper and my father finally resurfaced from the restroom, I told them the news, then rushed to the restroom myself, nearly throwing up. The unpredictability of this song captures my experience perfectly.

“The Carnival of the Animals: XII. Fossils” by Camille Saint-Saëns — Daniel Xu ’29

While “The Carnival of the Animals” is better known for the tempered elegance of its penultimate movement, “The Swan,” “Fossils” is a far more apt description of the all-encompassing shock that comes with Stanford. We were at a restaurant with family friends, and I remember just thinking I would open my letter and get the whole ordeal over with. It wasn’t until the pixelated confetti burst on my phone screen that the shock finally set it. I turned, and with a hoarse and trembling voice, said, “Mom, I just got into Stanford.”

What makes “Fossils” so emblematic of this moment is its rhythm and dynamics, simultaneously airy and manic all at once. Certainly, it is hard to track, to categorize exactly what is going on. Getting into Stanford felt much the same, with this all-consuming shock — and deep down, a frenzied, staccato pulsing that had not yet come to terms with what had happened.

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