u/Dooraven

Hi there,

Been a Mensa member for a couple of months now, and I'm struggling to see the value add for me as a early 30s professional.

I've been to Mensa meetups in Sydney and San Francisco so maybe it's just these two areas that I haven't felt any connection to since most of the people I've met are substantially older - most people are retired and every discussion turns into politics (which is fine in doses but not every meeting)

Curious to know if this is the standard or if this is just limited to the meetups I went to

Hi all,

I just got accepted into the SEP and will be on campus from June - which was a pleasant surprise as I did not expect to get in.

However, I know the Executive Program isn't really considered a formal Stanford affiliation by the majority of Silicon Valley and my aim during it is to build as much networks as possible for my third company.

I would ideally like to do a Masters degree at Stanford but my problem is that despite my background (more on this later), my undergraduate GPA is extremely low (it is 3.x/7 in Australia).

Basically I got extremely good marks in high school and was admitted into Medicine at university. However I got into extreme depression during university - lots of personal problems during that time - and I was also building a company back then - and flunked the course - managed to pass with a GPA but I didn't even attend my undergraduate ceremony.

Since then -

* I self taught myself coding and became a professional software engineer, working with some of Australia's largest companyes.

* Sold my first startup (bootstrapped) while I was at university to a major US media company

* Raised a bunch of money from VCs in Australia and worldwide as a solo founder

* Sold that company in a large cross border M&A to an Indian company and returned DPI to all my VCs

SEP only required essays - and a recommendation, which all my Stanford friends and VCs Partners were glad to give.

But every Masters requires a GPA and my GPA that is 10+ years old in a different field is a bad corner weight for me.

What is the best way of getting in to a MS program at Stanford?