I WORKED at Stanford for about 3 years in the 90s. I would have to say the best and brightest do not go there. Chelsea was a student there when I was there. A student in our lab told us that she was basically s-faced with the DKEs every weekend except when Slick visited. The Graduate Schhools in the sciences is good, but undergrad-no/ You could drop a course until the last week of classes and not get an incomplete. You could take a class over and over again and only the final grade would count towards your GPA.