Watching all those cute little ProFros last weekend reminded me of a different, more innocent time. A time when we actually bothered wearing high heels to classes, when we all seriously cared about the SAT scores of virtual strangers, when we feared there might actually exist a mythical permanent record of every time we got recess detention in elementary school. In short, Admit Weekend takes us all back to life before college. Generally, prospective freshman can be sorted into a few categories. Which of these did you fit into, back in the day?

True-Blue Cardinal: This spirited little filly has spent the past eighteen years dreaming of Lakeside Dining and practicing her wacky walk; she knows all Branner’s dorm chants from the past five years and she actually believes that we might win Big Game again in the conceivable future. The True-Blue Cardinal ProFro is a Stanford devotee to the bone, and sent in her early acceptance months ago. The only reason she’s going to Admit Weekend at all is to get a dose of HoHoPalooza to tide her over until MuFuUnSun and, of course, to become “besties 4eva!” with her RoHo, HoHo and future RFs.

Typical quote: “Go Stanford!”

Haughty Harvardite: No force of man or God is going to recruit this young ProFro to Stanford: he was accepted to all sixteen universities he applied to, including two colleges at Oxford. You know this because he told you within the first twenty seconds of conversation. Multiple times. He only applied to Stanford as a practice application before sending off his envelopes to all of the “real” schools back East. He spends the entire weekend chain-smoking cloves and quoting Ulysses, wearing a wool trench coat and wondering when it’s going to start raining. As he leaves, he shakes your hand cordially, flicks you a custom-printed business card, and tells you to be sure to get in touch when you decide you’re ready to rumble with the real (i.e. Bostonian) big boys.

Typical quote: “After my interviews at Princeton, Columbia, Harvard and Yale, it’s so charmingly quaint to visit your cute little farm.”

The Party Animal: According to Facebook, this profro’s favorite movies are Animal House, Porky’s and American Pie 2. She came to The Farm to enjoy her first real, alcoholic boy-girl party — and no stupid “dry weekend” policy is going to stop her! The Party Animal waltzes in to drop off her stuff on the Thursday of Admit Weekend; the next time you see her is three days later. She reeks of gin and strawberry soda. When you ask where she’s been sleeping, she mutters something incoherent about Xanadu’s laundry room. Sketch.

Typical quote: “So, what does SAE stand for?”

Scaredy McStageMom: This is the poor, cute little high-school senior who gets dragged around all weekend by his over-eager, pro-Stanford parents. While they take flyers and candy from every single booth at the activities fair (including Campus Girl Scouts and the Judo Club), he sullenly text messages his friends back home. While his parents are forcing President Hennessy to autograph a Nalgene, he is frantically trying to gnaw off an arm through the custom-made Stanford polo shirt his mommy dressed him in that morning. His parents refuse to call him by anything but his College Confidential admissions forum screen name. In reality, this kid doesn’t even know which colleges he has applied to — he is just waiting patiently to go somewhere (anywhere!) more than 100 miles away from home in the fall.

Typical quote: This kid’s mother does all the talking for him; it is currently unknown whether he is physically able to speak.

Eager Beaver:This profro is so impressive that her fifty-page resume is required reading for introductory CS and MS&E classes. She maintained a 4.7 GPA, won nationals in debate, initiated a gender studies course at her school, single-handedly saved a family of fifteen after Hurricane Katrina, and invented a moving, speaking, artificial-intelligence-driven robot to play with blind orphans whose parents died of AIDS in Bolivia. Over the course of Admit Weekend, she started a non-profit in East Palo Alto and learned Norwegian. She was so busy interviewing tenured faculty members during Admit Weekend that she could only sleep two hours a night — but she managed to use that time to donate plasma. Just looking at her makes you want to take a nap.

Typical quote: “Would it be possible to play a varsity sport, sing in an a cappella group and do a three year co-term?”

Ideal Profro: This ProFro acknowledges that Admit Weekend is a little dorky, but the people are cool. He spends half of his time checking out the libraries and potential academic tracks, and the other half grabbing Late Nite with students and asking what Stanford life is really like. He knows that there’s no way to understand a university in one weekend, but he likes what he sees and is pretty psyched for the next four years.

Typical quote: “It was nice to meet you, man. See you in the fall.”