chemE_

Do you already have an apartment at $1200? That seems pretty low unless you'll be living in Oakland. Food at $300/month is very doable if you cook for yourself most of the time. Transportation cost will be higher if you're living in Oakland and you take the BART into the city. Taxes will also be higher (CA has a very high state income tax, that number looks little low even for federal only). Does your program pay for health insurance? If not you'll need to include that as well. Will you own a car? If so, you need to include the absurd registration fees and car insurance for the area. And a car payment if it's not paid off already.

I think they wait for the same reason every school waits. There's really no incentive to send rejections asap. So they do it when they get around to it. I don't know how many students were accepted this year. In the past few years it's been in the 25-40 range.

I am a current student in the chemE PhD program at Stanford. I can confirm that admissions is finished (all acceptances have been sent), and was finished in early January. It usually finishes around that time each year (you can look at previous years on the results page to confirm).