Imagine yourself as a Stanford admissions officer: You review a few thousand excellent applications every year, but face the unpleasant task of rejecting 90 percent of them. You notice that year after year, Stanford’s freshman class only gets stronger — with rising GPAs, SAT scores and class ranks — but the number of spots remains fixed at around 1,600. Although you are proud of being the gatekeeper to one of the world’s finest universities, your heart also sinks when you reject a brilliant kid — a rejection that takes place because Stanford has no more room.

Given this situation, one can understand why the administration is considering expanding the size of the freshman class. All other things being equal, it is good to spread the benefits of a Stanford education to more people. By having more students, Stanford will also produce more graduates who will become distinguished in their own fields and add to Stanford’s reputation.

However, an oversized undergraduate population would also carry huge costs. Housing problems would be exacerbated; already, there are some Stanford students who lack proper living arrangements. There will be longer queues at the dining halls, The Treehouse and Subway. But, more importantly, students would have fewer opportunities to interact and develop relationships with faculty. Speaking as an economics major, I find that most of my professors’ office hours are heavily attended and held in small rooms — hardly conducive to developing close, meaningful relationships with one’s mentors.

There are those who argue that expansion will help achieve greater diversity. However, Stanford could probably achieve this goal more effectively by diversifying the existing undergraduate population. Out of Stanford’s 6,689 current undergraduates, 44 percent come from a single state — California — with New York and Texas representing a large portion of the remaining 50 percent of non-Californian U.S. undergraduates. What about more equal representation from other states? Moreover, Asia, Africa and Europe are represented by only seven percent of students. Given Stanford’s commitment to diversity, why not consider diversifying the existing undergraduate population as an alternative to drastically expanding it?

In addition, we must also consider the idea that Stanford should stay selective in order to remain a magnet for the world’s top students, scientists, thinkers and innovators. Rightly or wrongly, the public sees selectivity as an indicator of quality, and Stanford must respect that sentiment. Already, Stanford’s undergraduate population is bigger than that of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Duke, Dartmouth and Brown. Moreover, of the top 10 American universities ranked by U.S. News and World Report, only one, the University of Pennsylvania, has more than 7,000 undergraduates.

Here at Stanford, there is an unspoken rule that you must not speak about rankings because they invoke feelings of competitiveness. This, of course, is a charade: we regulate only the speech, not the feelings. But the charade is necessary because it keeps us civil. That being said, however, it is worth noting that Stanford was ranked a dismal 19th in the latest Times of London Higher Education Supplement. Moreover, although Stanford was once ranked first in the U.S. News rankings for a couple of years in the 1980s, we have since lost that spot to Harvard, Princeton or Yale — and we haven’t been ranked in the top three in quite some time.

Stanford’s admit rate is about 10.3 percent, which seems low until we note that Harvard’s is nine percent. But Harvard isn’t contemplating expansion. In other parts of the world, many top Asian universities have even lower acceptance rates. For example, India’s Institutes of Technology (IIT) typically receive about 300,000 applications for only 5,000 places, a 1.7 percent admit rate. It is regrettable that Stanford must reject many qualified applicants each year. But between a high rejection rate and a high acceptance rate, the former is by far the lesser of two evils.

At this early stage, it is unclear what the size of the proposed increase is — we don’t know if we’re talking about adding a few dozen, a few hundred or a few thousand students. Ultimately, it is essential to have an open debate on the proposed undergraduate population expansion. Students, faculty and alumni all have a vested interest in ensuring that any change in the undergraduate population will improve, not hamper, Stanford’s educational environment and its ability to contribute to society.

Chris Seck '10 can be reached at seck "at" stanford "dot" edu.