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Comments about "2012 admits shatter records"
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24 Comments on this article:
Give me a break...these gimmick admissions have less to do with admitting qualified applicants than they do about stroking some academic bureaucrat's politically correct ego.
They throw all the applications in a hat and select N% of them randomly. All they need to do is make sure N decreases every year.
i hope they expand the freshman class next year. i feel a lot of people who deserve to come here aren't simply because there isn't enough space.
One of these days someone is going to get the bright idea and file a class action discrimination suit against the Financial Aid Office. It could happen. Your mileage may vary.
Dean Shaw is doing a great job--using Common App, 1/1 app deadline, sending "likely" letters to some applicants--all very good changes and way overdue. Applying to Stanford with its non-Common App and old 12/15 deadline in the middle of high school final exams was way goofy. Way to go Dean Shaw!
The new process of not sending paper reject letters (applies to RD round only) is causing quite the storm among rejects. That is one change I don't see a good reason for.
As for expanding class size...we're already in quite the housing crunch, until they build more dorms, it is just simply impossible to admit any more people.
WHY do Stanford admit much less qualified students (in many ways, talents/leadership/academics/writing) because of legacy, ethnicity, and rediculous reasons such as 'the first generation in the family to go to 4year college'? financially poor kids can always get aid no matter where they go. Asians from upper middle class with best grades, leaderships and talents should never even consider applying to Stanford. I know who got in/rejected from the same school. So don't even mention -global scale- sort of things!
Amazed is an ignorant fool is probably jealous that he or she did not get accepted into Stanford. By the way, I am an Asian from an upper middle class family and I have been recently accepted into Stanford. You obviously do now know what you are talking about.
It's still an absolute crapshoot though when it comes to predicting who might get into Stanford. Age, Religion, Legacy, Ethnicity by no means, at least I think, get you into Stanford.
Paper Reject Letters=Dead Trees. Simple.
yeah, Amazed, c'mon ideas like that are so tired and narrow! Stanford does aim to admit a diverse class, and i applaud them for that. but i do not believe for a second - and i'm yet to see a student prove me wrong - that Stanford compromises quality for diversity. everyone i've met here is amazing in her/his own regard. i'm glad stanford has admitted the people it has instead of simply students with the "best grades, leadership and talents". stanford students are so much more and the quality that these students bring to the campus shines through applications and cannot be captured in grades or achievements.
of course everyone makes mistakes and the admissions process is definitely not perfect.
It's also bad to assume that just because applicants are admitted from a minority or underrepresented pool, for example the first in the family to go to a four year college, that those applicants are less qualified.
As for complaints that Asian Americans don't get admitted, look at the statistics, they make up the second largest group (after whites) in the school.
It's also bad to assume that just because applicants are admitted from a minority or underrepresented pool, for example the first in the family to go to a four year college, that those applicants are less qualified.
As for complaints that Asian Americans don't get admitted, look at the statistics, they make up the second largest group (after whites) in the school.
It is indisputable, if you are familiar with college admissions results on a large scale, that affirmative action lowers class quality. If you choose to be idealistic and 'believe' otherwise, thats up to you. Exactly how much it lowers the quality is up for debate, but I find it hard to believe that college students can be so incredibally naive as to believe that it does not lower the quality at all.
It is indisputable, if you are familiar with college admissions results on a large scale, that affirmative action lowers class quality. If you choose to be idealistic and 'believe' otherwise, thats up to you. Exactly how much it lowers the quality is up for debate, but I find it hard to believe that college students can be so incredibally naive as to believe that it does not lower the quality at all.
Re: Bob. What's your measure of "quality"? If it's just top GPAs and SAT scores, the admissions staff might as well be sacked right now and replaced with a number crunching machine which can "objectively" select the absolute best students out there. Stanford is a private university and I think it's great that it can take the liberty to choose a diverse (and I'm not talking ethnically) undergraduate population. Only a fraction of the Stanford experience happens in the classroom, it also lives in the dorms, academic departments, social activities etc. In the end, it doesn't matter because it's the graduate programs where it REALLY counts.
Would be interesting to know how they came up with over 25,000 applications. In January they had less applications than last year. Since Stanford uses the online Common Application exclusively and the count is updated immediately, how did the count increase by over 1,000 after the deadline? You don't suppose they pumped up their numbers by counting applicants who started a Stanford application but never submitted or payed the application fee? Would be nice if Daily reporters actually checked what they were reporting about the University rather than just repeating University press releases.
http://www.stanforddaily.com/article/2008/1/24/recordNumberOfAppsReceived
http://www.stanforddaily.com/article/2008/1/31/applicationStatisticsExamined
Then why did the reported figure keep increasing after the deadline? A former classmate works in admissions and told me the talk of the office was that applications had barely topped 24,000. That was a week after the deadline. Everyone except for Shaw had expected a big increase. Shaw saw the count as validation of his view that a Jan 1 deadline would decrease applications because applicants who were admitted early elsewhere wouldn't apply to Stanford. With the old Dec 15 deadline they often didn't receive their early decision before Dec 15. Some people in admissions thought they should count applicants who started a Stanford application but didn't submit. Otherwise it would look like Stanford's popularity had plateaued. Sounds as if they did exacylt that.
23,958 2007 applications
24,000 Jan 7
24,693 Jan 24
24,810 Jan 31
Oh wait! Now I see my error. The problem is'n that Stanford falsified the admit rate this year, it's that Stanford has been falsifying the admit rate all along by counting thousands of applicants who withdrew after being admitted elsewhere early.
I think Stan is onto something. Far too signifacant, potentially, for the Daily Stanford (whose editor is, after all, on the University payroll) to investigate.
Of course Stanford fudges (or used to fudge?) the admissions figures. I will give us THIS, however ... we are far more honest in the numbers we report than Yale is.
Stan...I can see your point, but no matter what you say, these applicants did apply to Stanford. The way I see it, that's all they're saying: "number of applicants." Not, number who accepted the offer, or the number who chose other universities, or even those who simply applied after the deadline. The bottom line is, if the number of those who had the motivation and desire to apply to Stanford increased, does it really matter what becomes of those applications? The idea is that THEY APPLIED. Which means that MORE PEOPLE WANT TO GO TO STANFORD. So (just a thought) however legitimate your argument may seem to you, just think about the bigger picture.
@ Amazed: props for seeing what's going on.
I've got an anecdote:
Our valedictorian, who is brilliant, get waitlisted despite crazy-high math scores and a reputation of brilliance among my school's faculty.
My best friend, who taught English to Japanese students for two months last summer, excels at the language, one B+ from being a valedictorian and again, highly respected by the faculty, gets denied.
Another student with lower grades, but killer performance on our school's musicals is also denied.
Another friend, a few grades from valedictorian but more top honors for character, academics and all-around being a great guy than the all the valedictorians combined and then some is denied. He's also an Eagle Scout w/ a Silver Palm and 7 weeks of research on crazy laser things.
But the Black guy who played football for two years, but with a reputation for disrupting class gets in.
I don't doubt at all that there are some amazing Blacks, Indians, first-generations, etc that destroy them, but he was the only minority with respect to Stanford that applied and also the only one to get in. Sounds fishy to me. Anyway, Stanford: have fun with your new IB Math Studies, while the Differential Equations kids go somewhere worthwhile :P
It's anecdotes like that which make me glad that I'm going to Harvey Mudd this fall instead of an overhyped engineering program at HYPS :)