Opinions
Navigation
Other Issues
This Issue
- Front page
- News
- Sports
- Opinions
- Intermission
- Dining Guide
- Night Life Guide
- Careers
- Features
- Classifieds
Buy
SMS
RSS feeds
Comments about "A look at Stanford admissions"
<< Back to A look at Stanford admissions
13 Comments on this article:
Great article, Stuart! A piece like this is long overdue!
My son is coming to Stanford. He did not come for the admit-weekend and chose Stanford over Yale. Just keep the rankings up and people will come.
they're adding the interview component. get your facts straight.
You make some very good points, but there are plenty of exceptionally qualified students. I really double you could detect the differences in qualifications of the newly admits to Stanford from those going to the Ivy League School. The more important factor, by far, is the resources spent on world renown faculty and facilities. If Stanford continues to progress in these areas, there will continue to be a gradual shift of the very brightest westward.
Who would want to go to Harvard? It snows there. If you aren't smart enough to see Stanford is the superior choice, you shouldn't be admitted to Stanford.
Thats the glib answer.
The more serious answer is, you begin by talking of Stanford's high yield rate, then bemoan Stanford's lack of effort to achieve an even higher rate? There are enough qualified applicants who want to attend Stanford, I'm not sure more needs to be done to court those on the fence.
Harvard was the first to expand financial aid so generously? Try Princeton, which did it 8 years ago.
Stanford "wins" about 40% of cross-admits with Yale, splits with Princeton, and wins 75%-90% over the rest of the Ivy League, so I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that we're not competitive with the Ivy League. Harvard beats every school in the country for cross-admits, including Yale at a 2-1 ratio, so our 73% statistic isn't that embarrassing.
And how exactly do you propose that Stanford attract more diversity? Give even more affirmative action to under-represented minorities?
Tom: I agree with you generally, except that diversity is not only defined by ethnic status. It should be defined by achievement, life experiences, skills, goals, location, and class status as well as ethnically. . We're a pretty homogeneous group on some of those counts.
As a student who faced a serious choice between Stanford and MIT, I chose Stanford and have not looked back since. Your article makes several points, that at least based on my experience, are not true of many students.
I never knew I wanted to come to Stanford. It was my second choice, and I only considered it after a suggestion from my parents. Even in the weeks leading up to Admit Weekend, I was certain that I would be attending MIT in the fall. Admit Weekend showed me not what the university was like on a day to day basis, but what the people can be like here: Happy, enthusiastic, energetic. There was an energy at Stanford that you just don't see at other schools.
If the admissions process were so flawed, how is it that I chose to come here? I'm certainly the one who was won over by Stanford, and I am certain it was due to Admissions' efforts.
i'ma current stanford student. if u get into harvard, go there!! that's a true university
Personally, I felt that admit weekend did a fantastic job of convincing people to come. I met many people who were set on colleges, only visiting Stanford because it was free, and they decided to come. In fact, I only know of 2 people who decided to turn down Stanford: one for financial reasons and one because he wanted to experience the East Coast, and both still said Stanford was still the school they really loved. Also, the data in the article you cite on cross-admit statistics is questionable at best; according to the admissions office, most Stanford-Harvard cross admits choose Harvard, but Stanford wins over the majority of cross-admits with every other school.
"Furthermore, we still engage in early admission despite the inherent unfairness of the process and its abolition by Harvard and Princeton." <- I think Stanford is making a fantastic decision not to play lemming and drop early admissions. Early admissions is fantastic for high school students since it lets them clearly designate their first-choice school and lets them know way ahead of time if they got into that first-choice school. Harvard and Princeton's decisions to eliminate early admissions are just publicity stunts: they're shallow attempts to show they're trying to do something about the disproportionate wealth of their admits when, in reality, this has no effect on such demographics; the same rich kids who got in early will just get in regular. If they really wanted to try and even out their student's socioeconomic backgrounds, they'd make affirmative action policies include parent's income so poorer applicants get a leg up in admissions, and I hope Stanford and other schools do decide to adopt such policies.
I applaud Stanford for staying above the admissions stunts of Ivy League schools while still managing to win over the majority of students admitted to all but one other school. Honestly, I think a lot of those people who turned down Stanford for Harvard didn't really give Stanford a chance. Had they, I think many of them would have realized what I did: Stanford is the greatest university in the world.
I think Stanford does a pretty good job of winning over cross-admits. The Admit Weekend was a big factor in a lot of students coming to Stanford this fall. After going to Princeton and Yale's weekends, I met a lot of cross applicants who were taking the same tour as me. Many of them loved Stanford once they got here, and matriculated. Even the Harvard people I met here at Admit Weekend were having a tough choice deciding. Also, the 2006 article about cross-admits reportedly only surveyed New Englanders. If Stanford does have something to improve, it is letting people in the Midwest and NE to know more about Stanford. I'm from Indiana, and most people here only know that Stanford is in California. Reaching people on the other coast and letting them know about Stanford's character and opportunities would be the best improvement. And I agree with the above poster: Stanford is the greatest uni in the world.