The fact Stanford has the land — it being the largest contiguous campus — is a huge advantage to growing its incoming class size, which it is doing. It has enough space for 4000 spots per year
Frankly speaking, I am sick and tired that some people try to use the number of Nobel prize winners, or blah, blah things as a proof of superior. Please keep the old fame . Good for you . When my kid had applied colleges, dd even didn’t care how many Nobel prize winners at colleges or what college the most Ceos came from. Even dd never got any of marketing flyers from Stanford. Dd even was accpeted from colleges which some people tried to claim to have better undergraduate programs than Stanford but dd ended up to Stanford. So what is the matter? Dd has loved it, always wanted to be part of it and made dd’s dream come true. Does this bother you? Do you think my dd should have counted all whatsoever prize winners before decision? Dd had searched all the things dd cared for colleges and picked the college dd’s heart went on.
@websensation “Bobby, I honestly thought my kid had only a sliver of a chance — even less than other average applicants to Stanford — but he got in last year as REA. Many denied kids had higher hard stats than my kid. And no, my kid has no hook.”
Do you mind sharing what you feel set your kid apart from the rest of the crowd?
I can’t resist beating this dead horse (even though I think counting Nobel prize winners is a ridiculous way to evaluate the quality of the undergraduate experience at a college.) It seems to me that the relevant statistic re Nobel prizes is not where you got your degree, but where you did the work that won you the recognition. The Nobel official site lists the research affiliations of the prizewinners, and as I suspected Stanford has a very healthy showing: since 1960, 18 to Harvard’s 20; since 2000, 7 to Harvard’s 6. Not people “late in their careers…going there to retire”, but faculty members who did their groundbreaking work in Stanford’s rich academic environment.
Stanford is the most selective university in the US for the simple fact that it has a breadth of excellence unmatched by any university. Competes in engineering and tech with MIT, Caltech, Berkeley… in the humanities with the ivies and in sports with USC, UCLA, Texas. No school comes close period.
In addition if Stanford were as aggressive in goosing its numbers as other schools it’s admit rate would be below 4% right now. The Stanford admission’s office doesn’t even report on EA numbers… or give an official EA press release even though it is more selective than the usual suspects.
Stanford has essay app requirements which many schools do not and the highest app fee which limits overall apps. If anything the Stanford admit rate would be lower if it instituted the same practices to boost app numbers that other schools practice. havard is well known for being the largest abuser of such practices - what a surprise:)
imagine if stanford eliminated its application fee for all applicants… the acceptance rate would be in the negatives, lmaooo.
@socaldad2002 His hard stats were: 3.9 gpa, 33 ACT (35s in Reading and Writing) but somehow made NMF. He (ORM) is a non-STEM interested kid. Very honest and focused essays and his strong ECs involving language and cultural learning experiences and his actual language ability in 4 languages. Took a gap year to further improve in one of the 4 languages through a scholarship program to study abroad. But don’t get me wrong, we were all still totally shocked to get into the only reach school he applied, which he himself wanted to apply to, not us. We were concerned that he might feel bad when he got denied from Stanford, and truthfully, he would have been OK with getting a deferral. I thought UCLA and Berkeley were matches for him, only because he was applying to non-STEM area, and safeties were several other UCs and 2 Honors Colleges with merit money. Every year, 65 to 70 kids from his HS apply to Stanford, and no one else got in except for him. He might have been the only kid in his HS history to get into Stanford as REA. I think he was ranked around 20th out of 520 GPA wise. There were definitely academically more accomplished kids than our kid in his HS. However, my kid didn’t study as hard as he should have in some classes because his attitude in HS was just do enough to get A minuses or As. Where he showed some zeal was in languages and pursuing some of ECs. Had he been unlucky, he could have gotten 5 B+s instead of only 2 B+s in math and biology.
If you could get 33 in ACT score, I would advise these kids to devote more time to ECs and working on their essays. That’s more important IMO, not trying to get GPAs and test scores to near perfection.
@websensation are you out of state for California? UCLA and Berkeley are reach schools for most out of state students. Most wouldn’t consider them matches. i don’t know if others agree.
@bronze2 We are CA residents. I considered them matches after researching their admission criteria because he applied for the non-STEM major in which he demonstrated a great deal of ECs and zeal. To me, a school is a “match” if you have 50% chance to get in or denied, and a “safety” is a school you have 95% or more chance to get in. That is why we applied to both UCLA and Berkeley because there is good chance he might not get into one. After I found out he would be NMF, I had him apply to 2 HCs (one top HC and one not that good HC but had a good program in one area). For the 2 HCs, I thought our kid had 100% chance to get in because their college rep told us he would get into HCs with his stats and NMF status. Otherwise, I would have found some other safeties.
Fair enough if you are CA residents!
For me as CA resident, I can’t fathom why anyone who got into their great flagship state schools such as U of Mich, UVA or Univ of Wisconsin would pay OOS tuition to attend UCLA or Berkeley unless you are loaded.
Easy answer. Not all state flagships are “great”. That’s the predicament we found ourselves in. So we would have paid OOS for Cal or UCLA over our state’s “flagship”, and yes, that’s an expensive proposition.
^ I strongly believe the answer is not that easy. What @DeepBlue86 keeps saying about Stanford’s selectivity being affected by lack of regional competition can be applied to flagships as well. Northeast flagships, for example, don’t carry the prestige of others in part because they are surrounded by top-private schools. Take UConn for example, throw a stone in any direction and kids from at least 12 Stanford crossover schools will have to run for cover… Prestige aside is it really that different from the “great flagships”? I highly doubt it… BTW, I used UConn because of its location (middle of Ivy territory) but Rutgers, Maryland and Pitt (could keep going…) also come to mind…
That is Standford’s marketing! In my DD’s small private school, there were 12 kids applied Stanford this year, only two kids belong to the 10% of the class and has decent ECs, the others, no good score (GPA nor SAT), no ECs (at least not demonstrated at school), but they just applied in hope of the “holistic” admission.
@DeepBlue86, I was trying to reply but saw that your post was deleted.
Anyway, welcome back! I see that you are still carrying the "little monk’s heart. " Hopefully you enjoy the snow of April in New Heaven today.
If financial markets can serve as an example, the secret is that you don’t beat your brain out to analyze what will go up/down, you spend you time to figure out who actually know the markets and follow. Afterall, you don’t want to outsmart the smart but the average.
And yet it is Stanford that lives rent-free in Harvard’s head:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/10/30/stanford-vs-harvard/
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/2/7/raffel-beware-stanfordization/
https://www.thecrimson.com/flyby/article/2017/4/27/screw-stanford/
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/10/16/reyes-latinx-longform/
http://www.thecrimson.com/flyby/image/2017/4/26/stanford-weird/
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/4/8/stanford-beats-harvard-admissions-rate-again/
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/1/28/stanford-tops-harvard-fundraising/
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/2/14/harvard-fundraising-trails-stanford/
http://www.thecrimson.com/column/letters-from-cambridge/article/2016/10/11/stanford-vs-harvard/
IMO without a top engineering and tech you’re not in the running for “the best” university period.
Harvard is a third rate D league engineering school
Not sure which of my posts you think was deleted, @ewho - the one I put up yesterday, on a different Stanford thread, is still there (http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21405514/#Comment_21405514).
What is a “little monk’s heart”? Google is not giving me any answers. I’m not entirely understanding your comment about financial markets either (and I don’t think I agree with it, so far as I can tell) - maybe we should continue the conversation via DM.
Since you mention it, did you see the snow in “New Heaven” yesterday? If not, there are some nice photos of it on the Yale Instagram feed.
@DeepBlue86 , I did mess up with the threads , and I guess that there was no snow in New Heaven but in New Haven yesterday. Many things I posted can not be found from Google. The “little monk’s heart” referred to the discussion of two monks we had before.
@BenBen1234, the following list may be more accurate.
- Jeff Bezos Teacher College of NJ Undergrad
- Bill Gates Harvard Undergrad Dropout
- Mark Zuckerberg Harvard Undergrad Dropout
- Larry Ellison Chicago Undergrad Dropout
- Larry Page Maryland Undergrad
- Sergey Brin Michigan Undergrad
- Steve Ballmer Harvard undergrad
- Michael Dell UT Undergraduate Dropout
- Paul Allen Wash St. U. Dropout
- Dustin Moskovitz Harvard Undergrad
- Eric Schmidt Teacher College of NJ Undergard
Maybe the Princeton forum is warmer. People will not choose Princeton over Stanford because of this.
@BenBen1234 : Why don’t you be a billionaire yourself rather mentioning a list of billionaires here and there in Stanrod CC?
You look pitiful and desperate. Your posts seem that a little kid puts on airs with other one’s belonging not with his belonging. If you are part of the colleges you are proud of, I think you will have a big chance to be a billionaire. Go for it.I think you have two things in your mind. 1) list of billionaires 2)How to become a **** in Stanford CC.