<p>From your experience, what are the main differences between the selection processes at these two schools? Does one tend to reject 2400 valedictorians more often? Do both care about seeing your passions equally? And is it true that H values leadership slighlty more and that S values creativity slightly more?</p>
<p>And please don't let this degenerate into a "Which one is better?" thread.</p>
<p>I’ve heard Stanford is more into the entrepreneurial spirit than many other schools.</p>
<p>One difference I’ve found is that Harvard more often goes for the traditional high-numbers students. Of course tons of students with high scores get rejected, but it does seem that they go for high SAT/ACT quite a lot, even when those students are rejected or waitlisted at YPSM. This is further evidenced by their testing requirements: Harvard requires 2 subject tests (used to require 3), whereas Stanford recommends 2, but it’s optional, and many students get in without taking them. </p>
<p>One misconception about Stanford is that all the lower-scoring students that get in are the URMs, legacies, and athletes; in reality, even non-hooked students with scores below the midpoint get in quite often, usually for having strength in other parts of their application (leadership, awards, essays, recommendations). And of course, we all know that there are plenty of higher-scoring URMs and athletes. Fun fact: adcoms have stated that legacies have higher average SAT scores than the rest. This probably isn’t different from Harvard (legacies at elite schools tend to be much more qualified on average, anyway), but I will add that the acceptance rate for legacies at Stanford is allegedly much lower than Harvard’s (14% vs. 30+%). Take from that what you will - it could be that Harvard cares more about legacy status, or it could simply be that they get more legacy applicants who are highly qualified, or it could be something else altogether.</p>
<p>Another difference is essays: Stanford tends to place much more emphasis on them. This is evidenced by the # required essays: correct me if I’m wrong, but Harvard has one additional essay, which is optional. Stanford, on the other hand, has three additional required essays. Stanford emphasizes the importance of intellectual curiosity, hence why the intellectual vitality essay has been around for at least 15 years. I think this partly helps to explain why Harvard tends to have a larger portion of pre-professional students who end up in finance and consulting. I’d say Stanford is less pre-professional than Harvard, and a larger portion of the pre-professional students it does have are more entrepreneurial, hence why so many students end up at a startup or a nonprofit instead of finance or consulting (MIT’s engineering students go into consulting in droves; Stanford, not so much). Just a hunch, but I think this is reflected in admissions as well: they tend to value that entrepreneurial spirit more, as moonman767 suggested. </p>
<p>In their CDS, Stanford says that the non-quantifiable factors - ECs, talent/ability, character/personal qualities, essays, and recommendations - are all “very important” (the highest on the scale), while Harvard says those are “considered” (second to “not considered”); Harvard doesn’t make any distinction outside of “considered” and “not considered” for all the criteria listed.</p>
<p>As a result of all this, I think Stanford’s admissions are more subjective. And that’s a frequent perception that people have had over the years - that Stanford’s decisions are more subjective and thus harder to predict. In answer to your other question, I don’t think Harvard emphasizes leadership more and Stanford creativity. I don’t know which rejects 2400 valedictorians more, but I’m willing to bet it’s Stanford.</p>
<p>There was one student a few years ago on here who was absolutely amazing - lots of research experience including a prestigious internship in a lab at Stanford’s med school, a rec from a Stanford professor, lots of awards, tons of leadership (including a charity she founded that successfully built schools in third-world countries), perfect GPA with lots of APs, almost-perfect SAT scores. She was flat-out rejected from Stanford, and people were outraged. You’d think that she was rejected because Stanford figured it wasn’t her first choice and she’d go somewhere else, but no; she applied SCEA and wasn’t even deferred. She ended up getting a likely letter from Dartmouth and graduated from Harvard last year. This kind of stuff still happens today; Stanford is just more unpredictable.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Clarification: I do think that Stanford emphasizes creativity more, but I don’t think that Harvard emphasizes leadership more (or less).</p>
<p>When you mention H going for high number students, is that something that adcoms at H have ever actually said or just your experience from seeing students getting admitted in the past?</p>
<p>^ just from what I’ve seen on CC, which is to say a lot.</p>
<p>Just a reality check: Brown rejects
80% of applicants with an 800 CR
83% with an 800 Math
81% of Valedictorians</p>
<p>The take home: you can subjectively discuss the differences between elite schools . . . but they ALL reject the overwhelming majority of high number achieving applicants; one may reject 83% of them, the other 87%, etc, which is a distinction w/o much of a difference.</p>
<p>The one major difference between these two schools that cause the effects you all are discussing: Stanford gives athletic scholarships (about 300 per year?) and Harvard doesn’t.</p>
<p>Result: Stanford’s student body is more well rounded (and in saying that I am not implying “better”.)</p>
<p>At least in CA, students seem to get into Stanford easier than Harvard. We have had many students who got into S but deferred or wait listed (and ultimately rejected) from Harvard.
However having said that, if someone is outstanding (there was this girl last year who was an outstanding dancer and a valedectorian and had leadership in school and overall just flawless)…got into both S and H (and if anyone is curious, she chose H …just wanted to flavor the east coast). But the year before, the val just got into S and not H. She did not have the “national level” talent but otherwise quite a leader.</p>
<p>So my 2 cents…easier to get into S than H (at least in California) unless you are looking for athletic scholarship and then maybe S is hard (they look for the very best) (Div 1)</p>
<p>Well is the opposite rue on the East Coast in your opinion @trying?</p>
<p>Who knows ? I’ve heard folks from MA (and those elite academies in New england) get into Harvard…easier than S. But then they are all well connected anyways…who has 30-40K/year for elite academies…I do agree… H is a lot about legacies than S.</p>
<p>phantasmagoric - Interesting to hear about that girl. You know, this building website and starting charity is getting so old. At the end of the day, it is also what class they are trying to build. If they already took a bunch of science researchers, maybe they need someone who has musical talent. And yes…personal statements…I do agree S looks at that very closely.</p>
<p>Kei-o-lei, of course when you look only at numbers, there’s not a whole lot separating the tippy-top schools. Yet despite that, applicants can feel and see the difference in competitiveness. This difference is why Brown or Columbia, despite having single-digit acceptance rates, still have tons of students who were rejected at one or more of HYPSM.</p>
<p>tryingforcollege,</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, this is a bit of a misconception. Harvard doesn’t “officially” give out designated athletic scholarships, but it’s more than willing to bend its financial aid policies and be extra generous with its athletes to get them to attend. This is true of most Ivies, who bend their agreements quite often (e.g. by sending likely letters even when they agree on a single notification date).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This could be the case - if you’re a CA applicant applying to Harvard, they’re going to assume that you’re also applying to Stanford, which factors into their admissions decisions for yield reasons. (Likewise, Stanford would view Northeast applicants similarly, although it says its yield of New York admits is 90%.) But your reasons for thinking this are very flawed - it doesn’t matter what happens at one single school. At other high schools, students are much more successful at Harvard than at Stanford.</p>
<p>It’s also definitely the case that it’s harder for a CA applicant to get into Stanford than for a MA applicant to get into Harvard. Part of this is because Harvard still draws heavily on the typical Northeast prep schools. People always think that Stanford has an overrepresentation of its state, but when you factor in population size and graduating seniors, MA students at Harvard are more than twice as overrepresented as CA students are at Stanford. If you look at it regionally, the two are much more comparable: Harvard has said that upwards of 50% of its student body comes from the Northeast, whereas about 40-45% of Stanford’s student body comes from the West Coast. The West Coast and the Northeast have virtually the same population.</p>
<p>Last thoughts - Admission is unpredictable and getting more and more so every year. Noone really knows what is going on in the mind of the adComs as they look through stuff. And the most unfortunate part is, people are hiring college consultants to tailor and polish their apps so that somehow it sticks out among 80K applicants. People with super Stats are even getting rejected from the top tier UCs.</p>