https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMxd_Zyn3EY Fast forward to 9:55… AND SHES ASIAN!
very odd because her extracurriculars are good, but don’t stand out. Meaning, most of the competitive applicants have activities like that and a much much higher sat score but still get rejected…
That’s very impressive. It might be that her online schooling was factored in?
It might be that despite all the complaint some Asians get in with lower scores and some blacks get in with higher scores.
This is why people need to stop comparing themselves. People are special in there own way and bring something to Stanford’s campus that maybe others cannot bring.
@Jwest22, I think that’s the proper way to look at it. Whatever we think of this person’s accomplishments based on what she chose to reveal on Youtube, the Stanford adcom clearly felt that she brought something to the campus that merited overlooking her SAT score. She clearly did a good job of conveying a strong picture in her application. Well done.
What this girl does not tell you in either of her videos is that she is a nationally ranked athlete who was highly recruited nationally by a number of schools including Stanford. She will be attending Stanford on an athletic scholarship. Her admission experience–especially her admission with (apparently) only a 1700 SAT–is totally irrelevant for the vast majority of kids who apply to Stanford. If you are a regular applicant with only a 1700, then you are dead in the water. On the other hand, if you are a nationally recruited athlete, then her experience is highly relevant. The admission of recruited athletes is a totally different ballgame, especially at the elite schools. What she is telling you is that if you are a nationally recruited athlete (and there aren’t a lot of them), 1700 is not a deal breaker. Totally different standards.
I think it is very sad that the college admissions process has become so opaque. The admissions staff, of course, encourages this opaqueness. It encourages more kids to apply, even those who have little if any chance of admissions. The number of applicants in part is how deans of admissions are judged. Opaqueness also gives the individual admissions staff more power.
I have found this board to be valuable as it can help a kid and his/her family learn something valuable that will influence where the kid should apply. If a kid wants to spend $100 to take a shot at applying to Stanford during the regular round, so be it. Miracles do happen and $100 isn’t a lot of money. But there are a lot of kids applying early to Stanford who have no shot at admissions. They could be applying to a near-reach school–applying to such a school early can make a huge difference. If the videos this girl has posted lead hopeless kids to apply early to Stanford, then she has done them a disservice. I’m sure she did not intend to mislead anyone. That’s why I decided to post this information.
You if don’t believe me, you can confirm this post by reviewing the videos and using Google. It took me about a half an hour to connect the dots.
I assumed it was something like that when she said something to the effect that she had “been accepted” to several schools but only formally applied to Stanford. That sounded like an academic commitment. Besides being one of the top recruits in the country, she also won sportsmanship awards, did a lot of youth mentoring and created a mentoring program, for which she won awards, and raised over $200K for a youth foundation. And she maintained a 4.2 GPA while probably spending most of her time traveling on the youth circuit. Does her SAT score really matter all that much?
Again, as @Jwest22 notes, she brought something to the campus that others couldn’t bring. She mentioned that too in her video, but she understated her athletic accomplishments.
@fredthered how do you know shes a recruited athlete??
@verizonwireless just like @fredthered stated, look at her youtube videos, google stanford tennis recruits and look at the pictures. Pretty simple and by the way, she is a five star recruit.
Her videos are very misleading to all her friends and followers who think they have a shot at Stanford with a 1700 SAT.
Thanks for getting to the bottom of this @fredthered.
To add one more point, the common data set indicates that less than 5% of Stanford freshmen have SAT scores that low, and athletic recruits are 10-15% of the class . . . so 1700 is very low even for an athletic recruit, especially in a non-revenue sport.
Aren’t there nationally ranked athletes who can manage more than a 1700 though…
But she’s supposedly top 5 in the country so why should Stanford pass up on such a stellar athlete just because she didn’t find getting a perfect SAT score as the be all end all in her career?
I’m sure even with a 1700 she can still manage the work at Stanford (save for maybe engineering majors).
Well, it really comes down to opportunity cost. The number of kids in an entering class is set, let’s say 1,700. If you admit John because he is a great baseball player (but an average student), that means you can not admit Joe, who is an amazing student (2400 SAT, National Merit Scholar, Concord Review publication, etc) but a terrible athlete. There’s no free lunch whenever there is a choice.
The question becomes what is the goal of Stanford: Is it to field the best sports teams or is it to educate and train the mind? I think if the SF Giants were choosing between these two kids, the choice is clear. I think it is also clear for Stanford, but obviously I am in a minority.
Many people think that the admitted athletes are all very “good” students, after all this is Stanford. Some are in that their academic credentials are not that different than the regularly admitted students. But over time my assessment of how many recruited athletes fall into that category has gone down, considerably. This is true not just at Stanford but at all of the elite schools. You would be amazed at kids I know who have gotten into the likes of Harvard and Princeton simply because they were good rowers or sailors (yes, sailors). They know why they were admitted and everyone else does. This is not to say that they are stupid, only that their academic credentials are a lot lower than kids who are rejected. We aren’t talking 50 points on the SAT in most cases. In some cases, as with the example in this thread, we are talking about 700 points (and sometimes even more). And it is not just SAT, it is also class rank. Athletes from the bottom half (bottom third?) of my son’s graduating class were admitted to the Ivies and the Little Three.
Can the recruited athletes handle the academics at Stanford? (Let’s put aside the girl in this thread for a variety of reasons). It is almost impossible to flunk out of Stanford. You just have to pick the right classes. Some classes and majors are very hard; other classes and majors can be mastered by a ham sandwich. Computer Science and economics have relatively tough reputations. Science, Technology, and Society, in contrast, is very weak. You find recruited athletes in both majors, but there is a disproportionate number in STS. Check out the rosters for the sports teams on line as it varies by sport. (Having said this, let me say that if a kid picks the right classes at Stanford, the education is unparalleled–simply amazing.)
I think there should be a reasoned discussion of the proper role of inter-collegiate sports in colleges, in general, and at Stanford, in specific. I’m talking about inter-collegiate sports, not recreational sports. I doubt whether it will be on the agenda of the next trustee meeting at Stanford or any other major university.
@Fredthered I’m in agreement with most of what you said, but even Stanford, at the “tippy top” can’t attract 1700 “perfect” students each year. There just aren’t that many to be had. Consequently, you find yourself working your way down the stack and taking stellar athletes becomes quite reasonable in the scheme of things, even if they are STS majors.
So, the point is that if Asians do sports, they aren’t discriminated against?
Seems to me that playing sports is a discriminating factor, not being Asian…
@Fredthered, I was one of the “amazing” students who attended Stanford. I took graduate classes as a freshman, did a double major plus a masters in 4 years while going overseas for one of them, was a junior Phi Beta Kappa, and a Marshall finalist. And I had plenty of interaction with student athletes, including a couple of Olympians, an NCAA women’s tennis champion, and several top players on the women’s basketball team. None were academically as strong as I was, but none was a misfit either, and they generally held their own. I turned down Harvard (among others) for Stanford, in part because I valued the more balanced atmosphere and undergraduate experience at Stanford, and I consider that I benefitted from being exposed to student-athletes and others who had a broader focus than just academics.
Stanford values athletics highly as an enhancement to the overall academic community, so I can understand their interest in someone like the woman who posted those youtube videos, regardless of her SAT score. As I mentioned in post #7 above, she had a strong GPA, leadership credentials, and raised over $200K for a youth foundation. Apparently Stanford valued those more than her standardized test score. Unlike some “perfect” students, she was probably too busy accomplishing meaningful things to optimize preparing for those, and/or realized that they weren’t critical to her success.
I would say that the “goal” for Stanford admissions is to field a balanced and multi-faceted class that creates the most vibrant intellectual and social community possible. I think that this requires considering more than grades and SAT scores. I think that it would be a disservice to accept someone who cannot hold their own just because of their athletic achievements, but I also think it would be a disservice to focus on standardized scores to the exclusion of other aspects.
I do agree that it is somewhat misleading for this person to post a youtube video giving people advice and talking about how she poured her soul out into her essays, when she had specific hooks that made her situation out of the ordinary.
Agree with the misleading, but it’s not too hard to imagine how an athlete could feel discounted and want to write something that shows they have more than one dimension.
Good points @fredthered on opportunity cost. I think this issue is most acute at Stanford and a handful of other schools (such as Duke and Northwestern) that are both at the top academically and compete in top sports conferences. There was a cover story in the alumni magazine on this a year or so ago. There are just not a lot of people who are Stanford caliber athletes and also have 2300 SATs, 4.0 GPAs, etc.
Not to say things are perfect in the Ivy League by any stretch of the imagination, but I do think this is a bit less of an issue in the Ivies due to the Academic Index standards enforced by the league, i.e. those schools can’t admit whoever they want in terms of athletic recruits. As a Pac 12 member, Stanford can essentially do whatever it wants with athletic admissions and the same is true for Duke, Northwestern and others in top sports conferences.
@bluewater2015, the woman in question was also offered a spot at Penn and said that her final decision came down to Stanford vs. Penn, so she must have met Ivy League AI criteria as well. Her GPA was 4.2. Other than a 1700 SAT, there’s nothing that stands out was “weak” in any way. I calculate her AI as being somewhere around 195 or so, depending on specifics like class size and exact SAT breakdown, and assuming SAT II’s based on her SAT I scores. That’s not great, but still well above the Ivy threshold of 176, and for a 5 star recruit with a strong service record, I can see where she would get Ivy offers as well.
Again, many people who choose schools like Stanford and Duke value a more diverse and balanced experience. As a “top academic” student I found my experience enriched by the diversity of students at Stanford, including athletes. In retrospect, I’m not sure I enriched their Stanford experience as much as they enriched mine.