Asian with a 1700 got into Stanford

Colleges and Universities A-Z Stanford University
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This exchange is interesting but frustrating. I think there are two over-riding questions: First, what are the facts about admissions at Stanford (athletes or otherwise). Second, what should the admissions policy be at Stanford, be it for athletes or anyone else.

I don’t see how you can have an intelligent discussion of the second question without having the facts; without addressing the first question. The problem is that admissions at Stanford (as at virtually all schools) is very opaque. Facts are few and far between. Opinions are common.

Other than the common data set (required by federal law); the stats on the admissions office website (largely a repeat of the common data set); and the occasional report by the dean of admissions to the faculty senate, I’m not aware of any other hard data on Stanford admissions. Then we are all left to try to piece things together. This has become somewhat of a hobby of mine. I’ve talked to dozen of parents whose kids have applied to Stanford over the years. I’ve talked to several college counselors at good private and public schools; I have a close friend who worked for many years in the athletic department at Stanford; and I’ve looked at dozens of Naviance scatter diagrams involving Stanford. One of my kids applied to Stanford. I’ve been reading this board for some time. I think I know something about Stanford admissions, but who knows how accurate my beliefs are.

Thus, take the case at hand: A kid says she was admitted with 1700 SATs. First, is it true? Well, we know she was admitted (and this is an unusual case), but we don’t know her SATs. Second, let’s assume the 1700 is correct. One poster said that the admissions office must have seen something else in her file to admit her. Duh! That’s axiomatic. The big question for potential applicants is what was that something else: Did she cure cancer? Was she Miss Nevada? Was she the star of some stupid reality TV show? Is her mother on the board of trustees? Is her father a billionaire? Is she a good all-around kid? Is she a world class tennis player?

Without seeing her entire folder, we are pretty sure there was something else but we have no idea what it was. By looking at the Common Data Set we know that a few–a very few kids–are admitted with SATs this low. Again, for me (at least for the purposes of this board), it all comes down to applying early. You may apply early, but in most cases to only one school. Most schools give you a big break by applying early (Stanford less so). Where do you play this valuable card? It is tough seeing the big picture when you are allowed to see only a few individual pieces.

Having said all of this, given my limited knowledge, over time I have come to the conclusion that most but not all kids who are admitted to Stanford or schools like it with very low board scores fall into one of three categories: URM, recruited athletes, or special parents. That’s why I found the case at hand to be strange. She clearly was not an URM. (I believe the admissions prejudice against Asians is real. That is the subject of a big lawsuit.) That left either something amazing (curing cancer) or one of the other two categories. Frankly, most kids who do something amazing also have pretty high board scores (there are exceptions, of course). More to the point, her videos didn’t indicate anything special along these lines. That left the two remaining special categories, athletes and special parents.

I wish that colleges were more transparent, but it won’t happen short of a change in the law. And I doubt that that will happen. If you think athletes get admissions breaks, wait until you hear about the admissions breaks for the kids of politicians!

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I agree that the admissions process is opaque both at Stanford and at other highly selective private schools. Partly because it’s hard to be clear about criteria when the admit rates are so low, and in my view partly because schools do not want to publicize the advantages that those in priority groups get, whether that’s children of prominent alums/big donors, athletes, URMs or some other priority group.

All of this was a lot easier when these schools were admitting 20% or more of applicants, as Stanford and its peer schools were doing 20 years ago.

There is more transparency at some state schools, such as the UC campuses which publish admit rates by SAT, ACT, GPA etc. For that matter anyone can look up what a particular professor is paid at Berkeley. At highly selective private schools, not so much.

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But if this girl is really a top tennis recruit, this is a non-story. Everybody knows that sports matters at Stanford. And she has really good grades. Of course she got in. It’s not surprising or mysterious in the least.

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Hunt, I have to agree and disagree with you. I agree that “Everybody knows that sports matters at Stanford.” But the stuff about the grades is not so clear.

The most valuable thing about SAT is that is consistent across students. A 1700 at an online high school is, at least as a first approximation, is the same as a 1700 at Exeter. That is the major reason why a select group of admissions officers pushed for standardized tests as part of the admissions process in the 1950s. It really helped “top” schools become more of a meritocracy.

Grades, as we know, are not consistent across high schools. I’ve seen very rigorous schools were no one has ever graduated with a 4.0. I’ve also seen schools where half of the class graduates with a 4.0 (or a lot higher) and the students and the school are very weak. In the case at hand, we simply do not know how rigorous the grading was at her school.

Couple of other things: From looking at hundreds of Naviances over the years at both public and private schools, you will see that there tends to be a strong correlation between SATs and GPAs. Not perfect, but strong. Moreover, although there are kids with high SATs and relatively low board scores, the opposite tends to be far less frequent (low SATs and high grades).

Moreover, when you look at Naivances (and this is hard data, although you often do not know the kids), you see schools like Stanford rejecting a ton of kids with high board scores and low grades; you also see them rejecting a ton of kids with low board scores and high grades. If you have high SATs and high grades, then you are competitive, but certainly not guaranteed admissions.

Thus, a lot of kids who like this student had high grades (even at very tough schools) and low SATs were rejected. Why not? If you can admit only one kid out of 20, you are looking for reasons to reject.

One question for a recruited athlete is: how low may my SATs be and I can still be admitted to Stanford. There is a NCAA minimum of 820, so you can’t go below this number. I hope Stanford is above that level. This case tells us that 1700 standing alone is not a deal killer. For some kids, that is valuable information.

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As many of you probably know, there was a large number of students that requested to view admissions records this past January based on an e-mail sent out by the FoHo. The article linked below indicates that 2,800 students made initial requests. I never saw any data on how many actually went in to view them. I believe students were given approximately 20 minutes to look. No phones, no ability to record anything - they were only allowed to take in pencil and paper. It would be interesting to know if patterns, trends, etc. could be gleaned if all of these viewings could be brought together.

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2015/03/09/first-students-gain-access-to-their-admissions-files-through-ferpa-provision/

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Students won’t be able to view their admissions files in the future, by the way. Going forward, Stanford is deleting admissions files once decisions have been made, to preempt future requests.

It would be interesting though to see what people gleaned from reading their files.

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^Oh, yes. I know. My understanding was that there wasn’t a requirement to keep the records - just a requirement to show them if requested if they had kept them. I’m sure it was more common to purge more frequently when everything was paper. It would just be students from this past year who requested them. Or, I suppose, others in the past, but this year’s batch would be far larger because of the wide dissemination of info on how to do it.

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Unfortunately, student reports of what they saw in their personal files in a 20 minute period falls rather short of “hard data”.

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I guess it may be valuable for some recruitable athletes–but my suspicion is that they get more direct information about their likelihood of admission to a lot of schools.

For people who aren’t recruitable athletes, it’s at best useless, at worst misleading.

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I totally agree with your last sentence. That’s why I identified that the poster was a recruited athlete in the first place.

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@Hunt, I think this is one of the puzzling things about the video referenced. For someone who reportedly wants to mentor and help others, it makes little sense to give advice which is potentially misleading outside of the applicant’s context, and which can give people false hope or unrealistic expectations. It’s fine to say be personal in essays and dig deep, or to develop yourself as a person outside of school as well as academically, but it’s not so great to give people false hope that they can overcome mediocre test scores by writing compelling personal statements without having some other significant accomplishments and/or hooks.

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She’s a kid. That’s the explanation.

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I agree that recruits in contact with coaches will typically get more direct information, but it could be useful for a potential recruit who’s not quite to that stage yet.

That said, interpolating from the CDS numbers, fewer than 3% of Stanford admits have SAT scores of 1700 or below and if I recall correctly athletic recruits are around 15% of each class. So scores at that level are unusual even within this group and I assume would tend to be found among recruits at the top of a coach’s list.

Similar but less formal than the system in Ivy League football, which has four academic index bands and a certain number of recruits allowed in each band . . . those in the bottom academic band are usually going to be star players.

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When you are at admitted student functions for tippy top schools, you can see Tiger Parents giving their kids instruction on how to behave and who to talk to.

They usually make them leave the athletes alone.

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That’s an easy out to a very good question posted by @renaissancedad - why couldn’t the “kid” be honest and say it like it is? “I’m a recruited athlete and I got in with a 1700” Answer, because then everyone would be like “OK, they got in because they’re a jock, that explains it”. There’s no “wow” factor in that is there?

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The kind of attitudes on the part of non-varsity athletes that JustOneDad mentions are unfortunate . . . both for those students, who miss out on getting to know some really interesting people who happen to play college sports, and for the student athletes. Admittedly there is some self-segregation on the part of some athletes also, which is natural as they are spending a lot of time with their teammates, but is also unfortunate if taken too far.

Those parents mentioned are also misguided on purely utilitarian grounds, assuming their objective is for their kids to meet classmates who are likely to be successful in career terms. Aside from the work of Bowen and colleagues on career outcomes for college athletes, which I mentioned in an earlier post, it should be readily apparent to anyone looking at building names on the Stanford campus that there are some really successful ex-college athletes out there . . . like John Arrillaga (basketball), Phil Knight (track), and the late David Packard (football, basketball).

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Do you have a reference for parents making their children leave athletes alone during college? I mentioned that I briefly was on the rowing team at Stanford. I didn’t notice any significant changes in who associated with me soon after joining the team, which is not surprising, considering nearly everyone in my classes had no idea that I was athlete. Few outside of my dorm were aware, where I had a reputation for being focused on academics, rather than dorm parties/recreational activities.

The women’s tennis team’s average GPA is actually well above the non-athlete Stanford average, with all but one starter at 3.74 to 3.99; so they might fit in well with disciplined tiger children who are focused on top grades for med/grad school and the like. And whatever Stanford’s test score admission polices are for athletes, they seem to be working from an academic perspective. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, Stanford athletes as a whole have the same grad rate as non-athletes, with highest FGR grad rate of all Div I colleges. When people think of Stanford athletes, they probably think of the sports that get the most television coverage, such as Football and Men’s Basketball. However, the majority of athletes play a different sport where it’s not practical to go pro after graduation and as such often have post grad goals that are similar to the overall student body. For example, I’ve known quite a few Stanford athletes who were focused on pursuing medicine are now doctors. This includes some stellar recruited athletes. One was a HS national championship winner in her sport and another was an Olympic participant. Among persons I knew on the rowing team, a disproportionately large number of them are now engineers, including myself. A recent article mentioned the majority of the men’s rowing team upperclassmen are engineering school majors.

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Yeah, it’s me; personal observation.

What I actually said was “at admitted student functions”. Once the kids get away from their parents, they are going to do what they’re going to do.

I think what can happen is that you go from HS where you are almost certainly going to have experienced a bunch of average jocks to Stanford and you find that things are different.