<p>it seems like many on this board think that stanford admissions are a complete crapshoot and that many who get in don't deserve to be admitted to such a prestigious school. i've read plenty of people who think stanford admissions are arbitrary and even foolish, like they just admit random people for no reason. is this the common consensus? that a lot of stanford kids are just randomly picked and many might not really deserve it? </p>
<p>i would usually think that stanford is looking for passionate, driven people who may not have the best sat's, etc, but have some special intellectual qualities that get them admitted. but then i see people from my school who really have no passion for their ec's, who have low sat's, i read some of their essays and they were well-written but very standard/traditional, they weren't urms or have any special background, etc and they still got picked...and i read that stanford likes to select a lot of "average joes" while turning down applicants with either higher academic achievement, more passion or extracurricular achievement, or often both. </p>
<p>it makes me slightly wary, i guess. why would stanford decide--out of all its qualified applicants--to pick so many "average" people? and by average, i do NOT mean "sat below 2300??? omg AVERAGE!" i mean, people who don't even show passion for anything or any special skills or undeniable intellectual curiosity for a subject or anything like that, but are average all-around...how do those people get picked and why? is it really as arbitrary as a lot of people on this board think? is it because they just seem like "good kids"? i still think that would be weird because plenty of more traditionally qualified applicants are good kids as well...:-/ i guess the only thing would be that the ADCOMS see something special in these applicants that many of us might not see, but i dunno...anyone else have any deeper insight about it than that?</p>
<p>Do you know for a fact that these people that were admitted are average Joes? Because, many times, there is a lot more than meets the eye. Did you read all of their essays, including the common app one? Because a lot of things have happened to me that doesn’t make me an average Joe, although it isn’t stuff I would tell people I don’t know very well. Just saying…</p>
<p>well i know them fairly well, and they’ve all seemed like happy, normal kids. i guess they could have some deep, dark secrets or something, but it seems unlikely if you knew these kids…i read some of the essays, and all of them portrayed them as normal kids too. i didn’t read all the common app ones, though, so you could be right. but stanford itself said it likes to admit a lot of average joes, didn’t it? so if these kids came from some type of harsh background or something, stanford probably wouldn’t call them “average joes”. :-/</p>
<p>Also, did you read their recs? I think Stanford does find something special in those applicants. Besides, you can read an application very carefully but miss facts that adcoms will surely notice.</p>
<p>^that’s a good point. i didnt read the recs. but you guys get what i’m saying about stanford CALLING them “average joes”? if they really had some unique special qualities, why would they call them that? also most people who achieve very highly in academics, ec’s, or both would have stellar recs too.</p>
<p>no its a pretty new, average public school. 4 people (that i know of) have been admitted and there might be more that i don’t personally know. 2 of them ARE urms but 2 are just the “average joe” types. is 4 a lot for a public school or is that normal?</p>
<p>Seems like a lot to me. I don’t know anyone in my city who has been admitted to Stanford in the last two years. I don’t have intimate knowledge of all three high schools, but I know something about it.</p>
<p>huh, that’s pretty interesting. i wonder if it bodes well for my chances, being from that particular high school. (not sure why it would since it really IS just a normal public. hmmm…)</p>
<p>yeah, that could be true too. haha. what city do you live in anyway? is there anything markedly different about it in comparison to other cities?</p>
<p>I cannot believe that Stanford would randomly admit any candidate. I am sure that at least say 98% (or even 95%) of the students admitted to Stanford have very good credientials and will preform very well at Stanford. The question is “Are there other candidates who were better than those actually selected”. When, you have so many good candidates, each very good in their own way, it is difficult to compare, but yes there are cases of good candidates being turned away in favor of slightly weaker candidates. </p>
<p>This can be considered as randomness, arbitrary etc. and unfair to many people. There is a luck element.</p>
<p>*Torrey Pines had a 2006-2007 API score of 852, the highest of any high school in San Diego county.</p>
<p>*In December 2006, Torrey Pines received the Class Nobel School of Distinction Award from The National Society of High School Scholars (NSHSS). </p>
<p>I think my kids school had 4 by the time she graduated. Not saying what city, but I think the county is famous for having the most homes in N. Cal in foreclosure;among the most in the country! How’s THAT for elite?</p>
<p>My school offers 10 AP classes. It’s a pretty good public high school, though not compared to the likes of Torrey Pines. It has sent about 5 kids to Stanford, but it’s only been open for 9 years, so I’d say that’s pretty good. :)</p>
<p>This is silly. No one “deserves” a spot. Admission can be worked for and wanted, but no one “deserves” a spot any top university (or any non-open admissions university, actually). So if they get in, they get in.</p>
<p>The problem with your post is that you think you know a lot about these applicants but you, like the rest of us, probably don’t. They clearly offered something that Stanford wanted or they wouldn’t have been accepted. Stanford definitely doesn’t just randomly select students, but the process can seem arbitrary when so many awesome students apply that it’s difficult to determine who was admitted for what reason.</p>
<p>You can’t say “more traditionally qualified.” Do you mean that they were higher scoring students? Obviously Stanford doesn’t care about just high-scoring students, since they don’t except all their 2400s and 4.0s. What I’m trying to get across here is that because we know so little about the admissions process, we can’t say that one student was more qualified than another. Statistics aren’t the issue here, so that’s a terrible measuring stick.</p>
<p>“You can’t say “more traditionally qualified.” Do you mean that they were higher scoring students? Obviously Stanford doesn’t care about just high-scoring students, since they don’t except all their 2400s and 4.0s. What I’m trying to get across here is that because we know so little about the admissions process, we can’t say that one student was more qualified than another. Statistics aren’t the issue here, so that’s a terrible measuring stick.”</p>
<p>He made it extremely clear that that is NOT what he meant. Maybe you should reread his post. It was very obvious to me that when he said “qualified”, he meant students that are either 1.) academic superstars 2.) passionate, driven people in regards to EC’s 3.) badass essay writers or 4.) all of the above. For students who don’t fit into any of those, it can be strange to figure how they’d be admitted unless they were a URM or from some type of harsh background, which the admittees at his school did not seem to be. Stanford itself says it admits many “average joes”, and no one has been able to explain this quote yet.</p>
<p>Have you ever considered that out of all of the people that Stanford admits, you have only met four? As for Stanford saying that it likes to admit average Joes (I don’t know where they said that but I will trust you), I think it is their attempt to convey a down-to-earth attitude, it does not mean that they go through looking to admit the most average and boring people they can find.</p>
<p>I wasn’t saying Torrey Pines is average but thanks for all of the stats which show that it is a great school academically (which it is). I was saying that having 4 students admitted to Stanford isn’t a lot, (because we had 10 last year alone) but it is more than average.</p>