<p>Hi- Brand new at this- thought I would get my "dumb" questions out of the way first-anticipating my questions will get "smarter" as I progress. At least I hope so!</p>
<p>I am a Cal kid who would love to attend Stanford. It appears 30- 40% of the undergrads admitted each year come from California. I would think that means we have an advantage here in the sunny climes of CA. But I keep hearing it is harder?</p>
<p>Even with greater numbers of students applying, I assume, it seems that the percentage accepted would say we have an advantage.</p>
<p>Does anyone know what the numbers are we are talking about: how many Californians (roughly) apply each year?</p>
<p>I don’t think that Stanford releases info on the number of CA residents applying and their acceptance rate. In their charter, it states that Stanford has to accept a large percentage of CA residents, however with the huge compettion there is not any overt advantage. </p>
<p>Stanford will always be a reach, instate or out, unless you are well-hooked.</p>
<p>Thanks. I tried to find the charter just for fun but I must not be entering the right
search words. </p>
<p>I admit to still being curious. It seems that with an outright charter mention of some kind to have Californians represented in great numbers that it must mean something for admittance chances.</p>
<p>Guess I will just have to do my best and see what happens.</p>
<p>No, it just says that Stanford would serve California, etc. in a general way. There wasn’t anything about percentages or even portions.</p>
<p>Regardless, this was the exact same question I asked an admissions officer from Stanford, and she replied that for Californians, it’s neither easier nor harder; they don’t really take it into consideration for California, and geography is barely a consideration even elsewhere. That’s supported by the figures that the Daily wrote about, which said that 37% of the applicants were from California and 35% of the accepted students were from California. So mostly even.</p>
<p>California isn’t as overrepresented at Stanford as, say, Massachusetts is at Harvard. Something like 15% of the undergrads at Harvard are from MA, whereas it’s 35-40% at Stanford. When you account for differences in state population, MA is more disproportionately represented at Harvard than CA is at Stanford. Raw numbers such as % in-state can be misleading. It’s not the state that matters to students, but the distance, so you can expect a school like Harvard to draw students from an area on the East Coast comparable to the area of California, with lower numbers of students applying the farther you move away, etc.</p>
<p>My D is at Harvard .Out of 5 elite schools and 2 full merit scholarships ,Stanford was the only school she did not get into .We are on East coast . Her cousin ,a California resident ,currently at Yale , did not get into Stanford . Can’t figure out where we failed ! Stanford is a mystery for us.</p>
<p>It used to be easier to get in from California, but I know Stanford recently talked about discontinuing that policy. I don’t know if they actually followed through with it, though.</p>