<p>idad -- I think that there ARE valid points made in that excerpt. By and large, anyone who's even thinking of applying to Stanford KNOWS that she had better be an intelligent, driven, and hard-working individual. Beyond that, I've been told for years that Stanford really does take a unique approach to applications, weighing "hooks" very highly. This isn't to say that I don't know absolutely stellar students who were admitted, but it is to say that I know plenty of equally stellar students were not, as well as some strangely <em>not</em> stellar students who were. I don't know exactly what they're looking for, and to say that numbers aren't a big part of things would be ignorant, but in Stanford's case--more so than most would think--I think it would also be a mistake to say that they're EVERYthing.</p>
<p>Also, I do think it's important to encourage students to take what interests them more than to just pile on AP after AP, and that does NOT amount to telling students not to challenge themselves. At my high school, the girl who took an absolutely obscene courseload and is now at Princeton actually watered down her GPA by taking many, many academic electives that were unweighted (4 languages, none of which were weighted until the 3-4 levels). Some students refused to expand their horizons like this because they didn't want to "water down" their weighted GPAs. Similarly, some students refrained from taking college courses offered on campus because they weren't factored into GPA. </p>
<p>I interpret Dean Shaw's message in that light. CLEARLY, prospective students should be motivated, driven, passionate, intelligent, open to challenge, and so forth, but NOT to the extent that they actually end up stunting their experiences just to boost numbers or whatever else. I think it's easy to read his statement and react negatively, as many posters here have, but I see that as a misreading. He's not directing his words to an entirely random audience.</p>