Common misconception or astute observation?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Stanford University
1

<p>ASSUMPTION:

  1. Stanford cares the most about your essays and responses that show your “intangibles” or your “personality”.</p>

<li>The Ivy League schools care first about your test scores and care little about your essays in comparison to Stanford.</li>
</ol>

<p>I see this thinking a lot on CC. Do you think it’s true or false?</p>

<p>I don’t think it’s true. Every college is focused on the high school transcript more than anything else followed closely by the SAT.</p>

2

<p>i don't know...the last four kids into stanford from my school all had 1600's...i think that's worthy of notice...but i've read the essays of two of them and they were also very strong so it's hard to say</p>

3

<p>Well I do know that for #2, for Yale at least, they value your transcript above everything else. The admissions officer told me that herself. Then everything else (essays, test scores, recs, interviews, etc) are valued on an almost equal basis, though I believe that interviews would probably be given a tad less weight.</p>

4

<p>First of all, you need to remember that none of us really know what matters most. I bet that even people who work in the admissions office aren't entirely sure themselves. They can tell you why they admit a student, but not why they didn't admit another student. </p>

<p>I doubt that Stanford cares most about your essays. Test scores and transcript probably come first. They want to know that you can graduate. If you can't graduate from Stanford, you won't get in. The transcript is still probably the most important part of the application. That said, it seems like they must also look at the essays and the teacher recs quite closely. Everyone here is friendly and just so damn interesting as a person that it seems impossible that that's just due to chance alone. Are the Ivies different? I have no clue. It is possible that after they have selected students who would do well at stanford and end up with two to three times the number of slots left at that point the essays might become more important whereas at other schools they might focus more on grades, test scores, legacies, minorities, etc. if you are not just an auto-admit. Who knows.</p>