<p>I know the Stanford student body is very diverse and that's much more important, but is there a California resident quota for undergraduates now? I attended Stanford long ago and that stipulation rings a bell and it seems like if true it would be a very basic fact about Stanford admissions, but I can't find any information about it on the web now. Thanks!</p>
<p>mommybird, I asked someone in admissions about that, and he said that there is no quota per se for California residents at Stanford. The university’s founding charter contains language to the effect that the school “shall serve a significant number of California residents”, but apparently leaves the interpretation of that up to the administration. You can find out the percentages of California residents in the undergrad population via the Common Data Sets for each year, and then average them to get some idea. I think it’s somewhere around 35-40%, on average.</p>
<p>However, in practice, this doesn’t tend to create an actual admissions preference for California residents as a group, since the number of California applicants to Stanford each year is really huge. It seems like every high-achieving kid in California includes Stanford on his or her list. If there’s a geographical admissions “preference” from a statistical point of view, it woud be from the usual underrepresented states like Alaska, Hawaii, the sparsely-populated mountain states, etc. This is true at all colleges that do their best to maintain representation from all 50 states. It’s not usually an actual “hook” in the sense of compensating much for crummy stats, essays or ECs, but it’s one of those things that can give a little tip when other things are essentially equal, according to admissions.</p>
<p>Thank you for your quick response. That makes sense to me than the misinformation I recently heard.</p>
<p>You’re very welcome. : ) Also, I should have more accurately said “in practice, this doesn’t tend to create an actual admissions preference for California residents on an <em>individual * basis”, due to the huge numbers of Calif. applicants each year. Taken as a *whole group</em>, there would in fact be some preference for Calif. residents, since the charter’s stated intention is that Calif. residents be well-represented among the student body. But this is sometimes misunderstood by Calif. applicants to mean that they would have a better shot at admission, on an individual basis, than residents of other states, and that’s the part that’s inaccurate due to the massive hoards of Calif. applicants each year.</p>