<p>My d has recently become interested in Stanford. Her HS provides a service that shows the application outcomes for students in her HS. It's a highly rated public school in Massachusetts, which routinely sends kids to the Ivies and other highly selective schools.</p>
<p>I was surprised that of the 16 students who've applied to Stanford in the past few years, none of them have gotten in. It could be just some weird statistical anomaly, or perhaps someone in guidance really ticked off an admissions rep, but it made me wonder if there some regional preferences going on.</p>
<p>I noticed that in the latest admission stats for Stanford, 41% were from California. Does Stanford have some obligation to take, or preference for California students? Just trying to understand her chances</p>
<p>The Dean of Admissions told me to my face that there is no preference for students from any particular state. There is a large proportion of applicants from California.</p>
<p>well i guess one way to show your interest (and show the school that you're not applying to Harvard, Yale.. MIT, etc) is by applying scea... although supposedly they also give no weight to demonstrated interest.</p>
<p>I would think if anything Stanford would like kids from other parts of the country besides California (and the West Coast in general.) I would guess that the admissions rate for California applicants to Stanford is much lower than from other, more obscure parts of the country (in addition to the East Coast to a lesser extent.) The reason for this is the large applicant pool from California - virtually every top kid in high school will add Stanford to their list since it's the best regional college near them (and in this case one of the tops in the country), whereas lots of top East Coasters only look East to go to college...</p>
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The Dean of Admissions told me to my face that there is no preference for students from any particular state.
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I want to reemphasize this point and note that this implies that there is neither an advantage nor a disadvantage to Californians.</p>
<p>Dean Shaw is interested in attracting applicants from other states. He is working on this by sending representatives all over the nation to talk about Stanford. He said that he is putting a higher priority on this than the former dean did.</p>
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So Stanford doesn't care about geographic diversity? That sucks...I was hoping I'd have a hook here..
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<p>Nope. When I went to a conference held at Stanford, I personally approached the Stanford rep and asked her whether Stanford really cares about geographic diversity. She flat-out told me no, that Stanford is interested in enrolling an able class, and geographic diversity isn't something that would sway decisions at all.</p>
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This can't be just because of population.
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<p>Stanford is very attractive to Californians, and since there are roughly 40 million residents, you can see why Stanford ends up almost half Californian.</p>
<p>Most high school students choose (or their parents choose ;) ) colleges within 500 miles of where they live. So it's not unusual for a particular privately operated college to have a plurality of students from the same state where the college is located. Because California is a very populous state, yes, Stanford has a particularly large plurality of Californians. That could look like a bug to students who desire a college with a lot of diversity in geographic origin of students, but California itself is a large and diverse state, and Stanford still has a majority (barely) of students from outside California.</p>