<p>Here is what I think how admission offices at Stanford and at other universities work. Although they claim that they read each application “word by word”, I don’t think that is true at all. Think about it: The Admission Office will not have enough time to read all teachers’ recommendations, students’ essays and students’ family background of each student within two to three months unless each office has 4000+ officers in place. </p>
<pre><code> Here is what I think the process of admission actually is. I think if you are not qualified let’s say… in step one, your whole application is “trashed” immediately. They won’t even want to read the rest of your application. Basically it’s just a long process of “process of elimination”.
</code></pre>
<li><p>Checking school academic record - rigorousness of academic course load
– if your course load is not rigorous enough, you’re out</p></li>
<li><p>SAT I & II<br>
– if your score does not meet the university’s requirement, your application should also be “trashed”</p></li>
<li><p>Teacher Recommendation & Family Background & Extracurricular activities</p></li>
<li><p>Personal Qualities (important!)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I am not saying this process is wrong (if it indeed, is true). I am just speculating. What do you guys think?
I think this process is widely adopted…
I’ll apply for Stanford next year…
I am afraid I’ll be under castigation…
I am afraid I’ll be rejected for posting this thread…
I think this thread is old and outmoded…</p>
<p>There are no cutoffs. There are people on the Accepted Threads with SATs of 2100 and such. You should check that out. It might change your mind about how 'stats are everything'. Yes, the probability of getting in with a lower score is less than that of a student with a higher score, but it is still possible.</p>
<p>Typical students (when they say typical students, they mean qualified students) have minimum of 650 in SAT CR, W and M, and 3.6 in GPA or above.</p>
<p>If you have 3.6 GPA or above, you pass the first stage. If you have 650 in each part of SAT, you pass the second stage. And yes, it is possible to have 610 and get in; maybe that's because that person has high scores in other areas.</p>
<p>Believe it or not schools do go through all the applications on a holistic view. Most admissions committees have several levels (e.g. an initial reader who recommends it or sends it to the trash file, a committee that makes the final decisions, etc.) There are plenty of people that would not get in based upon the idea that there are minimums for GPA and SAT scores.</p>
<p>I guarantee you, Piannoyny, that is not how Stanford admission works.
First off, a 3.6 GPA is relative to the school's curriculum. A 3.6 at a magnet school is much more impressive than a 3.8 at an easier school. And second, I've known many people who had subpar scores admitted to Stanford.</p>
<p>I got a 630 on the SAT math section and was admitted. :)</p>
<p>I think they may weed out people with 2.0 GPAs and 300s on SATs, but other than that, I believe they give everyone a fair chance. Just my thought.</p>
<p>Hm, I don't think it works quite like that, but there's a general method there that I think they do employ. Since they're highly trained and have been doing this for years, they can easily assess the general strength of a given applicant with a quick look. So, let's say that the first thing they look at is the rigor of the courseload. Applicant X's isn't rigorous. They'll probably quickly read over the rest of the application -- scores, awards/honors, etc. -- and then glance over the essay, seeing that, in most parts, the application isn't strong, just as the courseload isn't rigorous. And then they put them in the "rejection" pile. This, to me, seems much more efficient than doing a "level by level" thing; instead, they form a quick hypothesis, see whether it works, and make a decision.</p>
<p>This general sorting is what they do: in the first round, they admit the "clear admits" (~5% of the applications) and put the "clear rejects" out (I believe a few thousand are eliminated here). The rest are set aside for another round, the "sink or swim" round. They may deliberate on an applicant for multiple rounds, too.</p>
<p>I read an article on Harvard's admissions, and I know that they eliminate quite a few in the first round. Here's an article (a little old) on Stanford admissions:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/stanfordtoday/ed/9801/9801fea5.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/stanfordtoday/ed/9801/9801fea5.html</a></p>
<p>In addition, Stanford's site says that most of those accepted had between a 3.6 and a 4.0 unweighted GPA. This is probably including the really difficult magnet schools.</p>
<p>As for SAT scores, we know the middle 50% of students. So, one could probably form a bell curve (given that the pool demonstrates normal distribution), if one could figure out the standard deviation. I forget how.</p>
<p>Anyway, you'd probably see that there are some who get in with somewhat low SAT scores. What's more important is what caused the adcoms to overlook them: sports recruiting, URM status, donation to the school, etc. or maybe the applicant was generally strong in all the other areas of the app.</p>
<p>Correction: after the first round, about half of them are deemed "clear rejects" (or "noncompetitive"), according to that link.</p>
<p>I actually read that they do it kind of like that. In a book called How to get into the Ivies or something. It went something like this:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>They do a quick overview of general stats and if you're obviously not qualified they don't even look any deeper into it. </p></li>
<li><p>They rate different qualities such as academic rigor, grades, ECs, Recommendations, and awards as "Poor, Good, Standard Strong, Very Strong, and Clear Admit". Applying different weights to each one based on the school. </p></li>
<li><p>Then they separate those Standard Strong and Very Strong averages and admit the clear admits. Then they go and read each application from Standard and Very Strong applicants and consider all those other factors. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>-You can find the book at borders, if anybodies read it feel free to correct me if i misstated anything.</p>
<p>That's generally what I said. =) But I don't think they'd go through and have a hierarchy of what constitutes "qualified" (getting past the "SAT door," then the "GPA door," etc.).</p>