Has Stanford always been like this?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Stanford University
41

<p>I strongly disagree that Yale's decisions are more "predictable" than Stanford's. 9 of my very good friends applied to Yale, 4 were admitted, 5 deferred. Many of them were significantly "more qualified" in a chance thread and from knowing them personally than some who were admitted and many who were deferred/rejected. In fact, one accepted would appear to be the typical ultra-asian (ranked in piano, chess, tae kwon do) loves math, rank one, phenomenal SATS, rich, from california. And he got in. While some others who were also accomplished but seemed more "unique" did not. </p>

<p>When you have schools that get to cherry pick their classes from a pool where 70% of their applicants would be great choices; all they have to do is figure out the 30% who aren't. Once it gets to that point, it is totally arbitrary because they can be arbitrary. They may not always make the "best" decisions, but they always make good decisions.</p>

<p>So we can go on and on about who the "best" or "most qualified" people would be, and sometimes we may be right and the school may have been wrong. But that's why we're not admissions people. If you can make a choice that will make your school BETTER, the time, the passion, the momentum, and the certainty you lose searching for the absolute best choice isn't worth the marginal difference. </p>

<p>Oddly enough, i came to this conclusion after having a discussion with my dad about decision making in the business world. I think what we talked about applies here. Who'd a thunk I'd learn anything???</p>

42

<p>
[quote]
Baelor said that "how on earth is a low-income, first gen applicant supposed to have the same stats as a native English speaker who goes to an expensive private school?"
In her description, in no way did she/he refer to the applicants' skin color.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>But Baelor did seem to make the assumption that the low-income, first-gen applicant didn't speak English natively, which suggests that the student is not white. Low-income, first-gen students are not necessarily minorities, immigrants, or non-native speakers of English. So again, the focus is on the applicant's context (background, opportunities, etc.).</p>

43

<p>Don't get me wrong faraday. I am a proponent of socioeconomic AA. I feel very disapppointed when very well-off URMs and accepted while poorer Asian or White applicants aren't. I am completly against that type of AA. I wholeheartedly agree with not giving these richer URMs a bump. They obvously didn't have to live under the same disadvantaged conditions of low-income URMs, myself included.</p>

44

<p>Baelor: you say:
"How on earth is a low-income, first gen applicant supposed to have the same stats as a native English speaker who goes to an expensive private school? "</p>

<p>If theyre competing for the same slot, why shouldnt they have the same "stats"? In fact, given that the applicant that you are describing, likely did not go to a very competitive school, his/her GPA will likely be higher than that of a "comparable" applicant from one of those dreaded private schools.</p>

<p>In terms of the SAT's ALL applicants are on the same footing. Contrary to what you may want to believe, studies show that doing the free practice exams, provides the same benefit as taking a private prep class, and neither makes a big difference in score. </p>

<p>If the problem is english proficiency, the applicant damn well better remedy that BEFORE applying to a top school and has no business applying until he/she is proficient. </p>

<p>I am tired of all the whining, and excuse making. If you dont measure up, you dont deeserve to be there. I'd like to play in the NHL , but I have been disdvantaged because of a lack of cultural emphasis on the sport, and ice, where I hale from. When the NHL (or NBA )because I like hoops too) makes allowances for me, then colleges can make allowances for your applicants.</p>

<p>Everybody has to put up or shut up. Stop encouraging people to believe that they are victims and start encouraging them to be responsible for their own success....</p>

45

<p>mia305, you may not agree with socioeconomic AA, but I'm not willing to debate you on this. Just realize though, that all top schools apply AA just like Stanford does.</p>

<p>PS: I really think that Stanford may need a moderator who actually looks at these threads. I think this has the potential (it's not yet) to turn ugly like that SCEA 2013 threads.</p>

46

<p>
[quote]
In fact, given that the applicant that you are describing, likely did not go to a very competitive school, his/her GPA will likely be higher than that of a "comparable" applicant from one of those dreaded private schools.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Just because it's a private school doesn't mean it's tough. What if that applicant went to a school that a) didn't have honors or AP courses, b) had teachers that aren't paid enough to care, and c) didn't have the financial resources to offer proper student support? I'd expect that GPA to be lower.</p>

<p>
[quote]
If you dont measure up, you dont deeserve to be there.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>"Measure up" is more arbitrary than you think.</p>

47

<p>If theyre competing for the same slot, why shouldnt they have the same "stats"? In fact, given that the applicant that you are describing, likely did not go to a very competitive school, his/her GPA will likely be higher than that of a "comparable" applicant from one of those dreaded private schools."</p>

<p>Fine. Good GPA, terrible stats, not many ECs because not many are offered. What then? They shouldn't be penalized because they haven't been given anything on a plate. And I go to a private school. ;)</p>

<p>"In terms of the SAT's ALL applicants are on the same footing. Contrary to what you may want to believe, studies show that doing the free practice exams, provides the same benefit as taking a private prep class, and neither makes a big difference in score."</p>

<p>That's actually not true at all. They do make a difference for many applicants, if only in confidence level. And, for someone who is totally surrounded by people who are not applying to schools like Stanford (if they're applying to college at all), it's almost always unreasonable to expect them to have the guidance to study efficiently for the test. Not to mention the incredible disadvantages they may have already because of a sub-par curriculum. </p>

<p>"If the problem is english proficiency, the applicant damn well better remedy that BEFORE applying to a top school and has no business applying until he/she is proficient."</p>

<p>They may be proficient in English, but knowing the definitions of random words is not really indicative of success later in life.</p>

<p>And they are successful. That's why they got into Stanford. :D</p>

<p>Look, I'm not arguing from a victim's perspective. I'm arguing from the perspective of a 2400-scorer, private school student who realizes that opportunity is everything, and people like you perpetuate class divisions. There is absolutely no reason to believe that 'unqualified' students will not do well at Stanford, and thus no basis for the argument that their admissions is unsuccessful. kthxbai</p>

48

<p>
[quote]
What I don't understand is the principle behind the thinking that guides some people. How on earth is a low-income, first gen applicant supposed to have the same stats as a native English speaker who goes to an expensive private school? They're not rejecting qualified applicants in favor of unqualified ones; they're giving everyone an equal chance and perhaps using OPPORTUNITY (not race, class, etc.) as a tie-breaker.</p>

<p>For anyone to claim that they have any knowledge about the candidates beyond what is posted on the forum is ridiculous. So please don't second-guess the adcoms at one of the top four schools in the country. I'm told they know what they're doing.

[/quote]

Agree with this and the rest of Baelor's posts, for the most part (surprising, you have changed dramatically in your posting content from a long time ago..)</p>

<p>There is probably no way to determine whether candidate X is "less qualified" than candidate Y in this case. For example, the stats on these forums, we don't even have the complete picture - essay, recs, life circumstances, personality, etc.</p>

49

<p>ah here we go. This quote is from an admissions dean at Yale during a panel for the NYT that was just realeased this week i believe. You can find the whole article on the Yale board. It was in response to the question of the biggest misconception about the admissions process.</p>

<p>
[quote]
It is not well understood that we are not aiming to pick out the best candidate in a particular school or from a particular area, as measured by some predetermined criteria. Rather, we are trying to assemble the most varied and most interesting class we can from an extremely diverse group of close to 25,000 outstanding applicants.

[/quote]
</p>

50

<p>"But Baelor did seem to make the assumption that the low-income, first-gen applicant didn't speak English natively, which suggests that the student is not white"</p>

<p>Kyledavid, with all my respect, I have to say that most people, whether blue, green, black, white, yellow (OK, ROYGBIV, invisible IR and gamma rays included :)), who was born and lived in the US since birth should be considered Native speakers. A URM who started learning english since 2 yrs old has much more english advantage than a non-URM (asian or even white) who immigrated 2 yrs ago. In that case, the asian should be given the bump, not the URM who was born and raised in the US.</p>

<p>Thus, socioeconomic AA does not need to take in account your skin color, unless your skin color has a real-time negative impact on your ability to study, such as having depigmentation disease for example.</p>

51

<p>I think that the perception that Stanford is less fair in comparison with HYP largely comes from Stanford's lower SAT scores. It is not because the scores are more important than other factors, rather, the scores are the only data people can put a finger on and other data like ECs is very difficult to pinpoint. Here are the scores for HYPS:</p>

<p>Princeton:
SAT Critical Reading: 690 - 790 98%
SAT Math: 700 - 790 98%
SAT Writing: 690 - 780 98% </p>

<p>Yale:
SAT Critical Reading: 700 - 800 92%
SAT Math: 700 - 790 92%
SAT Writing: 700 - 790 92% </p>

<p>Harvard:
SAT Critical Reading: 700 - 800 98%
SAT Math: 700 - 790 98%
SAT Writing: 690 - 790 98% </p>

<p>Stanford:
SAT Critical Reading: 660 - 760 96%
SAT Math: 680 - 790 96%
SAT Writing: 660 - 760 96% </p>

<p>Stanford is 50-100 points (total) below HYP, which, IMHO, is signifiant for top schools.</p>

52

<p>We need to remember that in terms of living, the US is still a largel segregated country. Blacks and latinos are disproportionately highly represented in ghettos and slums across the US than their white counterparts. This translates into bad school districts, can't pay for test prep, tutors, and have to work after school to help pay for bills. This makes it a lot harder to make your app look as good as a kid from a well of suburb with a good school district. </p>

<p>Now, of course this doesn't mean that all black/latino kids are poor and white kids are all rich (as this clearly is not the case and there are plenty of black/latino kids who are decently well off and poor as dirt white kids). However, since as a whole minorities live in generally harsher conditions, it just seems as if all these URMs are getting in simply for being URMs when it reality it was due to their socioeconomic status but there's just such a high correlation between being an URM and being socioeconomically depressed so it just seems like schools like HYPMS are accepting these students due to their skin color.
AA doesn't really help well off minorities. I know one black kid from my neigborhood who's family is wealthier than mine who got deferred SCEA from stanford, while I got in and I'm white (I'm also first gen, but that's another story).</p>

53

<p>


</p>

<p>You must be crazy. I cannot fathom any circumstance other than certifiable insanity that would cause you to hold the above viewpoint.</p>

<p>In the history of America, what is socioeconomic discrimination based on if not race? Socioeconomics are not just about $$, they're also about opportunities, or more importantly, the lack thereof. It's impossible to know exactly what opportunities candidates have had/missed out on, so you have to use a proxy, namely, race.</p>

<p>By your definition, I'm not sure skin color has a "real-time negative impact" on anything, but it is, at the very least, a reasonable window into facts that are very hard to discover outright, or are simply illegal to ask about.</p>

54

<p>"It's impossible to know exactly what opportunities candidates have had/missed out on, so you have to use a proxy, namely, race."</p>

<p>Sorry to disagree, but yes, there are better ways to know about the opportunities of a candidate, ways that are much more objective than race. It is true that there is a correlation between lack of opportunity and URM status. However, if the university is truly targeting the lack of opportunity, it doesn't need to take in account race.</p>

<p>For example, by having the high school stats (provided by counselor), Stanford can easily know how "bad" the high school is (% going to college, % taking SAT, suburb national prominence). THose are objective characteristics, because they actually are "proofs" of the lack of opportunity.</p>

<p>Race is not proof of a lack of opportunity. It cannot confirm with certainty whether or not a student got a disadvantage or not. There is correlation, but it's not a 100% correlation. Secondly, the fact that URM means URM is for a specific reason. URM, unfortunately, does not stand for DM (discriminated minority), sth you argued for. Underrepresented minority, means those that are less represented than the national average, and therefore excludes asians. If you want to bring out the scars of the past, I can tell a bunch of bad discrimination against asians (relative to whites). THey are penalized, however, because they tend to be more successful. Their success, is majorly due to a tradition that is deeply rooted in respect for elders, hard work and dedication.</p>

<p>Stanford can make college admissions more equitable, without taking into account race. You can say that race adds to the culture, but once again, if your race is so important that it will contribute to the campus culture, you can always expound on the attributes of your knowledge of that culture in the essay. For example, if I believed my scientific expertise will contribute to stanford's campus diversity, I can vow my scientific skills in my essay (and I better make a convincing case for it).</p>

<p>Now, Stanford may actually practice AA for other goals than giving advantage to disadvantaged kids. If so, then there's no point arguing because if Stanford wants to promote their global image (skin color is visual, after all), then all the reasoning to give advantage to disadvantaged is moot. It's like trying to give Caltech a set of guidelines to look for the best humanities students, when Caltech (this is made up!) wants only the smartest, most insane math whizzes on this planet.</p>

55

<p>
[Quote]
Stanford is 50-100 points (total) below HYP, which, IMHO, is signifiant for top schools.

[/Quote]
</p>

<p>Hmm...that is certainly a cogent point. I won't argue that the SAT scores aren't a good point for comparison, because they are. I would argue that perhaps, for some reason or another, Stanford may not have the pull to get the really top SAT scorers. What I mean to say is that if Stanford were open to the same applicant pool and THEN selected kids with lower SAT scores it may seem less fair. While this may at first mean that perhaps Stanford is not on par with HYP, I would propose that the difference in the applicant pool comes from recruited athletes for $$$ sports aka football and men's basketball. I think those scores could be sufficient enough to lower the middle 50% enough to appear as such. In such a model if lets say for arguments sake that 90% of the kids at both S and HYP were admitted on academics and 10% were admitted for $$$ sports (these numbers are clearly false but I'm using them for a simplistic argument) then the 90% at both Stanford and HYP could be roughly equal, but the 10% at Stanford could be significantly worse than HYP's thereby lowering its middle 50%. Even though the SAT ranges of Stanford would be lower, the criteria for picking their 90% would be just as high as HYP's. Of course this might be only one reason, or not even reason at all for the difference in SAT scores.</p>

56

<p>Hi, Morsmordre,
Some good points there, but then should we say Stanford is on par with Duke since both are big-time sport schools with similar SAT scores?</p>

57

<p>"This translates into bad school districts, can't pay for test prep, tutors, and have to work after school to help pay for bills. This makes it a lot harder to make your app look as good as a kid from a well of suburb with a good school district."</p>

<p>That's why I suggest taking into account those factors that actually affect academics with certainty.</p>

<p>Stanford is using race to assert that a kid is disadvantaged: why doesn't it use the actual circumstances?</p>

<p>To know if it's a bad school district, Stanford can just look at av. SAT scores, AP classes offered etc... instead of skin color. </p>

<p>I think the problem lies in the fact that most top universities have another major goal of AA, one that supersedes helping the disadvantaged. It is to promote their appearances.</p>

<p>PS: "docketgold": it is rather impulsive and disrespectful to call me "crazy." I hold different views, I acquiese. But crazy? That's a pretty strong word.</p>

58

<p>
[Quote]
Hi, Morsmordre,
Some good points there, but then should we say Stanford is on par with Duke since both are big-time sport schools with similar SAT scores?

[/Quote]

Not necessarily. I must admit that many people draw parallels between Stanford and Duke, they are indeed very similar universities on certain levels. However, I would argue that big-time sports and SAT scores don't tell the full story about the school. When one looks at overall selectivity, professional schools, prestige, money, research, one would likely place Stanford with HYP rather than with Duke. That is not to say the schools can't have similar atmospheres. I have heard that Princeton has a similar atmosphere to Dartmouth (though I can't be sure since I don't attend either school) but that doesn't mean that Dartmouth and Princeton are peer schools in the strictest sense. I would leave it as, among HYPS, Stanford is arguably more distinct from the other three schools.</p>

59

<p>


</p>

<p>Admissions is not a science, it's an art. Nothing about it is a certainty. Plenty of kids get admitted to Stanford with great grades, EC's, the whole nine yards, and just can't hack it. They're gone within the year. I've seen it first hand. As much as the AO's seem all-knowing, they're really just making the best guesses they can.</p>

<p>You say there are other ways to identify a lack of opportunities, but you only mention one. Fact is, there's not much else Stanford can do, particularly in the face of the 25,000+ applications they have to read annually. They only get a snapshot of each candidate, and from that snapshot, they have to decide who gets in, and who doesn't. It's very easy for us to sit here and debate the merits of various minutiae on people's applications, but AO's don't have that luxury. They have, to put it broadly, a big information cost problem. In the face of that problem they have to use all the tools at their disposal to try and identify particular qualities (e.g. a lack of opportunities) that might distinguish one exceptional candidate from another. </p>

<p>As much as you may not like it, race is one of the few tools AO's have in their limited snapshot of each candidate to help them make an educated guess as to that candidate's opportunities. Is it perfect? No. Clearly there are some minorities who benefit from this policy who've had as many or more opportunities as the average candidate. And I'll be the first to admit that the benefits of such a system go both ways--I've no doubt Stanford loves to flaunt all the diversity such a system provides them any chance they get.</p>

<p>But at the end of the day--and this is where we'll probably have to agree to disagree--I believe that, in lieu of a perfectly fair world, AA is better than nothing in college admissions. You can say what you will about better indicators this and that, but I think they just don't exist. </p>

<p>I don't necessarily disagree with what you're arguing, but you've got to look at the bigger picture. For every 1 URM that isn't really disadvantaged, there are many more that actually are and who's only chance at breaking the cycle is an AA-type system.</p>

<p>


</p>

<p>I bet you grew up in a household where saying the word stupid was like dropping the f-bomb.</p>

60

<p>the thing with socioeconomic AA is that it doesn't account for the achievement gap between whites/asians and blacks/hispanics/native americans. i read on this site somewhere (i think in the affirmative action thread) that upper class AAs underperform whites even of the lowest scioeconomic class on the SAT. racism has a negative impact on kids regardless of whether they are wealthy or poor. a wealthy black kid does not equal a wealthy white kid.</p>

<p>
[quote]
What I don't understand is the principle behind the thinking that guides some people. How on earth is a low-income, first gen applicant supposed to have the same stats as a native English speaker who goes to an expensive private school? They're not rejecting qualified applicants in favor of unqualified ones; they're giving everyone an equal chance and perhaps using OPPORTUNITY (not race, class, etc.) as a tie-breaker.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>yes, that it what they should be doing. it's the exact same thing that HYP do - someone said that stanford and HYP admissions are the same, and i was just observing that HYP's seem somewhat different.</p>