How competitive is Stanford?

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/433076-accepted-1700-sat-score.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/433076-accepted-1700-sat-score.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Don't think this belongs in the berkeley forum...........</p>

<p>And it's very competitive. Trust me. My friend got into harvard and he was rejected by stanford.</p>

<p>It's stupid to post that, and no way knocking Berkeley (I'd probably go to berkeley over stanford if accepted to both), being accepted to stanford with a 1700 is an extreme outlier, whereas getting into cal with a 1700 would just be seen as a little weird.</p>

<p>Trust me, people I know got rejected by Cal and got into Stanford.</p>

<p>^ Yes, but that isn't the norm. I was a CalSO counselor this summer and it was interesting that I met an international student from France chose Berkeley over Stanford because he heard stories of how Stanford "holds their hand." ie discussing issues over a cup of tea, so he chose Berkeley instead. I'm sure that's not the only reason why he chose to attend Berkeley at the end, but still interesting.</p>

<p>Some kids actually like the Berkeley vibe better than the Stanford suburbs feeling. Mine does! To each his own, right? Both schools are very competitive and as of this year, it appears Stanford is harder to get accepted to.</p>

<p>cal >> stanford in terms of surrounding area and diversity...</p>

<p>this guy is a troll though--he's posted the same thing on forums of other top schools (harvard, yale, princeton, stanford, etc...)</p>

<p>^^Any evidence?</p>

<p>he posted the same thread on the princeton forum, but it was presumably taken down, because of the hostile responses there...it seemed, at the time, that he had a very 'look how easy it is to get in!' attitude.</p>

<p>A lot more competitive than Berkeley, the public school that wishes it were Stanford.</p>

<p>^^ nah, it wouldn't want to downgrade.</p>

<p>(Only because this is the Berkeley forum. =p)</p>

<p>
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Trust me, people I know got rejected by Cal and got into Stanford.

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<p>As do I.</p>

<p>Of course it should be said that almost all of them were OOS. Stanford obviously doesn't care about OOS, but Berkeley clearly does. And quite a few of them were URM. UC doesn't use AA anymore, but Stanford still does. I think it would surprise nobody that a URM OOS applicant might actually find it easier to get into Stanford than Berkeley.</p>

<p>
[quote]
It's stupid to post that, and no way knocking Berkeley (I'd probably go to berkeley over stanford if accepted to both), being accepted to stanford with a 1700 is an extreme outlier, whereas getting into cal with a 1700 would just be seen as a little weird.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Indeed true. Consider the following Daily Cal article regarding 'low-scoring' students who nonetheless were admitted to Berkeley. Presumably this occurred back when the SAT was still scored out of 1600 points. </p>

<p>*"An analysis of UC admissions data published by the Los Angeles Times Monday revealed that UC admitted 51 percent of applicants with SAT scores below 1,000, compared to last year's 65 percent admission rate. On the UC Berkeley campus, 216 students with low SAT scores were admitted...</p>

<p>The controversy over UC's admission policies ignited in fall 2003, when then-UC Board of Regents Chair John Moores published a report revealing that UC Berkeley had admitted nearly 400 students with SAT scores lower than 1,000, while rejecting 641 students with virtually perfect scores. More than 90 percent of the low-scoring admits were underrepresented minority students." *</p>

<p>The</a> Daily Californian</p>

<p>^^ I think things may have changed somewhat since that article (roughly 3 years ago).</p>

<p>If Berkeley would lower % of students admitted to Stanford's % admit level, I wonder what would happen.. would prestige of Berkeley's undergrad increase due to higher selectivity?</p>

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^^ I think things may have changed somewhat since that article (roughly 3 years ago).

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<p>Fair enough. Then consider the following PDF I pulled from the CDS. In particular, consider page 8, which seems to indicate to me that, for the 2006-2007 academic year, the 25th percentile of enrolled Berkeley freshmen who reported scores had an SAT score of 1780. Hence, if that's the 25th percentile, then it would seem to me that a significant fraction (i.e. maybe 15-20%) of enrolled students would have scores of 1700 or less. </p>

<p><a href="http://cds.berkeley.edu/pdfs/PDF%20wBOOKMARKS%2006-07.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://cds.berkeley.edu/pdfs/PDF%20wBOOKMARKS%2006-07.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Unfortunately, I can't get the 2007-2008 data, probably because it is still being compiled, but I rather doubt that the numbers would radically shift in just a single year.</p>

<p>To further Sakky's argument I might even add that the freshmen who got low scores might not want to report so the real data might actually be skewed even lower.</p>

<p>Actually, I would say that what really skews that data is the large population of community college transfer students, a disproportionate portion of which probably have relatively low (for Berkeley) SAT scores, or would have had such scores if they had taken the SAT.</p>

<p>
[quote]
the 25th percentile of enrolled Berkeley freshmen who reported scores had an SAT score of 1780. Hence, if that's the 25th percentile, then it would seem to me that a significant fraction (i.e. maybe 15-20%) of enrolled students would have scores of 1700 or less.

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</p>

<p>You're misinterpreting the data. What the CDS means is that 25% got below a 600 on CR, but they may have (and probably did have) much higher on the other two sections, etc. In other words, the CDS data is showing ranges for individual sections and not the composite SAT scores.</p>

<p>And even then, superscoring makes a difference too.</p>

<p>
[quote]
You're misinterpreting the data. What the CDS means is that 25% got below a 600 on CR, but they may have (and probably did have) much higher on the other two sections, etc. In other words, the CDS data is showing ranges for individual sections and not the composite SAT scores.

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<p>Uh, what you're really positing is that the individual SAT sections are actually negatively uncorrelated (i.e. Pearson coefficient is negative). No evidence of this exists, and if anything, the correlation is actually positive<a href="that%20is,%20from%20a%20percentile%20standpoint,%20those%20people%20who%20get%20relatively%20low%20critical%20reading%20scores%20tend%20to%20also%20get%20relatively%20low%20math%20and,%20especially,%20low%20writing%20scores">/i</a>. Hence, my interpretation of the composite SAT percentiles is actually *generous. </p>

<p>
[quote]
And even then, superscoring makes a difference too.

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</p>

<p>It may. But that's not the point. The point is simply to demonstrate that a significant percentage of Berkeley students have relatively low SAT scores.</p>

<p>
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No evidence of this exists, and if anything, the correlation is actually positive

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<p>No evidence of that exists, either. But it makes more sense for a student to be accepted with lower scores in one section if the other sections are higher -- especially since SAT scores are, after all, considered "important."</p>