Christian McCaffrey is a double legacy also.
I really enjoy living in California. I don’t think however that Stanford is the be all to end all. Probably most of the Cal graduates would join me in that sentiment.
@texaspg I personally know two double legacies who didn’t get into Harvard. One had a 35 ACT but around 3.7. (McCaffrey had a 3.5) The other one was taking upper division science classes while in HS and both their parents were distinguished UC professors. The other one wanted to attend Harvard early without a HS degree however
All legacies are not created equal…
Stanford = Innovation
East Coast Ivies = tradition
if you feel more comfortable with tradition, preppy, old school the ivies are your best bet.
Stanford’s ethos is more about innovation… Silicon Valley… tech… start ups… disruption… etc.
oh and btw… Stanford has the best shopping mall of any campus hands down (lols seems to be a lot of commentary on the shopping mall) and yes Palo Alto is not your typical gritty college campus town… if you want that Berkeley is a good bet.
Actually the honor for the most amount of venture capital raised for startups goes to Harvard.
Actually the honor of the most venture capital goes to Stanford undergrad… I believe UC Berkeley is second… if you’re talking MBA that honor goes to Stanford too when you factor in VC per student. Harvard’s MBA class size is more than double GSB. On a per student basis it’s GSB, MIT, Harvard.
in regard to Stanford athletics… Stanford competes at the div 1 level in a power conference competing against USC, UCLA, U of Texas and SEC schools. SAT scores are in the bottom quartile for athletes at Stanford. Yet the football team manages to graduate 90% of the class while the average in the SEC is 70%.
despite having a class size less than a quarter of competing schools Stanford has been the dominate athletic program for the past 22 years as measured by the director’s cup and has won more individual and team championships than any school in the US. Second in Olympic medals to USC.
To be an athlete at Stanford you have to be the best of the best and reasonably academically qualified. Jeremy Lin was rejected at his first choice Stanford (they told him to walk on to the b ball team) but was accepted at Harvard as an athletic recruit.
Sorry but the academics at Stanford for athletes arent even comparable with Harvard. Stanford publishes lists of easy classes for the jocks. An Act of 25 with a 3.5 will get you into Stanford. LOL. Stanford tries to graduate everyone so a 90 per cent graduation rate is meaningless
my point exactly… Stanford athletes have lower SAT scores but are some of the best athletes in the world and the Stanford athletic program has been the most dominant athletic program in the US for the past 22 years. Stanford has won at least one national championship for the past 40 years. I won’t even compare Harvard’s program to Stanford’s because frankly it’s not on the radar screen… USC, UCLA and U of Texas are peers for Stanford athletics and not a division 1A non power conference school.
Stanford goes for the best of the best. Jeremy Lin didn’t make it based on academics at Stanford… but did based on athletics at Harvard.
This thread is something else. There is some good information, but it is getting pretty far from the original post and question. I hope that prospective students aren’t paying much if any attention to this thread.
The posts by proudparent26 are particularly inane. Sorry to be blunt, but it is what it is.
All colleges–and I mean all colleges except Caltech–cut the admissions standards for jocks. Let me tell you a little about your beloved Harvard. There are 320 athletic admits per year. (This was told to me by someone who is as connected as you can be at Harvard.) The number for each team vary year by year. The standards also vary by year. The standards for men’s basketball at Harvard are especially low. And don’t start talking about the team average for the AI. You should check out the kid from Harvard-Westlake who “joined” the team a couple of years ago. Let’s just say he didn’t play much in HS but he had a very high SAT. He was on the Harvard team for a very short time. A number of people at Harvard were very upset about this (to their credit).
I don’t know if the standards for jocks are lower at Harvard than they are at Stanford–and neither does proudparent26. I know kids who got into ivies, including Harvard, who were in the bottom of their class and had SATs in the very low 600 (and in at least one case below that).
Every school has easy courses and majors. Sorry to tell you proudparent26. I’m sure your kids aren’t taking advantage of these courses, but some kids are. And they aren’t all jocks. Check out the government courses at Harvard or even an economics major at Harvard. Why do you think so many jocks had to stop out of Harvard because of the cheating scandal in the government course a couple of years ago.
I know a professor at Harvard whose kid is a jock and goes to Yale. When he arrived as a freshman in New Haven he was given a list of easy courses. His father told him he was not allowed to enroll in any of the courses. Good for him.
Again, I’m not saying Stanford is better than Harvard on this score. I’m saying they are pretty equal. In college today the jocks are treated very differently. You can say this is good, or you can say this is bad. But you can’t deny the reality of the situation. The jocks know this (just as the URM know this).
There are some real difference between Stanford and its east coast competitors. This thread has identified some of them but not many of them.
The greatness of Harvard is always severely damaged by this kind of stupidity competition (comparison), though Harvard always wins.
Re post 48, I don’t believe Harvard has 320 official athletic recruits per year (meaning those who count for Academic Index purposes) as the Ivy League limit is more like 230 for that.
It’s possible there are more where athletics counts in a less formal way but in terms of those getting Likely Letters for athletics, I don’t believe it’s anywhere near 320.
The latest Harvard Crimson survey data (class of 2019, 70% response rate) show 12% of the class were recruited athletes, with very similar numbers for the prior two classes. With a freshman class of around 1,675, this means around 200 athletic recruits.
IMO the Common Data Set test scores are consistent with lower academic standards for athletes at Stanford. These are for all freshman but test scores are slightly lower at Stanford, and to me athletics is the most obvious explanation.
-25th-75th percentile ranges are about 20 points higher per SAT section at Harvard
-Depending on SAT section, 19-25% of Stanford students are in the 600-700 range, compared to 17-18% at Harvard
-On the ACT, 12% of Stanford freshmen are below a composite of 30, compared to 10% at Harvard
Anecdotally, our HS’s Naviance graph has an “accepted” data point for Stanford at 900/1600 and 1400/2400 SAT (and a relatively low weighted GPA). There’s a group of 3 admits around 1800/2400, and the other admits are more in line with what you’d expect. None of our few Harvard admit data points are lower than tippy-top.
Stanford has an entirely different niche than Harvard. Winning bowl games is a huge priority on the farm and they will take whomever they can to help them do that. Stanford has more in common with UMich, Duke and ND than Harvard.
Every year, about 43% of stanford admits are HYPSM cross-admits, and about 1/3 of enrolled students are HYPSM cross-admits. It is pointless to single out a specific group.
Stanford athletics is the top athletic program in the country… A non power div 1 conference school is not relevant to this discussion and is not a peer university with regards to athletics.
Stanford is the most selective university in the US… the top fund raising university the past 10 of 11 years. last year raising more than Harvard and Yale combined… won the most nobel prizes this past century and is the most complete university in the world. Harvard lacks Stanford’s engineering and tech. MIT lacks Stanford’s arts and humanities.
Yes Stanford athletes have lower SAT scores than athletes from many non power Div 1 schools… comparing athletic programs with non-power conferences is pointless… sort of like comparing the Stanford athletic program with Caltech’s… meaningless… Stanford weights athletics more highly and Caltech only values academics… also meant to say Stanford faculty have won the most nobel prizes this century
I will also add that Stanford biz school has the highest GPA and GMATS of any biz school in the nation… obviously a more homogeneous admit pool devoid of athletic considerations. Stanford could easily fill its class with students having perfect SATS and 4.0 GPAs if that was the priority… it isn’t.
sbballer I think that’s right in post 56 that it’s an apples to oranges comparison in athletics (at least football) and I made the point about SAT scores just because someone above was saying there’s no difference compared to the Ivies in the academic qualifications of athletes.
In this aspect Stanford’s peer group is schools like Duke, Northwestern, Vanderbilt etc. that combine top academics and top athletics in revenue sports, with Duke probably being the only one in the same ballpark as Stanford on both dimensions.
There was an article on this topic (which I agree is a bit far afield from the OP’s original question) in the Stanford magazine not long ago.
https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/issue/?issue_id=72708
agree bluewater… here are the results from last year’s directors cup that ranks the top athletic programs in the country… Stanford has won the cup 23 straight years.
stanford
ucla
usc
florida
north carolina
virginia
ohio state
penn state
texas
notre dame
all are from power conferences (except for notre dame which is independent I believe), and are big time athletic programs. these are Stanford’s peer groups in athletics… not schools from a non-power conference with less successful athletic programs.