<p>So I was looking at the Stanford supplement for this upcoming application cycle (yeah, I already registered for the Common App, don't judge me), and I didn't see a Why Stanford essay. There was the roommate one, the intellectual vitality one, and a "What is important to you, and why?" essay. Did I just not see it? or does Stanford not seem to have one this year?</p>
<p>Nope. I went to the orientation and they changed it because they wanted to make it more personal to students. </p>
<p>Source: went to orientation, trust me on this :)</p>
<p>I wonder whether they decided reading a bunch of “Why Stanford?” answers wasn’t very informative?</p>
<p>If you think about it, it seems quite possible that the small percentage of essays that were really good were also really similar, and the majority that said basically “because it’s Stanford,” but in hideously overwritten language, were also really all alike.</p>
<p>PHEW i am glad that is out of the way! I really do not like questions like that. The “what matters to you” short answer seems really vague to me. i do not like it very much but hey, it is better than “why Stanford”</p>
<p>It makes sense, since Stanford says in its CDS that level of applicant interest is “not considered.”</p>
<p>This new essay seems like a more general restatement of the short essay that “why Stanford” replaced: “what activity is meaningful to you, and why?” In a way, this new essay subsumes both the previous “why Stanford” and “meaningful activity” essays. If I were applying this year, I’d be uneasy about this new essay, since it’s so general.</p>
<p>
Yeah, I think Stanford can safely assume that its applicants are pretty darn interested.</p>
<p>wooooow no why stanford? i feel that that was the essay that got me in o: interesting to know</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Especially considering that Stanford has the second-highest yield among top universities. Even though HYPSM all cannibalize each other’s yields, based on cross-admit battles, Stanford was the second-most preferred after Harvard last year.</p>
<p>Although I’m not surprised the “why Stanford” essay is gone, its yield during the past 3 years (when the essay was used) has been the highest ever (low 70s), so maybe Stanford’s yield will go down this year. Or perhaps Stanford decided to toss it after Harvard and Princeton announced their SCEA programs, which will remove a lot of overlap and reduce the necessity to “probe” the applicant pool for those truly interested in Stanford (which is the whole goal of “why ___” essays - to reduce the possibility of having their yield cannibalized by universities with lots of applicant overlap).</p>
<p>And yet again the other two essays (roommate and intellectual vitality) are unchanged - they’ve been the same for at least 13 years, as a 1998 article on Stanford admissions mentions both of them.</p>