<p>"Stanford University is considering increasing, for the first time in decades, the number of students it enrolls each year.</p>
<p>"If university officials accept a larger freshman enrollment, Stanford will join a growing list of highly selective universities that are opening their doors wider to outstanding students.</p>
<p>"Schools like Princeton, the University of Chicago, Duke and Rice are all expanding and Yale is considering it.</p>
<p>"There are many reasons for the tremendous admissions pressure. The nation saw a 21 percent increase in high school graduates between 1991 and 2003 and is projected to see another 6 percent by 2016 for an annual total of 3.2 million grads, according to the National Center for Education Statistics."</p>
<p>It truly is a great time to apply, unlike the previous years. Although Stanford is still only considering doing such, it still is an indication that universities are aware that admissions have become quite competitive. Be thankful and rejoice class of 2012 and subsequent classes!</p>
<p>I hope and pray they don't do this. Any current student knows that housing is already struggling to find rooms for people and that many of the current facilities (i.e. gym) are already overcrowded. Plus, the extra bike traffic will be hell.</p>
<p>We toured Rice this summer and was told its increase was because they are building two more residential colleges. Is Stanford doing something similar?</p>
<p>Actually, this might be more pertinent for future classes, at least for Stanford anyway. And I'm pretty sure they would have to build new residence halls and facilities/utilities, so overcrowding does not seem to be a problem. I believe they can do it with their huge endowment, and I hope they are willing. But regardless, perhaps class of 2012 might experience some of the generous admission standards, provided Stanford adopt a new plan to increase students soon. I think we applicants can all agree that any increase in the acceptance percentage is a good thing--not sure if current students will feel the same way.</p>
<p>I don't know where they think they're going to put all the new students. The dorms are already full to capacity, and the current housing project is "unstuffing" the current housing spaces--taking rooms that were intended to be doubles but are now triples, and turning them back into doubles, and things like that. That alone will require building one or two more undergraduate dorms. Taking more students would require building still more. And at the pace of the typical (read: not Stanford Stadium) Stanford construction project, that'll be a very long time from now.</p>
<p>Housing should be tight: empty rooms still cost the same to heat as filled rooms, since all the heat is controlled centrally. Stanford's housing goal is to get housing down to a perfect science - this may not happen, but they are usually pretty close.</p>
<p>As for new housing, it is happening all the time. The new environmental house is set to open (with 60-80 residents). More important will be the new Munger residents, which will hold 600 graduate students. Most of them currently live off-campus, but demand will decrease for some of the graduate housing on campus, leading to some of those dorms being converted to undergraduate housing.</p>
<p>I don't think Stanford is going to accept kids and then not have housing for them. Even with the bumper year of 2011, housing has been tight - but not broken. What happens in the future remains to be seen.</p>
<p>As pointed out in the article from Stanford, it's a very new idea and hasn't really begun development. If there is an increase, it will be very small -- the acceptance rate might be 12 or 13 percent. And if it does do such an increase (where the income class is over 2,000, I suspect), they're going to have to reduce the size of the graduate body. Seriously, Stanford now has 20,000 students, and twice the number of grads as undergrads (which makes it somewhat hard for Stanford to claim that it really cares more about its undergrads). If it were to increase its undergrad to 8,000+ (like Northwestern and such), the school would have about 22,000 students. So either Stanford allows this, or it reduces its grad division.</p>