<p>So, i was going through the stats of admitted Stanford students and some made it with a low Sat as well as some with low SATs.... like how! what do these applications have that even after being academically weak they were admitted O.o . </p>
<p>I could easily give you the reasons…but, I will leave it up to your reasoning power and simple logic…let alone simple google research on what “holistic” admissions is all about…</p>
<p>…because, if you don’t have these reasoning powers…you are not meant for Stanford.</p>
<p>I’ve met one person who got in with an ACT at 28 if I remember correctly and he was part of Questbridge, gay, part native american, from Oklahoma and also very intelligent and passionate and I’m sure a lot of other great things. You just have to have everything else work out for you. </p>
<p>We had a girl who was accepted to Stanford last year with an ACT score of 29. She had started her own charity.</p>
<p>I hate when people consider a 28 or 29 a low score! That is NOT. A low score. The national average ACT score is between a 20-21. Someone who scores a 29 is in the top 93rd percentile in the nation.
In my school, the salutatorian has a 28 and the valedictorian has a 30. No one has anything higher than that. Just because we may not have as high of a score as you does not mean we are idiots or that we don’t have as much potential as the next person. We are just not as fortunate as some people to go to one of the best schools in the nation. You have to look at ones score in comparison with the standards of the school. A 30 at my school might as well be a perfect score in another school.
All I am saying is that it is such bull when people on here think scores like that are sooooo low. The difference between a 29 and 30 or a 35 and 36 could be a matter of a single question… So correctly answering (or guessing) on one question does not make you anymore smart than the other. It just means you are a slightly better/luckier test taker. </p>
<p>Okay… End rant </p>
<p>again, average sat score is around 1500, but we sure as hell wouldn’t call it “okay.” everything is relative, and if you’re applying to stanford, the standards rise dramatically</p>
<p>FOOTBALL.</p>
<p>C’mon guys, are you all idiots?</p>
<p>F-O-O-T-B-A-L-L</p>
<p>There, I spelled it out for you.</p>
<p>Beyond football, Stanford also loves its other sports. You really need to be an athlete to have a good shot at this school. Just the facts, ma’am.</p>
<p>@makennacompton, the athletes here are still some of the smartest people I have ever met. </p>
<p>@makennacompton Yeah, I agree with @guccigirl Stanford’s athletes are still really smart people.</p>
<p>I have close ties to Stanford and know people at other top schools. I’ve asked a number of faculty and administrators from HYPSM the following question: If your school admitted kids based only on academics, what percent of your freshman class would be here? It is amazing that most have given me the same answer: 1/3. Those that didn’t give me this exact number gave me a number pretty close. (Caltech is very different.)</p>
<p>At all of these schools, including Stanford, it can be helpful to think of the undergraduates as falling roughly into thirds. The top 1/3 are lights out academically. Very high board scores (certainly all over 750, many with straight 800s including subject tests), super high grades, many with national or international academic awards: International Mathematical Olympiad, Intel Science, National Latin Exam, Concord Review, etc. I think when most people think of the typical Stanford undergrad, they think of a kid from this group.</p>
<p>But this in only 1/3 of the entering class. Consider the following. The Class of 2018 Stanford admitted only 9% of the applicants with 800 on their math SAT. Yet 25% of the entering students had math SAT scores below 700. There were a few admits who had math scores below 600.</p>
<p><a href=“http://admission.stanford.edu/pdf/counselor_newsletter/cn_fall14.pdf”>Page Not Found : Stanford University;
<p><a href=“Stanford Common Data Set | University Communications”>http://ucomm.stanford.edu/cds/2014</a></p>
<p>If academics were the only criteria, virtually everyone at Stanford would have at least 750 on the math SAT. </p>
<p>So who are the other kids at a school like Stanford?</p>
<p>The next 1/3 of the entering class “isn’t chopped liver” (as someone from the top 1/3 told me). These are kids with very strong academic records but not the absolute highest. They usually have some very unusual extra-curricular achievement, and this can be the decisive reason why they were admitted. I know one kid who falls into this group who started his own profitable business. I know another kid who was on the school board in this community as a high school student. After graduating from Yale he joined the Marines and was sent to Afghanistan where he saw action. He is now at a top 10 (but not top 5) business school.</p>
<p>Then there is the remaining 1/3. These aren’t bad kids by any means. Many will accomplish much in their lives. But they aren’t the strongest academically. Why are they admitted to a place like Stanford or Harvard (the two schools I know best)? There is always a reason, but that reason varies. The biggest reason is a recruited athlete. Not all recruited athletes fall into this category, but many, probably most, do. At one time the NCAA published the SAT scores of varsity athletes by team. Stanford and Georgetown had the biggest gap between the recruited athletes and the regular students. At Stanford women’s basketball had the lowest SAT of any varsity team. A current freshman at Stanford told me “there is a pretty big gap between most of the varsity athletes at Stanford and the regular students.” There are also a few kids of celebrity parents. There are also URM and kids with unusual challenges (very poor, broken families, severe illness, etc.). Then there are a few kids from very wealthy families.</p>
<p>People—especially applicants—should realize that top schools (with the notable exception of Caltech) do not admit solely based on academics. So yes, there will be kids with relatively low boards and grades who are admitted, and you will not be admitted even though your grades and boards are much higher. That’s reality.</p>
<p>Is the focus on non-academics (for at least 2/3 of the admitted class) good or bad? It depends on whom you talk with. Some people love such a “holistic” admission process. It certainly gives a lot more power to the admissions staff. Others say that a school like Stanford should focus exclusively on academics. Caltech has gone this route with all of its students. So have Oxford and Cambridge. The other top U.S. schools (including Stanford) have gone this route for graduate admissions but not for undergraduate admissions. Whether you agree or disagree with this approach, it is unlikely to change in the near future.</p>
<p>Best of luck to all of you who are applying.</p>
<p>@fredthered You perfectly answered a question that I had posted in a separate thread, so thank you very much for your thoughtful response!</p>
<p>@fredthered Are you sure you got the statistics right for the athletic recruits and SAT Scores? Can you send me a link to an article? I’m not calling you out or anything I’m just really curious.</p>
<p>Stanford is a private institution, so they are not required to divulge any of that sort of information. And it seems unlikely that they would do so. </p>
<p>Guccigirl. Stanford might be a “private” university, but it still must comply with thousands of government and NCAA rules and regulations, some of which involve reporting data. Top Stanford administrators spend a lot of time complying with these laws and regulations. Believe me.</p>
<p>On the difference between jocks and regular students, colleges do not like to acknowledge must less rationally discuss the gap. The NCAA used to break out the SAT scores by team and college. This practice stopped in the late 1990s, so that is the most recent data we have.</p>
<p>Here is a link to a 1999 article in Stanford Magazine. The NCAA is the apparent source for the information that the male athletes at Stanford had an average SAT score of 1,215, while surprisingly the women were slightly lower at 1,151. (This was when the SAT had only two parts, so the maximum score was 1,600.)</p>
<p><a href=“Stanford Magazine - Article”>Stanford Magazine - Article;
<p>Although the article compares Stanford athletes to athletes as other schools, it makes no comparisons to regular Stanford students. For students entering Stanford in the fall of 1998, the inter-quartile range for verbal was 770-680 and for math it was 770-670. (This information is made public because of federal regulations.) The average SAT score of entering students is not reported. Let’s assume it is in the middle of the inter-quartile range. That would be 725 for verbal and 720 for math, for a total of 1,445. (By way of comparison, the median for the Class of 2018 was 730 and 750.)</p>
<p><a href=“https://ucomm.stanford.edu/cds/cds_1998”>https://ucomm.stanford.edu/cds/cds_1998</a></p>
<p><a href=“You've requested a page that no longer exists | Stanford News”>You've requested a page that no longer exists | Stanford News;
<p>Back to 1998, the average for the athletes was over 200 points lower than for the student body as a whole. Of course, about 15% of the student body consists of athletes, so the gap between athletes and regular students would be even greater. You can see why the Stanford Magazine article does not make comparisons with regular Stanford students even though the magazine is ostensibly about Stanford.</p>
<p>My guess is that gap has increased since the late 1990s. Stanford is even more difficult to get into, and there is an increasing arms race in college sports. (The AD at Stanford just informed the Faculty Senate that there is now an arms race in feeding varsity athletes. Stanford has spent only $250,000! One Pac 12 school is apparently spending $1.5M!!)</p>
<p>If you want more information, I would highly recommend a book co-authored by the former president of Princeton. He discusses the fact that the gap is especially large at Stanford. Here is a link:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-Game-College-Sports-Educational/dp/0691123144”>http://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-Game-College-Sports-Educational/dp/0691123144</a></p>
<p>Finally, you should realize that Stanford is not unique in these dimensions. The situation is probably worse at Division III schools simply because such a large percentage of the incoming students are recruited athletes.</p>
<p>As an athletic recruit to Stanford, I’d like to pass on some information that the coach gave to me during my official visit there last month.</p>
<p>The track and field coach told me about the high caliber of academics their athletes are still upheld to. He said one of the hardest parts of recruiting was that he can’t always take the best athletes in the nation because of grades or test scores. He then mentioned the wrestling team (wrestlers are apparently notorious for having bad grades) who have struggled in their recruiting the past few years because they haven’t been able to find many kids who excel at the sport and in the classroom. </p>
<p>My impression was that Stanford is still one of the best schools in the nation (if not THE best) when it comes to a combined academics/athletics program. Stanford has won the Director’s Cup for the best overall athletics program for the last twenty years, yet it’s still the most academically prestigious school in the nation. </p>
<p>Personally, I am applying with 4.05 weighted GPA and 33 superscored ACT (32 is my best standalone composite). I don’t have any experience with the SAT; I didn’t take it because I didn’t have to. I really hope I hear good news from the coach and/or admissions sometime this week.</p>
<p>I don’t think athletes should be looked down upon for receiving admission with slightly lower GPA’s/test scores. The coaches, bottom line, still look for kids who they think will excel at the school. If the recruits’ grades aren’t pristine, the coaches obviously think they possess a drive that will allow them to succeed in both the sport and the classroom.</p>
<p>One more thing, athletics are just another extracurricular. Sure coaches have pull to allow athletes in, but non-athletes who are admitted had that one special thing about them that got them in as well. Whether it be music, service, academic achievement, or back to athletics, all Stanford admits put hours and hours and hours into an activity they were passionate about and showed Stanford that they can positively impact the school by bringing that passion there. There are many kids besides athletes who proved to Stanford that they can bring something to the school besides a perfect GPA or SAY score. Athletes put in as much work as the next guy, so don’t put them down.</p>
<p>hey @fredthered Where have you been all my life? GREAT answers/insights…please post more. </p>
<p>@fredthered Thanks for the response. it’s a very interesting topic. </p>
<p>@trx1150 I agree very much with your opinion. All the athletes I’ve met here aren’t at Stanford just because they’re good at their sport. They have some inner motivation, drive, and appreciation for intellectualism that makes them choose Stanford in the first place. I’m sure most of them could’ve opted to attend a school that offers them more “athlete perks” and much less rigorous academics. </p>
<p>I actually think the gap between normal student and athlete depends on the sport, and the athlete himself/herself. I personally find that most athletes here really don’t stick out. They fit into the same social life, and take the classes as us “normal” students. I work on my PSets and hangout with plenty of athletes. But there is a sort of stigma that the “big sport” athletes (such as football, basketball) aren’t at the same level academically as “small sport” (think fencing, rowing, etc.) athletes. Then again, it depends on how much the athlete is wiling to put into it their school work. It’s completely possible for football players to pass Stanford putting in very minimal effort (and frankly some of the NFL-bound players do this). But I would say that most do care about life after football, and are committed to knowledge and getting their degrees. </p>
<p>In short, in my personal opinion, athletes DO deserve to be here, even if their SAT scores aren’t as high as the “normal” student. To have a balanced prowess in both body and mind is something truly remarkable to me. </p>
The athlete at our school that got into Stanford had a 25 ACT and a B in most classes. He was a very good football player, however. Thus, my evidence.
Sample size n=1 nice
Here’s an article from the Stanford Daily that mentions that the median SAT score for Stanford football recruits is 1800. 1800 is a very strong score (around 80th percentile) but it is also over 400 points lower than the overall median for students at Stanford, which is around 2215.
I’m a big fan of Stanford sports and Stanford in general, and I also believe in holistic admissions. Just saying the point in post 16 goes beyond one data point.
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2015/02/22/the-price-of-athletics-at-stanford/
“We had a girl who was accepted to Stanford last year with an ACT score of 29. She had started her own charity”
I love this part of “holistic” approach. All the girls in my son’s school who are applying to Stanford have started their own charity. Starting a charity means daddy spends some money to support some people and get some local reporter to write a report on it. The holistic process is bound to be abused, you remember movie “Soul-man”