<p>I was talking to 2Leashes. You’re welcome to revive your own threads, ericwchgo. Congrats on Stanford and Yale. You must be really proud of him. Why Yale > Stanford, though? Just curious.</p>
<p>It was a hard choice for him. I actually think that staying over at Yale with current undergraduates when he visited gave him a feel for college life there. Stanford doesn’t do sleep overs with visiting students, and whenever we visited Stanford, school wasn’t in session.</p>
<p>I also think that even though he was extremely excited about getting into Stanford, he wanted to be able to say to himself that he got into a school without being a legacy – even though being a Stanford legacy isn’t that much of an advantage apparently.</p>
<p>Yet, now he texts me every so often that it’s 50 degrees at Yale and 40 degrees at Stanford. I text him back that I’m glad that once every 30 days the weather is better at Yale than at Stanford.</p>
<p>Ericwchgo- funny that your son ended up at Yale. My younger son, who was admitted EA last year is currently a freshman at Harvard. For my kid, I think it was also to blaze his own path, especially since his older brother attends Stanford.</p>
<p>“Wow . . . there aren’t many people who literally don’t know anything about Stanford and apply there any way”</p>
<p>I was in the Stanford class of 1978, and I totally believe that Stanford '79 hadn’t heard much about the school. I grew up on the East Coast, and when I told people where I was going, a common reply was, “Stamford?” (as in, Connecticut). In those days far fewer kids from the East Coast applied to West Coast schools.</p>
<p>As for how we got in: the Stanford Dean of Admissions told my freshman class this story: “There were x thousand qualified applicants this year, and to some extent your acceptance is a matter of luck. Here’s what I do: I put all the qualified applicants’ names on index cards, climb to the top of the stairs, and throw the cards. Then I go to the bottom and pick up cards until the class is full.” </p>
<p>Obviously that’s not the actual process, and that admissions director has long since retired, but he was making an important point: Luck is part of the equation. Universities want a balanced class, however they define that, and you may or may not have a quality they are looking for that they haven’t found yet in the applicant pile. If you get in, consider yourself well qualified, but remember that many, many other qualified applicants didn’t have your luck for this particular school.</p>
<p>Does legacy count? I’ll tell you more in 2012 when my daughter applies. Her dad has a Stanford BS, and I got undergrad and grad degrees there. We’ve donated every year for 35 years, but we’re hardly big donors–we are in the very small donor pile. I seriously doubt that the double legacy will help much. She’ll apply anyway, but she’ll also keep her expectations very, very low. With an acceptance rate under 10%, that’s the only sane attitude.</p>
<p>After going through this admissions process with my son I think that luck obviously plays a role, but for the top schools there is probably always one thing that sticks out to that particular admissions director – it may be an award, it may be something special the student did, or it may even be an anecdote about who you are in one of your essays that just strikes that admissions director in a way that resonates with them.</p>
<p>In terms of being a legacy with parents who donate to Stanford, a former admissions director at Stanford explicitly told an assembly of alums that any donation under 1 million is totally off the radar for the admissions office.</p>