<p>When H did away with early applications, i thought some of the others did surge a bit. Kids who really would have H as their top choice, given the option, but not sewn up in December.</p>
<p>“If Princeton no longer existed, do you think Harvard and Yale would actually get significantly more applicants? And who would they be?”</p>
<p>They’d get virtually everyone who currently gets in early at Princeton, most of whom don’t apply elsewhere. That wouldn’t represent a large absolute bump in their total number of applications, but it would be a good bump in the kind of students H & Y want to admit. Each of HYP would love to get its competitors’ early admits.</p>
<p>I would think a lot of the Princeton early admits would go to Stanford. In terms of location (relative to cities) and feel, not to mention engineering tradition, Stanford and Princeton are pretty similar.</p>
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Yes, it wouldn’t be a big bump in the total number of applications. The Princeton SCEA admits make up only 2% of the number of applications at Harvard or Yale. If all 714 would be Princeton SCEA admits applied to Harvard (and we assume that SCEA admits never apply to other schools in the RD round), it would decrease admit rate by only 0.1%, from 5.9% to 5.8%. If you consider that a good portion of the would be admits are going to apply early to somewhere other than Harvard, have a good reason for not applying to Harvard, or still apply to other schools after SCEA admission (for example to compare FA or because of being undecided), then the bump in apps would be less, maybe decreasing admit rate by 0.05% instead of 0.1%. I agree that they are more qualified than the general application pool, which may may lead to a more competitive general application pool, and this isn’t reflected in the admit rate.</p>
<p>^^ You picked a good user name ;)</p>
<p>I agree with what you wrote.</p>
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<p>Preference for Stanford isn’t only due to weather, but also a widespread perception along hardcore engineering/CS aspirants that Stanford has a much more engineering/CS and nerd/techie friendly campus culture than Princeton. </p>
<p>@Data10: Did you just speak to the hypothetical scenario where P was out of the picture, or did you also mean to imply that even if H was at a location similar to S where few peer schools that potentially compete for applicants and admits, or vice versa, there would be no or little impact to both school’s admit rate and yield? In other words, do you disagree that S’ low admit rate and high yield has something to do with its location? Would love to get your data supported viewpoint! </p>
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<p>Here is my non-data supported view as a thought experiment.</p>
<p>Let’s say a highly competitive, sought after Fluffy U magically showed up tomorrow 50 miles north of Los Angeles (that is a bit more than the distance from Harvard and Princeton, and Princeton is about 50 miles from NYC as a major city/attraction).</p>
<p>Assuming Fluffy U is a similar size as Stanford (750 EA admits, 1700 overall).</p>
<p>Of the people who applied to Stanford, who would no longer apply? It seems that only those accepted into EA and who decided to go to Fluffy U wouldn’t bother applying. So Stanford’s application number goes from 43,000 to 42,200 or there abouts. Now of course, that assumes that Fluffy U is only taking away from Stanford EA apps, not from other Ivies or top schools, which is not a great assumption.</p>
<p>Of the remaining 42k how many would not apply in the RD round? I guess only those who are convinced they would get into Fluffy U (those whose family donated a building, or play D1 fluffy-ball…but wait, aren’t those people who would usually get in EA?).</p>
<p>So I don’t see the admit rate changing that much - what certainly could change is the yield…which may change the admit rate too.</p>
<p>But then again, Fluffy U would also take top students away from UCLA and USC who preferred going there instead of Stanford due to geographic considerations.</p>
<p>“So even though Dartmouth is closer to New York City than, say, Cal Poly SLO is to San Francisco or LA, it’s in a totally different REGION. So when it draws kids from New York, that’s NATIONAL, baby!”</p>
<p>Silly me! Of course, when a kid from the Northeast elects to stay close to home, that’s because he wants to stay in a sophisticated place full of sophisticated people – not like in the Midwest or South, where they are so backwards that they don’t venture out of their regions for college.</p>
<p>And I AM a kid from the Northeast, with the pronunciation of water as wooder to prove it.</p>
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<p>Which part of the NE is that? Philly? Just curious.</p>
<p>Yes, Philly.</p>
<p>Fluffy, I see your approach is adding or subtracting one school at a time. 
I don’t feel your argument convinicig but I have said all I have say. I am resting my “case”. Cheers.</p>
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<p>I thought this was great: <a href=“http://sheplusplus.stanford.edu/”>Inspiring women who made computing history - Namecheap Blog; </p>
<p>(goodgirlsgonegeek)</p>
<p>Apparently they met with Sandberg today and waved to Zuckerberg.</p>
<p>So . . . interestingly enough, I had dinner last night with an old, old friend I hadn’t seen in more than 30 years. He has a strong connection to Stanford: both he and his wife got PhDs there, and both of his children have gone to college there, one graduating a few years ago and one still there now. Neither he nor his wife is on the Stanford faculty, but both have the sort of jobs that make Stanford faculty members close colleagues, and they live on the Peninsula. He had a number of views that are relevant to this thread:</p>
<p>-- Like me (and like many others, this was a conventional opinion), for a long time he believed that the undergraduate college was the weakest part of the university. Not that Stanford offered a bad education, but that it only offered a great education to confident, focused self-starters. After years of internal hand-wringing over this, some reforms instituted in the past decade have made a huge difference. The number of students with real faculty relationships, engaged in actual scholarly research in all sorts of fields, has zoomed.</p>
<p>-- When faculty discuss the college now, two concerns are paramount: </p>
<p>(1) They are sick and tired of entrepreneurial culture. It’s exciting, and has brought the university lots of benefits, but it has become a real distraction, with many students essentially dropping academics altogether, not just to invent things, but to get funding, hire employees, negotiate contracts. The volume of it has gotten out of hand. They want the college to be a college, not a business incubator.</p>
<p>(2) The disinterest in anything that isn’t STEM is reaching near-crisis proportions. They are desperate for more humanities majors. The applications viewed most favorably in the future may be those who look like they want to major in French Lit or Religious Studies.</p>
<p>There was guy who stood up during the Hennessey’s speech and and complained that he and his brother started a company and were doing a lot of work together while the school is pressuring his brother to decide whether he is staying or leaving. He felt the school should give more support in such situations. The president essentially said he would prefer the students complete their degrees so they have something to fall back on and there will always be companies to start.</p>
<p>@JHS and @texaspg
I have already seen this happening in the past few years…they are disproportionately getting way too many applicants that seem to favor STEM…and not nearly as many applying for their top humanities and social sciences programs…and part of the apprehension is due to the fact that many of the top humanities/social science leaning students “feel” like they have no chance of getting into Stanford if they don’t have some STEM related national/international achievements…</p>
<p>…that fear is REAL…our K2 thought despite multiple national/international level accomplishments in the humanities and the arts…K2 did not believe K2 could get into Stanford…so applied to one of the HYP early to get an “acceptance” and then applied to Stanford in the regular round…to surprisingly get an “acceptance”…</p>
<p>…and I have seen many of the top humanities/arts types from the bay area being accepted over the Intel finalists, Olympiad winners, or the top app developers…this is why I started a thread addressing this on Stanford forum:</p>
<p><a href=“**NB: Advice and Warning for Future Stanford Applicants - Stanford University - College Confidential Forums”>**NB: Advice and Warning for Future Stanford Applicants - Stanford University - College Confidential Forums;
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<p>So…future applicants beware!</p>
<p>Grav, yes, this year I saw an emphasis on looking for committed humanities kids. (Not referring to S.) Of course, it’s always “been there.” But there is now the momentum in STEM attraction that they sought so actively over the past, say, 5 years. </p>
<p>@jhs</p>
<p>That was a great post and probably required reading for all future applications who start their question with “I developed 3 apps and really want to showcase those to Stanford along with my entrepreneurial interests for my application…” ;)</p>
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<p>My son has been admitted to Stanford, and I see these door opening powers already. He has been offered an internship at a defense company for summer after freshman year(he is a high school senior). I have also received three calls from “six degree of separation” acquaintances within Silicon Valley asking me to have my son stop at their offices for an introduction, and they will, in turn, introduce him to various peers that they deal with. This is after simply being admitted. </p>
<p>Wow, that is amazing! I suppose these companies want to get a leg up on the competition in snatching up the future tech wizards.</p>