<p>Interesting point about Stanford. My son was a kid who thought Stanford was a STEM school and had no desire to go there. Of course, he also said, “U of Chicago. Where fun goes to die.” 
I am sure that he heard that from someone else. I didnt even know about U of Chicago until they started sending him all their marketing material. </p>
<p>“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…”</p>
<p>How have you seen this happening … Are you an adcom at Stanford?</p>
<p>If I may make another broad generalization about why Stanford is popular: they do a nice job of blending STEM and humanities studies. My child is pursing a STEM degree while minoring in classics and is heavily involved in the music department. Other kids touted at the orientation also seemed to blend the fuzzy and the techy: the engineering student interested in poly sci who interned for Condie Rice, the pre-med student who was involved in the community level development of his urban neighborhood, etc. And humanity departments are nearly all world class, top ten, super-duper and can attract a lot of interest on their own merit.</p>
<p>@gravitas - the provost was on a tour around the country and had a pit stop in Houston last year. He emphasized the need to increase the students interested in humanities and not become a purely tech school (looks like your K2 got admitted right after!).</p>
<p>@parent1337 - your kid must be pretty special! My kid has been running around both summers to land an internship! So I don’t see that magic happening. :D</p>
<p>@Pizzagirl. There are many of us here in the bay area like JHS’s friend who have close ties and familiarity with what is going on at Stanford and the affluent high performing suburban public schools/public and private feeders in the past few decades (Harker, Menlo, Gunn, Paly, etc)…especially having personally gone through two admission cycles with our own children and their friends and cohorts…</p>
<p>@texaspg. That’s funny :). Sorry to hear about your kid. Is your kid majoring in biology? I thought K was pre-med…</p>
<p>Indeed, but all that means is that you can extrapolate the world of San Francisco-area affluent public and private schools, not the US in general. </p>
<p>@gravitas2 - I am not sure it is anything to be sorry about since most kids seem to do the same at S. OTOH, other than on campus internships for summer that don’t seem too hard to find, I have not heard anyone tell me about any high school kid being offered a summer job an year in advance for being admitted to a college. I think it is uncommon unless others here know other examples.</p>
<p>@Pizzagirl South, yes certainly that has been my experience. The Midwest really depends. </p>
<p>Of my 3000 High School students(Medium Sized School) 70% left the Midwest entirely.<br>
It probably helps to live in the suburbs of a major city with decent income parents(Detroit or Chicago examples). In addition a fourth of those left because of the weather, while the others went East Coast or West Coast.</p>
<p>I was providing a possible explanation as to why Stanford’s acceptance rate is lower than Harvard’s. The majority of students applying to any of these top schools are not qualified for admission. It is their reachy reach application, a $75 lottery ticket. Those students, which are many, are not buying 3 or 4 lottery tickets. You can disagree but I firmly only one lottery ticket is purchased. I am not saying and never said Harvard is better than Stanford. They are all great schools (I have no preference for any of them). If Harvard was in the west and SYPM etc were in the east. I would think Harvard located in the west would have a lower admission rate. I would discount the admission rate at Harvard based on the geography of the other colleges. I was not making an east against west argument, just providing a possible explanation. </p>
<p>I would like to add most 18 year old students are not super savvy about the colleges they apply to. Most could not even name all the ivy colleges and other highly regarded colleges. They only know what they hear on television, mainstream elite college names. The most recognizable names to the majority of mainstream 18 year old students are Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Many students want to stay close to home. Students on the east coast buying a lottery ticket will choose on of those schools. This causes dilution of apps among those schools. On the west coast my thought is that Stanford has the same brand recognition as HYP. Does UCLA, UCB, and USC carry the weight as Stanford does to the majority of mainstream 18 year old students? I did not think so, maybe I am wrong.</p>
<p>You can disagree with my thought process but please do not attack me as being a northeast elitist snob. </p>
<p>@roundup49789. No…I said you sound like a “provincial nor’easterner”…look up PROVINCIAL…it doesn’t mean elitist snob. It means something else…I know plenty of elitist snobs who live all over the country…and there are plenty out here in the bay area…</p>
<p>Gravitas someone else called me an elitist snob. I know what provincial means, no need for me to look it up. </p>
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<p>If they’re aspiring engineering/CS majors, UCB does carry just as much weight as Stanford from what I’ve noticed and heard from both my Californian relatives and some HS classmates at my NYC public magnet. </p>
<p>Main deterrents, however, are low FA/scholarship packages for for OOS and fears they’ll end up on the 5-6 year plan due to being shut out of oversubscribed critical major/core requirement classes.</p>
<p>A NYC public magnet is not representative of the majority of mainstream 18 year old students.</p>
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<p>If they wanted to stay close to home, they would apply to all 3. There is minimal dilution as was discussed earlier.</p>
<p>“Does UCLA, UCB, and USC carry the weight as Stanford does to the majority of mainstream 18 year old students?”</p>
<p>Like any prestige question, this can’t be answered unless you tell me the geography you’re talking about. </p>
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<p>I don’t believe that geography determines whether or not someone is informed of the quality of a university.</p>
<p>People can now use the internet (especially if they have the latest google installed) to get all sorts of information.</p>
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<p>The majority of mainstream 18 year old students are not applying to HYPS, nor are they representative of the applicants.</p>
<p>In fact, only about 1% of the HS graduates apply to Harvard.</p>
<p>Omg, fluffy, if only kids would use the web to learn more about these schools. How many times they ask things like do I need 3 years of science or when is the deadline, etc. Or, is X good in this field?</p>
<p>Fluffy, you’re going to lose any credibility you have if you seriously want to try to argue that the knowledge bases about schools are the same across the US. There’s a reason all the Ivies overindex by a factor of 200 - 300 to the Northeast, and there’s a reason Stanford does the same for the West Coast. There’s a reason that smart kids in the Midwest apply to state flagships and no one considers it a “failure,” yet smart kids in the Northeast see their state flagships as back-ups. There’s a reason there is a vast empty response when some kid from California asks “so what do you all think of the reputation of the various UC’s outside of California” and is stunned to realize that outside of Berkeley and UCLA, all those UC’s are pretty much unknown outside of California. (Ditto for the SUNY system.) Go to the Irish south side of Chicago and the most prestigious school for the smart kids is Notre Dame, hands down. UVA meant something on the east coast - but to most midwesterners, it’s just “oh, well, I guess Virginia has a state university.” People on CC are constantly “discovering” Vanderbilt, WashU and Grinnell, which everyone in the midwest has known for years are great schools. What people know differs by region of the country. Yes, one can use the internet - but the average person is just going by what they’ve heard of. </p>
<p>The best remedy for regional (or other) bias is more and better information about the rich variety of good choices. High school students need to understand (if they don’t already) how very unlikely they are to succeed in the face of a 5.1% admit rate, especially when so many accepted students are hooked applicants (or applicants with truly exceptional ECs). They need to understand as well that many less selective alternatives, by a variety of objective measures, are very nearly as good (or in some respects even better) for undergraduate needs.</p>