Stanford dean: School’s ultra-low admit rate not something to boast about

^ Collegedata.com has scattergrams (GPA vs SAT or ACT) that allow you to toggle on/off for decision cycle (EA/ED or RD), legacy, athlete, gender, IS/OOS, private/public HS, etc. Here’s such a plot for Stanford:

http://www.collegedata.com/cs/admissions/admissions_tracker_result.jhtml?schoolId=781&classYear=2015

If you click on a data point, you can also see what other schools that kid applied to and what the decisions were.

Of course, these data are self-reported, so you have to take all of this with a grain of salt.

Interesting data @whatisyourquest - not that many data points but with one exception, those admitted were at or very close to 4.0 unweighted GPA (and the exception is around 3.8). No admits below 3.8 GPA or 2000 SAT. Obviously more of a range on test scores than grades, which is also the case with the data the UC campuses publish.

@whatisyourquest Very cool, thank you. It would be even better if it was actual data, unfortunately colleges keep that info close to their chest.

@bluebayou not entirely true. Harvard and Stanford can afford to get rid of their outreach efforts. MIT needs it for non-stem applicants, Yale needs it for stem applicants and also because while super prestigious, it is no Harvard, Stanford or MIT in terms of global regogntiion and strength nowadays, and Princeton needs it for the same latter reason.

@bluewater2015 Yeah, I noticed the same GPA vs SAT/ACT trend for my kid’s “reaches.” This is consistent with what I’ve read in many books and blogs:

GPA tends to trump SAT/ACT in admissions, because it reflects effort from freshman-junior years, while SAT/ACT reflects results over one (or a very few) test days. Plus, one can prep ($$) for standardized tests, so they don’t carry as much weight as GPA.

@STEM2017 You’re welcome.

No, they really cannot, less they slowly turn into a bastion of upper class privilege.

Which means that they are worthless.

^ Well, that’s pretty harsh. I compared published SAT/ACT ranges for my kid’s reaches with the ranges on collegedata.com and they seem consistent to me. But hey, bluebayou, if you have something more reliable, please pass it on.

@Penn95 @bluebayou

In 2006 Harvard and Princeton made a noble effort and eliminated their early admissions programs.

In 2011, both had to reinstate their early admissions programs due to competitive pressure.

That makes it really hard to believe that Harvard could eliminate all outreach and not lose significant ground to the competition…

I can’t take your word for it. I know what my D scored, what my nephew scored, what their class mates scored, and most of them are rejected. When 13,000+ national merit semifinalists are on the chopping block while only a a couple of hundred or so make it, I think a lot more very good candidates are getting rejected. I see no issue with it since there are only 1500-1700 seats at these colleges and they only truly take half of them based on academic merit +ECs and rest are institutional priorities.

Problem is that once they decrease the outreach, and only if they get rid of the inappropriate applications, I think the decreased numbers still impact negatively on the US News and World Report ratings and/or other rating systems. And then there would be headlines like “Harvard no longer a top school”, which in turn would impact on its reputation, etc.

Perhaps, but any AP Stats student can attest to it.

Sorry, don’t know of any sources.

Unilateral disarmament is always risky, but I don’t see the connection with dropping EA/ED by H&P, which became a boon to Y&S. (But more importantly, it ticked off the alums.) Early admissions is a game played by those in the know. They need no outreach. It’s those NOT in-the-know that need the outreach, those from diverse (economic, racial/ethnic/gender, geographic) communities.

@kmrcollege , I’ve seen an identical trend. There is virtually no correlation above 30 ACT and 3.7 GPA at the upper tier Ivy’s, Stanford, etc. They seem to value ‘leadership’ roles, sports, URMs, etc. etc… over merit. There is a much higher correlation with tech schools like Caltech or Rice, and somewhat with Vanderbilt, Chicago etc. All the state schools have very high correlations. At the same time, schools like Alabama are cherry picking those top students with scholarships and brand new facilities.

I would call his claim by a relatively new term

“Humblebragging”

@texaspg - I was not clear - the values I posted are for those students applying not accepted.

Interesting @TooOld4School and consistent with occasional results posts here of someone being admitted to one or more of HYPS but not to a top state school e.g. Berkeley, UCLA. This may not be common - and I’m pretty sure the reverse situation is a lot more common - but it does seem to happen sometimes.

In some cases it may be because the student applied for a highly competitive major at the state school and would have been admitted if they had picked something less competitive . . . whereas many of the top private schools don’t admit by major . . . but I would suspect the differences in approach you mentioned play a role too.

@bluewater2015 Stanford does that for test scores.

Also, according to Naviance, the average UW GPA of students accepted to Stanford from my school is a 3.91. However, I know that many of the people who get in (I’d say around 1/3; last year, at least 1/2 for sure) are valedictorians, so that leaves people who got ~3.7 GPAs. (Note: I go to a school where 25-ish kids get 4.0 GPAs every year. They are all accomplished. However, after a certain point, it seems that Stanford really doesn’t care. I don’t see much of a correlation there.)

Wow–Stanford’s international acceptance rate was insane: under 3.9% (!)

Stanford isn’t need blind for internationals so it’s somewhat of a different process than for US students.

To lighten things up, here’s an April Fool’s spoof from The New York Times:

"PALO ALTO, California — Cementing its standing as the most selective institution of higher education in the country, Stanford University announced this week that it had once again received a record-setting number of applications and that its acceptance rate — which had dropped to a previously uncharted low of 5 percent last year — plummeted all the way to its inevitable conclusion of 0 percent.

With no one admitted to the class of 2020, Stanford is assured that no other school can match its desirability in the near future.

“We had exceptional applicants, yes, but not a single student we couldn’t live without,” said a Stanford administrator who requested anonymity. “In the stack of applications that I reviewed, I didn’t see any gold medalists from the last Olympics — Summer or Winter Games — and while there was a 17-year-old who’d performed surgery, it wasn’t open-heart or a transplant or anything like that. She’ll thrive at Yale.”

The rest of the article is at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/opinion/college-admissions-shocker.html

I agree with a comment above how school should have some sort of “cut off” for applying… obviously, everyone who meets this cut off won’t be admitted because there are tons of other factors but acceptance rates will be more reliable because everyone applying will have a legitimate chance.