To be far - in order to apply to Stanford you need to write 11 supplements and pay a $90 fee, as @sbballer pointed out. And while I received lots of advertisements from various colleges after taking the SATs I don’t recall Stanford ever sending one. It seems they’re pretty genuine about not inflating applicants.
I like the Common App. It doesn’t make it less work (I spent more time on Stanford’s app than I did on MIT’s app), it just makes it easier to organize requirements and submit things in one place. (@teddymittens2)
Fairly cynical for Stanford’s dean. A few years back there was a related article in the Economist. In a normal supply/demand system when there is demand for a given commodity the rational thing to do would be for the supply to increase. Yet this is not what’s seen. A big part of it is the absolutely irrational perception of USNWR rankings, parent’s ego, the legacy system, etc. High prestige schools are getting their funding through other means than tuition, and that funding is often correlated to their ranking. So they have this perverse incentive to not increase the number of available seats and that will continue for the foreseeable future. The OP original article linked does have very good words of wisdom: there are other incredibly great opportunities for absolutely great education outside of these ultra-selective schools.
In a few years the acceptance rates will all hover around the 1% range. The rational thing to do is for students and parents to realize that prestige and USNWR rankings are not merely as important as ambition, work ethic, and networking which can be fostered at any college in the country.
Um, only entering that info in one place is “less work,” by definition. Pre-CA, applicants had to navigate separate forms and requirements for every school, filling in their family info, grades, test scores, demographic data, and course history anew each time, and to make matters worse, the forms would frequently vary slightly (or broadly!) in their requirements.
Make no mistake, the CA saves a ton of work (while enriching its shareholders & partner institutions and driving up applicant numbers/driving down acceptance rates).
Re post #101, Stanford’s outgoing president has been talking about increasing the size of the undergraduate student population (article below), though I’m not sure where that stands. Also Yale is increasing its class size by about 200 starting with the class of 2021, when new housing currently under construction comes online in the fall of 2017.
Oh please, no one is acting like anyone’s futures are ruined.
If you don’t have enough ambition to seek out opportunities whether it is find out about competitions, or at your college, you probably aren’t going to do that well in environments in which people are ambitious. Do you honestly believe that is either saying their futures are ruined (well, that means that you must believe that unless you go to a top school, you are ruined) or controversial (do you believe that you can do well without ambition)?
As for your example, I know of some really smart STEM students who had very little ambition and they didn’t do anything interesting in college, didn’t apply to any graduate schools and are now some of the smartest people working in retail at minimum wage. So my anecdote cancels out yours. LOL.
I don’t think you can fault Stanford and other schools for going “on the road” as part of their outreach program. What I do think crosses the line are the personally addressed letters and glossy brochures sent to students stating that their grades and test scores indicate that […] may be a good fit for you. My kids are high flyers and each received numerous such appeals to apply. 16 and 17 year olds are not the most sophisticated consumers and many will develop false hopes about institutions out of their league. To its credit Stanford was not one of the institutions that promoted itself in this way (and one of my children is there now); but many of the very best schools put on the full press. Also with its numerous required supplemental essays, Stanford seems to do its best to deter those who are not serious applicants. The sheer volume of applications to Stanford and numerous required supplemental essays, justify the hefty application fee. As I type, Stanford is building new dorms and plans to increase the size of its incoming class in the near future. All in all I do not doubt the sincerity of the Stanford Dean’s stated dilemma.
I expect that Stanford could fill their classes with highly qualified and interesting people by never traveling outside of California - o traveling outside of Stanford for that matter.
@bluewater2015 Personally I feel like even if Stanford did release that data it would be pretty useless. About 50% of the Berkeley applicant pool has a 4.0 or higher and I would imagine an ever higher percentage of Stanford Applicants do. Probably something like 67%. I would imagine the admit rate for applicants with a 4.0+ GPA is something like 9-11 percent.
What I think might more useful data is if you were to combine certain statistics. Like Stanford could release the admit rate for applicants who have a 4.0+ as well as a 2000+ SAT or 30+ ACT.
I applied to Stanford with pretty average test scores and no perfect GPA. I definitely did not think I had an SAT score that was qualified for admission, but I applied anyway (and I almost didn’t). I’m so happy I did because I was accepted. It’s definitely not often that Stanford accepts students below a 2000, but it does happen and I would have lost the opportunity of a lifetime if I let people
High selectivity means that the college or university has successfully marketed their school or product, succeeded in convincing a large number of students who they know will not make the cut to apply, collecting the fees (30,000 applicants x 85$ fee =2.55 million $), disappointing many to get a very low selectivity number and thus rise in the ranking of US News and World Report. Pretty sick behavior actually.
If this admissions dean was sincere, he would stop market his school aggressively, give honest and realistic information to prospective students, and care more about the young people that the rankings. Do not hold your breath for that to happen.
^^ But is Stanford really guilty of heavily marketing their undergraduate education and widely sending out application materials? I honestly don’t know, but I also don’t know anyone who needed any marketing materials to dream of attending Stanford. I would expect, at the minimum, that there’s outreach to underserved populations, be they regional or URM. That, IMHO, is a very good thing.
I would’ve said no @LucieTheLakie, but Stanford is touring on a road show in our city with Harvard, Duke, Georgetown and Yale. Like any of those schools need exposure.
I didn’t know that, @Agentninetynine. Interesting. I don’t really have a problem with “road shows” per se, as long as they’re being held in locations with good public transportation access and making sure every school in the region knows about the events. If they’re just marketing their events to private schools and affluent school districts, then a pox on all their houses.
Very sweet, story. I don’t know if they’re ‘mining’ the population or it’s just directed at prep schools, which my son attends. I looked at the notice again, it’s not Yale, but Penn.
@LucieTheLakie I got a whole (paperback) marketing book in the mail from Stanford. My friends and I were discussing the ridiculous marketing tactics of schools when someone brought up having received the same book - and it turned out all of us (I think there were 6) had gotten it. It’s not as if my PSATs were Stanford-level, either (1980, IIRC).
My son specifically checked the box asking that he NOT receive mailings when he took the PSATs and SATs (although we still got quite a deluge for a couple of years), so maybe I missed Stanford’s aggressive marketing efforts.