Stanford recently announced its vision for campus development through 2035, a plan that would add nearly 2.3 million square feet of new academic buildings and up to 3,150 new units of housing.
Some of the new student housing reflects anticipated growth in the undergraduate student body by about 100 students a year until 2035 — a total increase of almost 1,700. Administrators began to discuss increasing undergraduate enrollment in 2007, but the plans outlined in Stanford’s latest GUP represent a clear move toward implementing the change
They will need to have 88,000 applicants just to keep today’s admissions rate the same, lol. Otherwise, they risk falling in the rankings and despite what every college says, they DO care about rankings. Well, they have until 2035 to get those application up. The problem is there aren’t that many high achieveing kids in the US (looking at ACT or SAT scores) + gpa + ECs so they will have a lot more “less competitive applicants” than other top schools and probably a lot more foreign applicants for the 10% of the class that they take.
Stanford doesn’t seem to care about it as much as other schools imo
Stanford has the highest application fee of any university in the US
Stanford does not advertise on Facebook and social media for applicants (Harvard)
Stanford does not send out tons of marketing materials (U of Chicago)
and yet Stanford has the lowest admission rate and highest yield despite increasing the class size by 200 the past 2 years.
Stanford is thinking 50 years ahead… not 10 years. Stronger alumni network… more donations… more influence. more faculty… stronger departments (Stanford is already the most complete university in terms of breadth of excellence in all disciplines) I think its a great move.
I have my doubts the expansion will progress according to current timelines. City and county governments are getting more and more aggressive in terms of regulating environment and traffic control. As one minor example, when the women’s sand volleyball courts went through the approval process it took local officials six months to decide the number and location of handicapped parking spaces.
@googledrone well that is probably Stanford fast for California. I would expect a 2 year deliberation period for something like parking. Good luck to Stanford.
This seems kind of extreme. Part of the appeal of Stanford is that it has amazing resources that are available to a handful of carefully selected, brilliant students. Such an increase could potentially dilute the resources available to students, meaning larger lecture sizes, lower faculty/student ratio, lower financial aid per student etc. Also you do not want to create a student body so big that the community becomes chaotic and overwhelming and meaningful personal interaction with faculty and other students becomes difficult.
Increasing the class size by a bit is a good strategy to boost diversity and build a stronger and bigger alumni network in the long term. However doubling it to a total of over 3400 students per class seems kind of extreme. I graduated from Penn, which has a class size of around 2440 and even this is on the borderline of being too big for a top school. I cannot imagine 3400. I think around 1800-2000 per class is perfect for a top school.
Stanford has the luxury of lots of land and the financial resources to pull it off… 20 years from now the world and Stanford will look a lot different… Stanford’s main competition in 20 years may very well be schools from China, the Far East and India with much larger class sizes… so its all relative. perhaps that’s the world the Stanford admin is envisioning and preparing for.
Stanford never really fit the mold of any other university… and redefined the American University with its emphasis on tech, innovation and industry partnerships stemming back over 75 years that many other universities around the globe have now emulated. It’s a bold move by the Stanford admin… but one I think will only strengthen the Stanford brand in the long run. time will tell.
A 1700 increase means for 4 classes, so each class is about 1700/4=425 more than what it is now.
Progressively over the 17 years, the class size will grow from the current 1700s to 2100s. Each year on average, each class will be added 25 more students.
The whole incremental change over multiple years should not affect the yield/admit rates (ratio).
Yes as noted in post 8, if Stanford adds 1700 that is about a 25% increase, not double, over the overall undergraduate population of around 7000 today. Still very significant and I think a positive direction for Stanford given the high demand for spots. Of course time will tell how many are actually added, as Lisa Lapin notes in the PA Online article.
It is remarkable how much the campus has changed physically already in recent years - the big new parking garages, traffic circles, new offsite administration offices in Redwood City . . . it’s a new era.
They won’t be able to increase the student body by 100 for the first three years. It would be +25, +50, +75, respectively. Poorly written article, imo. They should have said they expect to increase the freshman class size by 25 students a year until 2035 for a total increase in the undergraduate student body of 1700 students by then.
OTOH, if getting the permitting and approvals is as difficult as some have said then it will likely be very lumpy and not a smooth 25 student freshman class increase each year.
^^ That each class adds 25 is not the same as freshman’s class increase by 25. It is difficult to clearly explain what the plan is. The good understanding is to add 25 students to each of 4 classes every year, though they can not add more students to the upper classes. Another way to think is the class size will grow to 2100s by year of 2035, regardless how they do it.
bottom line is Stanford is planning on increasing the entire Stanford undergrad student body by 1700 which will be mostly through increasing the freshman class size… and some through transfers I guess
oh ok i misread it, 1700 increase in the total undergrad student body sounds perfectly reasonable and is a good strategy. i thought a 1700 increase for the incoming class and was like whoa…haha
@Penn95 Most of us misread the article (I probably was the first to miscomment on another thread) and the title of this thread was wrong which re-enforced the mistake. A 2100 class size is doable and a great goal.
We all failed the critical reading, in math. Hopefully we understand better on the issue now, and we probably should never doubt what they intend to do.