<p>I realize the title may have been a little over-dramatic. :)</p>
<p>I came across this packet on the internet that contained the geographic distribution of the Class of 2013 by state, plus distribution of SAT/ACT score ranges with respective admission rates.</p>
<p>It's interesting how there wasn't a single state with 0 applicants accepted, and only one state (Mississippi) with 1 applicant accepted.</p>
<p>Also, an 800 on W in the SAT seems to have the biggest impact of the three, since it's 19% admit rate for 800 Wers, a 18% admit rate for 800 CRers, and a mere 12% admit rate for 800 Mers. So much for Writing not mattering...</p>
<p>Here's the link the the PDF (scroll down to page 5 for the info mentioned):</p>
<p>An 800 on writing doesn’t mean that the writing SAT matters. It could mean that those who wrote the most coherent essays also had the highest writing scores, or any number of things.</p>
<p>^Exactly. I think the SAT writing score matters very, very little compared to just about every other aspect of the application (and I had an 800, btw). applicannot’s point about the likely correlation between a high writing score and well-written essays is a good one, and we all know that the essays are a Very Big Deal in the admissions process.</p>
<p>Yes, that’s logical, I suppose. Still though, a 12% admit rate for 800 M applicants… pretty harsh. Although the M section is the section with the most 800 scorers.</p>
<p>this is very interesting. this means that 1/3 students in stanford are from homestate. this is huge compared to 1/8 at harvard and 1/10 in princeton. Maybe stanford’s low acceptance rate is not because of admit difficulty, but because of home state favoritism or lack of applications from the east coast</p>
<p>Stanford gets many applications from the east coast and from all over the country (and the world). And while it does accept a significant percentage of its class from California, it also receives an <em>extremely</em> large number of applications from California students, so it is very selective as to its California applicant pool, as well as to its overall pool. In fact, so many California students want to go to Stanford that some people think it may be harder to be admitted from California than from elsewhere due to the incredible competition for the California spots.</p>
Of course, CA has a population 4x as large as NJ and 5x as large as MA. If anything, it would appear that in-state students are more over-represented at Harvard or Princeton.</p>
<p>American Samoa beat Mississippi. And Guam tied it. Oh, and New Hampshire only had 1, too. You might have to zoom to make out the number well.</p>
<p>Also, all sections of the SAT obviously “matter”. Making claims of which matters more without admissions office statements is sketchy, though. As has been said, the Writing statistic is likely because of the increased writing abilities of those with high writing scores, and the importance of essays in college admissions.</p>
<p>Yes, noimagination, that was one of the points I was making.</p>
<p>And nooblet, my prior post wasn’t a hypothesis, but rather statements of fact derived from conversations with the Office of Admission. You might try contacting them to see if they’ll share further information with you, if you are interested.</p>
<p>Kids from Atherton probably are often accepted here because (1) they have gone to excellent high schools and done well at them; (2) Atherton is home to many successful Stanford alums, so their kids have legacy; and (3) some of those alums are successful enough to make sizable donations to Stanford, making those particular kids developmental admits. This is a different situation from California as a whole, obviously.</p>
<p>Incidentally, I’ve met several kids from Atherton here, and they are all very smart and very cool. (Stanford students don’t tend to call attention to their families’ wealth, in my experience.)</p>
<p>If you consider the population of CA compared to that of states in the NE, I think you will see that the eastern schools draw a similar proportion of students from the immediate states that comprise a similar population area. I also think this is also somewhat true if you consider it from the perspective of physical size. Once I had some hard data for two of the schools to compare. I think it was Stanford and Princeton. I can’t locate it anymore. As I recall, it was only slightly higher for Stanford and CA. I think the difference would be less for Harvard because NJ wouldn’t get counted and it has a relatively high population.</p>
<p>Also, consider what Fitzsimmons says on page 2 of this very recent article:</p>
<p>…First and foremost, Harvard will always be a Massachusetts and New England institution. We work extremely hard on our recruiting and outreach in Massachusetts and New England because we feel it is vital for Harvard to play an important role in educating the future leaders from the place that has done so much to shape its mission. We have always had a policy of admitting a Boston or Cambridge student over others when the credentials are approximately equal.</p>
<p>I am very surprised that a college admissions officer would publicly state this so bluntly, generally they tend to be far more evasive on questions like these.</p>
<p>Remember, that map represents matriculation not admissions. </p>
<p>As one poster on another thread (LA HS stats) noted, high achieving kids who are accepted at several top schools are more likely to attend the one closest to home. A Cali kid might dream of Stanford but apply all over, while NY kid might dream of Yale and apply to Stanford as well. Note the overrepresentation (relative to population size) of Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Arizona. Also, west coast kids are more likely to have a ‘Stanford or bust’ attitude and go to USC, UCLA, Cal, U of W etc. as an alternative if/when first choice doesn’t work out. Ivies are more interchangeable in terms of atmosphere than Stanford and any Ivy. West coasters often feel that the east coast fit wouldn’t be right even if they did get in.</p>
<p>That raises an interesting point—is the reason why a lot of East Coast kids get accepted to ivies but get rejected from Stanford applying RD that Stanford believes them unlikely to attend if they’ve already gotten into Harvard, Princeton etc.?</p>