@sbballer I know you find this hard to believe but not everyone wants to go to Stanford. I know you think Stanford is the answer to everything My kid got in and chose to go somewhere else. The fit was better elsewhere. You really need to be more analytical and objective in your reasoning. I agree with much2learn this is a national problem
@collegedad13 you started your post titled Stanford leads the nation… which is false and misleading. nice try but actually the Ivy League leads in rapes (3 of the top 10 rape schools are ivy league Harvard, Brown and Dartmouth) why don’t you post that on those boards??)… that’s being analytical and objective.
your kids got rejected… they’ll get over it.
@sbballer You may want to read the OP again so you can understand what it says. Are you a HS student whose dream is to go to Stanford? If you really want to get into Stanford you should try really hard to be more analytical
@collegedad13 your agenda has nothing to do with analytics sport
@collegedad13, if you don’t want to be bothered by @sabballer, please don’t reply. As a Stanford parent, I feel terrible for what happened. But, at the same time you also don’t have to remind us what had happened. If Stanford accepted your kid(s) as you indicated, at least Stanford was nice to your kid(s), and you don’t have to bash Stanford any time you can.
In considering the Dept. of Ed. statistics on reported crimes (including rape) it is important to understand that those figures are not statistics of student-involved crimes, they are a count of reported campus crimes, i.e., crimes reported as having been committed on a given’s college’s so-called “Cleary Geography”. (Under the Dept. of Ed. reporting rules, the Clearly geography includes the campus and off-campus properties owned/controlled by the college where students regularly go). It doesn’t matter whether the person reporting the crime, the victim, or the perpetrator has any association with the school. All that matters it that the crime is reported has been reported as having occurred on the college’s Cleary Geography.
This means, as a general matter, that any college that provides on campus housing, sports and entertainment facilities for its students (and non-students) will tend to have higher campus crime statistics than those that do not. Thus many elite colleges tend to have higher crime statistics than commuter schools because they have the resources to provide 4 years of guaranteed housing for their students. When students attending those colleges are involved in crime it tends to be within the Clearly Geography because they spend nearly all their time there. At another campus you may have students murdered trying to walk to their off-campus apartments but those crimes wouldn’t show up in the Dept. of Ed statistics. So I would not use these statistics as a measurement of how dangerous it is for your child to attend any given college.
Stanford is at a particular disadvantage when it comes to these statistics because not only does it provide 4 years guaranteed housing for undergrads, but most graduate students live on campus too. Additionally, the Stanford “campus” includes an entire town (Stanford, CA) of people living on it who are not even students. The residents are mostly professors and their families, but those are still non-students, and, because this town was built on the Stanford campus, any crime reported in that town (whether prosecuted or not) shows up as a “Stanford” crime. It also includes on-campus facilities like Stanford stadium, Maples Pavilion and Frost Amphitheater where tens of thousands of non-students regularly come to see sporting and entertainment events.
A more helpful methodology would be one that requires reporting crimes that actually involve students (and that do not distinguish between crimes happening on university owned/controlled property or not). That’s what most people assume these statistics show, but unfortunately that is not the case.
One way to evaluate campus safety in the absence of reliable statistics is to physically visit the campuses. I’ve lived in a number of different places in my life, including both the Stanford and Harvard campuses and, hands down, the Stanford campus is the safest place I’ve ever felt. I think most people understand that to be the case and are not scared off by the way the Dept. of Ed figures are reported. Indeed, early indications are that Stanford’s yield for the Class of 2020 may have jumped to as high as 87%, which blows every other national university (including Harvard) out of the water.
If you want to see precisely how the Cleary geography is defined for Dept of Ed crime reporting purposes, check out this chart. You can see why schools that own/control more property than others might end up with higher crime statistics. http://www.higheredcompliance.org/resources/resources/ProperlyClassifyingGeoLocale_CleryAct.pdf
Just curious where you heard that the yield may be 87%. Did you calculate this from the letter they sent too all the incoming freshman with the three books to read? In it they said they sent the books to 1798 incoming students. Dividing that by the 2063 students that were accepted, I also got 87%.
Yes, that is the exact same way I had calculated it @Multiverse7. Though I know at least a handful got in off the wait list so I think that might push it down slightly.
Actually, when I just reread the letter I saw that it is addressed to the Members of the Class of 2020 and Transfer Students. So, if you figure on about 30 transfer students, the yield could still be as high as 85.7%. Schools have different ways of accounting for students accepted off the waitlist. Not sure how Stanford treats them.
@SocalPapa - thank you so much for taking time to post this helpful information!
I, too, have been wondering about yield. Seems as though it has usually been reported a bit earlier than now. Wonder when they will officially release.
I am not sure what the yield rate has to do with my OP. I think Stanford is a very good school. But it does have some issues that are appropriate to be discussed in this forum. I know some of the posters think it is the perfect place. Some of us try and take a more analytical view
@collegedad13 - I found SocalPapa’s reply to be highly analytical.
Perhaps the yield rate is somewhat off-topic to your OP. However, it is clear that whatever your intention of reporting such statistics and regardless of their accuracy, they are not keeping students from matriculating at Stanford. The anticipated yield for this year is an area where Stanford likely will lead the nation.
@hoggirl yield has nothing to do with the issue. If the yield rate was 100 per cent it would make no difference. The issue is sexual violence. I believe that 1.5 million people signed a petition and Joe Biden spoke out in regards to the Brock Turner case. I have never said that Stanford is not a good academic institution. But we cant allow that to turn a blind eye to issues of national importance such as sexual violence
“Data shows a pattern of Northeast schools with the most rapes… whether this is due to a regional “culture” of reporting is pure conjecture.”
““It is really misguided to use sexual assault reports as rankings, because schools with higher rates are actually doing a better job of encouraging reporting and addressing the issue,” Laura Dunn, founder and executive director of the victims’ advocacy organization SurvJustice, said…Clery data should not be used as a tool for comparing or ranking institutions, said Mary P. Koss, a professor of public health at the University of Arizona and a pioneering researcher on the prevalence of campus sexual assault.”
Entire Article: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/06/13/advocates-warn-against-ranking-colleges-handling-sexual-assault-based-clery-data
@collegedad13 There are two principal reasons that fathers of college age children like us might want to look at the issue addressed by your OP:
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To help a child in selecting a college to attend in the first instance, or
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to examine whether the given school our child has chosen to attend might be improved.
Based on your posts in this thread (and elsewhere on CC) it appears you originally fit in category #1 and that your child passed up Stanford for Harvard. That is an excellent choice and I’m sure the best one for your child. I was originally in category #1 and am now in category #2 (I have two daughters who are current Stanford students).
I brought up yield because when choosing between Stanford and other top notch institutions (where good academics are a given), the decision typically comes down to fit, with the safety of the college environment often an important factor. The fact that so many people (who would be presumed to have taken the time to closely examine campus safety) have not found it a barrier to choosing Stanford is important evidence of the relative safety of that campus vs those of other top institutions. I can also tell you personally that both my daughters love the school and have never had any safety issues there.
Given that your child has already made their decision, I’m not sure why you remain so interested in sparking discussion about a school your child simply applied to at one point. Nevertheless, as a Stanford parent I surely welcome a fair and frank discussion about any issues related to the school, no matter the source.
since we’re being analytical… cough… cough… Stanford leads the nation in…
Nobel Prizes this century
Stanford University
Columbia University
University of California, Berkeley
Princeton University
University of Chicago
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
University of California, Santa Barbara
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Technion Israel Institute of Technology
Stanford accounted for over 10% of the inductees into the National Academy of Sciences for the past 2 years the most of any school by far.
Fund raising 2015 - Stanford has been the top fund raising school for the past 10 of 11 years
Stanford University (1) $1.63 billion
Harvard University (6) $1.05 billion
University of Southern California (101) $653.03 million
University of California-San Francisco (380) $608.58 million
Cornell University (34) $590.64 million
Johns Hopkins University (85) $582.68 million
Columbia University (28) $552.68 million
Princeton University (3) $549.84 million
Northwestern University (89) $536.83 million
Admissions yield 2015
Stanford University 81.1%
Harvard University 80.0%
MIT 72.4%*
Yale University 71.7%*
Princeton University 68.6%
University of Pennsylvania 66%
Admit Rate 2016
Stanford 4.7%
Harvard 5.2%
Columbia 6.0%
Yale 6.3%
Princeton 6.5%
University of Chicago 7.6%
MIT 7.8%
Caltech 7.9%
Stanford has also won the directors cup for 22 straight years as the best athletic program in the country.
@sbballer
Many universities have issues with athletics and rape, but as one of the world’s leading universities, people are looking for Stanford to take this issue seriously and show leadership in proactively addressing and eliminating this behavior on its campus.
I know that many members of the Stanford community are taking this issue seriously, but I have the impression that the Stanford President has, thus far, been very unresponsive and seems to want to avoid addressing the issue. Why do you think that is?
I certainly agree that rape is a very serious crime. I think almost everyone would agree that it is very serious. I also think that many universities have some issues with athletes, especially male athletes.
At any given time, Stanford has about 16,000 students. I am not familiar with the numbers. Could you tell me how many Stanford students have been convicted of rape over the past five years? How does that compare with other universities? Since you raised the issue of “rape,” I’m interested in statistics for that crime, not for other crimes or borish behavior that might not raise to the level of a crime. I’m also interested in convictions. I fully understand crimes can happen without ultimate convictions, but that is true at all schools.
I know this is an emotional subject, and rightly so, but it would be great if you could provide some solid facts. Thanks.
@fredthered I think you will see that some of the data you are interested in has been posted in the thread. Try reading the link in the OPs post and the subsequent posts.