<p>Lets include a… AFFIRMATIVE ACTION into the mix of admitted students.</p>
<p>And while we’re at it, let’s include AFFIRMATIVE ACTION for the rich a.k.a. legacy admits, which I’m amazed that even at the graduate level, you find plenty of on this campus.</p>
<p>What in the world do these two prior posts have to do with this discussion?</p>
<p>lol I was just thinking the same thing.</p>
<p>I actually have no idea. I was just responding to the reactionary response to the poster above me.</p>
<p>When I said AA as in URM, I was responding to a post that mentioned only athletes and really smart Asians get into Stanford. (Post #11)</p>
<p>Wahoomb, </p>
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<p>I personally have not heard of graduate-level legacy admissions. Do the grad school applications to Stanford have a space to list your legacy affiliations? (I just finished a PhD application to Stanford, and there wasn’t anywhere to put affiliation, though it might depend on what program you apply to and whether it’s MS or PhD.)</p>
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<p>This always makes me laugh, because Stanford is the only elite school (among HYPSM, at least) that gets a lot of flack for AA. If you look at the % of students in each minority category, against a school like Harvard, both have 8% black students; both have about 1% native (Stanford’s total native population has dropped from its previous 3%); and both are 17-18% Asian; and though Stanford has a higher proportion of Hispanic students, that’s to be expected given that it gets a large portion of its applicants from California, which has an extremely large Hispanic population.</p>
<p>This is, at least from what I’ve seen on CC, how people tend to treat AA for different schools, even though the statistics tell them otherwise.</p>
<p>What I meant is that in my cohort alone, 4 of the students have at least one parent who is a Stanford alum (almost half of the cohort). In grad school orientation, I met a plethora of students who had very strong family connections to the university (boh parents + siblings, both parents, grandfather, etc).</p>
<p>I’m sure many of you have read the Stanford summary in Fiske’s college guide. I think their statement that ‘Stanford is the first great truly American university’ provides one of the key reasons why this school is seeing an ever increasing number of applications.</p>
<p>The composition of what Stanford is offering academically and socially is setting the standard for what a great univeristy is supposed be as we move into the early part of the 21st century. Yes, places like Harvard and Yale have done a good job of trying to keep up. People like Dad2 think the older the better, so by that standard the University of Salamanca or Padua should still be great. The reality is that a great school in this day and age has to be evaluated much differently than universities were a 100 years ago. It also explains why a relatively new school such as UC San Diego has manged to reach the upper echelon so quickly. Stating the obvious, students want the best education in practical, relevant disciplines.</p>
<p>Yale seeing a little slip in applications… Like they say, adapt or die.</p>
<p>wahoomb,</p>
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<p>Interesting–that seems like quite a bit (other people might have the same experience). At the same time, I don’t think that’s unexpected; Stanford, among others, anticipate large numbers of qualified applicants from undergraduate students whose parents or grandparents are alums, simply because the influence of a Stanford degree in a family is high. It doesn’t seem far enough to expect the same for graduate students, but as far as I’ve seen, legacy admissions apply to undergraduate applications. I think it is plausible that legacy admissions could have an effect on graduate admissions, but I haven’t found anything discussing such. If you (or anyone else) find information about this, please let us know–I think legacy graduate admissions, if they exist, would be under-reported and under-studied.</p>
<p>(My intuition is that it’d be less important, if even considered, since graduate admissions are very research-based, and even things like extracurricular activities are unimportant. For example, as a result of these research-based policies, 1/3 of grad students are international students. That’s my personal hunch, though.)</p>
<p>SunDiego,</p>
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<p>I don’t have the Fiske guide, but could you provide the context of why they consider Stanford a ‘truly American’ university? (In other words, did they mention anything specific regarding why Stanford is particularly ‘American’?)</p>
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<p>I second that–my perception of UCSD has changed a lot over the past 3 years, and I think it’s very close to being on par with Berkeley and UCLA, not simply a school in ‘purgatory’ between the top and the middle (UCSB, UCD, UCI).</p>
<p>Phantasm’,
Here’s a section (they have a lenthgy write up in their Guide to Colleges) from Fiske overview:</p>
<p>‘Stanford is a world away from the Gothic intellectual culture of the Ivies. Virtually all the great Eastern universities began as places to ponder human existence and the meaning of life, using European institutions as their models. Stanford, by contrast, built its academic reputation around science and engineering, fields characterized by American ingenuity, and only later cultivated excellence in the humanities and social sciences. Stanford is, without a doubt, the nations first great American university.’</p>
<p>thank you, SunDiego.
this is why I’m proud to be going to Stanford :)</p>
<p>SunDiego,</p>
<p>Thanks for that–their reasoning makes sense. I had assumed they would mention (Fiske may have) that Stanford, unlike many East Coast schools, started explicitly as coeducational and nondenominational, which feels very ‘American’ to me. (IMO, divinity schools are the last vestige of what some of the Ivies once were.)</p>