To refer to any student-athletes as “Neanderthals” is unacceptable and just so wrong on so many levels. I don’t care how smart some people are. Unless we are work together – and this is something that team sports teach and promote – we are in deep trouble. Anyway, I think we beat this dead horse too long. lol
@CA94309 @hebegebe You might not agree with how he chose to respond to the essay prompt, but you can’t deny that that kid has some serious accomplishments under his belt. Stanford (and Yale and Princeton) would not have admitted him if he didn’t.
I don’t understand why people are so annoyed with someone taking a risk and the risk paying off.
@Penn95 I think he must have had other qualities for sure. My response is very limited to a specific question of whether I think his essay was creative and responsive to the question asked. Not really to both questions. However, I care very little about whether he got in or didn’t get in because students get accepted to HYPSM in very different ways and routes, so I don’t really care whether it’s fair or not fair. The college wanted to admit him, so they did.
Oops, I am beating this dead horse again. I really have to STOP. lol
@DeepBlue86, I think you’re probably pretty close in your analysis. The numbers released a few years ago from Stanford faculty senate minutes showed 214 cross-admits with Harvard, 155 with Princeton and 184 with Yale. I believe the methodology is such that the total number of people is less than 214 + 155 + 184 = 553 as some were admitted to more than one of HYP as well as Stanford.
So most Stanford admits were not admitted to any of HYP, and likely the same is true for those other schools as well (most were admitted to only one of that group). To your point, with high yield rates for all, mathematically there can’t be that many cross admits.
A few years back, before H and P resumed early admisson, about 43% of Stanford’s admits were HYPSM cross-admits (more than a 1000), and Stanford won 52% of those cross-admits. 1/3 of Stanford students are those cross-admits.
I’d like to see a source for those figures, @ewho. Even if it were true, though, today HYPS each have yields of 70-80%. They admit overlapping but very different cohorts of applicants, and each of them lands the vast majority of those they admit. Go where you feel most comfortable, if you’re in the small minority that’s fortunate enough to be admitted to more than one; you’re probably going to do just as well at whichever you pick (and parsing which has a slightly better department in this or that area is by and large a waste of time).
@DeepBlue86 While I agree that splitting hairs between HYPS is not really meaningful, the kids admitted to more than one of these tend to be very competitive and prestige-conscious. There is a reason for example most Harvard -Yale cross admits turn down Yale for Harvard.
Personally I would be very interested to see a recent HYPS cross-admit split. Any knows if there is any data out there for the classes of 2019 or 2020 ?
@@DeepBlue86 I’m the source. 
google “stanford harvard yale princeton” and you will see. To warn you that the article was math intensive.
Or
http://mathacle.blogspot.com/2012/01/stanford-or-harvardyaleprincetonmit-or.html?m=1
@Penn95 the info about the HYPSM cross-admits is highly guarded, I believe. The info for the schools themselves can be easily obtained : all they have to do is to send each other the lists of admits and matriculates in October. No abuse of stats here since it is the population data.
For us to guess, it is fairly difficult to figure out the pie problem with only partial info. The yield of cross-admits should be partially associated with the overall yield, relatively. I am so sick to figure this thing out again since my original analysis. But I’m confident that stanford’s yield of cross-admit is higher now than it was before, simply by looking at the overall yield.
@ewho that makes sense. My guess would be that Stanford now is about neck and neck with Harvard (like 50-50 to 45-55 in favor of either), wins by a bit over Yale (maybe 40-60), and wins substantially over Princeton and MIT (30-70 or more). Also the parchment match-up data d not tell the whole story since they include data from all the previous years i think.
@Penn95 - yes, they’re kids, often with prestige-conscious parents. Is the point to attempt to measure which school is more prestigious than another? If so, good luck and have fun. As I think most will concede, the education, grad school admission or job a kid gets is going to be far more dependent on who they are than which of these four tippy-top schools they went to. In any case, we don’t have the data to support such an analysis.
As the author of that article states, now that HYPS all have SCEA, the number of cross-admits of Stanford with any one school is no more than a couple of hundred or so, and often much less (and I agree with him - I don’t know where they could reliably have got that data unless the admissions offices are - probably illegally - sharing names).
Does anyone (apart from Stanford administrators and fans who are keen for Stanford to be seen as at least equal to Harvard) really care if something like 200 admitted to both Stanford and Harvard, out of more than 3,800 admitted to Stanford and/or Harvard, chose one or the other? Does that say anything meaningful about the relative prestige of either school, when both get 80% yields?
I think one of the commenters on that article poses an interesting question regarding geographic preferences. It seems intuitively true to me that East Coasters will generally prefer HYP (and split their preferences among those three schools) and West Coasters will generally prefer Stanford, but it would be interesting to see the data for cross-admits segmented geographically. I’ll bet it would show that geographical location is much more important than relative “prestige” among HYPS, but I’d revise my opinion if Stanford could be shown to be handily winning cross-admits to HYP from New England and the Mid-Atlantic states.
.No, I don’t know what his accomplishment are, so I cannot deny or confirm anything. Neither does anyone who has not read his application or don’t know him personally, so all of us are guessing here. Pretty much all of what has been written about his essay suggests that he should not have been admitted. The is coming from the left (HuffPo) and right (National Review). Only enthusiastic Stanford parents on CC seem to think otherwise.
No one except the Admission Committee knows why he was admitted - maybe he was admitted because of the essay, maybe it was because he was very qualified and this essay did not matter, or maybe because of his wealthy family, or for some other reason.
We are not annoyed, I think you are the one who seemed to be annoyed.
I was the author and I never said that, not back then and not now.
For those who have no association with S or H, no.
The yield rates in the past several years:
H, S, Year
79.2%, 82.8%, 2016
80%, 80.9%, 2015
82.4%, 78.8%, 2014
81%, 76.5%, 2013
80.8%, 72.8%, 2012
Regardless where did the admits come from in the past several years, assumed that the schools have not changed their preferences in admitting the types of students, the relative changes in yield indicate that something has happening. The surging interests in CS/AI might have contributed to the changes, especially for those full-pay academic students who are interested in the next new things. Where to spend $70,000/year and what to study are the big questions. It is either to build the next AI things or to waste time to deal with the brown-noise markets while we have the pink-noise minds?
@slushy I was wondering if there were any personality differences between your two kids who ended up going to Princeton and Stanford? Congrats.
By the way, I do agree that the “best fit for a particular person” is the “best” approach.
Mathacle / @ewho - I wrote:
You replied:
But, unless I’m misreading, you speculated exactly that in your comment to your own post:
Clearly, Stanford’s yield has increased significantly over the past few years - and I would guess that interest in CS/AI has a lot to do with it. I think, though, that there has to be a natural ceiling on it. Unless S comes to be perceived as unquestionably dominant over H and all other schools, in all fields, so dominant that this trumps the geographical issue I referenced, there will always be some cross-admits who will choose HYP and others, for any number of reasons. Each school could raise its yield a bit more by moving to ED and admitting a lot of their classes that way, but that hurts the schools in other ways, by limiting the candidates they get a look at, so I doubt they’ll go there.
I have no view on “brown noise” or “pink noise”…
I misread the number as for HYPSM’s, not one school, my fault.
Our minds change too fast compared with the “white” noise. Collective actions of our minds make the (financial) markets more persistent in change while we view the markets as “white” noise… okay I will stop here if you don’t ask me more questions on this…
You should be ashamed of yourself for making generalizations like that. I would certainly ban you if I could.
^^ referring to post about Andrew Luck, athletes, Neanderthals, and rape.
@TiggerDad I don’t think you should engage in a debate of maturity with an undergrad, as you aren’t showing maturity in your posts. I am not sure what you are contributing to this discussion as you actually don’t have any experience at these schools either. Maybe you should reflect on the humbleness of those you admire.
@arbitrary99 I agree as to your “Neanderthals” post. As to TiggerDad posts, I do think certain posts that keep hyping Stanford over other great schools does disservice to Stanford rather than help Stanford. My goodness, there are many great schools in US, depending on your fit.