<p>was there a method to the madness, a pattern perhaps, or was it more or less random/politcal? any idea what stanford seems to be looking for in their applicants? what do they value most?</p>
<p>I got in, and I was surprised. If I could say anything, it would be this: INTELLECTUAL VITALITY (SOOOOOOO IMPORTANT -- write a killer essay for this one), and people who give back.</p>
<p>they value you, and the most significant way that is shown is in your essays and recommendations. SATs and GPAs are just numbers, essays and recs put everything into perspective. And you can't be the run of the mill brilliant person, you need to do something significant and have an impact in whatever you do. People are saying its arbitrary or random, I promise you it most certainly is not.</p>
<p>It obviously had little to do with writing ECs, as both GeoffreyChaucer and I (with writing as main ECs, and for him, awards), got rejected outright.</p>
<p>Evidently they weren't too concerned with test scores either...2400, 800/800/760 SAT IIs, 35 ACT...rejected. Valedictorian as well. </p>
<p>I'm trying to figure out what sort of extracurriculars they were after. My primary two were leadership (class president for 2 years, student government vice president, etc) and theater, I haven't seen enough other people with those to make any observations yet though.</p>
<p>Maybe they target how successful they think you will be in the future</p>
<p>Oh, wow. Its ridiculous. I guess my statement about leadership wasn't accurate either.</p>
<p>fortify: I plan on being extremely successful in the future, and I got rejected. ;)</p>
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<p>I satisfied both of these, or at least the latter, and it did nothing for me.</p>
<p>^Passion motivated by some desire, some cause, some outlook. </p>
<p>You can have all the writing awards in the world but if it looks like you just write because you're good at it and you want to win stuff, which may be the case, you don't distinguish yourself from the thousands of other probably stronger writing applications they've gotten over the year. Something about you has to give them a vision about where you'll fit, what you'll accomplish, and how you might leave stanford better than when you came.</p>
<p>Stanford is making an investment, having the highest scores or gpa or valedictorian status or token, discursive leadership positions doesn't show that you'll give a lot back to society by going to Stanford over any other school. </p>
<p>And of course, they will make mistakes; they're only human :)</p>
<p>I guessing something like starting a company would help a lot</p>
<p>Or curing cancer. Just wait... Somewhere down the road I'll be writing Stanford's textbooks and laughing about how I wasn't good enough for admission as an undergrad.</p>
<p>They arent looking for certain types of students. They want certain types of PEOPLE. What type..........i dont know.</p>
<p>Stanford is nuts, no other explanation. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Agreed. :p</p>
<p>EA was complete BS this year...although Stanford has been my dream school forever, I doubt that I will be wasting my SCEA on it after witnessing this slaughter...</p>
<p>As one of the admitted students, I'm going to guess that what they're looking for is passion, as cliched as it sounds. For many applicants, especially here on CC, it just seems like they do all of their extracurriculars for the sake of getting into college. Stanford seems to look for people who move beyond the college process and who do things just because they love them. These are the kind of people who will do something with their degree, who will see Stanford as the beginning of a journey, and not the destination of some long, hard battle already fought. Does being the president of ten different clubs really show much leadership ability? At my school, I know it doesn't. When an applicant pool is filled with valedictorians and perfect SAT scores, the applicant has to have something that will truly excite an admissions officer. The admissions officers have to feel something when they read your application if you want them to fight for you in that room. </p>
<p>That said, I'm still in shock that I got in.</p>
<p>^ I'd like to refute. I think a lot of us on CC know here if we do stuff "just for apps", we're screwing ourselves over for admissions b/c the adcoms will see that though our essays. I genuinely think a lot of people here on CC do things because they truly love the activity -- whether they took the effort to explain through their essays was probably one of the varied unknowns of each person's app.</p>
<p>If there is any leeway for your argument, I believe a lot of people will agree when we say that the activity started out as "app-worthy" activity. Personally, I think a lot of those activities grew into passions that many have come to love and cherish and have become honestly passionate about. Thus, I really don't think a "lack of passion" in reality could ever be a legitimate reason for a rejection for anyone. We all had passion and we still have the passion. The only thing we can really blame is that the EA's were just too selective this year.</p>
<p>Again, as I have posted in other threads, condolences to those who got rejected or deferred. Many of you didn't deserve it.</p>
<p>I can honestly say I've never done anything just for college apps. I promised myself I wouldn't. Now that I'm deferred, I'm thinking maybe I should have, lol.</p>
<p>Just throwing a random thought out there, and hopefully it's not a terrible first post haha, but for the people that didn't get in, did you submit your applications very close to the deadline (Nov. 1)? Just wondering because someone jokingly (at first) said that maybe Stanford just didn't have time to read all the applications since there were so many, and that they just deferred the ones they didn't yet finish. </p>
<p>p.s. in case you are wondering I got deferred as well, and am part the "great stats, great EC's asian males that got deferred" group (haha). I submitted my app on the last day.</p>