What are my chances Early Action

Colleges and Universities A-Z Stanford University
1

<p>-competitive college prep school</p>

<p>-pretty rigorous schedule, honors courses whenever possible, 2 AP's a
year for 11th and 12th grade, (our school only allows three AP's a
year and only in 11th and 12th grade)
-in 9th grade just the basic classes with honors geometry
-in 10th just the basic classes with honors algebra 2
-in 11th honors precalc BC, ap chem (got a 5 on AP), ap english (got a
2 on AP), us history, french 4, and digital projects
-in 12th honors physics, ap bio, ap calc BC, debate/a lit class,
financial life skills, animation independent study
-overall GPA is a weighted 4.03 on a maximum unweighted 4.33 scale
(unweighted 3.85)</p>

<p>-took the SAT twice got a 1370 first time, 1470 second time (800M, 670V)
-800 chem SATII, 800 Math IIC SATII, 700 Writing SATII</p>

<p>-Average extracurriculars/ awards/ volunteering/ etc., but no single
special interest or talent.
-National honors society, high honors, couple class awards, an art award.
-worked at NASA last summer, did a couple littler assistant jobs
throughout high school
-Did a little tutoring, food drives, health fairs, and other
volunteering things each about once a year
-student council, french exchange, amnesty international secretary,
and a couple other clubs just for a year
-tennis 9, 10th and 12th, (no awards)
-took some summer classes at local colleges for two summers</p>

<p>-good recomendations and probably a slightly above average essay</p>

<p>what are my chances?</p>

<p>Thanks alot</p>

2

<p>i think you have above average chances...about 40%, which is still much better than the 20% average. the only negative factor i see in your app is your relatively low verbal score</p>

3

<p>i know this is kind of a far-fetched question, but even though stanford has its low acceptance rate does that mean that many relatively unqualified people apply and so if you have stats comparable to the middle 50th percentile of current freshman you have a very good chance. Or does the low accept rate reflect that many many superqualified people with stats comparable to current freshman apply and that everyone kind of has the same chances. </p>

<p>I dont know if that makes sense, but the reason i ask is because i know alot of people with not so great stats applying to top ten schools and ivies, and that would make me think that the low accept rates are deceiving.</p>

4

<p>Well they work hard to get as many applicants as possible so they can reject a lot of them... my guess is that somewhere between 30%-50% go in the automatic reject pile. The rest are well qualified. I'll bet that for every student who is accepted, there is another overly qualified student who could take his/her place. Just a guess, no real stats behind it.</p>

5

<p>I actually don't know, but I'm more inclined to believe it's because of slews of underqualified applicants. Stanford and other highly selective schools want a low acceptance rate and the best way to do that is to encourage as many people to apply as possible. This is why they don't have a cut-off SAT score or GPA since they don't want to discourage undequalified students from applying. Thus, they can maintain an artificially low accept rate.</p>

<p>This is a complete guess, but out of the however many people who apply to Stanford, I'd be willing to bet only 2/3 of them actually have competetive stats (and I mean competetive as in within 25% of the avg.). </p>

<p>But to answer your question, yes. If you're within the 50th percentile, I think you have decent chances. Essentially, you have a 35-40% of getting in (complete conjecture but fairly close - maybe + or - 5%?). From there, what matters is how you present yourself through your essays and what your teachers/counselor say about you.</p>

6

<p>To clarify how I got the 35-40% number, I assumed the Stanford admit rate was 20% and that 1/3 of the applicants had no realistic chance of being accepted. </p>

<p>The equation for finding the admit rate is:</p>

<p>Admit Rate = X(total number of people who got accepted) / P(total number of applicants)</p>

<p>If you rearrange the equation and plug in 0.2 for the Admit Rate, it looks like this:</p>

<p>X = P*Admit Rate
= 0.2P</p>

<p>However, as I said, I assumed 1/3 of the applicants weren't qualified. So I wrote a second equation that took this into account.</p>

<p>X = (1 - 1/3)P<em>Admit Rate
=(2/3)P</em>Admit Rate</p>

<p>Since X(the total number of accepted students) will be the same, I set the two equations equal to one another getting:</p>

<p>(2/3)P*Admit Rate = 0.2P</p>

<p>The P's cancel out and after some rearranging you get:</p>

<p>Admit Rate = (3/2) * 0.2
= 0.3</p>

<p>So after you cut out the 1/3 people who aren't qualified, the admit rate rises to 30%. Since you're within the 50th percentile of the freshmen, I added an extra 5-10% to your chances since you have a slight advantage over 50% of the competition.</p>

7

<p>For what its worth: at an info session at Yale, they actually said they could kill their incoming freshman class, take the next 2000 or so people, and there would be no noticeable difference. Using StressingOut's logic, they could do that about 6 times.</p>

8

<p>thats a nice way of thinking about it, killing all the freshman</p>

9

<p>How did you arrive at that conclusion? The person at your info. session essentially said there was little difference between the 2000 people who were accepted and the 2000 people just below them. How were you able to jump from this to saying Yale could repeat this process 6 times?</p>

<p>And how does that disprove my logic?</p>

10

<p>ok i was just reading through the ea essay topics and everybody has the most unique, interesting essays. mine are pretty simple and straightforward on pretty commonplace topics. how much do essays really matter. i know for some of my state schools they say it really has no impact either way. I know stanford puts more emphasis, but i mean are there any percentages out there on their importance to the admissions process.</p>

11

<p>The importance of essays depends on your competetiveness. If you have high gpa/sats/ecs, the essay won't be that big a deal. So long as you have a solid attempt, you'll be fine.</p>

<p>For the rest of us who are below this level, but still in the fairly competetive pool, the essay becomes much more important. Essentially, all of us look alike in stats so our only way of distinguishing ourselves is through the essay.</p>

<p>In short, your stats and your essay are inversely proportional. The higher your stats, the lower your essay needs to be for acceptance. The lower your stats, the more important the essay becomes.</p>

12

<p>You can write brilliant essays on commonplace topics. Essays I'd think are pretty important in that the more the adcom gets to know you the harder it is to reject you. They say they accept applicants and reject applications, or some nonsense like that. They matter in that they should make you sound like an interesting person. A great essay will not get someone in, and it would take a very bad essay to keep someone out (like mentioning your criminal record or describing the night you lost your virginity in detail or something equally awful).</p>

13

<p>ha thanks marligirl, actually i was reading your post on what your essays were about and thats what made me think about how bad mine are.</p>

14

<p>I think actually there are more competitive applicants than 2/3. People who apply obviously think they have a fighting chance or they wouldn't waste the $70. My mom's friend used to be part of addmissions at Stanford and I asked kind of the same question. She said after being given a stack of 100 or so applicants a day there would really be only one or two total larks. That said, you know you guys are good and you got the stats and what not, it's all chance at this point.</p>

<p>pman: essays are important, but really from what I've heard all they do is tip the balence. Admissions doesn't like A LOT of the essays they read, so don't stress too much. What really hindered me from finishing mine was wanting to write a <em>stanford</em> essay. But, really just be yourself (I know, everyone says that). As for your chances, looks good, but I don't have a clue ^_^</p>

15

<p>The problem is, people have vastly different ideas of who's a "competitive" applicant. So to your mom's friend, that could have meant someone with a 1000 SAT. However, others may consider, let's say someone with a 1300 as having a hard time of getting in, which is a very good score. So it's all relative. Personally, I know people applying to top-schools who are under-qualified, despite their reasonably good SATs. So don't fret. They're out there. </p>

<p>As for pman, good stats, good chances. The NASA thing really stands out. And it depends on whether or not they're looking for a well-rounded applicant or not at the time.</p>

16

<p>I wasn't trying to disprove your logic StressingOut, I was using it to prove your point. The way I figured that they could repeat the process 6 times is because, according to you, about 2/3 of the applicant pool is competitive and could survive the workload at somewhere like Stanford or Yale. If they accept just under 2000 applicants, out of a pool of about 20,000...13,333 (about 6 x 2000) of them are "competitive."</p>

17

<p>I agree with jellybean. I think you certainly have a chance. Nothing jumps out as especially unusual/amazing (like no national or international recognition), so I bet it will depend a lot on recs and essays (although depending on how involved you were with NASA, that could be a big plus). Part of that is simply understanding where you fit within your class and how strong that GPA is as well as how hard the courseload is within the context of your school. Strong teacher recs and essays that the adcom happened to like could make you an applicant who stands out and get you in. The good news: with some luck you have a very good chance. The bad news: at this point it really is just luck, when they happen to read the app, how much the person reading the app values your strengths, their own personal beliefs, etc. I promise they will at least strongly consider admitting you, but beyond that no one can be sure. Good luck! </p>

<p>Oh, and btw, how is talking about some random lunch time conversation with my friends not commonplace? I think my extended essay is pretty simple and straightforward, it's just some dialogue with a short paragraph at the end. Just me hanging out with my friends... what could be less out of the ordinary/impressive?</p>