<p>According to the Yale Daily News, Yale's Dean of Admissions, Richard Shaw, has accepted a post as Stanford's dean of admissions.</p>
<p><a href="http://161.58.180.45/article.asp?AID=29517%5B/url%5D">http://161.58.180.45/article.asp?AID=29517</a></p>
<p>If the link doesn't work, just go to <a href="http://www.yaledailynews.com%5B/url%5D">www.yaledailynews.com</a>.</p>
<p>Is that a lateral or a promotion or just a move to better weather? More importantly will it affect the US News and World Report rankings? Will Stanford suddenly become obviously way superior to Yale in the opion of every precocious 18 year old HS senior?</p>
<p>Shaw was out west (CA and Colorado) from 1972-88. His wife has an interesting name--Delphine Red Shirt. Wonder where he went to college? He could be from out West originally.</p>
<p>A little googling discovered that his wife is a "noted Lakota writer." She seems to be a very interesting woman. <a href="http://www.hanksville.org/storytellers/redshirt/%5B/url%5D">http://www.hanksville.org/storytellers/redshirt/</a></p>
<p>And he graduated from Dartmouth.</p>
<p>United States Marine Corps? Wow.</p>
<p>Wonder if she met Mr. Shaw at Yale or she had those jobs at Yale because she was married to Mr. Shaw and that's where they lived.</p>
<p>so where do you think anne marie porras (stanford) is going?</p>
<p>Shaw did a super job at Yale; Stanford did well to land him. Previous AD Robin Mamlet, who they got from Swarthmore, was also terrific, I thought. Will "Stanford become obviously superior to Yale" in the eyes of applicants? Best study of relative strength of the two in the eyes of top applicants is the "Revealed Preference" study of cross-admits shows them neck and neck at #2, behind Harvard, but they are such very different schools...</p>
<p>I was not impressed by the Yale admission staff myself; and I remember the rather snooty letter Berurah's S got from his regional rep, suggesting that his app was not strong enough to get admitted into highly selective colleges. We did not visit Stanford but attended a local admission presentation which was well done. My S was admitted to Stanford, and Anne Marie Poras and her staff did everything to convince him to come, even sending him an electronic B-day greeting! A local alum also contact S immediately after S got the thick envelop. Despite all this attention, S decided he wanted snow so he will be staying in NE.</p>
<p>The letter to Berurah's son, subject of hundreds of cc posts, was unfortunate, deplorably callow, a mistake that I'm sure Shaw would have squelched, had he known. Can't say I loved the admissions process at Yale, but Shaw's results speak for themselves.</p>
<p>If S had decided to apply to Yale, it would have definitely been in spite of, rather than because of, the admission staff he dealt with.</p>
<p>Remember that it was just about a year ago that Richard Brodhead officially assumed his role as President of Duke. He had previously been the Dean of Students at Yale. IMO, that was a good move for Duke and a loss for Yale.</p>
<p>Where's the thread about the letter that Yale sent to Berurah's son? I can't find it, and I don't think I ever read it.</p>
<p>Not only were they inappropriate and unkind to send any such letter, but horribly wrong. As I remember, Berurah's son ended up with some pretty stunning choices in April. Where is Berurah, anyway?</p>
<p>Marite- it's great to see you back :).</p>
<p>What struck me about the adcoms my S dealt with was that they were very recent Yale graduates. I don't know whether this is a common practice at other colleges, but it makes for a degree of inexperience and perspective and a high degree of turnover. The regional rep my S had contacted one year was no longer there the following October. The regional rep who wrote to Breurah's S was similarly a recent graduate. </p>
<p>That said, I've always told my Ss that they should not judge a college by its admission staff but by the impressions they get from talking to students and profs as well as other factors of importance to them. The profs my S talked to were very helpful and forthcoming and the students were very happy and enthusiastic about Yale. The son of a CC poster very kindly showed S around, making up for the snafus in the admissions office.</p>
<p>It's not uncommon for a portion of any college's adcom members to be recent graduates from the college. After all, what are you going to do with that degree in medieval Bulgarian literature? This phenomena seems to be more prevalent at the big Ivies (especially Yale--ours was a recent graduate in history) who get a lot of applications. Many of those only do it for a couple of years and then move on to grad school or law school. I would think that it would be hard to keep continuity going.</p>
<p>Other schools have professional adcoms who make a living doing it. It seems like there is a surprisingly high amount of turnover as adcoms skip from school to school climbing up the adcom ladder.</p>
<p>Not sure if I could specifically pinpoint Shaw's accomplishments at Yale, though. It was Princeton that started the financial initiatives that replaced loans with grants. And Harvard that started not requiring any any parental contribution if you made less than $40K.</p>
<p>Yes, hard to pinpoint. Switch to SCEA was a very smart move. I believe yield has improved; more "buzz," at least on CC. Certainly think Marite's advice not to judge a school on its admissions department is right on. I remember that when I was on the faculty at Vassar, we were only dimly aware of admissions office, considered them the sales force.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>when I was on the faculty at Vassar, we were only dimly aware of admissions office, considered them the sales force.<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Adcoms do wear 2 hats--in the early fall, they are beating the bushes encouraging people to apply. In the early winter and mid-spring, they are denying admission to those very people they encouraged to apply.</p>
<p>Yale Admission has always seemed very straightforward in their approach.
When they used their own appl, it was not packed with little questions that Princeton liked to have.
Going to SCEA was an excellent move (taking a lot of pressure off students).
They also have the most flex policy regarding old/new SAT I for next year's applicants.</p>
<p>The above is not biased as I'm P alum.</p>
<p>Credit for Yale going SCEA goes to its President, Richard Levin, who would actually prefer to det rid of ED/EA altogether:</p>
<p>Taking a gamble on the admissions game
President Levin wants Yale to get rid of early decision. But who will follow?</p>
<p>It is one thing to crow about wanting to see changes, and another to stop rewarding the early admits. </p>
<p>Yale admits enough early applicants to fill 50% of its entire class. Magically, the attrition allows the school to stay a bit below the illusory 50% threshold -numbers that are strikingly similar to Harvard's and Stanford's. If you had the number of early deferrals who are later accepted, the numbers of admits from the early pool is as high as 70%. </p>
<p>There is a reason WHY the early applications are so high ... it works like magic for the school and for a number of candidates.</p>