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Stanford will no longer announce undergraduate application numbers
Dave_Berry
492 replies2724 threadsCC Admissions Expert Senior Member
"Stanford’s policy shift is intended to help de-emphasize the perceived importance of low admit rates at colleges and universities. The university will continue to publicly report application data to the federal government at the end of the admission cycle." ...
https://news.stanford.edu/2018/08/30/stanford-will-no-longer-announce-undergraduate-application-numbers/
50 replies https://news.stanford.edu/2018/08/30/stanford-will-no-longer-announce-undergraduate-application-numbers/
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Replies to: Stanford will no longer announce undergraduate application numbers
(I wonder something similar about UChicago RD, i.e., why bother. And Harvard? Please.)
I'll have to think some more, but I'm not sure that not reporting is really beneficial to students.
In addition, if Stanford continues to report to the government, the rate will end up in the NCES website eventually anyway - it won't go unnoticed.
If Stanford were really concerned about their admit rate being too low it would stop doing ANY marketing/outreach to any students. No emails, no glossy mailings. Full stop.
It feeds the false belief that an outstanding education is only available at the most selective universities/colleges;
Many outstanding programs are not even reviewed as they do not belong to the "top 20;"
Stanford would like applicants not seeking just prestige, but seeking a creative place to grow.
Their position makes perfect sense to me. The hype surrounding selectivity is making their job more difficult and it is damaging the entire process. I'm old enough to remember the very successful "lion-hearted" Chrysler ads from the '50's. The more horsepower, the better the vehicle? One popular metric should never define the selection process.
Thank you Stanford! You are trying to bring the discussion back on point!
The question is: why this opaqueness? My guess is to encourage even more applications. The vast majority of applications to a school like Stanford are—or should be—doomed from the start. But the retort is “you never know—why not apply?” Downplay the odds to get some additional applicants. Sort of like encouraging people to buy lottery tickets?
So, it is the talented students who don't apply. The best way to do is probably accepting the beat ones.
I think the problem is not the low admit rate but whether a talented applicant will be accepted, especially the Asians.
"During the admission process itself, and when admission decisions are issued each fall and spring, the university will not release application numbers. In the past, information about the incoming class, including application figures, was announced every spring. Stanford will continue to provide data on application numbers at the end of the admission cycle as part of an annual public report to the federal government."
The article then provides a link to a March 30, 2018 article in which Stanford announced its application figures for the class being admitted for Fall 2018. It then says Stanford will continue to provide figures to the federal government.
What I am not clear on is whether this means Stanford will no longer provide the application and admission figures in the Common Data Set (CDS). The CDS is something filled out and published in Fall for the Fall class that has already enrolled, i.e., it is not something created during the "admission process" of the class to which the figures apply but instead something that is only provided after that admission proces is long over.
If it is still going to provide the figures in the CDS, then essentially little has really changed since majority of colleges do not publish application and admission numbers of their incoming classes until they issue the CDS for the already enrolled class.
Moreover, the CDS is a document relied on by US News to provide rankings (USNews created the first CDS and is still one of the principal creators of any changes). USNews uses application and admission figures from the CDS as a factor in determining ranking. The US News ranking information released in August annually is actually always a year behind in that the figures it is relying on are for the prior year's starting class not the new one starting in the current August. If Stanford is actually going to cease providing figures in the CDS that would seem to create an issue for US News in determining its ranking. In the past, when a college has refused to provide key information relied on by US News in the CDS, US news has either lower their rank or "unranked" them. Is that something which will occur with Stanford if it refuses to provide figures in the CDS?