how important is it to Stanford to be URM

phantasmagoric
Fri, 04 Feb 2011 21:57:17 +0000

Posted from another thread, but just to be clear in this thread, it’s no more important than at schools like Harvard, Yale, etc. Look at the % students for each minority

Ethnicity - Harvard % - Yale % - Stanford %

African American - 8 - 8.5 - 7.3
Native American - 1 - 1.3 - 1.3
Asian or Pacific Islander - 17.2 - 14.3 - 17.8
Hispanic - 7.4 - 8.5 - 15.7

http://www.provost.harvard.edu/institutional_research/Provost_-_FB2009_10_Sec02_Enrollments.pdf
http://www.yale.edu/oir/cds.pdf
[Stanford University: Common Data Set 2010-2011](http://ucomm.stanford.edu/cds/2010.html)

The only noticeable difference is in the Hispanic population, which is predictable, given that almost 40% of the state is Hispanic (coincidentally, roughly 40% of the student body comes from California).

On the whole, though, URM status is not “pretty significant” or even “important”; as the links above say, it’s “considered,” nothing more, and not being an URM will not harm your application (after all, the largest portion of all these student bodies is not a minority).