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<p>I brought up top 10 percent of class specific to a discussion point nonsense of WashU being top heavy with great students; the balance supposedly filled out with not-so-good students compared to peer schools. In that, class rank is very appropriate. </p>
<p>True, the differences between high school x and y can make the top 10 metric rather worthless. Still the question remains, why is Stanford recruiting kids out of the top 10 percent of the schools from which it is drawing? It’s not that UC Santa Barbara has a stronger student body top to bottom. It is that the bottom of Santa Barbara’s class is stronger than the bottom of Stanford’s class. Stanford can’t care about having a big-time sport programs without suffering the consequences.</p>