<p>The Yale admit rate is NOT “below Harvard’s” as you state.</p>
<p>Stanford can, in fact, increase the number of applications by the simple expedient of moving to the common app and online applications.</p>
<p>Similar moves upped the app numbers by more than 15% when made by Yale, Princeton and Cornell recently.</p>
<p>What Stanford has failed to do - and why, in consequence - its USNews standing has stalled - is to take steps to nationalize its recruiting. The West Coast applicants fall in their lap like fruit off the lowest limbs, without their half trying. In consquence, the recruiters have become lazy.</p>
<p>Harvard has led the way - with Yale and Princeton now following - in recruiting <em>nationally</em> with intense efforts in all corners of the United States. Stanford does not yet do this: in consequence, its yield rate is misleading, since its applicants come disproportionately from Califoirnia and the West, and its yield rate in other parts of the country are fairly modest.</p>
<p>If Shaw can wake up the self-satisfied, excessively regional Stanford admissions operation, he will be accomplishing something.</p>