Stanford Legacy REA?

phantasmagoric · August 10, 2011, 9:13am

This question just keeps popping up - here’s the answer I’ve given to others:

This is a common misconception that the admissions office has continually debunked. Yes, it is true that the early pool is more competitive (which the admissions office has admitted many times), i.e. there is a higher proportion of students who are more qualified. But that does not mean that it’s harder to get into early, because of an additional factor: deferral. If a student were, in theory, more likely to get in during the RD round than in the early round, he or she would be deferred to the RD round. So while it’s true that the early round has lots of very competitive admits, in addition to special cases like athletes, they only reject the ones who they’re certain will not be admitted in the RD round. For those who might get in depending on how competitive the RD pool is, the admissions office defers them. But as they’ve said many times, they’re committed to giving as many final decisions as possible during the early round, so that means they are certain that a) the ones who are admitted would be admitted no matter what, b) the ones who are rejected would not get in during RD, much less the early round, and c) the ones who are deferred have a chance in the RD round (about 10% of those deferred get in).

As the director of admissions says, from a Daily article (emphasis mine):

“We encourage students to apply if they know Stanford is their first choice,” Patterson said. “We also encourage students to apply if they feel prepared and ready to submit their application.”

There is no disadvantage to applying early, and the only advantage would be finding out the decision earlier, Patterson said.

“If we’re going to admit a student in restrictive early action, we would admit the same student in regular decision,” Patterson said.

In reference to deferrals–when a student’s admission decision is postponed to the regular decision round–Patterson said the admission office usually prefers to give students an answer right away.

“We defer students when we want to see additional information from them and when we want to look at them in the context of the entire applicant pool,” Patterson said, “but our philosophy is that we want to let as many as we can know our final decision.”

[Restrictive</a> early action application numbers rise 7 percent | Stanford Daily](<a href=“http://www.stanforddaily.com/2010/11/11/restrictive-early-action-application-numbers-rise-7-percent/]Restrictive”>Restrictive early action application numbers rise 7 percent)

As for legacy status, in general it makes a very small impact if any at all. The acceptance rate for legacies is apparently around twice that of the general acceptance rate. That’s not so much because of preference, but rather because legacy students on average tend to be the most qualified, as they’re more well-off than most applicants. It’s a fact that the higher your income, the more likely you are to be qualified for college - SAT scores are highly correlated with income, as well as non-quantifiable factors. Students who come from the higher income brackets tend to have the money for tutors, SAT prep classes, music lessons, service trips to other countries, summer programs, college counselors, etc. Not to mention that they tend to be able to go to better schools (either private ones or public schools in strong districts) with lots of advanced classes, extracurricular activities of every kind, and so on. That’s why legacy students at top colleges get in at much higher rates - not so much because of explicit preference (there’s little of it), but because they’re naturally the most qualified students out there, having come from well-educated parents with higher incomes who push their children to go to college.

So if Stanford is your first choice, then you should apply REA. Simple as that.

Stanford Legacy REA?

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