<p>why is it bad for waitlisted people? I don’t see your line of reasoning. Please explain. It is only a 68% yield rate, which means they have to resort to the waiting lists.</p>
<p>“So the secret is out–high school GPA is almost the only thing that matters if you want to be accepted by Stanford.”</p>
<p>yayverily, there is no way that is correct. The reason is this: there are too many applicants with a 4.0 for Stanford to accept 84% of them. For example, there were 3,000 Valedictorians in the Harvard pool last year. I assume most of these had a 4.0, and that many students who were not Valedictorian had a 4.0 as well. Even if GPA were the ONLY factor, there is no way that 84% could be accepted.</p>
<p>Well, it would be great for waitlisted people if Stanford planned on a 100% matriculation rate. Obviously, they didn’t, which is why they admitted so many students, who, if they all came, would wreck havoc for Stanford’s housing. </p>
<p>They planned (or guessed) pretty well this year bc last year the full class size was only 1633 (with 13 waitlisted kids) so basically 1620. This year they have 1657, so if they only wanted a class as big as last years, they wouldn’t take anyone off the waitlist. Hopefully they want a big class and have to take more off the waitlist.</p>
<p>Clearly those test scores don’t even enter the picture, considering how high Stanford’s averages are.</p>
<p>:rolleyes:</p>
<p>
That’s not the point. Their use of “at least” implies that the GPA they’re talking about is weighted GPA. So, for example, if Stanford releases a statistic that 80% of those accepted had a 700 or higher SAT Math score, would you be able to infer that a large percentage of Stanford admits had 800s? No, of course not, this inference makes no statistical sense. Hence you can’t infer that lots of people had 4.0uw knowing that lots of people had 4.0w.</p>
<p>
I just don’t know. In my class of 390 (and my school isn’t especially competitive, just sorta grade inflated), we had 16 people with 4.0 unweighted after seven semesters. I was the only one who got in.</p>
<p>Maybe the Dean used “straight A’s” to mean 4.0 weighted? It sounds about right that 80-some percent of people with 4.0 weighted are accepted, considering how many URM/athlete/legacy/really bright kids who got a few low grades there are.</p>
<p>To clarify for alexinorbit:</p>
<p>Stanford receives such and such number of applications each year (this year, it was over 22,000), and admits such and such percentage of them (Just under 11%). If every admit accepted their offer of admission, there would be no need to take people from the waitlist, because the yield would be 100%. However, this is never the case. While most students choose to enroll at Stanford, some do not. Over the years, Stanford has observed this, and has learned to add an extra number (in the hundreds) of students, so that the incoming class size can be consistent year-to-year. In other words, the people at the admissions department have figured out approximately what percent of students enroll who are admitted, known as the yield, (it usually hovers between 66% and 70%–I dont have the exact margin of error), and use it to admit the number of students the university can handle. It is unusual for the university to be over-enrolled, because it would much rather take students from the wait list if there is a deficiency in the class size, rather than deal with the extra number of people who are admitted (and sort through all of the housing problems.)</p>
<p>Last year, the yield was slightly lower than ideal, and so the admissions department had to take applicants from the wait list to replace the spots that the predicted matriculants would have taken. This year, apparently, the yield has increased, which means that fewer (if any) students will be taken from the waitlist. Thus, this year is not a good year for waitlisted students, because their chances of acceptance are relatively smaller. </p>
<p>A school that takes very little to none of its applicants from the wait list (like Stanford) has the yield percentages figured out pretty well, generally speaking.</p>
<p>Well maybe Shaw meant strait As as in no A-s? I know that in many schoos, A-s are still considered 4.0s.</p>
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<p>But I still don’t think that “80% of the accepted class have at least a 4.0” means the same as 80% of all people with at least a 4.0 is accepted. I don’t know, maybe I’m not explaining what I’m saying very well.</p>
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<p>That would make a lot more sense, since Stanford does calculate its own GPA. Still, can the secret to Stanford really be just getting straight-A’s, even if it’s only A’s or A+'s?</p>
<p>No, chillaxin, I understand and agree with what you said earlier. “80% of the accepted class have at least a 4.0” does not mean the same as 80% of all people with at least a 4.0 is accepted. The comment that from my post that you quoted is in reference to the 84% cited by the Dean in the OP.</p>
<p>Ahh, got it. Sorry for the mix-up. :]</p>
<p>I mean empirically, there must be something wrong with 84% of an admit class getting all As. As a stanford student, i can say that while we’re all very bright and hard working, most of us managed to get a B or two in high school. Such is the course of life. If it’s true that so many admits have straight As, which would mean that at least 75% or so of the matriculating class has straight As (assuming two thirds yield rate), then I clearly have a group of friends here at Stanford that is Sooooo wildly not representational that I’ve managed to hang out only with the slacker stoner athletes… which is hardly true…</p>
<p>Rant, but the point is clear</p>
<p>I tend to agree with Chillaxin. What Dean Shaw was quoted as saying in the Senate minutes was “This year, 16% of kids who had straight A’s didn’t get in.” I believe this was either an unintentional misstatement on his part or on the part of the person who wrote up the minutes (although one would think that a tape recorder would have been used for accuracy). </p>
<p>What he should have said was “Of those who were accepted, 84% had a straight-A average” which I interpret (based on other data I have found) to mean at least a 4.0 weighted GPA, where the weighting was done in an as yet unexplained but consistent manner known only to Stanford admissions staff. This is consistent with the March 31 news release, which states that, for those admitted, “nearly 80 per cent have a grade point average of 4.0 or higher.”</p>
<p>The correct interpretation is still a bit troubling to me as it implies that grades are all viewed the same, regardless of your high school. If you subtract out those for whom the admissions staff might overlook a non-4.0 GPA (sports stars, URMs, special legacies), then the percentage of those remaining with at least a 4.0 GPA is even higher than 84%. </p>
<p>Which brings me back to my first point: If you don’t have a 4.0 weighted GPA, don’t waste your time applying. You will not get in. Of course, it would be helpful to know exactly how Stanford computes that weighted GPA. I recall reading something somewhere that AP and IB courses are weighted, while honors courses are not. Anyone?</p>
<p>Here’s something that might clarify:</p>
<p>For Fall 2004, 62% of all applicants and 79% of all admitted students had a 4.0 or higher weighted GPA, according to the counselor newsletter available at <a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/dept/uga/pdf/CounselorsNL_Web.pdf[/url]”>http://www.stanford.edu/dept/uga/pdf/CounselorsNL_Web.pdf</a></p>
<p>It’s perfectly understandable that this rate has gone up by 5%.</p>
<p>It also disproves the idea that “GPA is all that matters”, since the >4.0 group had only a 7% advantage in acceptance over the 3.8-4.0 group. In fall 2004, that is.</p>
<p>So there’s hope after all?</p>
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<p>I don’t think your point makes sense- what if you go to a high school without any weighting and you get one B? I say apply if you want- you just might have some quality that they’re looking for, and one app’s time and $50 dollars is not that big a deal for most in the long run- the potential benefits could be huge and the very small. Just don’t expect to get in.</p>
<p>Judging from the link that Tetragrammaton posted, you can see that it says that in 2004, 17% of those with a GPA above 4.0 were accepted. Hence, the 16% statistic would make a lot of sense if you change the word rejected to accepted. :]</p>
<p>Thanks for clarifying–finally what sounds like a plausible explanation of the comment made. So Dean Shaw’s comment “16% of kids who had straight A’s didn’t get in” should read instead “16% of kids who had straight A’s did get in.” That certainly changes the message quite a bit, eh? Hopefully you can appreciate why I was concerned (that concern is greatly reduced if the statement is flipped around to its opposite, as suggested). I was simply jumping to conclusions based on what now appears to have been erroneous data. </p>
<p>Anyone know whether the GPA in that table is weighted, and, if so, how it has been weighted? (the table doesn’t say one way or the other). For a student at a school that does not award A+'s, for example, achieving an unweighted GPA of 4.0 requires perfection (since A=4.0), and that seems unlikely. If 62% of all Class of 2008 applicants had a GPA of 4.0 or higher (as the table shows), it certainly suggests that the GPA is weighted (or else there are a lot of schools that give A+'s).</p>
<p>If the reported GPA’s were weighted, then I would hope/expect that they were weighted by Stanford in a consistent manner. I am also wondering if freshman year grades are included as I seem to recall reading somewhere that they are not considered. Reporting a GPA without any explanation of how it was derived is just too murky for me. Please tell me which grades were included (should be all but might be some), and how they were weighted (AP vs. IB vs. honors)…especially when a difference of 0.4 in GPA makes such a huge difference in acceptance rates, as shown in the table.</p>
<p>Is there a Stanford admissions person who can lay out the facts here on this GPA that’s being reported? I did notice that the Class of 2007 news release (put out in 2003) stated that “more than half (of those admitted) have an unweighted grade point average of 4.0 or higher”. That’s the only year I could find that the reported GPA was specified as “unweighted”, and in other years (such as this year) the percentage reported to have a 4.0 GPA has been running much higher, 75-80%.</p>
<p>An unweighted GPA of 4.0 or higher? That sounds unlikely, but who am I to say?</p>
<p>Perhaps a lot of schools in California offer A+ grades? I’m from NoVa, and an unweighted 4.0 would require perfection over here.</p>
<p>And it seems likely, as further clarification, that when he says “straight As”, he means a WEIGHTED GPA of 4.0 or better. That’s what would be in line with the stats on the counselor packet.</p>
<p>At my school at least, a perfect unweighted GPA is 4.0. Anything higher means that it’s the weighted GPA, which is what I infer from his “AT LEAST” a 4.0.</p>
<p>back to the original topic: so, when will Stanford post its percent yield status for the admitted students this year? When did it post the statistics last year?</p>
<p>College Board 2005 DATA( SATs Sent)</p>
<p>State Sford Harvrad yale
CA 15500 4500 4100
MA NA 3500
OR 700
WA 1500</p>
<p>What this suggests that Sford only get about 5000 applications from rest of the country.</p>