Stanford Undergrad Applications Hit New High

phantasmagoric
Sat, 05 Feb 2011 00:11:28 +0000

wahoomb,



What I meant is that in my cohort alone, 4 of the students have at least one parent who is a Stanford alum (almost half of the cohort).



Interesting–that seems like quite a bit (other people might have the same experience). At the same time, I don’t think that’s unexpected; Stanford, among others, anticipate large numbers of qualified applicants from undergraduate students whose parents or grandparents are alums, simply because the influence of a Stanford degree in a family is high. It doesn’t seem far enough to expect the same for graduate students, but as far as I’ve seen, legacy admissions apply to undergraduate applications. I think it is plausible that legacy admissions could have an effect on graduate admissions, but I haven’t found anything discussing such. If you (or anyone else) find information about this, please let us know–I think legacy graduate admissions, if they exist, would be under-reported and under-studied.

(My intuition is that it’d be less important, if even considered, since graduate admissions are very research-based, and even things like extracurricular activities are unimportant. For example, as a result of these research-based policies, 1/3 of grad students are international students. That’s my personal hunch, though.)

SunDiego,



‘Stanford is the first great truly American university’



I don’t have the Fiske guide, but could you provide the context of why they consider Stanford a ‘truly American’ university? (In other words, did they mention anything specific regarding why Stanford is particularly ‘American’?)



It also explains why a relatively new school such as UC San Diego has manged to reach the upper echelon so quickly.



I second that–my perception of UCSD has changed a lot over the past 3 years, and I think it’s very close to being on par with Berkeley and UCLA, not simply a school in ‘purgatory’ between the top and the middle (UCSB, UCD, UCI).