<p>My kid is a junior so we’re not in the thick of this yet but I was astonished to discover today that a senior from her school was rejected by Stanford in the 1st round. This is a kid with near perfect SAT/ACT. 4.0 everything since the beginning of time. Hardest possible classes. A very good athlete (not enough to play on a competitive college-level team but a leader on his teams). Loved and admired by every teacher at our school. And then he had intangibles too…I won’t go into details so he can’t be recognized here by his classmates but I’ll just say that he physically built something…with his own hands…which then received a good amount of coverage in the media. While I didn’t see his essays, he’s a talented and thoughtful writer…so i have to assume they were strong.</p>
<p>I guess i’m thinking, if this kind of kid can’t get in, who in the world could?</p>
<p>I believe he would have had to have filled a niche they were looking for. Short of that, legacy? feeder school or program? If not, chances are slim to none regardless of scores and superstar qualities.</p>
<p>i hear ya…and did i mention that he pretty much won every award open to high school kids? Oh well…whatever college does get him, he’ll be a billionaire some day and will build a new stadium at Stanford. :)</p>
You can find examples of students who were admitted in the REA sticky thread. Many on this forum seem to overemphasize how beneficial near perfect stats are for Stanford (and similar). I analyzed the RD thread for last year and found that the accepted posters had worse median stats than the rejected posters, particularly for class rank. Instead the accepted posters shined in other ways, such as accomplishments outside of the classroom and/or bringing a unique voice through overcoming various challenges. The acceptances were surprisingly predictable, when considering these additional factors. Without knowing more detail about the student described in the original post, such as what he built and how/whether it was mentioned in the application, it’s difficult to speculate.</p>
<p>Data10, interesting stuff on your analysis…though you looked at Stanford, I imagine your findings would work for many top-tier schools. </p>
<p>a few things to add…my D just wandered in and said, “mom, he wasn’t rejected, he was deferred.” so not as dire as I thought.</p>
<p>And I guess why I thought he was a shoe-in is that he’s the rare kid who effortlessly made amazing grades while putting his energy and creativity into projects that truly matter…</p>
Most colleges defer far more than they reject in the early round. For example, this year Princeton deferred 79% and rejected 1%. However, Stanford is unique in that they reject the vast majority an only defer those who are truly on the borderline. Getting deferred is rarer than getting accepted. Historically the deferred students have a much greater chance of admission in the RD round than overall app pool.</p>
<p>
Obviously being a recruited athlete is helpful, but that only describes a small portion of the overall class. If you skim through the sticky REA thread, you’ll see that most of the admitted posters did not mention anything about playing sports.</p>
<p>A deferral from Standford is very high praise. It is limited to a small minority of the REA applicants. So he still has a good chance for acceptance in my opinion. Better than the majority of RA applicants because he’s already been screened and essentially been told he’s good enough. Whether he ultimately gets in will depend on the balance of the class coming out of the RA applicants added to the already accepted REA group. Such things as geography, interests, sex, ethniciity, could all be factors. He may even be wait listed at the end of the process.</p>
<p>“a few things to add…my D just wandered in and said, “mom, he wasn’t rejected, he was deferred.” so not as dire as I thought.”</p>
<p>Think of 5600 applicants turned down vs 750 admitted and 500 deferred. </p>
<p>It means he is very much under consideration and also validates your views about him being exceptional compared to others. I have seen many highly qualified students rejected but also deferred (know one 2400/36 who moved onto med school after getting admitted RD and another with a 36 couple of years ago) and admitted later. I think about 400 students meet athletic and legacy designation in REA which does not leave many spots for the others.</p>
<p>Since there are so few deferrals, anyone with incomplete app would probably either not make the statistic or rejected automatically.</p>
<p>Super interesting…and my daughter’s friend will be very keen to hear this…i believe he felt badly because he assumed being deferred meant “no way in hell, buddy” but this may give him hope. In contrast, everybody and his brother from our high school was deferred from Georgetown…but it sounds as if Stanford holds a different definition of this category.</p>
<p>Hi SouthernHope, I was accepted early and if I can throw in my two cents, at a school like Stanford perfect stats and perfect GPA and etc matters far less than essays and other parts of the application. While this kid may be loved by all, unfortunately it’s very difficult for admissions officers to discern a student’s past four or five years of work in a single application, so they do the best job they can with what they’ve been given. Unfortunately this means that apps are often simply a tossup between many amazing students. </p>
<p>My daughter got deferred last year and people treated it and her like she was already rejected. Stanford is not like all of the highly competitive schools. I know in that they genuinely only defer people who they want to keep in the pool. Odds are 3x better now on your daughter’s friend’s admission. And he should not despair. He should consider updating them as instructed and keeping the conversation and process alive. My daughter is now a freshman - on The Farm. Don’t lose hope and don’t lose faith in Stanford if it is indeed his first choice. That being said, my daughter also ended up with amazing choices that she would never have considered had her initial deferral not happened. She realized she would be happy at a lot of schools and that she was wanted. Everything happens for a reason. Good luck.</p>
<p>Stanford accepts a little over 2200 applicants a year and 750 have already been admitted. </p>
<p>There are roughly 1450 spots available. </p>
<p>They may have turned down 5600 apps so far, but last year they received over 38,800 applications total. So we can expect them to receive at least 32,000 more applications in the Regular Decision Round. </p>
<p>At this point we can assume he will be one of 32,500 hoping for a spot out of 1450 spots left:
He will be competing against the students who were deferred from the Top Elite Universities around the world as well as the Regular Decision only apps from households that will need to compare financial aid packages. </p>
<p>No candy-coating… Still less than 1% chance of an admittance.</p>
<p>Sorry lagunal…I would have to question where you got 1% from as well…</p>
<p>…if we are following the application trends expected for Stanford for this application cycle…they are conservatively expecting at least 40,000 total applications…</p>
<p>…they already had 6948 REA applicants…so 40,000-6948=33052 (regular applicants)</p>
<p>…they are expecting to admit about 2175 total this year due to their increased yield projection…so 2175-748=1427 (regular acceptances)</p>
<p>…so to get total regular applicants we must add deferred+regular applicants = 593+33052=33645</p>
<p>…1427/33645 = 4.24% (regular acceptance rate)…last year I believe it was 4.54%</p>
<p>…4.24% acceptance rate is for those who are applying in the regular round…not for those who were DEFERRED…</p>
<p>…for those deferred from the REA round it is more in the range of 15% usually…so 15% of 593 = 89 students will be accepted from the deferred pool alone…</p>
<p>…the deferred pool is in a completely separate pool from the regular applicants…even though they count in the regular applicant numbers statistics…</p>
<p>Moreover…we all know it’s extremely tough to get into Stanford…but I don’t think giving false statistics helps anyone…</p>
<p>…after all…this country is not like China, India, Korea, or Japan…where there is a clear single university every child applies to like (Peking) Beijing University, IIT, Seoul University, Tokyo University…and thank goodness for that!</p>
<p>"…for those deferred from the REA round it is more in the range of 15% usually…so 15% of 593 = 89 students will be accepted from the deferred pool alone…" </p>
<p>Where did you come up with these stats? I don’t believe them at all. </p>
<p>Also, where did you come up with the “single” university in the Asian countries? And the “application” that you mentioned? That is also untrue. In Asian countries, it is the TEST that determines where you get into a college, NOT an application. Also, countries have more than one ‘top’ choice.</p>