[CTcard]

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding of how admissions works at Stanford - for the general population and for football players as well. That's not surprising, given that Stanford is rather secretive about how admissions works in detail, as are most private universities.

I see these quotes and shake my head.  Does some admissions officer really tell these kids, "you are almost in, you just need to up your SAT score a few points?"  Really? 

Almost certainly not. First of all, Stanford adamantly refuses to have any set SAT standard for admission. Secondly, from what I have read it would seem that the football coaches have been telling him that he has to have a 1500 score in order for it to be worthwhile to submit an application. While ultimately that comment could probably be traced back to admissions, almost certainly it wouldn't mean they wouldn't consider a 1490 score or that a 1550 score means an automatic in. It probably does mean a 1350-1400 is a no-go for most everyone, and an 1800+ would be most advantageous towards getting a football player in.

Every year we read all sorts of weird quotations about the Stanford admissions process from recruits. These seem to be primarily the result of the phone-tag game from admissions to football staff to recruit to reporter, with a lot of built in misconceptions as barriers along the way.

I can understand having a "low" floor score for standardized tests, but setting a high bar for a test score, as a proxy for one's ability to handle college academics, is folly.

That it is, which is why Stanford doesn't do so.

This is especially the case in one like Robertson's, where the student is an elite athlete playing three sports, all with their own time demands, making it impossible for him to study for tests like other kids who don't have similar other demands on their time. 

Essentially anybody who gets into Stanford has extraordinary demands on their time. If they don't, then they aren't doing what Stanford looks for in admits.

Whether Robertson is putting a lot more time into sports than other scholarship athletes that do get accepted into Stanford is something I don't know. However, it is mostly irrelevant. At some point, if he has put little enough time into academics that his academics are inadequate, then Stanford won't accept him. As a concept, I don't think there is any real dispute that is a reasonable approach. The issue is where the line is drawn. The people in the admissions line are hired to draw that line. I am sure they make mistakes from time to time, it seems to me impossible not to. On the other hand, at the moment they seem to have been drawing the line at a place that has allowed Stanford football to be in a BCS/CFP bowl game 5 of the past 6 years and win 3 of the past 4 conference championships - so it seems adequate as far as producing a winning football team.

Maybe we should adopt the ND approach.

The ND admissions department pays very little attention to SAT scores. They look at the applicant's transcript and decide, mostly on the courses he has taken and the grades he has achieved, whether he is capable of doing the work and graduating from the university. If the answer is yes, they let him in.

It may be that und puts substantially less emphasis on standardized tests than other private schools, but I cannot find any evidence for that on a quick search. Stanford does not weight standardized tests as highly as many here appear to assume, and for most students it represents something more like a floor to guard against poor HS course loads rather than a strong positive on the high end. This causes great consternation for the candidates who have placed extraordinary time and effort in increasing their 2300 SAT into a 2400 SAT and find it hasn't got them in. As for und, their reported SAT scores for entering students are high enough it either appears that they pay some attention to the scores or the scores actually track HS grades fairly well.

I do think that latter sentence cannot quite be true. Neither Notre Dame nor Stanford (especially) are able to offer admission to any student that has demonstrated they are capable of doing the work, either by HS grades or anything else. There are simply too many applicants for spots. If you mean any football player the coaches want that shows they are capable of surviving, then that is closer to the admissions philosophy in both cases - though with much more rigorous scrutiny and consideration at one of those two places.

[CTcard]

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding of how admissions works at Stanford - for the general population and for football players as well. That's not surprising, given that Stanford is rather secretive about how admissions works in detail, as are most private universities.

I see these quotes and shake my head.  Does some admissions officer really tell these kids, "you are almost in, you just need to up your SAT score a few points?"  Really? 

Almost certainly not. First of all, Stanford adamantly refuses to have any set SAT standard for admission. Secondly, from what I have read it would seem that the football coaches have been telling him that he has to have a 1500 score in order for it to be worthwhile to submit an application. While ultimately that comment could probably be traced back to admissions, almost certainly it wouldn't mean they wouldn't consider a 1490 score or that a 1550 score means an automatic in. It probably does mean a 1350-1400 is a no-go for most everyone, and an 1800+ would be most advantageous towards getting a football player in.

Every year we read all sorts of weird quotations about the Stanford admissions process from recruits. These seem to be primarily the result of the phone-tag game from admissions to football staff to recruit to reporter, with a lot of built in misconceptions as barriers along the way.

I can understand having a "low" floor score for standardized tests, but setting a high bar for a test score, as a proxy for one's ability to handle college academics, is folly.

That it is, which is why Stanford doesn't do so.

This is especially the case in one like Robertson's, where the student is an elite athlete playing three sports, all with their own time demands, making it impossible for him to study for tests like other kids who don't have similar other demands on their time. 

Essentially anybody who gets into Stanford has extraordinary demands on their time. If they don't, then they aren't doing what Stanford looks for in admits.

Whether Robertson is putting a lot more time into sports than other scholarship athletes that do get accepted into Stanford is something I don't know. However, it is mostly irrelevant. At some point, if he has put little enough time into academics that his academics are inadequate, then Stanford won't accept him. As a concept, I don't think there is any real dispute that is a reasonable approach. The issue is where the line is drawn. The people in the admissions line are hired to draw that line. I am sure they make mistakes from time to time, it seems to me impossible not to. On the other hand, at the moment they seem to have been drawing the line at a place that has allowed Stanford football to be in a BCS/CFP bowl game 5 of the past 6 years and win 3 of the past 4 conference championships - so it seems adequate as far as producing a winning football team.

Maybe we should adopt the ND approach.

The ND admissions department pays very little attention to SAT scores. They look at the applicant's transcript and decide, mostly on the courses he has taken and the grades he has achieved, whether he is capable of doing the work and graduating from the university. If the answer is yes, they let him in.

It may be that und puts substantially less emphasis on standardized tests than other private schools, but I cannot find any evidence for that on a quick search. Stanford does not weight standardized tests as highly as many here appear to assume, and for most students it represents something more like a floor to guard against poor HS course loads rather than a strong positive on the high end. This causes great consternation for the candidates who have placed extraordinary time and effort in increasing their 2300 SAT into a 2400 SAT and find it hasn't got them in. As for und, their reported SAT scores for entering students are high enough it either appears that they pay some attention to the scores or the scores actually track HS grades fairly well.

I do think that latter sentence cannot quite be true. Neither Notre Dame nor Stanford (especially) are able to offer admission to any student that has demonstrated they are capable of doing the work, either by HS grades or anything else. There are simply too many applicants for spots. If you mean any football player the coaches want that shows they are capable of surviving, then that is closer to the admissions philosophy in both cases - though with much more rigorous scrutiny and consideration at one of those two places.