[81alum]

I thought I would expand a little on Stanford's grad-transfer dilemma.

While many of us understand the cache of the Stanford name, it is also the case that Stanford does not have many applied graduate programs--like criminology, optometry, certain kinds of nursing, etc. which have appealed to some of our WBB graduates over the years.  Other applied grad programs, like our MBAs, are incredibly competitive and usually do not take undergraduates straight out of college.  In short, Stanford is quite challenged either to retain 5th year students interested in masters degrees or to attract grad transfers. 

I doubt that this matters to athletes whose only serious interest is their sport--they can no doubt find a generic MA degree that may be enriching to them but is not going to be particularly oriented toward preparation for a career. 

But most of our WBB players are going to want to plan for a career after basketball.  Not all can get into an Engineering MS program like Ruef did or the law school the way Kate Paye did, and a lot would not want a generic MA in an academic discipline that does not lead to a profession.

So it could be that the more poly technical universities that offer dozens of applied MA and MS degrees are going to have an easier time capitalizing on the grad transfer rules than we are.  And that might partly explain Tara's irritation with the grad transfer rule.

[81alum]

I thought I would expand a little on Stanford's grad-transfer dilemma.

While many of us understand the cache of the Stanford name, it is also the case that Stanford does not have many applied graduate programs--like criminology, optometry, certain kinds of nursing, etc. which have appealed to some of our WBB graduates over the years.  Other applied grad programs, like our MBAs, are incredibly competitive and usually do not take undergraduates straight out of college.  In short, Stanford is quite challenged either to retain 5th year students interested in masters degrees or to attract grad transfers. 

I doubt that this matters to athletes whose only serious interest is their sport--they can no doubt find a generic MA degree that may be enriching to them but is not going to be particularly oriented toward preparation for a career. 

But most of our WBB players are going to want to plan for a career after basketball.  Not all can get into an Engineering MS program like Ruef did or the law school the way Kate Paye did, and a lot would not want a generic MA in an academic discipline that does not lead to a profession.

So it could be that the more poly technical universities that offer dozens of applied MA and MS degrees are going to have an easier time capitalizing on the grad transfer rules than we are.  And that might partly explain Tara's irritation with the grad transfer rule.