01-22-2014, 07:30 AM
What I remember most about Fred was that he made a point of coming to every freshman dorm and personally talking with the entire class. There was a great emphasis on making us feel that we belonged. This was important to me. I came from a small town without many examples of scholastic success, and orientation was exhilarating but also intimidating, as I discovered the incredible achievements of my fellow students. It is very hard to go from effortlessly being the best in every academic subject to suddenly having to work hard to be average.
Fred knew that, and so he made a point of following up on admissions and not just sending out the letters and declaring the job done. He reassured us that in reviewing the files, he found something unique and special in every student he admitted--something we had that no one else did. I think he believed that, and he made us believe that, and it helped us to gain some self confidence during what could have been a difficult transition.
There are the famous changes that Fred wrought. He established the idea that admission should be offered to well-rounded individuals and not solely on the basis of academic success. We laughed that 40% of my class had been student body presidents. But when Stanford went in this direction under Fred, the Ivy league thought we were nuts. We were giving up some of the top performing students by tests and grades to get merely "good" students who happened to have incredible extracurricular achievements. While I am not sure how Fred dealt with athletics, the concept he established has become the model for how an elite academic institution can justify admission to outstanding athletes (and musicians and authors and activists etc. etc. etc.) who may not be at the very top of the academic index. Stanford, after all, had athletic success before it became an elite academic institution, and so Fred had to figure out a way of how to resolve the two, and the pattern he established is still the basis for our success today.
There was also the incredible diversification of the student body that he promoted. Part of his formula permitted him to find outstanding individuals from pools that did not traditionally go to college, and Stanford became one of the first elites to make substantial progress in diversity in all of its manifestations. (He had a little less success with this when he went to Princeton.) And during his era legacy preferences were ended and "need blind" admission was established--I understand both of those reforms have come under threat in more recent years, and I frankly don't know if those reforms survived.
In short, Fred really did change the face of elite higher education in this country--probably forever. But more remarkably, the man who did this was a caring, thoughtful, modest individual who came to my dorm lounge, sat on the floor with his hands clasped around his knees, and reassured us that each one of us had the talents to succeed at Stanford.
Fred knew that, and so he made a point of following up on admissions and not just sending out the letters and declaring the job done. He reassured us that in reviewing the files, he found something unique and special in every student he admitted--something we had that no one else did. I think he believed that, and he made us believe that, and it helped us to gain some self confidence during what could have been a difficult transition.
There are the famous changes that Fred wrought. He established the idea that admission should be offered to well-rounded individuals and not solely on the basis of academic success. We laughed that 40% of my class had been student body presidents. But when Stanford went in this direction under Fred, the Ivy league thought we were nuts. We were giving up some of the top performing students by tests and grades to get merely "good" students who happened to have incredible extracurricular achievements. While I am not sure how Fred dealt with athletics, the concept he established has become the model for how an elite academic institution can justify admission to outstanding athletes (and musicians and authors and activists etc. etc. etc.) who may not be at the very top of the academic index. Stanford, after all, had athletic success before it became an elite academic institution, and so Fred had to figure out a way of how to resolve the two, and the pattern he established is still the basis for our success today.
There was also the incredible diversification of the student body that he promoted. Part of his formula permitted him to find outstanding individuals from pools that did not traditionally go to college, and Stanford became one of the first elites to make substantial progress in diversity in all of its manifestations. (He had a little less success with this when he went to Princeton.) And during his era legacy preferences were ended and "need blind" admission was established--I understand both of those reforms have come under threat in more recent years, and I frankly don't know if those reforms survived.
In short, Fred really did change the face of elite higher education in this country--probably forever. But more remarkably, the man who did this was a caring, thoughtful, modest individual who came to my dorm lounge, sat on the floor with his hands clasped around his knees, and reassured us that each one of us had the talents to succeed at Stanford.
