[newguy]

This is swell. Glad money is going to these fields of study...

but Stanford is already impossible to get into and I didn't read anything about a concurrent increase in enrollment. So doesn't this just pull students from other fields on campus? It's long past time for the ultra-selective colleges to add undergraduates, especially such a land-rich place like Stanford.

I TOTALLY agree that Stanford's failure to increase class size significantly is a scandal. What I fear is that the new department will require new buildings and a new drone staff to fill up way too much of the "land-rich" space, while not adding any undergraduate students. The population of the USA is 1.6 times what it was when I entered Stanford as a freshman. The undergraduate class size has not increased anywhere near that factor. Why?

an excellent question.
at one point in the recent past, Stanford was more selective than Harvard when it came to undergrads.....might still be for all i know.
this runs the risk of making the admissions process arbitrary, if it isn't already.

[newguy]

This is swell. Glad money is going to these fields of study...

but Stanford is already impossible to get into and I didn't read anything about a concurrent increase in enrollment. So doesn't this just pull students from other fields on campus? It's long past time for the ultra-selective colleges to add undergraduates, especially such a land-rich place like Stanford.

I TOTALLY agree that Stanford's failure to increase class size significantly is a scandal. What I fear is that the new department will require new buildings and a new drone staff to fill up way too much of the "land-rich" space, while not adding any undergraduate students. The population of the USA is 1.6 times what it was when I entered Stanford as a freshman. The undergraduate class size has not increased anywhere near that factor. Why?

an excellent question.
at one point in the recent past, Stanford was more selective than Harvard when it came to undergrads.....might still be for all i know.
this runs the risk of making the admissions process arbitrary, if it isn't already.