Alright, let’s get right down to it. Forget the fact that Stanford has a 3-point-something acceptance rate and is a perennial star of the U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Colleges” list. Most days in Palo Alto fall in the balmy 70s, Stanford’s campus has a residential co-op called the “Enchanted Broccoli Forest,” and notable Cardinal alums include icons ad infinitum (John Steinbeck, Tiger Woods, Reese Witherspoon, and *mother eternal* Sigourney Weaver). Forget about ~demonstrating~ cause, um, yeah you’re interested.
Nevertheless, we feel compelled to address Stanford’s policy on demonstrated interest, because for years the questions of how to demonstrate interest and how much it matters have been top of students’ minds. It’s confusing, we’ll give you that. For so long, colleges didn’t define demonstrated interest explicitly or disclose how much it factored into their decisions. Luckily, that’s changed, and Stanford — like everybody reputable in the college admissions game — has spelled it out for us.
Stanford’s Stance
Stanford’s common data set puts it in black and white; “level of applicant’s interest” is “not considered.” Their website answers this question, too, in case you were wondering what happens to your contact info when you create an account or sign up for email updates. Don’t get it twisted, y’all.
“Stanford does not track demonstrated interest as part of the admission process. Events that require registration do so purely for planning purposes. Stanford does not track demonstrated interest as part of the admission process. Engagement through our programming is optional and will not be part of the review of your application.”
Our consensus? We can pretty much sum it up with a “heck yeah!” You don’t need to go through a bunch of meaningless motions to get your name in Stanford’s system as many times as possible. They’ve been upfront that this won’t make a bit of difference when you apply, and now you know you don’t need to waste your time.
Does that mean you shouldn’t tour Stanford or watch a virtual campus walk-through or join a video panel or research their departments or follow their newsletters or yadda yadda? Literally of course not. What it means is you shouldn’t expect trivial gestures to get you into one of the most prestigious schools in the world by default. You should not, however, stop learning about Stanford.
It’s crucial that you get to know the school as well as you can to strengthen your application. Your supplemental essay can’t read like a template you swap for every college with a bit of Control-F “find and replace” school name magic. Then admissions knows for sure that you don’t care enough to write a couple hundred words about why you want to attend. Believe it or not, that’s not exactly the highly motivated and articulate créme of the créme they’re looking for.
Demonstrated interest still matters, just not in the way you think. For every personal connection you make with the school, you have more emotionally compelling material to use in your essay, which is where demonstrated interest actually helps you out. If your essays have well-researched, Stanford-specific details to communicate why you care about the school and why it’d be the perfect place for you academically and socially, admissions will be more likely to remember you and think, “hmmm, this person seems like a high-achiever with impressive and achievable aspirations who is not unhinged at all, actually.” And that??? Well, that’s the dream.
Not sure how to bring demonstrated interest into your supplemental writing? Contact us today.