Stanford has hired Bob Patterson, currently the deputy director of undergraduate admission at UC-Berkeley, as the Farm’s new director of Admission. Patterson begins his new post on Sept. 13, according to Judith McCoy, a spokeswoman for the Office of Undergraduate Admission.
As the director of Admission, Patterson will have broad influence over the increasingly competitive Stanford admission process. Stanford’s admission rate dropped to a record-low 7.2 percent for the 32,022 applicants to the Class of 2014. The rate for the Class of 2011, at the start of former director Shawn Abbott’s tenure, was 10.28 percent.
Patterson will also directly affect the makeup of freshman and transfer classes and affect the University’s longer-term admission strategy, including international and athletic admission. He will report to Dean of Admission Richard Shaw and oversee four assistant deans, who each manage a set of admission officers.
Patterson, 34, has worked in Berkeley admissions since Spring 2009, where he oversees a staff of 30. Berkeley had 50,312 applicants for Fall 2010 and admitted 25.6 percent, according to its website.
From 2005 to 2009, Patterson was the associate director of undergraduate admissions at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, according to an office newsletter announcing his arrival to Berkeley. Prior to that, he spent seven years as an admission and financial aid counselor at the University of Pittsburgh, from which he earned his bachelor’s degree. He also holds a master’s degree in higher education.
“It is a honor and privilege to represent such world class university,” Patterson said in an e-mail to The Daily. “I am anxiously awaiting my start at Stanford.”
McCoy said the University opened its search for a new admission director in May and finished last week. She said Shaw, who was on vacation Wednesday, involved senior administrators and admission staff in the hiring decision — one she called a “very intensive and long” process.
Patterson was one of four finalists invited to Stanford to interview after a national search, McCoy said. He replaces Abbott, whom Stanford hired in 2006. Abbott left in May to become assistant vice president for undergraduate admissions at New York University.
— Elizabeth Titus