Almost 37,000 high school students applied to a member of the Stanford Class of 2016, the largest applicant pool in the University’s history.
The Office of Undergraduate Admissions received a total of 36,744 freshman applications by the University’s final Jan. 1 deadline, which is a 7-percent rise from last year when the University received a previously record-breaking 34,348 applications for the Class of 2015. Around 32,000 students applied for the Class of 2014, and approximately 30,000 for the Class of 2013.
Bob Patterson, Stanford director of admissions, told Bloomberg News that Stanford had expected lower applicant numbers this admission cycle because of the reinstatement of early admission at Harvard University and Princeton University. He also added that success of the school’s athletic department, which included the Cardinal football team appearing in the Fiesta Bowl, might have bolstered the numbers.
“It’s a little more than we anticipated,” Patterson told Bloomberg. “Stanford did very well in football, and Andrew Luck was a leader for the university.”
Of this applicant pool, 5,880 students applied under the single-choice early action program and have already received their admission decision. This number is actually lower from the Class of 2015, which saw 5,959 students apply early action.
Harvard and Princeton, which rebooted their early action option this year, received 4,245 and 3,547 applications under this program, respectively. Yale University received 4,310 applications for early action this year, down 18 percent from 5,257 last year.
Final application numbers, which include regular decision, for these universities have not been released yet. However, last year, Harvard received nearly 35,000 students for the Class of 2015, a record for the university.
Stanford has already admitted 755 students, who applied early action, for the Class of 2016 on Dec. 9. Last year, the University ended up admitting 2,436 undergraduate students in total, 96 more students than it admitted in 2010.
— Kurt Chirbas