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At 4:00 p.m. PDT last Friday, high school seniors in quarantine all across the world logged into their admission portals to view the results of their applications to the most selective university in the United States: Stanford.
ProFros from all around the world tweeted with the hashtag #Stanford2024 to celebrate their admission. Many more were disappointed to be rejected.
Remarkably, some students were apparently rejected by Stanford’s undergraduate Class of 2024 but accepted to Stanford Health Care’s COVID-19 Class of 2020, and offered immediate matriculation to Stanford Hospital.
In an email to the Review, one Bay Area applicant provided a copy of the letter s/he received, signed by both Dean Shaw and Stanford Health Care CEO David Entwhistle. The Review can now share that letter, with the applicant’s name redacted for anonymity.
Lots of accepted applicants were from the New-York Metropolitan Area, particularly elite COVID-19 hotspots like Westport, Brooklyn, and Westchester. This prompted several outraged Daily Op-eds over the weekend, accusing Stanford of discriminating against applicants from underprivileged rural areas, who had not had the opportunity to be exposed to COVID-19 in their community.
Furious students have formed a ‘coalition’ demanding that Stanford accept negative test results from applicants in underrepresented areas.
Official Chinese government figures published in the Daily claim that no students from China were accepted, but independent modeling done by the Review suggests that thousands of Chinese nationals applied and were accepted on the basis of their exceptionally positive test results.
Op-eds in the Daily also blasted the United States, which is home to about 90% of accepted applicants, with one student claiming that the Chinese college-preparatory system had been ‘vindicated.’
Limited data and Stanford’s failure to test all applicants applying to the SHC Class of 2020 means the exact acceptance rate is not known. However, Stanford Dean of Admissions Richard Shaw told The Review that Stanford’s acceptance rate is “really tremendous... the best in the world.”
Some students admitted to the Hospital program were very upset that they would spend their time on the farm battling a deadly disease instead of meeting professors and making new friends. Stanford President Marc Tessier Lavigne reportedly reassured them that the real Stanford students are all doing their classes on Zoom anyway.
Happy April Fools from all of us at the Review!
