The data is in, and as the number of admission applications shows, getting into Stanford isn’t getting any easier. In 2000, the university received about 18,300 applications. In 2010, that figure had increased 75 percent to more than 32,000 applications.
Because Stanford has not drastically increased the number of students it accepts each year, only 7.3 percent of students who applied last year were accepted. In 2000, it was 13.2 percent.
The graphics below illustrate trends in Stanford applications, admissions, student majors and gender and ethnicity breakdowns. Click a graph to enlarge it. The article continues below.
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Once students are at Stanford, undergraduates prefer to major in human biology, economics and biology, the top three majors on campus. Although human biology is an interdisciplinary program mostly unknown outside Stanford, it’s by far the most popular on campus. In the 2009-2010 school year, 366 students majored in it, about 19 percent of undergrads. As the second-most popular major, economics had 229 students.
Every major at Stanford fits into one of three schools: Humanities and Sciences, Engineering or Earth Sciences. As the biggest school, Humanities and Sciences had slightly more women than men in the 2009-2010 school year: 1,437 women to 1,108 men. The School of Engineering was by far the most lopsided, with 576 men and just 227 women. A whopping 3,613 students were undeclared, split fairly evenly between men and women.
Stanford leadership prides itself on being ethnically and racially diverse. Indeed, white students make up 34.1 percent of the undergraduate population, a plurality but far from a majority. Asian students are the second-largest demographic on campus, at 17.8 percent. Interestingly, although Stanford plays hosts to one of the largest annual powwows in the nation, Native American students make up only about 1 percent of the undergraduate population.
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