Cherry-Picked or Not
One year later, most applicants are happy.
CARDINAL NUMBERS
Admissions rates at top universities across the country fell to new
lows this year— 6. 2 percent at Harvard, 6. 9 at Columbia, 7. 1 at Stanford,
7. 4 at Yale—reinforcing the perception that it’s harder than ever to get
into college. But it’s not so much that the cherry is getting smaller as it is
that the sundae is getting larger. Applications to Stanford, recently
ranked the No. 1 “dream school” among college applicants surveyed by
the Princeton Review, have nearly doubled since 2000. It’s not just at
Stanford: The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA has found
that 35 percent of college hopefuls now apply to six or more schools. (One
factor may be the relative ease of applying online via the Common Application.) And while some 40 percent of students don’t ultimately attend
their first-choice college, by the end of freshman year they report being
just as satisfied as those who do. So congratulations to the class of 2015,
wherever you matriculate. ■
2,427 ACCEPTED
34,348
APPLIED
Korean Studies Program
Marks 10 Years
Stanford’s Korean Studies Program steadily gained momentum in its first decade.
When sociology professor Gi-Wook Shin
arrived from UCLA to launch the program
at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research
Center, he was the first tenure-track professor to teach a Stanford course in Korean
studies. Today, the program boasts three
endowed professorships, two full-time
staff, two professional fellowships and
research collaborations both on campus
and internationally. Its activities include a
well-established seminar series, conferences and workshops, and a publishing program. The Korean Collection in Stanford’s
East Asian Library has grown since its start
in 2005 to more than 41,000 volumes and
13 electronic databases.
The Stanford program’s social science
and policy-driven orientation—and region-
al, comparative perspective—sets it apart
from Korean studies at other universities.
The New Beginnings project, a study group
started in 2008 to coincide with changing
presidential administrations in both coun-
tries, is tangible evidence of its mission,
including the goal of improving U.S.-Korea
relations. Policy experts, former senior
American officials and scholars meet in
Korea and stateside and make recommen-
dations to the White House. More publicly,
Stanford’s Korea experts have been finding
themselves in the headlines, whether o;er-
ing firsthand reports on North Korea’s
nuclear activities (professors John Lewis
and Siegfried Hecker) or accompanying Bill
Clinton on his rescue mission of two jour-
nalists detained in Pyongyang (program
associate director David Straub).
ture and studies of pop culture.
“There is no center, anywhere, doing
this breadth and depth of work,” Nass
told the Stanford Report. “The automobile is machine and metaphor. It is art. It
is at the core of understanding the 20th
century and the 21st.”
ISTOCKPHOTO.COM
Car Culture
While the University regularly wins kudos
for its e;orts to minimize cars on campus
and encourage alternate transport, in
April it launched an academic program
intended “to create a vital and much-deserved intellectual community around
the car as technological and aesthetic artifact and cultural symbol,” in the words of
its director, communication professor
Cli;ord Nass. The Revs Program at Stanford, with links to the specialized resources of the Revs Institute for Automotive
Research in Naples, Fla., brings together
campus research ranging from engineering to archeology, psychology to litera-
Preemie Research
The School of Medicine has opened a
research center to improve the study and
prevention of premature births through
multidisciplinary work employing large
state and national data sets. The March of
Dimes Prematurity Research Center is a
joint venture with the foundation, which
has committed funding of $20 million. The
principal investigator is Vice Dean David
Stevenson, director of the Johnson Center
for Pregnancy and Newborn Services at
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.
Initial research areas include the use
of artificial intelligence theory to study
the space/time patterns of preterm birth;
applying bioinformatics to identify genes
and protein biomarkers that could signal
prematurity; and studying how the maternal microbiome and placental gene expression a;ect preterm birth. ■
