A letter to families on college decisions
From Richard H. Shaw
THIS AFTERNOON, my office sent admission notifications to high school seniors who were waiting with anticipation to learn if they would be invited to join the incoming Stanford class.
Even after many decades in the admission field, I still feel heartache for the many exceptional applicants who are not offered a space in the class. Each year, I hear from parents who are heartbroken that their children – top-ranked, accomplished, and truly impressive – were not admitted.
I can relate. When my own daughter was applying to college, I wanted every school to recognize her talents and see her fit on their campus. The anxiety is real. But given the pressure that today’s teens already face, I wish to impart three credos:
First, no university alone is big enough to admit each of the many qualified applicants into its classrooms, dorms, and dining halls. And while Stanford’s undergraduate class size has remained largely the same, record numbers of applicants continue to apply. Thousands of outstanding students are going to be turned away, and there is no doubt that the vast majority of them could have met the demands of a Stanford education.
Admission is not formulaic; it is as much an art as it is a science. Each class is a symphony with its own distinct composition and sound; the final roster is an effort to create harmony, and the seats for any given cohort eventually fill. A student’s value and potential are not diminished by a Stanford admission committee’s decision.
Second, celebrate the bigger milestone. The applications that my staff and I reviewed showcased remarkable dedication and achievement. And in most cases, those denied admission to some schools are admitted to others. The transition from high school to college is a monumental turning point. I encourage parents to mark the success of their children and rejoice in the excitement that the next four years will bring.
And that leads to my final point: Education is what a student makes of it. Of course, certain schools offer majors, research programs, or campus resources that others don’t, but they all afford opportunities to learn and to grow.
I think about how proud Stanford is of its faculty, past and present. From Nobel laureates to MacArthur Fellows, the Stanford community has always had accomplished academics who changed the world for the better. And their backgrounds are manifold.
Their undergraduate educations included time at the University of Michigan (Nobel laureate Paul Milgrom), Arizona State University (Pulitzer Prize winner Adam Johnson), Erasmus University Rotterdam (Nobel laureate Guido Imbens), the University of Cincinnati (MacArthur Fellow Jennifer Eberhardt), Harvard University (Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi), the University of Minnesota Duluth (Nobel laureate Brian Kobilka), Sharif University of Technology (Fields medalist Maryam Mirzakhani), the University of California, Berkeley (Nobel laureate Andrew Fire), and many more.
An undergraduate degree from Stanford may well end up being only one line at the bottom of a resume. My hope is that parents and college applicants remember that the news they receive, whether good or bad, is but a single step on a much longer journey.
This dean’s letter is based on an article originally printed in the Los Angeles Times, amended in 2025.