Current Stanford student here willing to answer any questions.
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Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford
61–70 of 100 posts
Re: Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
development kid (i.e. you donated $$$) Anyone got any numbers on that? What does it take to become a development kid...
if they get another reviewer for that category, i can guarantee you that all that person will do is open an excel sheet, order by donation amount per family, and write the position your family is at. So i doubt donating the minimum will do you any good.
There are cases of parent givers (<$100k mind you) whose kids are rejected even with good stats.
Re: Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford
#63Wait, so will this work for other schools, too? Like a UC perhaps?
Re: Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford
#64Is there a legal conflict here - do writers of letters not have any protections under the law to prevent the letter being made public, or passed on to third parties. Do you lose all legal rights and controls over letters once you mail them? The teachers maker recommendations clearly had an assumption of privacy in their communication? If the Uni chose to precis the letter - eg provide a score in its place - would the…
How do you have an assumption of privacy when you are the one mailing out the letter to some third party?
It's _to_ the third party, not to the public. Particularly if it's to a named person and for a specific reason. That's just my instinctive take on this.
I haven't researched this issue at all before - though I did read this, http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/html/WYSIWYGfiles/file/G..., recently which suggests not publishing any private letters without consent and that letters from "government officials" (which teachers would be here it seems?) need permission from the relevant department. However that's a particular publishers guidelines and doesn't go in to the legal requirements that, inter alia, lead to those guidelines.
Re: Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford
#65Re: Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you have an assumption of privacy when you are the one mailing out the letter to some third party?
It's _to_ the third party, not to the public. Particularly if it's to a named person and for a specific reason. That's just my instinctive take on this. I haven't researched this issue at all before - though I did read this, http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/html/WYSIWYGfiles/file/G... , recently which suggests not publishing any private letters without consent and that letters from "government officials" (which te…
Are undergraduate recommendation letters really sent to a specific person? And only that person reads it? I doubt it.
I briefly browsed the organization's website, but I didn't find any verbatim copies of the documents they describe obtaining, so I can't confirm/deny this suspicion.
I think it's known that the letters can be read by anyone at the University and Federal Law has stated for the last 40 years that students have a right to view these communications. Not only has this right been codified for at least a generation, every student does have the right to know what a school is recording and communicating about them.
There's no (valid) assumption of privacy anywhere to be found here.
Re: Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford
#67> At least one student has received the records, and said he was surprised by what he got back: several hundred pages, including a log of every time his electronic identification card had been used to unlock a door, [...] It seems totally unnecessary to indefinitely store every door swipe. Sure, store the swipes used to access the rare book room or the chemistry lab for 6 months or a year, but there’s no reason for e…
When I was at college a friend of mine was being accused of a heinous crime. In the end, he used key card time slots to prove he was innocent. But even with the key card it was a matter of the incident happening like a single minute after he was there. Luckily, all of the key swipes were stored and it showed that shortly after he had already swiped his card etc. Anyways, long story short, it doesn't hurt to keep that…
Who says he didn't give his card to somebody else to create an alibi?
Re: Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're a Stanford student. I wouldn't want to try that for other schools.
Why not?
Because you have no idea if it'll work when you go through that system or be escalated to the right people, and you may not have access to such a system in the first place.
Re: Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford
#69> At least one student has received the records, and said he was surprised by what he got back: several hundred pages, including a log of every time his electronic identification card had been used to unlock a door, [...] It seems totally unnecessary to indefinitely store every door swipe. Sure, store the swipes used to access the rare book room or the chemistry lab for 6 months or a year, but there’s no reason for e…
When I was at college a friend of mine was being accused of a heinous crime. In the end, he used key card time slots to prove he was innocent. But even with the key card it was a matter of the incident happening like a single minute after he was there. Luckily, all of the key swipes were stored and it showed that shortly after he had already swiped his card etc. Anyways, long story short, it doesn't hurt to keep that…
Your friend would have been saved with even an aggressive retention policy, from the sound of it. Heinous crimes usually don't take years to pop up.
Re: Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford
#70Why does the article focus so heavily on Stanford? I understand that the students who have done this so far are there, but if this is based on a federal law that applies to all universities, shouldn't it work at all universities?
> I understand that the students who have done this so far are there,
That's it exactly. They've done the groundwork, laid out a template, recruited some students to request their records, and discussed a bit what they found or might found. So it's going to be Stanford-specific until similar meat is thrown out about other places.