I worked in IT at Stanford admissions briefly. The one thing I remember the most wasn't the stupid shit the kids would do (usually their parents calling pretending to be their kid), but the shitty way applications are reviewed. Basically your scores are looked at to quickly eliminate you, then if you're still there your essay is skimmed. If your essay has errors in it - it's eliminated immediately. If it sounds like all the others (as most do) then you have a 50/50 chance of being in the reject/maybe piles. If it tells a different story and sounds intelligent, you have a 50/50 chance of being in either the maybe/reject pile. That's it. Obviously, if you're a minority, are the first in your family to go to school, that ups you one pile. If you went to a great high school, or are from Manhattan, you go down a pile.
...but the worst part: If you are one of the ~250 kids each year on "the list", you are in. In order to reject one of those kids, the admissions officer needs to write a letter to the dean explaining why you're rejecting the kid. None of the officers I knew ever rejected one of these kids. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't such a large percentage of admitted freshmen.
To be on the list, obviously, you needed to be family or friends of administration or faculty, or be a financial contributor to the school. Again, it doesn't sound bad, until you realize that "the list" is an astounding 10% of all accepted students. All the other ivy league schools are the same, so I've heard.
