[powerclue]

That doesn't seem outrageously high for a high cap school?

15-20% of the world is estimated to have a disability. So Stanford population is high, but approximately double the average of a random global population sample.

Now, think about the selection pressures Stanford applies. Stanford selects students who are fighting for top academic honors. Those students are dealing with brutal competition, and likely see their future as hanging on their ability to secure one of a small number of slots in the school. Anxiety would be genuinely higher in the student body than, say, students at a mid rate state school.

Stanford wants students with strong test scores, especially those who are strongly capable in mathematics. High spatial awareness, cognitive integration, and working memory can be positive traits in some autistic people and some find strong success in standardized environments and in mathematics.

We're also improving diagnostic tools for autism and ADHD, and recognizing that the tools we used missed a lot of cases in young women, because they present differently than for young men.

Imagine a house party where the guests are selected at random from MIT or Stanford, then imagine you selected guests at random from, say, all Americans. Are you telling me you'd be surprised if the MIT and Stanford crowd had a noticeably different population demographic than the overall American population?

[Aloisius]

8.3% of Americans 18-34yo have a disability according to the Census department.

Stanford's rate is 4.3x higher than that.

Add in that half of all students who claim a disability have no record of a diagnosis or disability classification prior to beginning college, all the reports of rampant cheating in school, the Varsity Blues college-admissions scandal where some parents helped their kid fake disabilities to get ahead, and even people here who seem to think it's ok to defraud the system to get ahead?

I think perhaps elite schools need a better way to gauge an applicant's ethics to deny them entry since the last thing the world needs is more unethical people in positions of power.

[jeffbee]

> elite schools need a better way to gauge an applicant's ethics

You are perhaps mistaking which side of the line Stanford would select for. It is a school that produces and prefers sociopaths. Its engineering curriculum, almost uniquely among universities, has no requirement for an ethics course. You can fulfill Stanford's "Technology in Society" requirement by taking a course where you network with VCs for a semester. It is a factory for making jerks.

[bhelkey]

> 15-20% of the world is estimated to have a disability. So Stanford population is high, but approximately double the average of a random global population sample.

Stanford is not a random sample of the global population. Most notably, Stanford undergraduates are young, primarily between 18-24[1]. 8.7% of people in the US from ages 18-29 have a disability [2].

[1] https://www.meetyourclass.com/stanford/student-population

[2] https://askearn.org/page/statistics-on-disability#:~:text=8....

[pelorat]

> 15-20% of the world is estimated to have a disability.

Not a chance in hell.

[powerclue]

If you have better data, I'm sure the world would love to have it. The world, however, seems to agree the number is somewhere around 15-20%.

World Health Organization: 16%

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-...

UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs: 15%

https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/resources/f...

CDC: 25% of Americans

https://www.cdc.gov/disability-and-health/articles-documents...

ROD Group: 22%

https://www.rod-group.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/The-Glo...

[missedthecue]

Easily wayyy more than that given both the loosening standards of what a disability is combined with over-diagnosis. But I get your sentiment. When I was a kid, disabled meant you were in a wheelchair or needed someone to physically feed you, and now it means you have an Adderall prescription.

[IshKebab]

Well... in the UK it's now around 25%:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...

However, big caveat - it's self-reported. If you look at how many people get disability benefit it's around 10%.

So whether or not that is true depends entirely on what you mean by "disability" which is obviously not a well defined term.

[TrackerFF]

Let's look at the probability another way:

If 1 in 5 are obese, would it be fair to assume that 1 in 5 Olympic runners are also obese?

[al_borland]

The Stanford admission process could lead to a higher percentage of people with conditions that are classified as disabilities, but give them an edge.

Albert Einstein was a smart guy and very accomplished… yet his wife had to paint is house door red so he knew where he lived. He very likely had what we would now call ASD. While he was brilliant and a top university would love people like that, he needed some accommodations, such as a red front door.