All of us, on all sides of the issue, are and will be open to criticism. In the Stanford admissions process, all applicants receive careful consideration, and the individual circumstances of the applicant are taken into consideration. These efforts aim at a class characterized by diversity in terms of academic interests, artistic and athletic accomplishments, leadership qualities, and ethnic and social backgrounds. The main goals are two. First, we want a rich educational environment to challenge our students.
Students learn much from one another.
This task cannot be accomplished unless the country's demographic diversity finds a presence on campus. As we pursue our goals, there is no room for categorical preferences. However, there also is no room with respect to any applicant for making quantitative, scalable admissions criteria the sole touchstone of intellectual vitality, talent, character, and promise. That has never been the case at Stanford, and I hope it never will be. It is Stanford's very characteristic that it has never been one-dimensional, and yet the university has been able, especially over the last four decades, to become one of the world's most selective institutions.