Arcadia : 3 Admitted to Stanford

Things are right with the world again at Arcadia High School, where administrators have fretted in recent years about seniors’ inability to get into Stanford University. This year’s graduating class already includes at least three students headed for the prestigious Palo Alto school.

“Our concern was a little broader than just Stanford,” said Wade Askew, the Arcadia School District’s assistant superintendent in charge of curriculum. “Stanford was representative of the nation’s more selective schools.”

With letters from college admissions offices still arriving, the school’s 715-member graduating class has already received the three Stanford acceptances, two each from Harvard, Caltech, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia and Cornell, and one from Johns Hopkins.

Nobody can quite figure it out. It’s not that this year’s students are any more capable than last year’s or those of the year before, Askew said. “I’m not sure we can pin the causes to any one thing, other than that the students are applying to selective schools where there’s a great deal of competition.” He noted that straight A’s are no guarantee. “It’s more a matter of being able to match what a particular university is looking for that particular year.”