This afternoon, my office sent out over 34,000 e-mail notifications to high school seniors who were waiting to learn whether they would be invited to spend the next four years at Stanford. Even though I have been in the admission field for over 30 years, I still feel the pain of the many exceptional youths who were not offered places. Given that todays teens already have enough pressure in their lives, I wish to impart   three messages to any particularly disappointed parents. First, it's all relative. While the number admitted into the undergraduate   class has remained unchanged for years, Stanford, like many of its peer   schools, has had a record number of total applicants  more than 42,000. Regardless of arguments over whether too much preference is given to one category over another, thousands of students are going to be turned away, and there is no doubt that the vast majority of them could have met the demands of a Stanford education. I wish there were a formula   to explain who is accepted and who isn't, but the decision-making is as much art as it is science. Each class is a symphony with its own distinct composition  and sound. The final roster   is an effort to create harmony  , and that means that some extraordinary bass players don't get a chair. What's more, even among my staff   there are legitimate   differences about applicants. Second, celebrate the bigger picture. Most of the applications I reviewed are truly remarkable. The transition from high school to college is a turning point, and it's more important to focus on how a young adult is moving on to a new stage than where that stage happens to be. You should mark the success of your children and rejoice   in the excitement that the next four years will bring. And that leads to my final point: education is what a student makes of it. Of course, certain schools have resources   that others don't, but they all offer opportunities to learn and to grow. Thousands of applicants who arent accepted to Stanford go on to have fulfilling lives. What parents and college applicants across the country need to remember is that the news they receive, whether good or bad, is but a single step on a much longer journey. What is the main purpose of the article?
To congratulate those who have been admitted into Stanford. To tell parents that there is no need to feel down if their children werent admitted to Stanford. To inform us what kinds of applicants are more likely to be accepted by Stanford. To inform us of the characteristics of a Stanford education.