John Bunnell's story is pure Stanford. He arrived from New York as a freshman in 1957 and went straight to the Business School after graduation. In 1963, he turned down a Peace Corps posting in Libya to work in the admission office. He met his wife at commencement in 1970 at the entrance to Frost Amphitheater. She was a recent graduate working as a public events employee and was pacing nervously because the faculty procession was late. As head usher, Bunnell consoled her.
Later he returned to the admission office and looked up her 1966 freshman application. On it, in his handwriting, was "Great girl. Admit." They married in Memorial Church a year and a half later. One son graduated from Stanford last year; the other is a junior.
Bunnell, now 60, eventually rose to the No. 2 post in the admission office, helping to admit 35 years' worth of undergraduates before the office was reorganized and his position eliminated in December. "He's undoubtedly read more applications than anyone in the United States," says Jean Fetter, the dean of undergraduate admission from 1984 to 1991.
Indeed, Bunnell is a virtual Stanford archive. He reels off stories. Among his favorites are the call he got from song-and-dance man Gene Kelly to check the deadline for his son's application (his son was admitted but went elsewhere) and an application that included a record 36 extra letters of recommendation (rejected -- "she was clearly trying to hide a mediocre record").
He remembers how the turmoil of the late 1960s prompted Stanford to broaden admission standards to make room for minority students who hadn't attended a Scarsdale or Beverly Hills high school and lacked opportunities to participate in traditional extracurricular activities. The new approach transformed the applicant pool, broadening it from 7,000 students -- most of them white men in 1963 -- to nearly 18,000 men and women from diverse backgrounds today.
Even after reading an estimated half-million applications, Bunnell says picking the right people from Stanford's stellar applicant pool is still incredibly tough. "The assessment of human potential is an art, not a science," he says. "It involves visceral feeling, but being rational is important, too."
A longtime friend of Stanford athletics, Bunnell is now looking into advising eighth- and ninth-grade student-athletes to help them prepare for selective colleges. His Stanford story, four decades and counting, is not over yet.
