Each year, millions of high school students are obliged to write personal narratives as part of their college application: all flagship public universities and most private colleges and universities require these documents as part of a complete application.
But what are the social, cultural, and linguistic contours of college admissions essays? How can these be analyzed at scale? Our lab addresses these questions by pulling methods, theories, and ideas from data science, data/information studies, sociology, gender studies, linguistics, fairness/ethics of AI, and higher education research. An important by-product of this work is learning how to combine human and computational reading of text.
If you work in college admissions and/or college admissions counseling, we would love to hear your perspectives on our work: https://tinyurl.com/stanfordsnl
The Student Narratives Lab was cofounded by me, Tamara Gilkes Borr, David Song, and Rosalia Zárate (listed alphabetically).
The Student Narratives Lab is affiliated with the Pathways Lab (PI: Mitchell Stevens and John Mitchell).
Current Lab (listed reverse alphabetically):
Mitchell Stevens
Sonia Giebel
Ben Gebre-Medhin
Ben Domingue
anthony lising antonio
AJ Alvero
Lab Affiliates:
Francis A. Pearman (co-author of ongoing work)
Misha Moussavian (Stanford Institute for Research in the Social Sciences Summer Intern)
Jasmine Pal (Stanford Institute for Research in the Social Sciences Summer Intern)
Jules Hoffmann (Stanford Institute for Research in the Social Sciences Summer Intern)
Lab Alumni (listed chronologically):
Noah Arthurs
David Song
Rosalia Zárate
Tamara Gilkes Borr
AJ Alvero, PhD 