Stanford seems much more concerned with soft factors and is thus considered an admissions "black box." If you have killer rec letters and a solid personal statement, I don't think it's worth it
I'm spending it making a pros and cons list for Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Full-ride Columbia, Chicago, and NYU, fully knowing it will soon become a useless file.
... subpar writing. A DS and optional essays are there to provide ... writing skills. Mediocre to poor optional essays are worse than none ... you forgot a major (but optional) component and the quality is ...
I think some of the ties in the T25 (2, 4, and 8, 20, 22) will disappear due to the hits that different schools had to take to their LSAT medians. I think Stanford and Berkeley both drop since they took hits across the board.