And yet, one almost couldn’t find a home for its pathetic football program…
To my beautiful, smart niece who is flying out tonight to begin her journey at Oxford, good luck and kick some ass!!!
Uncle Dragonboy
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Stanley Zhong, 18, is a 2023 graduate of Gunn High School in Palo Alto.
Despite earning 3.97 unweighted and 4.42 weighted GPA, scoring 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT’s and founding his own e-signing startup RabbitSign in sophomore year, he was rejected by 16 out of the 18 colleges he applied to.
He was denied by: MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, UC Davis, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Cornell University, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, Caltech, University of Washington and University of Wisconsin.
Sad.
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His fault is being a Zhong. Time for you to re-think some issues seriously.
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Considering he founded a start-up, what does he need college for anyway? Go make money, young man, gobs of it…
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Google hired that kid.
That kid must have done something super dumb with his college app. Wonder what that is.
He applied to Computer Science and didn’t claim to identify as a female.
This is very much like my son’s experience. Don’t blame the kid - the colleges don’t care about people like this. They think kids like this don’t need college to be successful and give the spots to others. They’re correct, but it still means he is being denied an education that could make him even more successful and will have to get it on his own through youtube vidoes,
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I actually don’t think this is the case of outright discrimination. His weighted GPA is 4.42 and unweighted 3.97. So this kid didn’t take that many AP and Honors classes. Given that the UCs and CSUs don’t consider SAT he’s just not that impressive on their selection criteria.
Being in Gunn hurts his chances too. His peers likely loaded up on tons of APs and Honors. Being in a top high school hurts if you are not in the top 25 percentile. He may have spent too much time on his startup.
Do you realize how absolutely insane that sounds? Most kids don’t even have access to AP classes or maybe have access to a couple of them. It’s perpetuating a system where access to the top universities requires affluent parents. That’s the only way kids are in public schools that offer the classes or the parents can afford elite private schools. Of course, those private schools usually require private MS and grade school. We’re saying only kids with parents who can pay $1M+ for private schools or live in a multi million dollar home are worthy of access to the best universities. Then we send kids with lower incomes to degree factory schools with majors that don’t even lead to a career. That’s beyond broken.
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Is that his weighted UC GPA or straight weighted? If it’s his UC GPA, then it can’t go higher because they cap the weight increase.
Otherwise, you have some points. That said he got into a UT. Unless his family owns a house or land there, that’s not so easy - they only allow 10% non-Texas students. Also, they care heavily about rank.
The real problem of course is that there aren’t enough spots at colleges for the demand especially for CS students. If he were art-history, he’d probably have gotten into UCB. The colleges like to keep it that way to keep their brand identity.
you addressed the issue but why are you against affirmative action?
Why do poor black kids deserve special treatment over equally poor white kids? The belief in affirmative action requires believing that black and Hispanic people are inferior and need a lower standard. I don’t get how people don’t realize lowering the bar based on race is literally racist. It’s like people are ok with being racist if they claim it’s to help people.
Now if you want to make it purely socioeconomic regardless of race and say these schools need to admit x% of students from families below certain income levels, then that’s a different conversation.
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Got it but isn’t lower income and race highly correlated? Even if we change to income based wouldn’t it favor Black and Hispanic more (of course other race with lower income will be included but less in number)
At least then we make it about income not race. Everything we make about race is divisive and racist by definition.
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Nope. This is not how it works. College admission offices look at how many AP and Honors classes are offered in a particular high school. Kids are encouraged to take as many as offered. And if a kid goes out of their own way to enroll in community college that’s even better. It shows initiatives.
The metric is to do their best with the resources given to them. In a prestigious high school like Gunn everybody is loaded up to the gills with AP. This kid isn’t doing much. His class rank would be low as a result and will get dinged in college apps.
If instead it’s a crappy high school with no AP offered. Not taking any is not held up as a negative. If a kid even does one or two at a local community college it would be a huge positive.
Without standardized tests it all boils down to standing out in one’s high school. You need to do better than your peers.
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Yes, but people aren’t upset about helping lower income people equally. What’s currently happening is that middle income Hispanic and Black families get a boost in the name of equity and the lower income kids of all races aren’t getting helped as much as people claim. If AA isn’t even doing what it claims, then better not to have it.
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