Hired by Google as L4 but rejected by top colleges

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Doesn’t seem well rounded. Very one dimensional. All he does is computers.

+1

-1 I just went through the college app cycle last year. Colleges looking for "well rounded" is not necessarily true. They look for people who have passion, leaders.

The problem for this guy is that he is 1. Asian and 2. CS major. Those two combinations are already a heavy strike against you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many lame excuses for plain and simple racism on this thread. Sad!

I thought California universities were race blind?

He got (almost) shut out because there were many other better-qualified kids from his HS.

They are officially, but there was some analysis done last few cycles and what’s happening is that UC schools are targeting heavily minority schools vs schools in more affluent areas that are primarily white and asian. This can be done without “considering” race in the application. And now that they’ve eliminated tests completely, it gives them more leeway. The California schools are doing what many schools said they would do after AA was struck down; they’re emphasizing first generation, and geographic diversity to get the proportion of URM students they want. Some of the changes were really striking. At many top performing schools the percentage of kids accepted to the top UC schools went from ~40% to ~15%. Conversely the rate at lower performing schools had the opposite change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many lame excuses for plain and simple racism on this thread. Sad!

I thought California universities were race blind?

He got (almost) shut out because there were many other better-qualified kids from his HS.

they are supposed to be race blind. They use the top x% of HS as a way to circumvent Prop 209.

Also, even if he gets into a UC, it doesn't guarantee a spot at the top UCs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Entry to ivy League stem schools is broken. Too much focus on things volunteering, gpa and not enough focus on stem pre college. For example our friends kid got into Stanford and MIT because he has straight A's and AP classes and good sats but never coded and is learning how to sophomore year. Where as another friend's kid focused all his time ages 9-17 building 20 or so programs and major projects full stack and cloud based programs where he made 50k but didn't have straight A's and AP classes except computer courses so didn't get into any ivy League stem schools. At the end of the day the ivy League kid will be at least 10 years behind after graduation

It's a crapshoot. The kid with coding experience and lower stats could've gotten into a T10. It's happened before. And the kid who got straight As and high SAT scores, all 5s on 10+ APs could also get rejected at T10. That's also happened (that was my DS).

Admissions is an opaque process, and to us, on the outside, it boggles the collective minds that someone like this kid could be denied to places like MIT or Stanford. One would think he'd at least get into GTech and UIUC. It's insane. The entire college admissions process is insane.

My DS is a dual citizen and is seriously thinking about moving to that other country if he has kids because he does not want his kid to go through such an insane college process that he went through. DS has super high stats, higher than the guy in the OP, and he also get rejected at the same schools.

[Anonymous]

if the kid applied to college, he probably is interested in attending. Maybe he will drop out or maybe he won't. I think a lot of kids want to experience college life before they start work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many lame excuses for plain and simple racism on this thread. Sad!

100%

If this was a black or Hispanic kid that had these stats and got shut out, the tune would most certainly be different.

And the saddest part is that most of these posts are from people that consider themselves anti-racist.

I agree that there is a lot of racism on this thread. We are all speculating and hopefully the parents and student gets an answer on what happened.

Maybe the student was just unlucky, but jumping to the conclusion that this happened because he is Asian is not supported by the evidence that is available to us via the article. Most of the schools the student applied to do not take race into consideration and many admit students primarily on stats. Looking at the list, besides targeting schools with good computer science programs, it seems like the student also picked schools where being Asian shouldn’t penalize him based on the school demographics, and prior admissions practices.

We don’t know what his essay was like, or if his teachers wrote weak recommendation letters. However, I doubt his essay or rec letters were terrible given that he got into Texas and Maryland. Also, CalPoly doesn’t even have essays or rec letters. University of Washington also doesn’t have recommendation letters.

This happens more often than not and should not be explained by the usual excuses such as bad essays, bad LoR etc. It is racism pure and simple.

My DC graduated in the top 1% of TJ and was rejected by 7 out of 8 schools applied to with 4.0/4.6+ GPA and 1600 SAT and ton of awards, Chem Olympiad, various ECs, writing awards, leadership positions, advanced orchestra, National Merit Scholar, volunteer awards etc. etc.

Why did those same schools admit less qualified Asian applicants? Why choose them over him?

They were legacies or recruited athletes.

[Anonymous]

The California Class of 2023 applies to college with no grades from Fall 2020, Fall 2021,Spring 2022, and maybe Fall 2022 for late AOs.

Spring 2020 was pass/fail for everyone in CA.

Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 were grade-optional, so kids could drop non-As.

So you've got a lot of competition from kids who dropped low grades from half their semesters, a cool app that was just getting started and AO has no idea how legit the business is, and of the few most competitive/privileged high schools in the country.

A lot of schools fill their classes with ED/EA. Did he apply ED/EA anywhere?

It's possible he deserved a spot but didn't do the work to make it visible to the AOs who spend 5 minutes looking at each application, where half the apps are full of lies and fake achievements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many lame excuses for plain and simple racism on this thread. Sad!

I thought California universities were race blind?

He got (almost) shut out because there were many other better-qualified kids from his HS.

They are officially, but there was some analysis done last few cycles and what’s happening is that UC schools are targeting heavily minority schools vs schools in more affluent areas that are primarily white and asian. This can be done without “considering” race in the application. And now that they’ve eliminated tests completely, it gives them more leeway. The California schools are doing what many schools said they would do after AA was struck down; they’re emphasizing first generation, and geographic diversity to get the proportion of URM students they want. Some of the changes were really striking. At many top performing schools the percentage of kids accepted to the top UC schools went from ~40% to ~15%. Conversely the rate at lower performing schools had the opposite change.

No, UC is a state school system that wants to get a proportion of students from across California.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many lame excuses for plain and simple racism on this thread. Sad!

100%

If this was a black or Hispanic kid that had these stats and got shut out, the tune would most certainly be different.

And the saddest part is that most of these posts are from people that consider themselves anti-racist.

I agree that there is a lot of racism on this thread. We are all speculating and hopefully the parents and student gets an answer on what happened.

Maybe the student was just unlucky, but jumping to the conclusion that this happened because he is Asian is not supported by the evidence that is available to us via the article. Most of the schools the student applied to do not take race into consideration and many admit students primarily on stats. Looking at the list, besides targeting schools with good computer science programs, it seems like the student also picked schools where being Asian shouldn’t penalize him based on the school demographics, and prior admissions practices.

We don’t know what his essay was like, or if his teachers wrote weak recommendation letters. However, I doubt his essay or rec letters were terrible given that he got into Texas and Maryland. Also, CalPoly doesn’t even have essays or rec letters. University of Washington also doesn’t have recommendation letters.

This happens more often than not and should not be explained by the usual excuses such as bad essays, bad LoR etc. It is racism pure and simple.

My DC graduated in the top 1% of TJ and was rejected by 7 out of 8 schools applied to with 4.0/4.6+ GPA and 1600 SAT and ton of awards, Chem Olympiad, various ECs, writing awards, leadership positions, advanced orchestra, National Merit Scholar, volunteer awards etc. etc.

and your son could have had bad essays and LORs. You can rule it out because he's your son but that's not reality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Doesn’t seem well rounded. Very one dimensional. All he does is computers.

+1

So all the 0-dimensonal people who do *nothing* are better?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many lame excuses for plain and simple racism on this thread. Sad!

100%

If this was a black or Hispanic kid that had these stats and got shut out, the tune would most certainly be different.

And the saddest part is that most of these posts are from people that consider themselves anti-racist.

I agree that there is a lot of racism on this thread. We are all speculating and hopefully the parents and student gets an answer on what happened.

Maybe the student was just unlucky, but jumping to the conclusion that this happened because he is Asian is not supported by the evidence that is available to us via the article. Most of the schools the student applied to do not take race into consideration and many admit students primarily on stats. Looking at the list, besides targeting schools with good computer science programs, it seems like the student also picked schools where being Asian shouldn’t penalize him based on the school demographics, and prior admissions practices.

We don’t know what his essay was like, or if his teachers wrote weak recommendation letters. However, I doubt his essay or rec letters were terrible given that he got into Texas and Maryland. Also, CalPoly doesn’t even have essays or rec letters. University of Washington also doesn’t have recommendation letters.

This happens more often than not and should not be explained by the usual excuses such as bad essays, bad LoR etc. It is racism pure and simple.

My DC graduated in the top 1% of TJ and was rejected by 7 out of 8 schools applied to with 4.0/4.6+ GPA and 1600 SAT and ton of awards, Chem Olympiad, various ECs, writing awards, leadership positions, advanced orchestra, National Merit Scholar, volunteer awards etc. etc.

and your son could have had bad essays and LORs. You can rule it out because he's your son but that's not reality.

"Oh he didn't get into college because teachers are biased against him" isn't a winning argument.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many lame excuses for plain and simple racism on this thread. Sad!

100%

If this was a black or Hispanic kid that had these stats and got shut out, the tune would most certainly be different.

And the saddest part is that most of these posts are from people that consider themselves anti-racist.

I agree that there is a lot of racism on this thread. We are all speculating and hopefully the parents and student gets an answer on what happened.

Maybe the student was just unlucky, but jumping to the conclusion that this happened because he is Asian is not supported by the evidence that is available to us via the article. Most of the schools the student applied to do not take race into consideration and many admit students primarily on stats. Looking at the list, besides targeting schools with good computer science programs, it seems like the student also picked schools where being Asian shouldn’t penalize him based on the school demographics, and prior admissions practices.

We don’t know what his essay was like, or if his teachers wrote weak recommendation letters. However, I doubt his essay or rec letters were terrible given that he got into Texas and Maryland. Also, CalPoly doesn’t even have essays or rec letters. University of Washington also doesn’t have recommendation letters.

This happens more often than not and should not be explained by the usual excuses such as bad essays, bad LoR etc. It is racism pure and simple.

My DC graduated in the top 1% of TJ and was rejected by 7 out of 8 schools applied to with 4.0/4.6+ GPA and 1600 SAT and ton of awards, Chem Olympiad, various ECs, writing awards, leadership positions, advanced orchestra, National Merit Scholar, volunteer awards etc. etc.

and your son could have had bad essays and LORs. You can rule it out because he's your son but that's not reality.

I saw the essays and LoRs and they were excellent. For example, one LoR (from AP English teacher who graduated from Yale Law and became English teacher at TJ after years of law practice) said DC was the best student she had seen in the last 10 years. Other LoRs were equally glowing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Coding is just a technical skill that many people can acquired. Back to the 90s, so many people took a class and become a programmer. Coding skill is so common that it just like a technician in a special field. On the top of the pyramid are those smart people who innovate big ideas and great architecture. There is not evident this kid is extremely smart in that. This kid started coding from very early age. Bill Gate did coding at very age. That is fine. It's because a that time, not many people knows how to code. But now, millions of people knows how to code. even AI is can code too. Doing things millions can do at early age just wasting time. He shouldn't spend his childhood doing coding - a low level jobs like a technician. He should be learning Math, exploring literature and histories. Good colleges are looking people who are special, who are smarter than any others, but not kids who start doing easy thing early. This case is not a race discrimination, and don't get it wrong.

Sad to see Asians attacking Asians like this.

AI can do math and read literature and history books too.

And since Stanley has a 4.4 GPA, that means he did study advanced literature and history.

He did all that and also starred a successful busines whe most teens dropped out of school for a year to play Minecraft. Have you started a successful business?

The only consolation here is that Stanley is too good for college. Hell probably be engineering director in 5-10 years if he stays at Google, making Big Law money and having a lot more fun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many lame excuses for plain and simple racism on this thread. Sad!

100%

If this was a black or Hispanic kid that had these stats and got shut out, the tune would most certainly be different.

And the saddest part is that most of these posts are from people that consider themselves anti-racist.

I agree that there is a lot of racism on this thread. We are all speculating and hopefully the parents and student gets an answer on what happened.

Maybe the student was just unlucky, but jumping to the conclusion that this happened because he is Asian is not supported by the evidence that is available to us via the article. Most of the schools the student applied to do not take race into consideration and many admit students primarily on stats. Looking at the list, besides targeting schools with good computer science programs, it seems like the student also picked schools where being Asian shouldn’t penalize him based on the school demographics, and prior admissions practices.

We don’t know what his essay was like, or if his teachers wrote weak recommendation letters. However, I doubt his essay or rec letters were terrible given that he got into Texas and Maryland. Also, CalPoly doesn’t even have essays or rec letters. University of Washington also doesn’t have recommendation letters.

This happens more often than not and should not be explained by the usual excuses such as bad essays, bad LoR etc. It is racism pure and simple.

My DC graduated in the top 1% of TJ and was rejected by 7 out of 8 schools applied to with 4.0/4.6+ GPA and 1600 SAT and ton of awards, Chem Olympiad, various ECs, writing awards, leadership positions, advanced orchestra, National Merit Scholar, volunteer awards etc. etc.

and your son could have had bad essays and LORs. You can rule it out because he's your son but that's not reality.

I saw the essays and LoRs and they were excellent. For example, one LoR (from AP English teacher who graduated from Yale Law and became English teacher at TJ after years of law practice) said DC was the best student she had seen in the last 10 years. Other LoRs were equally glowing.

I got one of those too.
Every TJ teacher probably says that about one kid, as do teachers at other schools. Clever ones may say that at multiple kids, do different AOs.

[Anonymous]

Just watched the ABC news clip where father and son were interviewed. The kid and father seemed nice. No crazy red flags. i agree with there suggestion that kids can get feedbacy about why they were rejected.