re: Asian kid with 4.42GPA and 1590 on SAT denied by 16 colleges, Google hires him

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Amazingly woke arse Google stepped up.

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They can hire him significantly cheaper, buy his loyalty for a very long time, and get better results than his peers at Google. He won’t have learned a lot of the poor discipline and poor work habits the other Google employees have

Nobody here is denying that it would be much, much easier if he was African-American or Latino. It almost certainly would have been much easier.

But there were plenty of Asian-Americans who did get in. He wasn't strong enough for his race as bad as that sounds. I hate affirmative action with a passion just to be clear - I just don't think his application was that competitive for an unhooked Asian dude from San Fransisco.


Affirmative action is technically illegal now anyway.

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Nobody here is denying that it would be much, much easier if he was African-American or Latino. It almost certainly would have been much easier.

But there were plenty of Asian-Americans who did get in. He wasn't strong enough for his race as bad as that sounds.

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What you mean to say is, he's the victim of straight up racism.

If he'd been black, he could have gotten smashed drunk 5 minutes before taking the SAT and still been accepted.

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Affirmative action is technically illegal now anyway.

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Illegal?

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quote: Also, if you make less than around $90k per year as a family everything is fully paid for. If you make up to about $130k tuition is paid for. If you make more than that though, $75k per year to go to school. You get financial aid up to $300k a year depending on your circumstances. You pay a maximum of $15,000 at $150k household income but it only hits $75k+ when your parents are making $200k+.

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That basically assumes you have no assets though. BTW, there are all kinds of people gaming the hell out of that system as well depending on how you make your money. Schools should not charge based on income. If you want to have a scholarship around income from an individual? Great, go for it. All this system does though is make it so that any kid that has upper middle class parents is screwed because they will either destroy their parent's finances or take on massive debt in order to go to many of those schools even if they have elite qualifications.

As for the female/male thing that was their target. A school like Stanford gets to pick their class and what it looks like. The vast majority of applicants are "qualified" so the admissions folks can "play god" in many ways. Listened to a Podcast with the Stanford Director of Admissions and he said they had 22k applicants and 80% are "qualified". They can pick however many kids they want from this part of the country or that, this major or that, now the only thing they can't "officially" do is pick on race anymore. Of course people game the hell out of that too and do an Elizabeth Warren.

Brown is pure Liberal Arts so it makes sense they have more female applicants. That said over 60% of all kids in college now are women but the only STEM major that is majority female is Biology (my a hair). The more intense the Engineering or Math the more male Women dominate all the LA majors and Education, lining up to take on massive debt with worthless degrees. The Ivies or Stanford you are fine but most are going to mediocre schools where a LA Degree will get you a job at Starbucks so long as you can make a Latte.

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But Wisconsin and Washington? I'm not disputing they're good schools but are they really the type to turn away numbers like that?



His intended major was probably computer science. Asian applicants with perfect grades, super high test scores and strong extracurriculars are a dime a dozen for computer science, even at schools like Washington and Wisconsin.

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There is also a backlash from some Top 20-50 type schools that don't like to be a "Safety" school. They know some kid with those stats from California is very unlikely to ever go to school at Wisconsin or Washington so they would rather deny them than admit and just have them wait until May to decide they are going elsewhere. Kid needs to give them a better reason than "I'm really smart".

Part of the issue btw is the Common App has changed everything and there is so much info out there to "game" the system. With the Common App it's very easy for a top student to apply to 25 schools and many do it just for ego. This kid likely fit that profile btw. Likely just copied and pasted their essay from the schools they wanted to along with the Common App and changed a few words around. May never have been within 500 miles of the school and no real intention to go there unless virtually everyone else denied them. That school would rather have a kid with slightly less academics that has a compelling reason to go there.

There is so much prep out there now too for stuff like SAT's, that's part of why schools aren't valuing it as much. A 1500 vs a 1600 is the same to them. A 4.0 means little without knowing what classes you took and what kind of school you went to.

The new thing they are focusing on is "rigor". Meaning not only that you are taking AP's but taking the hardest AP's like Calc BC and Physics BC if you are going STEM and if you get a 4 or 5 on the AP Test. Then what type of activities you do for Extracurriculars and beyond the normal NHS stuff. The bar has just gotten extremely high because so many more kids are planning around college from a young age, especially Asian families. Whatever they come up with to raise the bar you have a subset that will come up with a way to game the system and have crazier resumes.

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This dude needs a college degree like he needs another hole in his head.
Not. At. All.

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True. I tell my son this all the time. He doesn't need to go to college. College is great and I enjoyed my experience.

But the 3 electricians that turned in a bid for me last week all were well over 1M dollars. And it's clean work for the most part.

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He wasn't strong enough for his race as bad as that sounds.

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What?? Strong enough for his race? How racist is this comment? How STRONG should his race be? What is the accepted strength level of other races?

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I just don't think his application was that competitive for an unhooked Asian dude from San Fransisco.

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What exactly is a hooked Asian?

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Affirmative action is technically illegal now anyway.

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Yeah and how is this technical illegality actually working when the godly admissions officers fabricate other requirements that specifically bolster some races and penalize others?

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What?? Strong enough for his race? How racist is this comment? How STRONG should his race be? What is the accepted strength level of other races?

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I'm not sure how I'm being racist here. I'm neither advocating for a system that chooses based on race nor am I assigning any negative quality here to him being of a certain race. I'm just describing the system as it existed before June 2023.

I'm saying that US admissions offices until now compared people to people of their own race and he wouldn't have been very strong compared to people of his own race as the system worked.

I made no such judgement on whether it's right - I just described the system as it existed.

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How STRONG should his race be? What is the accepted strength level of other races?

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I'm not an admissions officer - I'm literally just commenting on how the system works.

I don't know why you're taking it so personally and accusing me of being racist. I'm not in favor of the system, just describing how it worked.

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What exactly is a hooked Asian?

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Someone who is either an athlete, kid of an alumnus or a donor or faculty kid. They have a 'hook' meaning it becomes much easier to be accepted as those applicants are selected through a different admissions pool.

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Yeah and how is this technical illegality actually working when the godly admissions officers fabricate other requirements that specifically bolster some races and penalize others?

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That's legal and as long as it doesn't use race directly, no US court is going to rule it illegal.

Whether it's right or wrong, that's a debate for another day but I don't see anything wrong with using economic preferences to help low-income kids of all races etc.

If it happens to boost diversity or reduce it, that's not my problem. But I see nothing wrong with elite schools being more open to admitting low-income kids who've achieved.