Have you heard the story about this kid who is suing the University of California system because he did not get in despite his 1590 SAT score and 4.42 GPA? A Palo Alto teen named Stanley Zhong was rejected by 16 out of 18 colleges that he applied to, including five University of California campuses, which include UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UCLA, UC San Diego, and UC Santa Barbara. Why does this happen? How could this happen? “Racism!” Stanley is crying. He’s suing. But is it racism? I have five other things that probably are at stake.
I work with students trying to get into top 20 colleges. That’s my wheelhouse. Probably 80-90% of the students I work with are in that cluster, but even if you’re not, I’ll work with you too. But that tends to be the bees I attract. And I will say, I don’t think I’ve ever had a student I work with who has the stats that Stanley has, the story that Stanley has, a good enough story, and not get into many of the schools that are on his list. Generally, my students get into great places, and they put their best selves on paper, and we see results. And good things happen. And that’s why I think there are some other factors at play that aren’t just race. So in this blog, I’m going to go through five reasons besides discrimination—as well as discrimination—why Stanley, or other students like him who have amazing stats, may have been rejected. Why does this happen? How does this happen? And what can you do to not be the next Stanley Zhang?
If you haven’t yet, one thing you can do—because you do need the baseline scores and academic rigor that Stanley probably had—is check out our online course for the SAT, which you can find at supertutortv.com. It’s basically a full curriculum and material of really well-crafted questions that are like the SAT. You can import your Blue Book results to customize your study plan so that you’re studying what you need, not what you don’t. And we’ve had students score up to a perfect score on the exam using our self-paced course. So I encourage you guys to go check that out. We also have live group classes. We’ve got several Zoom intensives coming up that are taught by me and a senior-level tutor who has coached many students to perfect scores. You can also check those out at supertutortv.com. And I’m also teaching super seminars before each of the next several SATs.
Bad Essays
The number one reason that I think students get rejected is not race; it’s that their essays suck. Over the years I’ve had several students come to me that have been completely rejected by every college they ever wanted to go to. And in the second round they realized, you know what? Maybe I need some help. Maybe I need a professional to come in and try to help me straighten this out. I had a girl last year that applied to 15 or 16 schools and got rejected by all of them. I read her essays, and I’m going to be honest: they weren’t that great. They were pretty much at the bottom of the pile. When you’ve got 10%, 20%, and 5% admit rates and when you have programs that are really competitive, bad essays aren’t going to cut it. It is not enough just to have the GPA and the test score. Your essays have to be awesome, and they can’t sound like they were written by ChatGPT.
And there are multiple ways that essays can suck. One, students just mail it in. They answer the question, and they’re not revealing who they are. Two, they sometimes do them the night before. I even have a student I’m working with right now, and for some of his applications, which were for less competitive schools, he did those applications without me because he didn’t have time to go over them. And one of the problems was that he wrote them the night before, and when you write things the night before, your writing’s not as good. It’s not polished, and there are mistakes. And if it looks like you wrote your application the night before, admissions officers might shrug and say, “Well, this other kid was more polished so we’ll go with that kid.” So you’ve got to really do more than just answer the question. You’ve got to reveal who you are, and you’ve got to polish it. This is not something to wait until the last minute on.
And the final thing that I’m going to say about his essays is Stanley’s best story probably happened—and I’m not 100% sure on this; this is a little speculation—after he wrote his application essays. It says in all these articles that when he was 18, he got a job at Google at a PhD level. Whoa, wow factor. But here’s the problem. Did he turn 18 before the December 1st deadline for UCs? I’m not sure if he did. He may have gotten that job in what? January, February, March, April, May. Before graduation? And when he got that job, here’s what he probably didn’t do. If something fabulous and amazing happens to you, immediately send an email to every admission office where you applied and brag about it. It is never too late. This is total wow factor material. He needs to tell colleges about it, and he probably didn’t. So if he were my student, I would have had him send an update letter, which is basically an email to admissions offices. Two, I would have had him write a letter of continued interest that put this information in it. Three, if he were waitlisted at any of these UC campuses, I would have had him write a waitlist letter where he explained the story. And four, at UCs, even if you’re rejected and not waitlisted, you can write an appeal. And this is the kind of information that I would say that he’s a strong enough student, and he should write an appeal. And I would have had him write an appeal letter. And I have seen decisions reversed at both UC Berkeley and UCLA with students that I know. It could happen to you, so don’t give up. So Stanley should have written an appeal.
Overrepresentation
Number two, the second reason that I see people getting rejected is that whatever they represent, they’re over-represented. Now, obviously race is one factor there, but I’m going to pivot this and say Stanley was a computer science guy. Computer science is probably the most competitive major that I see students applying into. Though I don’t have the admission rates at UCLA and UC Berkeley for computer science for freshman admission, I do have the rates for transfer admission, and they’re both 5%. And transfer admission rates are usually higher than freshman admission rates. That means the freshman admission rates to those programs could be even lower. Maybe it’s 2%. Maybe it’s 3%. I’m not sure, but it’s at the level of Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, or Yale. So take that with a grain of salt. Even to get into places like the University of Wisconsin or the University of Illinois, you have to have some good essays if you want to get into computer science. Many schools have too many computer science majors, too many engineers, too many econ majors, and too many pre-med kids. If your story sounds the same as all these other kids and you want to do the same things as all these other people, your chances of admission just shrink, even if you’re amazing. And there are going to be too many amazing kids that want to do those things.
Discrimination
Number three is discrimination. Now I will say, though it’s illegal to discriminate, especially given the Supreme Court case, when it comes to holistic review, inevitably human beings can be biased. And one of the issues that comes up is that schools say they want a mosaic of students with varying activities and varying interests and all of these things. And yes, some of that computer science stuff is going to play into this. But I think there’s also something to be said for the fact that if you’re South Asian, I would say over half of the kids that I work with that are South Asian want to be doctors. So a pre-med narrative with a South Asian student just feels like an essay I’ve read before because I’m sitting here reading these essays, and I’m looking for something original. So when you think about holistic review, it’s not like they’re purposefully trying to be racist. But when you read essays and they’re from the same culture, from the same type of people, and they have the same goals over and over again in similar stories, it can be hard to stand out. And I’m worried that Stanley’s essays probably looked a lot like things that they’d seen before. His narratives, his ideas, and the things he wanted to do might have sounded like a lot of things they read already. And it’s not necessarily that he’s Asian, but that people who are falling into the buckets that he’s falling into across the board just sound the same.
GPA is Unreliable
Which brings me to number four. GPA is very unreliable because every school is different. Stanley’s GPA was 4.42. I know some high schools where 4.42 is low. 4.67 is more like valedictorian level, and so it’s really hard to compare across schools. And everybody’s getting A’s right now, you guys. This is the other problem. I saw a report on Big Ten schools where over 40% of students at the University of Wisconsin had basically perfect GPAs. And that’s unweighted. His is weighted. So I also don’t know what’s going on in that unweighted GPA. How many B’s are in there? There are questions I don’t have answers to. But here’s the problem: UC’s no longer look at SAT and ACT scores. So guess what that means? They’re only looking at GPA and AP scores. I have no idea what Stanley’s AP scores were. But again, GPA doesn’t mean as much. And when we don’t have that SAT score, you’ve just exploded a canon of students at you, and there just aren’t enough spots for everyone. We can’t make it a meritocracy. UCs have become a lottery, and this is just how UC’s are right now. Stanley is not alone. Asian or not Asian. UCs are literally a lottery now because of this test-blind policy in my book.
There Is Not Enough Space
Which brings me to number five, which is that there is just not enough space. You guys, there is not enough space at elite colleges for students who are just crushing it. Plain and simple. And when there’s not enough space, people with great stats are going to get shuffled down into the mix. And which ones are going to get shuffled down? The ones with crappy essays and the ones who didn’t present themselves in a way that when a reader sees it, they think, “Yes, this kid.” It’s human nature. That’s how we are. That’s how holistic admissions works. The final thing that I’m going to say is that they can keep students out who have great statistics. And I don’t think that’s what this kid did. I did a video a while back with a girl who also had amazing stats that got rejected everywhere, and she was talking about mental health all over the place. And that’s my final reason why students get rejected with amazing stats and amazing scores: they say something in their essays that’s a liability. And a liability to me is anything that says you may not be able to finish college or you might drop out. That could be mental health issues. It also could be saying things that are offensive or overly political. If you say something insulting or stupid, if you talk about how you’re going to be very aggressive in fighting for rights in some way, if you’re going to protest and throw Molotov cocktails or any kind of violence, that’s another reason. I once had a student make a comment that sounded racist in her essay, and she backtracked. She actually got into UCLA after she backtracked on the comment. But my point is if you say something with the liability in your essay, it could be another reason you get rejected. So again, it comes back to the essays. That’s my take.
I hope you guys enjoyed this blog and found it helpful!
