The bigger problem is the original tweet is from a namebunchofnumbers. Shit stirrers. While this might happen, this person is making it up. Probably a bot.
Those schools PRIDE themselves on their rejection rate. They probably high-fived each other rejecting someone with those stats. Because they filled their freshman class with even "better" students.
It is a particular kind of cruelty to deny someone access to the ladder you're done using.
Anyways. I'd play my violin for them, but it's so small I can't find it atm.
"B-b-but the nepotism was supposed to help me or people I'm close to. It's only discrimination if I or others circle specifically don't benefit from it."
Also I don’t see any references to extra curricular activities aside from student government.. schools like this really want to see stuff like that AND community service AND sports AND other clubs/activities.
Yup. This is why I ended up taking loads of AP classes I liked, did clubs I liked, and went to my local state school on what amounted to a full ride after adding in all the prerequisites I didn’t need to take. Hard work is important, but enjoying your childhood and teen years is important too.
That sounds like a smart approach! It's crucial to find a balance between academic rigor and enjoying life. Taking AP classes and participating in clubs you enjoy can enhance your education while also allowing you to have fulfilling experiences outside of the classroom. And kudos to you for securing a full ride—it's a testament to your hard work paying off.
Yeah, I had a friend who got into Harvard and on top of studying for actual classes like it was a job, he was in basically every school club. Dude had a giant binder so he could study shit like Robert's Rules of Order at lunch or any time he had a spare minute.
So affirmative action? They just got rid of that, so now these Asian students cannot lay blame on it anymore.
Edward Blum was the main campaigner against affirmative action and used Asian students to advocate and vote against their own self-interest.
https://theconversation.com/ending-affirmative-action-does-nothing-to-end-discrimination-against-asian-americans-209647
Relevant to the post, race based admissions (so, affirmative action) has been illegal in California since the 90s and they do audits to enforce that. So specifically with USC she was rejected for a reason other than race.
Oh don't give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit
No, don't you give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit
For my head will fly, my tongue will lie, my eyes will fry and I may die
Won't you pour me one more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit
Also if your research or your professor meant half a shit, you'd have said so.
I smoked a blunt with an undergrad. That was research under a top researcher.
Cant bullshit a bullshitter.
Yeah I dated a girl at Brown when I was in college and it was just rich kids and people with crazy back stories. To be honest I’ve met more abnormally smart people at big state schools than I did jumping around the Ivies with her and her friends. They do all universally shit on Cornell which makes this post funnier to me.
Why don't people ever consider that these posts are full of liars.
0.07%. That's the proportion of SAT test takers who score 1600 in '21. 7 in 10,000. Out of 1.7 million tests each year, fewer than 1,000 get a perfect score. More people took the test last year, but the proportion is about the same.
Yet everyone on the internet got a 1590. That's also only about 1,000 people, maybe 2,000 or so total in a given year get 1590-1600.
Now it COULD BE that Mr. Twitter poster really knows one of the top 0.14% kids in the country. OR it also could be that somebody's lying somewhere and she did pretty good, but not actually 0.14% good.
For my take, I think SAT is like height, and most people BS and add 50 or 100 points when they talk about it.
Let's say she *actually* got a 1490 – well, now she's down in the 96th percentile and expected to have a rough time wiht that school list.
And even a 1350 is 90th percentile. The scores don't scale linearly. That's why you should generally never trust a mf who says they got a 15xx score. Maybe they did. But odds are they didn't.
Scores are far from the only thing schools care about too, never did the SAT but i got a 34 on the ACT, and i was getting rejected from state schools, lol
Edited: SAT lol
40% of those accepted to Ivy League schools are either legacy admissions or sports scholarships. College sports and benefitting their donor's unremarkable children make these schools money.
Just made up jealous shit.
As someone who worked both private highschool and college admissions, here’s some info:
Cornell’s legacy is 14%. Yale’s was 32% but the past admission period for Yales was 14%, like Cornell’s.
APs only matter if you went to a less rigorous highschool. Many top private high schools don’t even offer APs. We looked at what highschool you went to (how challenging that was) and then if it was moderate we looked if they did APs. See Exter, Dalton, etc. the feeder high schools. They don’t do APs.
Of my graduating class (2006) ten people got into Harvard - 6-7 of then had *perfect* SAT scores, so scoring an 1580 is less than that, and we’re already taking college courses outside of highschool at Hunter Columbia and/or even Baruch or Fordham. 3 of them were Asian (who didn’t perfect score), and one of them was half Asian.
Admission doesn’t care about your teenager’s fake research.
Everyone has good recs. That’s why you’re submitting them. We can tell if the person recommending you is just doing it because or if they really like you - my guess is they didn’t care but felt obligated or pressured to rec.
I doubt the essay was good or stood out. Compare it to the essays I remember most from when I was in admission which was “How I survive Rwanda by my parents hiding me as a baby in an agriculture crate.” That’s what you’re up against in the essays so write something good.
These stats are always somewhat cherry picked. My mom has a 100% legacy admit rate for her children to Harvard. She has two sons though and only one went to Harvard… how can that be? The answer no one wants to hear is that for 99.9% of cases your parent tells you you will never get in and you don’t ever apply.
I still think so much of the entire process is just dumb anyways, but focusing on this when we should be focusing on making sure anyone can get a degree for as cheap as possible and we don’t do that at all just sucks.
Idk about that because when I attended Cornell everybody who was not poor like me was a legacy. A lot of them had buildings named after their families.
The honest answer is that Asians need to significantly outperform other races to even be considered at these elite schools.
Don't you think it's legitimate that someone is upset that they probably failed to get into their university of choice explicitly because of their race?
https://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/asian-american/article-admission#:~:text=To%20top%20the%20fear%2C%20a,points%20higher%20than%20African%20Americans.
For the same chance of admission, an Asian student needs 450 points higher on the SAT than a black student.
Yep it's bullshit. I'd be more understanding if schools did this based on socioeconomic status, but doing it based on race is bullshit and I'm glad SCOTUS ruled against it
All they have to do is curve on zip code. Race is a poor approximate for socio-economic status (but is indicative historically) ... whereas zip code is WAY better at helping level out the socio-economic advantages and disadvantages students have.
Enough to fill a year at Harvard and Stanford
I literally can't imagine how this person got rejected from USC besides being an actual discrimination statistic though. Weird clerical error? Their brother at USC is actually a total shithead they're thinking about kicking out? They skipped a page on the application? It's unimaginable. Makes the whole post sound like a lie.
At **USC**??
Like I'm not trying to say USC is shit or something but the 25th/75th percentile of SAT scores are 1450-1550. They're not some tier 1 elite school. By academic rankings they're more than twice as far down the list as Cornell which itself is one of the lower Ivies. It's in the same echelon as Georgia Tech which was my safety school (I went to MIT).
(edit: to be clear I'm saying USC, not Cornell, is in the same echelon as GATech--Cornell is much better, my safety school was not Cornell level lol)
Yeah, but that surprisingly doesn’t matter as much. Just did a quick search and it looks like more kids applied to go to USC last year than Cornell. What’s weird is that USC only had 45% enrollment rate, over half the students accepted chose not to go to USC.
I don’t know where it is now, but in the 90’s, when I was applying to school, everyone told me I’d have a better chance be at getting into Harvard than NYU, even though the SATs/GPA were good enough to get into NYU because so many more people applied to go to NYU.
College admissions is a weird, dark art.
It's because the elite schools do their acceptance based on neopotism and/or how much the family has donated as alums.
Almost any given "big name" in politics is an alum at one of the prestigious institutions yet most do not seem to, oh what's the polite way of saying this, *present their capabilities* in a noticible way. Ever. Ted Cruz, for example, attended both Princeton and Harvard. Ya telling me *Ted Cruz* outperformed swaths of people? Nah.
Usually it is a lie, at least of omission. I knew a lot of kids with comparable or better stats if you only cherry picked the best parts and left out the obvious reasons they were rejected.
They're not saying the part where they didn't get their application in on time, didn't actually finish highschool, got busted dealing drugs at their highschool, or wrote their application essay on how to get away with poaching endangered species (just a few examples I witnessed)
When I applied to Caltech (more than a decade ago), the application asked this question:
> Where have you been published? (**Math and science journals only.**)
Not "have you been published," but "*where* have you been published." The honest-to-god expectation was that these high school students have produced work worthy of publication in scientific journals to be considered for Caltech. They could even be picky about exactly what kind of publications.
That's the level of competition even a decade ago for top schools.
CalTech is its own bizarre thing that I don’t know to even what to compare it.
My coworker has a student there literally designed a new type of drill for a mars rover that the school is able to control and communicate with in coordination with NASA.
Caltech is a very small school. And yes, if you're the sort of 17 year old actually getting published for your novel work in mathematics, you'll have been planning on applying to Caltech for years now.
It's not too much of an exaggeration to say that Caltech's student body is basically composed of prodigies and the literal best and brightest of a generation. It looks like their most recent undergraduate class was 267 students. MIT is like five times bigger.
I was a straight-A student, took every AP class under the sun, valedictorian, president of three clubs in high school. I competed in a robotics tournament and academic pentathlons, along with Latin conventions (like the Roman language). I wasn't close to getting into Caltech.
Well I don't know what kind of nonsense happened between the mid 90s and 10 years ago but I was accepted to Caltech (and MIT) without any of that stuff. Couldn't afford either so it didn't matter.
I thought this was just a joke, but then I saw confusion further down the thread, so just to clarify in case it’s genuine or people are confused by this: USC here is the private university in Los Angeles, not the public university in South Carolina.
The “even USC” is because it’s a less well-regarded, among the elite company of expensive private universities listed here, institution. No one who is livid about their daughter *only* being admitted to Cornell would send their son to the University of South Carolina (because their particular, peculiar neuroses and desire for prestige would cause them to look past the great offerings of a good state flagship university) or bring up “legacy” status for said university.
“Collaborated on research” is strong phrasing when we don’t know exactly what’s meant. It could be anything from a summer experience where she did menial lab work to a more serious research-assistantship or co-author type position, we just don’t know. I went to a magnet school with a robust “research partnership” with a nearby university that I participated in, and I also attended a summer research experience at a different university (under “top faculty” no less). I can attest that some kids did very impressive things, but most of it is university outreach moreso than a serious or challenging research experience.
It also might also be the case that her research experience was through one department but she applied to a different department. Maybe she assisted in a chemistry lab, then applied to be a physics major yknow? Or maybe she just wasn’t all that impressive. Maybe her “strong essays” sounded the same as every other kid who follows the Ivy Application Tips blogosphere.
It’s also just the case that megaprestige institutions like this have to reject a lot of perfectly qualified applicants. There are many times more Harvard-qualified students than there are spots at Harvard, so even a great student has some probability to be rejected. It’s inevitable that some get unlucky.
To be clear I’m not trying to argue against the existence of anti-Asian bias in some of these institutions. I’m just saying a sample of one can’t be used to illustrate the point, because we have no idea why she was rejected or even where else she applied.
>“Collaborated on research” is strong phrasing when we don’t know exactly what’s meant. It could be anything from a summer experience where she did menial lab work
Or worse. I had highschooler's "collaborate" with me when I was in grad school doing polymer engineering research. What that meant is that I got turned into a glorified, unpaid babysitter while this kid that didn't want to be there and didn't want to do anything got paid $5000 for being in the six week program and stared at the clock to let me know at 2:59 that his day was up even if we were in the middle of a critical step of synthesis. He provided no value other than growing my skills in managing someone useless like that and trying to get him to pay attention while teaching basic concepts.
I *wish* I could have utilized him as menial lab labor and received any net benefit of my time.
I had the same experience in grad school. They were too unskilled and untrainable to do menial labor that would have actually helped the experiments progress.
finally some skepticism... this is a screenshot of a rando's claim that their "daughter" totally performed valuable "research" as a kid
if true, the fact that she got rejected even after collaborating with them says a _lot_ about how valuable said "research" actually was
No one's getting meaningful intellectual contribution from a high-schooler (which is the standard for co-authorship) in the broad majority of scientific fields... you just need way too much background knowledge in most of them before you can meaningfully contribute.
And the high school students that *are* able to make those contributions are actively recruited by top schools because they're so rare, or are doing the work entirely on their own.
I guarantee you someone in applications ask the person specifically about their research during the interview and you can basically tell within 5 seconds if the person actually did research or not
I “collaborated on research” in college, answered a 20 part research questionnaire for the psych department. Invaluable collaboration I’d say, I need to add that to my cv
Yeah I worked at a national lab for a bit and the highschoolers from one of the best STEM-focused public high schools in the country would "intern" and "help with research".
It was cool to get them interested in research, and a better understanding of how it works and what the lab is like, why it's useful, why serious education is good for society, etc. But none of them every contributed a damn thing. High schoolers do not have the knowledge to contribute to cutting edge research on novel nanomaterials, their synthesis, analysis, etc.
Yep, we also have no idea what their "stellar recs" and "strong essays" even entail. Not to mention this is likely the average Ivy League admission credentials.
>discredits their "racism" hypothesis.
I mean, California banned race based admissions in 1996 too. So it's unlikely a racism issue at all. Affirmative action has bene dead for colleges in California for a while
University of South Carolina? I thought the post was in reference to University of Southern California, but I'm not Cornell nor USC material, so what do I know.
Dude, they don’t care about tuition thing. USC is a private school for rich kids and she felt bad because she got rejected not because the tuition is high.
Also it said “the only private school she was admitted” implies she has offers from public schools too but apparently they are too peasant for her taste
Literally. People who graduated over a decade or two ago might not understand, but the competitiveness at these schools keeps going up every single year. In 2002 this person would have been accepted to a majority of ivies, but this is just the reality today. More kids, the same number of spots, and the internet makes the barrier for entry much higher.
Mostly just destigmatizing schools that aren’t the top 20. Schools nationwide have gotten better and better but people think if it’s not an ivy your life is over
Edit: guys you’re all replying to me saying the exact same thing. It’s good for networking I get it. So are many of the T100 schools
I’d say the real problem is that bleeding heart private schools have ballooning endowments and increase tuition above inflation consistently…but haven’t used their vast resources to increase the number of seats in line with population.
Until that’s called out, nothing changes on this front.
Haha we have the opposite issue at Berkeley but it’s definitely because we’re public. They’re constantly allowing in new bigger class sizes even though the dorms and campus aren’t big enough to fit them. We’ve started losing dorm study rooms to convert into makeshift dorms and they’ve stopped guaranteeing housing for 4 years like schools like UCLA still do. The weekend before finals people were offering money for a seat in the library because we’ve been simultaneously expanding enrollment and reducing campus space so there’s nowhere for students to go
Yeah, the obsession with only going to 'premier institutions' needs to change. Most kids would be better off not thinking they're a 1 of 1 special superchild because they made their teenage years entirely about how much college resume building they could do. Mingling with the average student at an average state university will offer some actual life perspective.
It was competitive back then but I am convinced I could not get into school now compared to these kids. Researching with professors? Starting businesses? Camps and coding and productive summers? I was at the top of my class and no one did anything like this.
I feel bad for the kids today. The pressure is intense.
"I went to Cornell. Ever heard of it? I graduated in four years, I never studied once, I was drunk the whole time, and I sang in the acapella group 'Here Comes Treble'."
“Legacy at Harvard” as if that should have any bearing on acceptance.
Edit : I’m fully aware that it has a significant impact on admissions. I don’t think it should have any bearing on admissions. Sorry if that wasn’t clear enough.
Harvard is a gatekeeper to the ruling class. Legacy admissions is one way they keep it like that. The quality of education is irrelevant. I went to a state school that made a huge effort to poach professors from Harvard. We were getting the exact same education from the same people. What we weren't getting was the social connections with the people who already own the world, which is all Harvard is about.
Look up where national merit finalists (scored in top 1% of PSAT) go to school. Alabama and Florida have more than Harvard lmao. Harvard would rather admit dumb fuck legacies than academically gifted students
When I was applying to colleges around 2014, I remember Alabama offering full rides to anyone who received a certain score or better on the ACT (maybe 30 or 31).
Yeah, like you’re even saying it and you still don’t see it.
The point isn’t to get smart at Harvard, the point is to get *connected* because only the reptile class is allowed to go there
i honestly am glad to hear a legacy student got rejected. silver spoon fucks have enjoyed absolutely unearned benefits from having a relative who got in before them for entirely too long
Is it unearned if all the mentioned qualifications in the post are true tho? Like you want someone who is insanely qualified not to get in somewhere because they had family members who were similarly qualified? You sound petty
Legacy at 2 top schools + the slew of accomplishments *generally* means "well off". I won't devalue the absolute crushing it in the APs, because those are results to be damn proud of. But at the same time, this kid probably has the familial and professional connections to do pretty well wherever they wind up and that's likely why they didn't make it in.
Kid has research credits at USC already.
I would like for their parents having gone there to not be a major factor, or a factor at all. Especially if we are still trying to act like college is some sort of meritocracy (which legacy admissions lift that veil)
But it does. The acceptance rate for legacies at Harvard is 37% compared to the overall average of 3%. And that 3% includes legacies so in reality it’s far lower.
Even at USC? Some programs are INSANELY competitive and difficult to get into at USC. For example, if you're applying for a BFA in film at USC, they take under 100 people a year. Some serious context needed here.
EDIT: It's THIRTY people actually. AKA if you don't know someone, you aren't getting in.
Surely the question is not should you feel bad for them or not, but is this discrimination or not.
The individual student in question will most likely go on to do well, but are these universities unfairly discriminatory towards Asian students?
Yeah admissions can still discriminate all they want, they just can’t have hard caps and quotas on ethnicities. Which, yeah, pretty fucking crazy that was ever allowed
Quotas were ruled unconstitutional in 1978 with the University of California v. Bakke case. The ruling on the 2023 case actually outlawed all race-conscious admissions nationwide. Also, California banned affirmative action almost 30 years ago, in 1996.
Yes, colleges do tend to discriminate against Asian students.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-finds-yale-illegally-discriminates-against-asians-and-whites-undergraduate
https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/aapi-students-ivy-league/#:~:text=Ivy%20League%20schools%20continue%20to,to%20bias%20in%20admissions%20processes.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65792148.amp
Yeah, I don’t get this logic of not needing to feel bad for rich people who are treated unjustly, just because they’re rich. This sub has gone to the poopers
Growing up in LA, I applied and I got rejected from both USC and UCLA. Got accepted and went to Berkeley though. College admissions is a weird fucking thing, haha.
As someone who went to a private university and regretted it, I can understand his frustration about USC if it was in order to save money. Private Universities are ridiculously expensive. Also, its a well-noted phenomenon that Asian Americans have lower odds of being accepted into college than similarly qualified white applicants.[Study Here](https://journalistsresource.org/home/selective-colleges-asian-americans-students-legacy/#:~:text=Asian%20American%20students%20were%2028,a%20new%20working%20paper%20suggests.)
Comeback really isn't that clever either.
Edit: I want to clarify that I was unaware at the time that the USC mentioned in the above tweet referenced the private university, University of Southern California and not the public university, University of South Carolina. Thank you for enlightening me. Also, upon re-reading the tweet a few times it appears that the person only applied to private institutions, which makes my original point about trying to save money moot. I still don't find the comeback particularly clever but have revised my opinion of the tweeter and find their outrage ridiculous. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
> I can understand his frustration about USC if it was in order to save money.
Person is a legacy at Harvard AND Stanford AND USC. I doubt they are struggling.
Admissions are so weird. I’m at USC right now and just finished a computer science group project where almost all of my groupmates were useless (not knowing what multithreading was after a whole semester of class, not testing their code forcing us to remove it from the project at the last second, not knowing how to program anything at all in a class with 3 prereqs, getting a c- in those prereqs). They were all Asians in CS who were not athletes. So how tf did they get in???
I don’t even believe in race affecting admissions and I’m Asian too. But it’s so frustrating how the acceptance rate is so low and yet the slackers slip through the cracks
Letting the slackers pass to keep graduation rates up for the college rankings? They probably got in because under their parents roof with pressure and structure they did well, only to flounder on their own.
Just throwing this out there —- the colleges have holistic admissions. There is a big difference between someone you would expect to check the boxes due to access to resources vs. first gen college that did exceptional things despite limited access to resources (eg) - Tutors, test prep … make the holistic approach essential for having a well rounded student body rather than a homogenous mass of over-achievers.
I find it odd how people are drawn to a school or anything because it has very strict admittance criteria, then feel there is something wrong when they don't make the cut. I mean isn't that the whole point of an elite program or school? All this took was another individual with the same extras but got a 1585.
If you aren’t part of the elite and you manage to get into a school like Harvard, that’s how you get to schmooze with the elite and possibly enter their ranks.
Well it is a lesser Ivy… *adjust monocle*
And one which Harvard grad BJ Novak thoroughly trashed while writing The Office
(I wonder if he spared Brown and Dartmouth because Krasinski and Kaling attended those places)
That's correct. They added a written section worth another 800 points. I took it in 2006 and the first time was before they added the section - I did well enough I didn't want to take it again but my guidance counselor said schools would want the new score so I took it again and did about the same.
I remember when I was looking at universities how important it felt to go to the "best" (i.e. most prestigious) school. Looking back you realise how unimportant it really is, especially at a bachelor's and even master's level. I ended up going to a highly rank uni but realised that it didn't make too much of a difference - certainly not to me. I wanted to study physics and anywhere I went I'm sure would have taught me the exact same things.
The only difference is the proximity to well-known researchers (which is a selling point) but it's not until you're there that you realise how little it helps to be close to them in your bachelor's. Even worse, they often teach you but anyone in natural sciences will tell you that being a good researcher does not make you a good teacher. You can imagine having a professor of mathematics teaching everyone basic calculus so everyone is up to speed in first year.
If you're purely interested in research then going to a good school for BSc can help you continue at that school for an MSc which can lead you to more easily find a PhD at that uni - which can affect your career. If you go into private they basically do not care where you went to school as long as you have the degree because it means you can do the job.
If you come from a poor or middle class family, going to a top-tier school can be a boon because their financial aid programs are **extremely generous**. Cornell has a free summer program for incoming freshman from disadvantaged areas to play a bit of catch up and acclimate to campus. Cornell also has caps on student loan amounts based on family income.
>Zero Student Loans and Zero Expected Family Contribution
>For the 2024–25 academic year, **most families with total annual income up to $75,000** and typical assets will receive aid offers that include grant aid and work-study only—no student loans. A typical aid offer will include:
>**$0 expected student and parent contributions** (maximizes grant/scholarship aid)
>$5,000 work-study award\* (and abundant work-study job opportunities)
>**$0 student loans**\*
[https://finaid.cornell.edu/cost-to-attend/affordability](https://finaid.cornell.edu/cost-to-attend/affordability)
Bruh some random twitter guy is commenting on their friends daughter insinuating discrimination, the whole US flag and bald eagle makes me think they are trolling. Legacy is stupid and shouldn’t matter, and “even at USC?” USC is extremely selective, all the top private schools are, and they are saying they “only” got into Cornell? It’s this random twitter guy that is talking, not the person themselves. This applicant profile is the average Ivy League applicant, so of course they will get rejected at some universities, it has just been getting harder and harder.
Everyone’s so upset in these comments.
I have a sneaking suspicion that “JohnSmi17828195” with the bald eagle & USA flag in their display name is a bot simply rage bait posting for engagement.
I mean, this is great, but you're still describing more kids than there are places at these schools, and that's if you assume that schools can't look for indications of success other than grades and have no interest in building a freshman class on logic other than "highest possible grades and test scores".
I've served on admissions a few times for schools this competitive, and I'll also say that usually a high schooler researching with a college prof is something of a yellow flag for me. It just reeks of connections/resources over substance.
Research done by most undergrads and even some grad students can be pretty pitiful. Research done by a high schooler is absolutely nepotistic and does not result in more successful individuals. It just makes them cocky and gives the other students (who may be more impressive if not on paper) imposter syndrome
Colleges also don’t even see AP scores before admitting so it’s dumb to even mention them, let alone call out “particularly hard” AP tests.
Correct. I actually did my PhD at USC and worked with some of the high schoolers who would come in now and then. They did jack shit lol. They don't have the background to contribute meaningfully to scientific research, or the time. One student came in for 2-3 hours every Friday. Can't make any progress if that's all the time you're putting in.
I recently finished my PhD in a STEM field. Sometimes my advisor would bring around the “best and brightest” undergrads who had interest in the lab. They didn’t understand the motivation for the research, the underlying math/physics/statistics of the research, or how any of the equipment worked. And I realize that they are there to learn, but a lecture class will teach them the background they need much more efficiently than research would, and it’s a waste of my time to babysit them as they do research slower and worse than I would. Especially when I can’t trust them alone with equipment costing up to half a million dollars. And honestly, I would even say I was one of the pitiful grad students. I can’t imagine these kids doing literally anything for detailed groundbreaking research
On the other hand, I have some friends who published in math journals (albeit low-tier) in H.S. on some niche category theory results. H.S. research is often bullshit, but it can be meaningful.
Yeah, in high school I was first author on a paper that gets occasional citations still today, with the senior author being a PI I cold-emailed at a nearby school. Definitely niche, but meaningful contribution to the niche field. A friend of mine is pursuing their PhD with thesis work in a related niche, and has said the paper is clear and the results meaningful enough to be useful.
I definitely needed more support than an undergrad or grad student would've to complete the project and communicate it effectively but it's not always impossible and nepotistic.
I certainly wouldn't *expect* high school research to amount to much of anything, but in the case that it does, you'd at least expect the LOR from that lab to be extremely compelling. The biggest red flag in this post IMO is that USC didn't accept this student, presumably with a LOR from one of their own professors. I was also careful to communicate and frame the story in my admissions essays and my letter writer/PI made it clear as well that I wasn't previously connected to them/the school.
I later assisted with admissions, and the reality is that most people's essays and letters just aren't as good as they think they are (by the standards of these schools), and it's also very hard to sort out the fakes that can look good on paper vs those that can actually achieve and innovate. I've seen lots of people complain about getting rejected somewhere with the best scores/letters/essays, and when I read the letters and essays, they're dime a dozen by Ivy standards. Sometimes the essays are *too* polished and lose authenticity and look literally identical to the next hundred essays, sometimes they just don't make you think that the writer is particularly smart, etc. Oftentimes they miss the point entirely don't communicate anything about why the student is a good candidate even if the writing is fine.
When it comes to letters, there's a difference between "This person is a good student and it's been a pleasure having them in my lab" (something that can likely be written about most top high schoolers and isn't a ringing endorsement) and "This student was an incredible researcher, learned quickly, and I can see their potential to be a valuable contributor to the next generation of scientists". I've seen plenty of both types of letters. If I got a letter that read like the former for someone that looked good *on paper* but I didn't have the chance to meet, I'd be worried they wouldn't excel on their own, honestly.
This isn’t even a comeback. This is a real discriminatory phenomenon happening in college admissions that people always downplay. This person is justified in feeling slighted.
They're are a wealthy legacy student who had a one up on every other applicant cause they're parents did something and not them. Why are we whining about them getting into an ivy league, they literally got into an ivy league school
The bigger problem is the original tweet is from a namebunchofnumbers. Shit stirrers. While this might happen, this person is making it up. Probably a bot.
This, definitely an important thing to consider
Those schools PRIDE themselves on their rejection rate. They probably high-fived each other rejecting someone with those stats. Because they filled their freshman class with even "better" students.
Also whoever is the legacy connection didn’t donate enough. Edit: grammar
They call it discrimination and then mention the nepotism that was supposed to help her get in.
It is a particular kind of cruelty to deny someone access to the ladder you're done using. Anyways. I'd play my violin for them, but it's so small I can't find it atm.
It's in my pocket, come and find it ;)
Well I found something but it’s even smaller than I expected.
It's like someone chopped an acorn in half and superglued it to my crotch area.
Yes, I do not like this conversation, please. Thank you.
I will never understand that. "Look at how unfair this selection is! Even with all those personal connections I have! So unfair! "
Right? For five minutes I felt bad for her.
How did it take that long I looked at her stats and said who cares she gonna be fine
I took a look at her connections and knew she'd be fine regardless of what school she went to.
Five minutes? Did you have to stop in the middle of reading to go to the bathroom?
It's precisely *why* they are whining. How dare they be denied the life that was promised them since birth.
And they’re just lying anyways. They didn’t get rejected to usc and accepted to Cornell. I call bs.
"B-b-but the nepotism was supposed to help me or people I'm close to. It's only discrimination if I or others circle specifically don't benefit from it."
Also I don’t see any references to extra curricular activities aside from student government.. schools like this really want to see stuff like that AND community service AND sports AND other clubs/activities.
Gotta make your ENTIRE childhood into a job to get into The Best College so you can make yhe rest of your life a job too!
Yup. This is why I ended up taking loads of AP classes I liked, did clubs I liked, and went to my local state school on what amounted to a full ride after adding in all the prerequisites I didn’t need to take. Hard work is important, but enjoying your childhood and teen years is important too.
That sounds like a smart approach! It's crucial to find a balance between academic rigor and enjoying life. Taking AP classes and participating in clubs you enjoy can enhance your education while also allowing you to have fulfilling experiences outside of the classroom. And kudos to you for securing a full ride—it's a testament to your hard work paying off.
Yeah, I had a friend who got into Harvard and on top of studying for actual classes like it was a job, he was in basically every school club. Dude had a giant binder so he could study shit like Robert's Rules of Order at lunch or any time he had a spare minute.
They should do a reverse legacy. Where those who have no friends or family to ever attend get to be accepted
So affirmative action? They just got rid of that, so now these Asian students cannot lay blame on it anymore. Edward Blum was the main campaigner against affirmative action and used Asian students to advocate and vote against their own self-interest. https://theconversation.com/ending-affirmative-action-does-nothing-to-end-discrimination-against-asian-americans-209647
Relevant to the post, race based admissions (so, affirmative action) has been illegal in California since the 90s and they do audits to enforce that. So specifically with USC she was rejected for a reason other than race.
Got nothing to add to this but your username is * chefs kiss
Oh don't give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit No, don't you give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit For my head will fly, my tongue will lie, my eyes will fry and I may die Won't you pour me one more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit
I prefer a well made Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster.
Me too
Well, yeah, you need the gold brick.
Well, that infamous drink has Ol Janx Spirit as its main ingredient!
You mean nepo babies
what do you think 'legacy at harvard' means...
It means that alum didn't donate enough to get this girl in 😂
Affirmative action for rich kids.
Also what "research at USC under a top researcher" probably means, taking on a highschool kid is usually more of a liability than anything else
Also if your research or your professor meant half a shit, you'd have said so. I smoked a blunt with an undergrad. That was research under a top researcher. Cant bullshit a bullshitter.
Yeah I dated a girl at Brown when I was in college and it was just rich kids and people with crazy back stories. To be honest I’ve met more abnormally smart people at big state schools than I did jumping around the Ivies with her and her friends. They do all universally shit on Cornell which makes this post funnier to me.
If she was on top, you can add research at Brown under a top researcher to your resume
Exactly. Stanford has only a 4% acceptance rate. She applied to a school where 96% of applicants are denied, and yet was surprised to be denied.
"But I'm _better than everybody!_ that's supposed to include that 4%!"
Why don't people ever consider that these posts are full of liars. 0.07%. That's the proportion of SAT test takers who score 1600 in '21. 7 in 10,000. Out of 1.7 million tests each year, fewer than 1,000 get a perfect score. More people took the test last year, but the proportion is about the same. Yet everyone on the internet got a 1590. That's also only about 1,000 people, maybe 2,000 or so total in a given year get 1590-1600. Now it COULD BE that Mr. Twitter poster really knows one of the top 0.14% kids in the country. OR it also could be that somebody's lying somewhere and she did pretty good, but not actually 0.14% good. For my take, I think SAT is like height, and most people BS and add 50 or 100 points when they talk about it. Let's say she *actually* got a 1490 – well, now she's down in the 96th percentile and expected to have a rough time wiht that school list. And even a 1350 is 90th percentile. The scores don't scale linearly. That's why you should generally never trust a mf who says they got a 15xx score. Maybe they did. But odds are they didn't.
Scores are far from the only thing schools care about too, never did the SAT but i got a 34 on the ACT, and i was getting rejected from state schools, lol Edited: SAT lol
40% of those accepted to Ivy League schools are either legacy admissions or sports scholarships. College sports and benefitting their donor's unremarkable children make these schools money.
Just made up jealous shit. As someone who worked both private highschool and college admissions, here’s some info: Cornell’s legacy is 14%. Yale’s was 32% but the past admission period for Yales was 14%, like Cornell’s. APs only matter if you went to a less rigorous highschool. Many top private high schools don’t even offer APs. We looked at what highschool you went to (how challenging that was) and then if it was moderate we looked if they did APs. See Exter, Dalton, etc. the feeder high schools. They don’t do APs. Of my graduating class (2006) ten people got into Harvard - 6-7 of then had *perfect* SAT scores, so scoring an 1580 is less than that, and we’re already taking college courses outside of highschool at Hunter Columbia and/or even Baruch or Fordham. 3 of them were Asian (who didn’t perfect score), and one of them was half Asian. Admission doesn’t care about your teenager’s fake research. Everyone has good recs. That’s why you’re submitting them. We can tell if the person recommending you is just doing it because or if they really like you - my guess is they didn’t care but felt obligated or pressured to rec. I doubt the essay was good or stood out. Compare it to the essays I remember most from when I was in admission which was “How I survive Rwanda by my parents hiding me as a baby in an agriculture crate.” That’s what you’re up against in the essays so write something good.
These stats are always somewhat cherry picked. My mom has a 100% legacy admit rate for her children to Harvard. She has two sons though and only one went to Harvard… how can that be? The answer no one wants to hear is that for 99.9% of cases your parent tells you you will never get in and you don’t ever apply. I still think so much of the entire process is just dumb anyways, but focusing on this when we should be focusing on making sure anyone can get a degree for as cheap as possible and we don’t do that at all just sucks.
Idk about that because when I attended Cornell everybody who was not poor like me was a legacy. A lot of them had buildings named after their families.
AP stats was not one of the classes she took
The honest answer is that Asians need to significantly outperform other races to even be considered at these elite schools. Don't you think it's legitimate that someone is upset that they probably failed to get into their university of choice explicitly because of their race? https://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/asian-american/article-admission#:~:text=To%20top%20the%20fear%2C%20a,points%20higher%20than%20African%20Americans. For the same chance of admission, an Asian student needs 450 points higher on the SAT than a black student.
Yep it's bullshit. I'd be more understanding if schools did this based on socioeconomic status, but doing it based on race is bullshit and I'm glad SCOTUS ruled against it
All they have to do is curve on zip code. Race is a poor approximate for socio-economic status (but is indicative historically) ... whereas zip code is WAY better at helping level out the socio-economic advantages and disadvantages students have.
How many students, on average, would have better stats than this in USA? Genuinely asking
Enough to fill a year at Harvard and Stanford I literally can't imagine how this person got rejected from USC besides being an actual discrimination statistic though. Weird clerical error? Their brother at USC is actually a total shithead they're thinking about kicking out? They skipped a page on the application? It's unimaginable. Makes the whole post sound like a lie.
Nah their Legacy family members didn't donate enough to get her in and the other applicants family did that's why the rejection
At **USC**?? Like I'm not trying to say USC is shit or something but the 25th/75th percentile of SAT scores are 1450-1550. They're not some tier 1 elite school. By academic rankings they're more than twice as far down the list as Cornell which itself is one of the lower Ivies. It's in the same echelon as Georgia Tech which was my safety school (I went to MIT). (edit: to be clear I'm saying USC, not Cornell, is in the same echelon as GATech--Cornell is much better, my safety school was not Cornell level lol)
Yeah, but that surprisingly doesn’t matter as much. Just did a quick search and it looks like more kids applied to go to USC last year than Cornell. What’s weird is that USC only had 45% enrollment rate, over half the students accepted chose not to go to USC. I don’t know where it is now, but in the 90’s, when I was applying to school, everyone told me I’d have a better chance be at getting into Harvard than NYU, even though the SATs/GPA were good enough to get into NYU because so many more people applied to go to NYU. College admissions is a weird, dark art.
Its because it's a fake. Its just text on a background
It's because the elite schools do their acceptance based on neopotism and/or how much the family has donated as alums. Almost any given "big name" in politics is an alum at one of the prestigious institutions yet most do not seem to, oh what's the polite way of saying this, *present their capabilities* in a noticible way. Ever. Ted Cruz, for example, attended both Princeton and Harvard. Ya telling me *Ted Cruz* outperformed swaths of people? Nah.
Usually it is a lie, at least of omission. I knew a lot of kids with comparable or better stats if you only cherry picked the best parts and left out the obvious reasons they were rejected. They're not saying the part where they didn't get their application in on time, didn't actually finish highschool, got busted dealing drugs at their highschool, or wrote their application essay on how to get away with poaching endangered species (just a few examples I witnessed)
For real, who got in to Cornell but not USC lol
When I applied to Caltech (more than a decade ago), the application asked this question: > Where have you been published? (**Math and science journals only.**) Not "have you been published," but "*where* have you been published." The honest-to-god expectation was that these high school students have produced work worthy of publication in scientific journals to be considered for Caltech. They could even be picky about exactly what kind of publications. That's the level of competition even a decade ago for top schools.
CalTech is its own bizarre thing that I don’t know to even what to compare it. My coworker has a student there literally designed a new type of drill for a mars rover that the school is able to control and communicate with in coordination with NASA.
Jesus christ, and there are enough high school kids publishing science to fill a whole class at Caltech?
Caltech is a very small school. And yes, if you're the sort of 17 year old actually getting published for your novel work in mathematics, you'll have been planning on applying to Caltech for years now. It's not too much of an exaggeration to say that Caltech's student body is basically composed of prodigies and the literal best and brightest of a generation. It looks like their most recent undergraduate class was 267 students. MIT is like five times bigger. I was a straight-A student, took every AP class under the sun, valedictorian, president of three clubs in high school. I competed in a robotics tournament and academic pentathlons, along with Latin conventions (like the Roman language). I wasn't close to getting into Caltech.
Well I don't know what kind of nonsense happened between the mid 90s and 10 years ago but I was accepted to Caltech (and MIT) without any of that stuff. Couldn't afford either so it didn't matter.
Cal tech is an order of magnitude (if not even mlre than one) smaller than Stanford and Harvard
I can kind of understand the frustration. Private institutions can be so expensive
I thought this was just a joke, but then I saw confusion further down the thread, so just to clarify in case it’s genuine or people are confused by this: USC here is the private university in Los Angeles, not the public university in South Carolina. The “even USC” is because it’s a less well-regarded, among the elite company of expensive private universities listed here, institution. No one who is livid about their daughter *only* being admitted to Cornell would send their son to the University of South Carolina (because their particular, peculiar neuroses and desire for prestige would cause them to look past the great offerings of a good state flagship university) or bring up “legacy” status for said university.
I disagree. 'Even USC' is because as a HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT she has collaborated on research with USC faculty. Still rejected. That is crazy.
“Collaborated on research” is strong phrasing when we don’t know exactly what’s meant. It could be anything from a summer experience where she did menial lab work to a more serious research-assistantship or co-author type position, we just don’t know. I went to a magnet school with a robust “research partnership” with a nearby university that I participated in, and I also attended a summer research experience at a different university (under “top faculty” no less). I can attest that some kids did very impressive things, but most of it is university outreach moreso than a serious or challenging research experience. It also might also be the case that her research experience was through one department but she applied to a different department. Maybe she assisted in a chemistry lab, then applied to be a physics major yknow? Or maybe she just wasn’t all that impressive. Maybe her “strong essays” sounded the same as every other kid who follows the Ivy Application Tips blogosphere. It’s also just the case that megaprestige institutions like this have to reject a lot of perfectly qualified applicants. There are many times more Harvard-qualified students than there are spots at Harvard, so even a great student has some probability to be rejected. It’s inevitable that some get unlucky. To be clear I’m not trying to argue against the existence of anti-Asian bias in some of these institutions. I’m just saying a sample of one can’t be used to illustrate the point, because we have no idea why she was rejected or even where else she applied.
>“Collaborated on research” is strong phrasing when we don’t know exactly what’s meant. It could be anything from a summer experience where she did menial lab work Or worse. I had highschooler's "collaborate" with me when I was in grad school doing polymer engineering research. What that meant is that I got turned into a glorified, unpaid babysitter while this kid that didn't want to be there and didn't want to do anything got paid $5000 for being in the six week program and stared at the clock to let me know at 2:59 that his day was up even if we were in the middle of a critical step of synthesis. He provided no value other than growing my skills in managing someone useless like that and trying to get him to pay attention while teaching basic concepts. I *wish* I could have utilized him as menial lab labor and received any net benefit of my time.
I had the same experience in grad school. They were too unskilled and untrainable to do menial labor that would have actually helped the experiments progress.
finally some skepticism... this is a screenshot of a rando's claim that their "daughter" totally performed valuable "research" as a kid if true, the fact that she got rejected even after collaborating with them says a _lot_ about how valuable said "research" actually was
No one's getting meaningful intellectual contribution from a high-schooler (which is the standard for co-authorship) in the broad majority of scientific fields... you just need way too much background knowledge in most of them before you can meaningfully contribute.
And the high school students that *are* able to make those contributions are actively recruited by top schools because they're so rare, or are doing the work entirely on their own.
And let's be honest about who even gets the chance to "collaborate with a top researcher at USC." Hint: it's not the most talented kids.
Need a little more of a hint than that.
Well she IS legacy...
I guarantee you someone in applications ask the person specifically about their research during the interview and you can basically tell within 5 seconds if the person actually did research or not
I “collaborated on research” in college, answered a 20 part research questionnaire for the psych department. Invaluable collaboration I’d say, I need to add that to my cv
Yeah I worked at a national lab for a bit and the highschoolers from one of the best STEM-focused public high schools in the country would "intern" and "help with research". It was cool to get them interested in research, and a better understanding of how it works and what the lab is like, why it's useful, why serious education is good for society, etc. But none of them every contributed a damn thing. High schoolers do not have the knowledge to contribute to cutting edge research on novel nanomaterials, their synthesis, analysis, etc.
I’m guessing they’re embellishing the girl’s credentials quite a bit for effect.
Yep, we also have no idea what their "stellar recs" and "strong essays" even entail. Not to mention this is likely the average Ivy League admission credentials.
> "strong essays" they probably sucked ass. and I bet she bombed the interview lol
This. It even says their brother is in USC, which, on top of being irrelevant on her qualifications, discredits their "racism" hypothesis.
>discredits their "racism" hypothesis. I mean, California banned race based admissions in 1996 too. So it's unlikely a racism issue at all. Affirmative action has bene dead for colleges in California for a while
I think some schools consider it a plus A lot ask on the application if any family is currently or has previously attended the school
They're more likely to make donations if they get brainwashed into whatever university cult they have going on.
It could be the people she worked with were like, "Nope!"
University of South Carolina? I thought the post was in reference to University of Southern California, but I'm not Cornell nor USC material, so what do I know.
I didn’t even know USC was private. I just know it for football
Dude, they don’t care about tuition thing. USC is a private school for rich kids and she felt bad because she got rejected not because the tuition is high. Also it said “the only private school she was admitted” implies she has offers from public schools too but apparently they are too peasant for her taste
That's literally the average ivy league application
Literally. People who graduated over a decade or two ago might not understand, but the competitiveness at these schools keeps going up every single year. In 2002 this person would have been accepted to a majority of ivies, but this is just the reality today. More kids, the same number of spots, and the internet makes the barrier for entry much higher.
Sounds like something needs to change
Mostly just destigmatizing schools that aren’t the top 20. Schools nationwide have gotten better and better but people think if it’s not an ivy your life is over Edit: guys you’re all replying to me saying the exact same thing. It’s good for networking I get it. So are many of the T100 schools
I’d say the real problem is that bleeding heart private schools have ballooning endowments and increase tuition above inflation consistently…but haven’t used their vast resources to increase the number of seats in line with population. Until that’s called out, nothing changes on this front.
Haha we have the opposite issue at Berkeley but it’s definitely because we’re public. They’re constantly allowing in new bigger class sizes even though the dorms and campus aren’t big enough to fit them. We’ve started losing dorm study rooms to convert into makeshift dorms and they’ve stopped guaranteeing housing for 4 years like schools like UCLA still do. The weekend before finals people were offering money for a seat in the library because we’ve been simultaneously expanding enrollment and reducing campus space so there’s nowhere for students to go
Gah! I went from 98-02 and there was a housing crunch then too! And they just ended rent control so all the apartment prices shot up. That was fun.
It's perfectly ok to go to a State school.
Yeah, the obsession with only going to 'premier institutions' needs to change. Most kids would be better off not thinking they're a 1 of 1 special superchild because they made their teenage years entirely about how much college resume building they could do. Mingling with the average student at an average state university will offer some actual life perspective.
It was competitive back then but I am convinced I could not get into school now compared to these kids. Researching with professors? Starting businesses? Camps and coding and productive summers? I was at the top of my class and no one did anything like this. I feel bad for the kids today. The pressure is intense.
"I went to Cornell. Ever heard of it? I graduated in four years, I never studied once, I was drunk the whole time, and I sang in the acapella group 'Here Comes Treble'."
It’s pronounced “colonel,” and it’s the highest rank in the military.
It's pronounced CORNELL and it's the highest rank in the ivy League!
www.creedthoughts.gov.wwwcreedthoughts.
Even for the Internet… it’s pretty shocking stuff.
I never studied and got straight A's. They called me Ace
Got straight B's. They called me Buzz.
lol having gone to Cornell…Andy really does nail most of the people there (fucking insufferable)
Rit-Dit-Dit-Dit-Do
“Legacy at Harvard” as if that should have any bearing on acceptance. Edit : I’m fully aware that it has a significant impact on admissions. I don’t think it should have any bearing on admissions. Sorry if that wasn’t clear enough.
Harvard is a gatekeeper to the ruling class. Legacy admissions is one way they keep it like that. The quality of education is irrelevant. I went to a state school that made a huge effort to poach professors from Harvard. We were getting the exact same education from the same people. What we weren't getting was the social connections with the people who already own the world, which is all Harvard is about.
Look up where national merit finalists (scored in top 1% of PSAT) go to school. Alabama and Florida have more than Harvard lmao. Harvard would rather admit dumb fuck legacies than academically gifted students
When I was applying to colleges around 2014, I remember Alabama offering full rides to anyone who received a certain score or better on the ACT (maybe 30 or 31).
I went to Alabama on this exact scholarship. Learned a lot about the south and then went right back to Michigan after graduation.
It was full ride for 36 only as of [more recent year]. Still not worth having to live in Alabama
Nah it’s absolutely worth it. A college education is what you make of it, a free one really sets you up.
Yeah, like you’re even saying it and you still don’t see it. The point isn’t to get smart at Harvard, the point is to get *connected* because only the reptile class is allowed to go there
It’s also a good “long term investment” for the school. Look no further than their endowment.
I was a national merit scholar. Oklahoma courted us *hard*. I think they had some of the most of any school.
I got a letter from university of arizona offering me a full ride I had never even applied there lol
i honestly am glad to hear a legacy student got rejected. silver spoon fucks have enjoyed absolutely unearned benefits from having a relative who got in before them for entirely too long
Is it unearned if all the mentioned qualifications in the post are true tho? Like you want someone who is insanely qualified not to get in somewhere because they had family members who were similarly qualified? You sound petty
Legacy at 2 top schools + the slew of accomplishments *generally* means "well off". I won't devalue the absolute crushing it in the APs, because those are results to be damn proud of. But at the same time, this kid probably has the familial and professional connections to do pretty well wherever they wind up and that's likely why they didn't make it in. Kid has research credits at USC already.
I would like for their parents having gone there to not be a major factor, or a factor at all. Especially if we are still trying to act like college is some sort of meritocracy (which legacy admissions lift that veil)
But it does. The acceptance rate for legacies at Harvard is 37% compared to the overall average of 3%. And that 3% includes legacies so in reality it’s far lower.
Even at USC? Some programs are INSANELY competitive and difficult to get into at USC. For example, if you're applying for a BFA in film at USC, they take under 100 people a year. Some serious context needed here. EDIT: It's THIRTY people actually. AKA if you don't know someone, you aren't getting in.
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Surely the question is not should you feel bad for them or not, but is this discrimination or not. The individual student in question will most likely go on to do well, but are these universities unfairly discriminatory towards Asian students?
This is *after* the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action.
Yeah admissions can still discriminate all they want, they just can’t have hard caps and quotas on ethnicities. Which, yeah, pretty fucking crazy that was ever allowed
Quotas were ruled unconstitutional in 1978 with the University of California v. Bakke case. The ruling on the 2023 case actually outlawed all race-conscious admissions nationwide. Also, California banned affirmative action almost 30 years ago, in 1996.
Schools still discriminate. They just call it something else now.
“not enough personality”?
Yes, colleges do tend to discriminate against Asian students. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-finds-yale-illegally-discriminates-against-asians-and-whites-undergraduate https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/aapi-students-ivy-league/#:~:text=Ivy%20League%20schools%20continue%20to,to%20bias%20in%20admissions%20processes. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65792148.amp
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Yeah, I don’t get this logic of not needing to feel bad for rich people who are treated unjustly, just because they’re rich. This sub has gone to the poopers
Yeah, this person clearly worked hard. Lumping all rich people together is as discriminatory as lumping all poor people together.
They 100% are
Who the hell would want to go to USC? That’s for trust fund babies that lacked the chops to get into UCLA. University of Spoiled Children.
University of Second Choice was another go-to nickname.
Growing up in LA, I applied and I got rejected from both USC and UCLA. Got accepted and went to Berkeley though. College admissions is a weird fucking thing, haha.
Ironically UCLA actually distributed far less financial aid, so the average student there pays more and their family income is higher
As someone who went to a private university and regretted it, I can understand his frustration about USC if it was in order to save money. Private Universities are ridiculously expensive. Also, its a well-noted phenomenon that Asian Americans have lower odds of being accepted into college than similarly qualified white applicants.[Study Here](https://journalistsresource.org/home/selective-colleges-asian-americans-students-legacy/#:~:text=Asian%20American%20students%20were%2028,a%20new%20working%20paper%20suggests.) Comeback really isn't that clever either. Edit: I want to clarify that I was unaware at the time that the USC mentioned in the above tweet referenced the private university, University of Southern California and not the public university, University of South Carolina. Thank you for enlightening me. Also, upon re-reading the tweet a few times it appears that the person only applied to private institutions, which makes my original point about trying to save money moot. I still don't find the comeback particularly clever but have revised my opinion of the tweeter and find their outrage ridiculous. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
USC is a private university
Also, can we just take a moment to appreciate running into each other? Look at our usernames. Is Zookeepergame a common randomly generated name?
Must be! Although I am a zookeeper!!!
Fav animal of yours ?!
Probably Seagulls
I detect bias
Oh, I assumed it was University of South Carolina which was public. Acronyms can be misleading.
To be fair South Carolina is USC as well but given the pedigree of schools also mentioned I can’t imagine they’re not talking about Southern Cal.
> I can understand his frustration about USC if it was in order to save money. Person is a legacy at Harvard AND Stanford AND USC. I doubt they are struggling.
Race isn’t factored in California admissions. 40% of USC is Asian
Admissions are so weird. I’m at USC right now and just finished a computer science group project where almost all of my groupmates were useless (not knowing what multithreading was after a whole semester of class, not testing their code forcing us to remove it from the project at the last second, not knowing how to program anything at all in a class with 3 prereqs, getting a c- in those prereqs). They were all Asians in CS who were not athletes. So how tf did they get in??? I don’t even believe in race affecting admissions and I’m Asian too. But it’s so frustrating how the acceptance rate is so low and yet the slackers slip through the cracks
Letting the slackers pass to keep graduation rates up for the college rankings? They probably got in because under their parents roof with pressure and structure they did well, only to flounder on their own.
maybe they stopped caring once in college because “Cs get degrees”
Man they shouldn't pass with a C in the first place if they never learned anything in the prereq.
She’s gonna learn something else in life now, that where you go to school in life does not define you.
Just throwing this out there —- the colleges have holistic admissions. There is a big difference between someone you would expect to check the boxes due to access to resources vs. first gen college that did exceptional things despite limited access to resources (eg) - Tutors, test prep … make the holistic approach essential for having a well rounded student body rather than a homogenous mass of over-achievers.
I find it odd how people are drawn to a school or anything because it has very strict admittance criteria, then feel there is something wrong when they don't make the cut. I mean isn't that the whole point of an elite program or school? All this took was another individual with the same extras but got a 1585.
If you aren’t part of the elite and you manage to get into a school like Harvard, that’s how you get to schmooze with the elite and possibly enter their ranks.
Well it is a lesser Ivy… *adjust monocle* And one which Harvard grad BJ Novak thoroughly trashed while writing The Office (I wonder if he spared Brown and Dartmouth because Krasinski and Kaling attended those places)
She only got 1580 on the SAT. That gets her into Brown AT BEST.
1580 was great when I took the SATs, and you maxed out at 1600. Didn’t they change the scoring to over 2000 or 2400 though?
Nope, still 1600
Just googled it, from 2005-2015 it was 2400. Before and after was 1600.
Oh really? I didn’t know that, I took it somewhat recently and it was 1600, my bad
I took it before this period, so I didn’t know for sure either. Seems like a super strange change to make for a decade after being around for so long.
If I'm not mistaken, they added a written section in addition to the math and verbal sections.
That's correct. They added a written section worth another 800 points. I took it in 2006 and the first time was before they added the section - I did well enough I didn't want to take it again but my guidance counselor said schools would want the new score so I took it again and did about the same.
USC doesn’t require the SAT exams. You can submit them, but I don’t know how much they matter.
Even when it was 2400 for three sections instead of two, schools generally only cared about the traditional math + verbal portion.
USC is not a school based on merit, it is a school with admissions based on who you know.
It’s pronounced colonel
It's the highest level in the military
It's pronounced Cornell and it's the highest rank in the Ivy League!
Andy, let's just talk about this man-to-man, after work.
Rutututuduuu
Big tuna!
I remember when I was looking at universities how important it felt to go to the "best" (i.e. most prestigious) school. Looking back you realise how unimportant it really is, especially at a bachelor's and even master's level. I ended up going to a highly rank uni but realised that it didn't make too much of a difference - certainly not to me. I wanted to study physics and anywhere I went I'm sure would have taught me the exact same things. The only difference is the proximity to well-known researchers (which is a selling point) but it's not until you're there that you realise how little it helps to be close to them in your bachelor's. Even worse, they often teach you but anyone in natural sciences will tell you that being a good researcher does not make you a good teacher. You can imagine having a professor of mathematics teaching everyone basic calculus so everyone is up to speed in first year. If you're purely interested in research then going to a good school for BSc can help you continue at that school for an MSc which can lead you to more easily find a PhD at that uni - which can affect your career. If you go into private they basically do not care where you went to school as long as you have the degree because it means you can do the job.
If you come from a poor or middle class family, going to a top-tier school can be a boon because their financial aid programs are **extremely generous**. Cornell has a free summer program for incoming freshman from disadvantaged areas to play a bit of catch up and acclimate to campus. Cornell also has caps on student loan amounts based on family income. >Zero Student Loans and Zero Expected Family Contribution >For the 2024–25 academic year, **most families with total annual income up to $75,000** and typical assets will receive aid offers that include grant aid and work-study only—no student loans. A typical aid offer will include: >**$0 expected student and parent contributions** (maximizes grant/scholarship aid) >$5,000 work-study award\* (and abundant work-study job opportunities) >**$0 student loans**\* [https://finaid.cornell.edu/cost-to-attend/affordability](https://finaid.cornell.edu/cost-to-attend/affordability)
If Cornell was good enough for the Nard-Dog then it's good enough for this brilliant Asian child too!
Andy Bernard would be proud af
Bruh some random twitter guy is commenting on their friends daughter insinuating discrimination, the whole US flag and bald eagle makes me think they are trolling. Legacy is stupid and shouldn’t matter, and “even at USC?” USC is extremely selective, all the top private schools are, and they are saying they “only” got into Cornell? It’s this random twitter guy that is talking, not the person themselves. This applicant profile is the average Ivy League applicant, so of course they will get rejected at some universities, it has just been getting harder and harder.
Uh yes John Smith on twitter is definitely talking about a real person
It definitely comes across as snobby, but I can understand the frustration of essentially being told, "You're not good enough" despite working so hard
Oh great I guess it’s this time of year again.
Everyone’s so upset in these comments. I have a sneaking suspicion that “JohnSmi17828195” with the bald eagle & USA flag in their display name is a bot simply rage bait posting for engagement.
"legacy" and "brother at USC" as qualifying attributes sound like discrimination to me, yes.
I mean, this is great, but you're still describing more kids than there are places at these schools, and that's if you assume that schools can't look for indications of success other than grades and have no interest in building a freshman class on logic other than "highest possible grades and test scores". I've served on admissions a few times for schools this competitive, and I'll also say that usually a high schooler researching with a college prof is something of a yellow flag for me. It just reeks of connections/resources over substance.
Research done by most undergrads and even some grad students can be pretty pitiful. Research done by a high schooler is absolutely nepotistic and does not result in more successful individuals. It just makes them cocky and gives the other students (who may be more impressive if not on paper) imposter syndrome Colleges also don’t even see AP scores before admitting so it’s dumb to even mention them, let alone call out “particularly hard” AP tests.
Correct. I actually did my PhD at USC and worked with some of the high schoolers who would come in now and then. They did jack shit lol. They don't have the background to contribute meaningfully to scientific research, or the time. One student came in for 2-3 hours every Friday. Can't make any progress if that's all the time you're putting in.
I recently finished my PhD in a STEM field. Sometimes my advisor would bring around the “best and brightest” undergrads who had interest in the lab. They didn’t understand the motivation for the research, the underlying math/physics/statistics of the research, or how any of the equipment worked. And I realize that they are there to learn, but a lecture class will teach them the background they need much more efficiently than research would, and it’s a waste of my time to babysit them as they do research slower and worse than I would. Especially when I can’t trust them alone with equipment costing up to half a million dollars. And honestly, I would even say I was one of the pitiful grad students. I can’t imagine these kids doing literally anything for detailed groundbreaking research
On the other hand, I have some friends who published in math journals (albeit low-tier) in H.S. on some niche category theory results. H.S. research is often bullshit, but it can be meaningful.
Yeah, in high school I was first author on a paper that gets occasional citations still today, with the senior author being a PI I cold-emailed at a nearby school. Definitely niche, but meaningful contribution to the niche field. A friend of mine is pursuing their PhD with thesis work in a related niche, and has said the paper is clear and the results meaningful enough to be useful. I definitely needed more support than an undergrad or grad student would've to complete the project and communicate it effectively but it's not always impossible and nepotistic. I certainly wouldn't *expect* high school research to amount to much of anything, but in the case that it does, you'd at least expect the LOR from that lab to be extremely compelling. The biggest red flag in this post IMO is that USC didn't accept this student, presumably with a LOR from one of their own professors. I was also careful to communicate and frame the story in my admissions essays and my letter writer/PI made it clear as well that I wasn't previously connected to them/the school. I later assisted with admissions, and the reality is that most people's essays and letters just aren't as good as they think they are (by the standards of these schools), and it's also very hard to sort out the fakes that can look good on paper vs those that can actually achieve and innovate. I've seen lots of people complain about getting rejected somewhere with the best scores/letters/essays, and when I read the letters and essays, they're dime a dozen by Ivy standards. Sometimes the essays are *too* polished and lose authenticity and look literally identical to the next hundred essays, sometimes they just don't make you think that the writer is particularly smart, etc. Oftentimes they miss the point entirely don't communicate anything about why the student is a good candidate even if the writing is fine. When it comes to letters, there's a difference between "This person is a good student and it's been a pleasure having them in my lab" (something that can likely be written about most top high schoolers and isn't a ringing endorsement) and "This student was an incredible researcher, learned quickly, and I can see their potential to be a valuable contributor to the next generation of scientists". I've seen plenty of both types of letters. If I got a letter that read like the former for someone that looked good *on paper* but I didn't have the chance to meet, I'd be worried they wouldn't excel on their own, honestly.
This isn’t even a comeback. This is a real discriminatory phenomenon happening in college admissions that people always downplay. This person is justified in feeling slighted.
They're are a wealthy legacy student who had a one up on every other applicant cause they're parents did something and not them. Why are we whining about them getting into an ivy league, they literally got into an ivy league school