<p>jeeez. give this guy a break!
AA did not play a deciding factor in this guy’s acceptance
his list of EC’s are very impressive! 
i come from a very under-represented region sat score wise- the middle east. students here don’t score high on their sats… its not because they are any less smart than high-achieving asians, but because they normally do not study for the test that much… anywaay, so students who graduate from my school usually get into upenn even if they score below a 2000… hence, i naively assumed that i’d get many acceptances since i scored a 2160 and am ranked 4th place w/ a lot of EC’s. BUT i was rejected at duke and northwestern so i guess i was lacking in some respects and the fact that i had a very high score in relation to my under-represented context didnt play a deciding role… moral of the story? its not simply AA that got this guy in… its something beyond numbers okay?
gman, i commend you for posting your stats… you probably anticipated the deluge of criticisms you’d receive from bitter students whose lives revolve around simply numbers… yet, you posted your stats to give hope to those who believe they won’t be accepted just simply because of low scores… i’m actually waiting for my stanford decision tonight and although i’m not that optimistic due to several rejections from lower tier schools, your story does give me a grain of hope… :)</p>
<p>I don’t have time to read all of the responses, but I just wanted to say CONGRATULATIONS! That’s truly phenomenal, and my heart goes out to you. I actually teared up reading your post! I came from a poor area where kids are not exactly encouraged to reach for the stars, so I know exactly what you mean about wanting to give back to your hometown through encouragement. After I got into one of my dream schools, I wanted nothing more than to reach out to my classmates and young women interested in math and science.</p>
<p>You seem like an incredible person, and I wish you good luck in everything!</p>
<p>I think this thread should be locked…</p>
<p>who dug this up??</p>
<p>lol</p>
<p>lol yes this thread should be locked. congrats again op!</p>
<p>Whoops, this thread was referenced in a current thread, so I clicked through and assumed it was more recent without reading that date. I apologize, Stanford folks!</p>
<p>getting in with a 1700 and not being an athlete,musician, ect.=Affirmative Action</p>
<p>I wonder why the OP even posted this to begin with. </p>
<p>Did you really need people on a forum to either admire or trivialize your accomplishments?</p>
<p>I hate to restart a stupid AA argument, but to claim that someone was or was not admitted because of affirmative action based solely on an SAT score is ridiculous. </p>
<p>It does sounds trite, but people are correct when they say that SAT scores are only a relatively small part of the application. Furthermore, the middle 50% of SAT scores means that one in every four admitted students falls below the range. That means that one in every four students admitted to Stanford have SATs below 2000 (that was the bottom of the range on whatever not particularly reputable website i just looked at). Out of 2400 students admitted in 2008, that means 600 had SATs below 2000. I bet there are far more 1700 admits than you think. </p>
<p>And even if there aren’t, keep your mouth shut unless you actually know more than a single thing about the admitted student.</p>
<p>Actually he did post his stats. No offense, but based on that, it is shocking how he got admitted to Stanford. His stats show that he isn’t an athlete,musician, ect. and he got in with a 1700. This is AA.</p>
<p>I think this kid deserves to get in. Back in high school, I used to scream AA whenever a kid I scored better than got into a college I couldn’t get into and I knew I was smarter than. However, after graduating from college, I realize that it isn’t all about test scores and GPA and how smart you are. Granted, those are important things for the workforce. However, I read the kid’s post about his stats and the things that stand out most to me are that he’s from a HS that doesn’t send many kids to college and that he PLANS TO HELP NEIGHBORHOODS LIKE HIS IN THE FUTURE. That last comment really stands out to me because I think top schools should not only admit the best and the brightest but people who will improve our communities. That article about Ivy League education says it perfectly about how people go to Harvard/Yale with ambitions to be a doctor and help people but they graduate and become I-Bankers. Therefore, if this kid is serious about helping people or if Stanford THINKS he is serious about helping people like him, I think it’s a good thing that he’s going to Stanford. It happens way too often that people become rich (ahem pro athletes) and sometimes forget where they come from and get in trouble and blow money more than they help the community. CONGRATULATIONS MAN! I REALLY HOPE YOU REMEMBER TO HELP OUT PEOPLE LIKE YOU IN THE FUTURE!</p>
<p>Are you kidding me? He has good stats, he’s VP, President, etc of a slew of clubs (he founded ACCEPT) and he does fine in school (As, APs, top 2% of a public school), etc, it’s just he tests bad on SATs. He probably has more extracurriculars than a lot of people. Obviously the fact that he’s a minority plays a role, but he’s obviously done an extraordinary amount of work to get into Stanford and to be like ‘oh well it’s AA, he shouldn’t have gotten in’ is rather ridiculous. Obviously scores aren’t everything so congrats, hope you have a great year.</p>
<p>Ridiculous. This is the type of admissions that makes Stanford’s SAT median lag behind HYP.</p>
<p>No. It’s the recruited athletes.</p>
<p>^^ It’s also the reason why Stanford has such a great student body. Why does Stanford have to keep up with HYP in test scores? This shows that Stanford really looks at the individual rather than just scores. The OP was no doubt qualified for admission otherwise.</p>
<p>To those discrediting Stanford’s admission policies, this is not the thread to do it. And as Bourne duly noted, it’s all in the recruited athletes. The only thing I’d say was that I don’t know if AA helped the OP get admitted but from what I can see he was outstanding in his own right. I do question why he’d create a thread about this because he should have known he was opening up the floodgates to insults about him and Stanford, but right after an acceptance people can sometimes lose their judgment temporarily.</p>
<p>^^ not to mention it was terribly inconsiderate to do such right when SCEA decisions came out and tons of amazing students (some with near perfect SAT scores) were rejected. Rather insensitive IMO.</p>
<p>^Well, he probably did it to give hope to future applicants who felt like they might not have a chance simply because of their SAT scores. He was trying to be inspirational rather than trying to make “perfect” rejectee’s feel bad. </p>
<p>Cut the guy some slack.</p>
<p>It would have been tactful to post that later on–when the future applicants are swarming the board. Instead he was tactless and posted it during a time when many current applicants were still licking their wounds. It was asinine and inconsiderate.</p>
<p>Nothing against the OPer personally, but this is an embarrassment for Stanford.</p>