Bay Area class of 2023 rejected by [UCD, UCSB, CPSLO], hired by Google [3.96 GPA, probably for CS major]

[worriedmomucb]

Here’s a summary with speculation if you want the short version of what happened:

Why a 1550 SAT, 3.95 GPA White Female Got Rejected by Ivy League Schools —...

[tamagotchi]

The whole title of that article is sort of nutty. There’s not necessarily any reason at all WHY a kid with 1550 SAT, 3.95 GPA gets rejected by Ivy League schools. There are simply so many kids with high stats, and once you have a certain of level of stats, it’s not about stats any more.

[Gumbymom]

CS admit rates:
Cal Poly SLO: 9%
UCD less than 20% estimated
UCSB: 5-6%
UCLA: 3.8%
UCB: 2.3%
UCI: 5.8%
UCR: 36%
UCSC: 60%
UCSD: Less than 10% estimated
UCM: 85%

[mtmind]

Such articles and students seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding about how competitive admissions is for students from high performing high schools with an abundance of similarly situated, highly qualified students. The same goes for many posting on CC. Likewise, while the test scores don’t matter at Ca publics, many can’t seem to get over this so they continue ignore this reality and insist that they should matter. It is not likely that it is racism or a breakdown in the process, it is too many highly qualified students from the same place competing for the same seats.

Here are the numbers for Gunn students applying to Davis for 2022. (I imagine they will be similar for this year.)

It is safe to assume that there are a large number of extremely qualified CS applicants from Gunn, which is a top school in Palo Alto, and the numbers will be even more competitive for CS.

Here is another example of unreasonable expectations regarding Ca admissions from another recent thread:

@hebegebe

The family lives in a relatively wealthy south bay suburb, but the family is low-income (complicated to explain). I never saw the daughter’s transcript, but I was told that she “stumbled a bit” freshman year and then did fine afterwards. But she also became National Merit Finalist, so obviously her grades were pretty good. She also clearly brilliant as evidenced by some of her extracurriculars.

As the dad admits, “mistakes were made” with respect to college admissions, and that the public high school counselors didn’t offer much guidance. All the private colleges she applied to were high reaches. But she also applied to a number of UCs, including (from memory) UCB, UCLA, UCI, UCSD, and UCSC.

She ended up with 14 rejections, no admittances, and a few waitlists. Her test scores were no longer considered that year for California colleges, so that didn’t help her at all. Fortunately the University of Oregon decided to reach out and offer her admission, even though she had not applied, perhaps because of National Merit. And she eventually got off the waitlist at UCSC, which she is attending.

This is the type of of “collateral damage” that is a natural part of an obscure college decision process, particularly for state universities. While those who spend a lot of time on CC could have pointed out the mistake of applying to only high reaches outside of CA, they didn’t expect an initial shutout from all the UCs they applied to.
The Misguided War on the SAT - #1012 by hebegebe

[tamagotchi]

The other problem with UC admissions (and UW, which many of the same students are also targeting) is that the decisions come so late in the year. By the time students are getting rejected from UCs, it’s too late to switch gears and apply to other schools that might be a better admission fit.

[CCC4]

@tamagotchi

but subsequently there was a lot of movement off the wait lists

Of course, waitlist movement can vary widely from year to year and campus to campus.

[ucbalumnus]

@worriedmomucb

Given his stats and ECs, to me this indicates some HUGE red flag in his application.

He presumably applied for CS, which tends to be much more selective at these kinds of universities.

Also, CPSLO does not use essays, but there have been reported quirks in its point system, so that not entering all high school level math taken in middle school in the CSU application may result in not getting the substantial bonus points for extra math beyond the CSU minimum.

On the UCs, perhaps the essays did not get favorable readings. Note that SAT was not considered at the time by UCs and CSUs (still the case).

[ucbalumnus]

@worriedmomucb

The (usually URM) student who gets accepted to 100 colleges and earns “over $1 million in scholarships.”

Usually means someone who did the CBCA (~60 HBCUs) and got dozens of big scholarship offers from them. Not hard to do for any high stats student.

[tamagotchi]

@ucbalumnus

Also, CPSLO does not use essays, but there have been reported quirks in its point system,

Yes, but we also don’t really know anything about his SLO GPA or UC weighted GPA (capped or uncapped). His qualifications, as reported by the article, were:

He had an unweighted 3.96 grade point average and scored 1590 on his SATs. He had also been a finalist in multiple global computer coding contests and founded a free electronic signature startup called RabbitSign.

If he had come to CC for a chance me, someone would have explained that the high SAT score wouldn’t help him in UC admissions, and he would have been told to include UCSC and some other easier admits on his list. But in the end, he really did just fine with his admit to UT Austin.

[ucbalumnus]

There also is not a full list of colleges applied to and which admitted or rejected.

[emi722]

To me that’s the most ironic part. Both UC and UT are great schools.

[ucbalumnus]

Looks like From Gunn to Google: Meet Stanley Zhong, the 18-year-old college reject who landed every techie’s dream job - Palo Alto Online contains a more complete list of colleges.

Colleges that rejected his application include MIT, CMU, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC LA, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UC Davis, California Polytechnic State University, Cornell University, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, Cal Tech, University of Wisconsin and University of Washington. The two colleges that accepted his application are University of Texas (UT) and University of Maryland.

[CCC4]

So, a very top-heavy list.

The family likely considered Davis a safety despite its <20% admit rate for CS.

[tamagotchi]

The other article says he was rejected by 14 schools and admitted to 4. So apparently he got off two waitlists after the Palo Alto Online article.

@CCC4

The family likely considered Davis a safety

Yes, I’m guessing the three “state schools” listed in the article are the ones that they considered safeties or at least very likely: UCSB, Davis, and SLO.

[DadOfJerseyGirl]

So, he only applied to high targets, reaches and high reaches. Even so, he was accepted at two very well regraded CS schools.
I don’t see a newsworthy story here.

This is simply another example of a kid (and family) who don’t understand how admissions work, and think his high stats and accomplishments should get him in at most schools.

[tamagotchi]

As far as I can tell, these are the elements that make the story newsworthy:

• He got a job at Google, which is basically presented in these articles as proof that he should have been accepted to more schools.
• He (and his family) chose to file a civil rights complaint and otherwise publicize his case, and AACE presented his case at a Congressional hearing.

[emi722]

The story is perhaps inspiring for those who are talented in coding and just want a software engineer job… Why bother going to colleges? They can learn the necessary skills and build career earlier. Nothing wrong with that. If works in Google/big tech is his goal, he already achieves it …

I see lot of irony in his story.

[tamagotchi]

Now that you mention it, I’m thinking that it might be fortunate for him that he went ahead and got a job now… the market for CS graduates has been getting somewhat weaker, and we don’t know what it will look like in four years when he would have graduated.

[Mwfan1921]

Many companies, including google, don’t require a college degree for many jobs, including software engineers. These companies are actively marketing that fact.

Companies move to drop college degree requirements for new hires, focus on...

[emi722]

Not just CS job market.

In fact, many disciplines offered in colleges likely obsolete in AI generation. Seeing how high schoolers working so hard to get into their dream schools only to find out there is no career prospect is painful.

Grinding for college admission is becoming a hard sell particularly the admission result is unpredictable, whether excel academically or not. I feel colleges should also define the purposes of higher education besides increasing the price tag yoy. Do kids really need to try this hard but still not getting into their dream schools? Or even worse, disappointed after getting into their dream schools only to find out their future or job markets are not promising because of AI.