Since this is a college discussion and not a gun control discussion, I want to call attention to this part, esp the last paragraph. Really, Stanford? If I were an adcom for any top school and this kid’s application came across my desk, he’d be in. I wouldn’t give a darn what his SAT scores were or how many kids from Colorado I’d already admitted.
Which brings us to Kai Kloepfer, a lanky 17-year-old high school senior in Boulder, Colo. After the cinema shooting in nearby Aurora, Kloepfer decided that for a science fair project he would engineer a “smart gun” that could be fired only by an authorized user.
“I started with iris recognition, and that seemed a good idea until you realize that many people firing guns wear sunglasses,” Kloepfer recalls. “So I moved on to fingerprints.” Kloepfer designed a smart handgun that fires only when a finger it recognizes is on the grip. More than 1,000 fingerprints can be authorized per gun, and Kloepfer says the sensor is 99.999 percent accurate. A child can’t fire the gun. Neither can a thief — important here in a country in which more than 150,000 guns are stolen annually.
**Kloepfer’s design won a grand prize in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Then he won a $50,000 grant from the Smart Tech Challenges Foundation to refine the technology. By the time he enters college in the fall (he applied early to Stanford and has been deferred), **he hopes to be ready to license the technology to a manufacturer.
Yeah, OK, so he invented a fancy new gun. Big deal. I bet the kid who got admitted in his place invented a time travel DeLorean or discovered the actual Fountain of Youth.
What a cool project. He got deferred from Stanford, so he still might get in
If he’s ok with small/limited schools, I’m hoping he applied to Olin too. It’s the kind of place that would nurture his innovative, entrepreneurial spirit.
I don’t see why this should entitle him to get into Stanford. I’m sure there are plenty of applicants who invent useful/helpful things or have great ideas and accomplishments who don’t get into Stanford.
Great kid, but I am surprised that his idea is considered novel. The article mentions a company with a similar product but that list should be longer, including European companies that hold patents. I am afraid that convincing the USPO will be a lot harder than the Intel judges.
It is still remarkable a high school student is in the conversation when the government and companies are investing many millions to come up with working smart guns.
Especially since is it not anything new. It is not like he thought of it. And that is probably the issue.
There are already biometrics grips and other locking and unlocking devices for guns on the market. This is really just a slightly different design, but no new technology or advantages.
No doubt it is cool that he built something, but it is also wrong to pretend that some new ground was broken and Stanford knows that - darn any serious gun owner knows this already exists.
In relative terms, YouTube was more groundbreaking than something that is already on the market being presented as new and revolutionary.
I agree if that the idea was already out there what is his leg up over other applicants? But I am wondering that if this nothing new why would he win the grand prize in the Intel Science and Engineering Fair?
Same reason all kids win science fairs - scientific execution, not novelty, per se. In fact. novelty will not help if the execution of the science is poor.
The entire issue is that his “invention” is just misrepresented, and I bet that it had zero impact on Stanford. Therefore, it was another reason for the deferral, whatever that reason.
unfortunately, the admission process is holistic. He may have had some other things which led to deferral.
I personally know an Intel fair winner who is so arrogant that it reflected in his essays (I read them). It came as no surprise to me that he was rejected everywhere he applied except his safety.
I, for one, am glad that you aren’t an adcom. I don’t know how you can even think of admitting him w/o reading his essays, LORs, transcript, and all these things become even more important when you consider that the device isn’t novel either.
If Intel thought him worthy enough, they should have given him the prize that makes him one out 7 million, not 34 out of 7 million.
I know someone else who got admitted early for being another grand prize winner in a category that would keep a lot of people healthy. They can only admit so many.
On a side note, being the liberal minded they are, the young adcoms probably find it distateful that any kid is interested working on guns, for better safety or otherwise, while they are advocating “doing away” with them. I see that being an issue at every elite college he applies to, even if we as adults find it a noteworthy cause.
TPG, you should know by now that media is not particularly good at reporting about high schoolers. The 1/34 is just the typical baloney sliced by so-called reporters. A first award is not a first place award. It is a junior award worth 3,000 dollars. You might have missed the link posted earlier. The kid is buried in the middle.
“The article mentions a company with a similar product but that list should be longer, including European companies that hold patents. I am afraid that convincing the USPO will be a lot harder than the Intel judges.”
That would be the USPTO (the trademark people get upset of the “T” gets left out). Well, if he disclosed his invention during Intel before filing an application, he might be out of luck. That’s why filing a provisional patent application prior to making a public disclosure is a smart idea. Even if there are others claiming things that seem to achieve a similar end result, he might have enough novelty and non-obviousness that he could be entitled to a patent. It all depends on the nuances of the tech and the disclosure.
@Xiggi - I dont think they looked at it as a problem but I suspect most young adcoms are not impressed by gun safety as a topic based on the many views I hear about doing away with them completely in US. Many of them seem rather young and idealistic and more likely give the nod to someone who started a social movement (just my opinion, not that I am encouraging any kid to jump on it to start one as a way to get in. ).
There are lots of winners on this list for 2014. As I mentioned, at least one of the lower level winners was admitted early to Stanford. I believe Kai was in the previous batch of many winners.
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