Asian with a 1700 got into Stanford

Colleges and Universities A-Z Stanford University
41

Part 2

Her YouTube video is just one more example of a young person who is interested in doing great things to help others. Her motivation was to inspire young girls who are scared just like she was when she was young, that they can do it.

When I sat down with her to proof read her college application there were so many extracurricular activities she could not list them all. I was also concerned that her accomplishments were so significant that some might even find them unbelievable. But I was there. I witnessed it. When most girls went out on weekends or to proms she was the type of girl to be in bed reading by 8pm and lights out at 9pm, after a day of homework, projects, interning and mentoring, on top of training 3-5 hours a day in tennis. On Saturdays when most girls goof off she loved working at her mentor program, working on her latest project, then taking the young girls she mentors to the movies or mall.

I would argue she is one of the most accomplished freshman going into
any school in the country next year, all around. I worked ten years on Wall Street building companies and have since built numerous non profits. Building a great organization is just like building a great college and learning environment. You need good natured, wise, hard working, appreciative, hungry, intelligent, intuitive, kind and self motivated people with integrity and great character. She is all of those things. Her video speaks to the truth that an SAT score can not on its own reflect a persons true intelligence and abilities. Her video could have done a better job of describing all of the great things she has done to get her into Stanford. Perhaps this forum will inspire her to do so. Hope this helped.

42

Truth about “Asian girl” - part 1

There are many false perceptions about the “How I got into Stanford” video by the student.

Since I know he and the college process very well I can shed light on this subject.

I have worked with over 80 students now in colleges like Stanford, Harvard, Wharton-Penn, Princeton, Georgetown, Vanderbilt and many others. She is as good or better than any of those students and in many cases out shines them all significantly.

I deal with hundreds of young students annually. It’s safe to say she is the most extraordinary all around young leader I have ever known in my fifteen years. Further I will bet that she will be one of the most extraordinary students on the Stanford campus when she arrives.

One error she made in her video was allowing her innate humility and kindness get in the way of communicating effectively. She did not go into detail on what she has done as a human being, leader and student that set her apart. Yes she was ranked #1 in her class academically, never had one B, washer high school valedictorian, and was the #1 tennis player in America in every age division from 12 to 18. But these are standard pre requisites to be accepted at a school like Stanford. If these were her only accomplishments with an average SAT score she would likely never get in. To her there is so much more, all of which has nothing to do with her athletic prowess.

What sets her apart is who she is as a person and how that organically translated into doing some amazing things.

Very few times in life we come across a person who has so much depth, potential and spirit that you can not describe it in words. Such is the case with this student. However for the sake of this forum I will do my best by listing a few points.

NOTE: I am not talking about the typical community service, national awards, school projects, student council or volunteer hours that most Ivy level students have." She has plenty of those credentials but they are not worth listing. The items listed below are things that she spent hundreds and thousands of hours doing. Calling them “extra curricular activities” doesn’t do her projects and accomplishments justice. Here are just a few:

  1. This is a young women who is credited as a founding leader in a youth foundation that has helped hundreds of children. www.InspiringChildren.net
  2. As a result of her extremely kind and empathetic nature she from a young age was always taking the younger girls under her wing. As a sort of big sister she listened to their problems, tried to share wisdom and would do small things to inspire them. Being the #1 tennis player in America she had a platform, that she never boasted about, but would use to encourage others. After three years she took her organic efforts and created a formal non profit mentoring program, complete with in depth tools that are being used to inspire hundreds of children daily and will continue to do so for years to come. The program is so effective it is now being made into an app that creators feel could revolutionize mentoring and parenting.
  3. In her desire to help this mentoring program and the non profit foundation she and four other young leaders raised over $200,000. She personally led the team projects and personally raised close to $100,000.
  4. Her efforts caught the eye of four separate organizations who not only funded her efforts but later, after seeing her in action, asked her to be a spokesperson for their organizations, including the United States Tennis Foundation, USTA NJTL, Richard Branson's Necker Cup via NT Foundation and the TEAM BRYAN Program.

As a result of her accomplishments she has been interviewed on national television with Mary Carillo, arguably one of the best female sports journalists in the world, and for multiple publications.

  1. She was the only female junior tennis player in the world to be included into the International tennis Hall of Fame, which is determined by a persons contributions to the sport and their sportsmanship.
  2. She helped create and lead two "Apprentice" competitions among youth as part of her fundraising efforts. These lasted 6 months over two summers. One of the participants who now attends Wharton School of Business said the experience is what inspired her to go to Wharton.
  3. She spent all of her free time as an intern at a non profit building and running her mentor program and much more.

This summer for example was her daily schedule:

630am wake
730am practice to noon
Noon-130pm Yoga & Lunch
1:30pm- 630pm Interning in the foundation office with youth she mentors doing projects.
630-8 Dinner & family
8pm reading them sleep by 930pm
*All day Saturday on her mentor program and projects.

  1. Her achievements have resulted in her being invited to speak in front of thousands of guests, to board of directors and to play tennis in front of over 23,000 people.
  2. As a world class athlete she has always been #1 in her age division, has traveled the world, won over 35 national tournaments and achieved all of the above while training 3-5 hours a day.

Apart from these accomplishments what other 16 to 18 year old meditates, does yoga daily and puts together her own life plan?

  1. This is a young lady who seeks out wisdom, embraces criticism and is self aware. A girl who has a personal goal of never lying and always being honest, of seeking happiness and understanding, then sharing it with others. How do you quantify her depth and maturity? Her essays demonstrated on a deep level who she is. This is far more important than an SAT score.
  2. She has played in stadiums in front of 23,000 people and embraced the pressure. She has beaten players that are 300 in the world as professionals. If she was 300 in the world at baseball, basketball or football at 16 she would have been a millionaire and phenom - and what basketball or football player plays at that level with the grades and accomplishments of this student?
43

Truth about “Asian girl” part 2

Her YouTube video is just one more example of a young person who is interested in doing great things to help others. Her motivation was to inspire young girls who are scared just like she was when she was young, that they can do it.

When I sat down with her to proof read her college application there were so many extracurricular activities she could not list them all. I was also concerned that her accomplishments were so significant that some might even find them unbelievable. But I was there. I witnessed it. When most girls went out on weekends or to proms she was the type of girl to be in bed reading by 8pm and lights out at 9pm, after a day of homework, projects, interning and mentoring, on top of training 3-5 hours a day in tennis. On Saturdays when most girls goof off she loved working at her mentor program, working on her latest project, then taking the young girls she mentors to the movies or mall.

I would argue she is one of the most accomplished freshman going into
any school in the country next year, all around. I worked ten years on Wall Street building companies and have since built numerous non profits. Building a great organization is just like building a great college and learning environment. You need good natured, wise, hard working, appreciative, hungry, intelligent, intuitive, kind and self motivated people with integrity and great character. She is all of those things. Her video speaks to the truth that an SAT score can not on its own reflect a persons true intelligence and abilities. Her video could have done a better job of describing all of the great things she has done to get her into Stanford. Perhaps this forum will inspire her to do so. Hope this helped.

44

With all due respect, having defended her admission and highlighted many of the qualifications listed above, I find the idea of a professional counsellor writing this kind of thing offensive, and it diminishes my respect for the applicant rather than enhances it. @NevadaJedi, are you planning on following her at Stanford and writing apologies or letters of support to her professors if she doesn’t get a good grade. Stanford admissions obviously felt that she was qualified, and as a top athletic recruit with a strong service record and strong academics aside from her SAT there is plenty to justify her selection using a holistic process, without having a paid publicist defend her.

45

I agree with @renaissancedad as I found @NevadaJedi’s posts offensive too.

I hope she gave permission to have aspects of her college application discussed on a public forum.

My respect for her accomplishments have been similarly diminished.

46

Your being offended has nothing to do with me or my comments. You do not know the applicant nor does she know that I am writing this, so “diminishing your respect for her” does not make sense. Further, I am not paid or a publicist. I am a volunteer. I am qualified to speak on this forum just as you are. I know far more about the topic at hand since I have first hand knowledge. If you are discussing something wouldn’t one welcome additional facts? My point is the applicant had far more going for her then a good GPA and being a good athlete. Far more. Now that the forum has more of the details they can have a deeper understanding.

47

@NevadaJedi are you the student?

48

You didn’t add any significant details than I already listed earlier in the thread from what was publicly available. In post #7 I wrote:

You just added a bunch of hype. No one - including the adcom, most likely - really cares that she was interviewed by Mary Carillo, or what her summer schedule was. There are tons of athletes, musicians and performing artists who have similarly demanding schedules, without a third party publicizing the details.

You also identified the applicant by name, apparently without permission; I’m not a mod, but that seems like a violation of privacy. You should be cautious about such disclosures.

49

You can not speak for the admissions committee or the group of people you refer to as “no one.” You can only speak for yourself.

This forum was discussing the admission of a young women I know, posting a link to her video, which makes it possible to find her name. I posted an explanation of the whole picture as I saw it. I also listed many additional details that were not previously mentioned.

When having a discussion why wouldn’t participants want as much information as possible, from people with direct knowledge? These details are not “hype,” they are the facts as I see them. You taking offense has nothing to do with me or my post. Your claiming that my post resulted in “diminishing your respect” for the applicant doesn’t make sense since she has no idea that I am posting and my opinions come from me not her.

50

Not speaking about this student in particular but more generally, I think it’s just common sense that anyone who gets into Stanford (or any other highly selective school) with scores that are well below the admitted student median on the SAT or another key academic indicator, is likely going to really stand out on a particular dimension, whether that’s being a priority athletic recruit or filling some other institutional priority.

“Regular” applicants on the other hand (I put that in quotes because many of them are very strong in multiple dimensions but perhaps not filling a specific institutional priority), probably can’t afford to be below the admitted student median on any key academic metric and will be in a stronger position if they’re more like 75th percentile.

51

I would just say that this is hardly the case to point to if your concern is low standards for athletic recruits. This girl, although with a mediocre SAT, is obviously a good student with top high school grades, and a lot of achievements beyond her sport. I’d be astonished if she fails to graduate from Stanford. The scandal is the recruits who are completely ill-equipped for college and who are merely exploited gladiators. I don’t think there are too many of these at Stanford, but if there are, they’re not on the tennis team.

52

Since I had something to do with this thread by identifying that the poster of the YouTube videos was a recruited athlete who neglected to mention this (I did not use her name), I guess I should chime in about the very unusual recent developments involving NevadaJedi.

In my original post I took pains to identify the reasons for my posting. It had nothing to do with diminishing her accomplishments. I simply did not want other kids to be misled to their detriment. In a nutshell: The college admissions process is very opaque. As a consequence, kids and their parents search for any scrap of information on whether they have a fighting chance of admissions at a given school. All of this depends, of course, on the information being accurate and a relatively full disclosure. Unfortunately, whatever might have been her motivation, by not mentioning she was a highly recruited athlete was at best being disingenuous (a term others have used in this thread) or naïve and at worst dishonest. She had to know that being a highly recruited athlete at the very least helped her.

The problem is that by not mentioning the athletic angle, she could lead others who do not have such a strong hook to apply to Stanford when really they have almost no chance of admissions. As I mentioned in my original post, if they apply on the regular round, it is no big deal. In all likelihood they have wasted only $100 and some hours to complete the Stanford supplement. But if they apply early (as she did), then they are precluded from applying early to another school where they might have a fighting chance. And applying early to most schools, especially if it is binding, can make a big difference.

Thus, if she had said in her videos: “I only got a 1700 on the SAT, but I was a nationally ranked athlete who was recruited by Stanford. I also did a lot to raise money for several nonprofits.” In that case, I would have no problem with her video.

When I learned of her identity, I thought for only a Nano second about identifying her by name. After all, people might not believe me if I didn’t identify her by name. But I quickly dismissed that idea. I thought: “18 year old kids do stupid things. She shouldn’t be saddled with this as she might be because the Internet never forgets.” I never identified her by name and neither did any of the other posters on this board–until NevadaJedi arrived.

She might now be saddled with NevadaJedi’s very counter-productive posts. I’m sure that was not his intention, but it has become the reality. These posts did nothing to help her and could hurt her in the long run. Consider the following:

• Someone could infer that she used a professional college counselor. Not a good thing to be widely known. NevadaJedi denies this. Perhaps he is correct, but obviously he would say this. People could reasonably infer the opposite, as one poster already has.
• NevadaJedi writes: “I bet that she will be one of the most extraordinary students on the Stanford campus when she arrives. There is no doubt in my mind that they got one of the best incoming students in the U.S. … I would argue she is one of the most accomplished freshman going into any school in the country next year, all around.” Wow. Where to start. There are about 1,700 students entering Stanford in the fall, how many do you know? Maybe 2 or 3? Probably only one. How can you make such statements? They are totally absurd. It is OK for you to make absurd statements, but why paint her with your statements? Does she really want her future roommate or boyfriend or corporate sponsor to read such drivel?
• Think about her teammates or coach Googling her. Everyone Googles everyone else. Now, thanks to NevadaJedi they will learn that she is the “#1 tennis player in America.” Really? The press release issued by the Stanford team has two players entering next year that appear to be ranked higher. Perhaps the coach messed up. Perhaps the rankings have changed or they are not accurate. But why do you want her to go there? She is a very good tennis player. No one disputes that. No good can come of statements such as, at least at this stage of her life.

There are a lot of other absurd things he said, and I’ve already wasted too much of my time on this issue. The sad thing is that NevadaJedi could have made his points without mentioning her name. He sounds like her press agent.

One poster has already questioned whether NevadaJedi is the student. It is a reasonable question. I don’t think NevadaJedi is the student (my guess it is someone associated with the foundation that has helped her), but I could be wrong. I am, however, confident that NevadaJedi is someone close to her. More importantly, if she hasn’t already learned of these posts, my guess is that she will soon. Consequently, if she doesn’t take action, NevedaJedi’s posts will become her posts, his protestations notwithstanding. Is she were my daughter, I would tell her—no, I would command her—to do two things: First, get this thread (and the related thread) deleted. Pronto. Second, be very careful about associating with NevadaJedi. At best he is a loose cannon. You don’t need that. You’ve got enough challenges ahead in your life.

53

@fredthered. Excellent post, which I agree with entirely with one exception.

I did not suggest @NevadaJedi is the student. I suggested that @NevadaJedi was her mom or perhaps some other partial supporter/relative.

54

As I touched on earlier, Stanford rejects most applicants who have perfect stats – 2400 SAT / 36 ACT, 4.0+ GPA, valedictorian, etc. Nobody gets in with top academic stats and otherwise being “regular”. The ones who do get in have something else impressive that helps to really stand out among the tens of thousands of applicants. For example, in a previous year I analyzed the Stanford decision thread on this forum. The rejected CC posters as a whole actually had higher average stats than the accepted posters – the rejected posters had slightly average higher test scores, GPA, course rigor, significantly higher class rank, etc. If you look at stats alone, it might appear that the decisions were completely random, maybe with a slight preference for lower scores. However, when you look at the rest of the post, then the decisions become clear. There was a strong preference for posters who shine in other ways, such as out of classroom activities including ECs and awards, often with something that was impressive on a state+ or high regional level. I expect the negative correlation between acceptance and academic stats occurred because among forum posters, valedictorian/2400 types were more likely to apply with “regular” rest of application than the lower stat posters.

I haven’t heard of many unhooked Stanford applicants who had an SAT not much above the national average, but had a really amazing rest of application that was as good as most accepted students. This small a sample size makes it difficult to say how low a score is too low to bother applying. I can say that Stanford does accept unhooked applicants with test scores well below the 25th percentile scores, so I certainly wouldn’t assume they need to exceed the median score. For example, a parent on this forum mentioned that her unhooked daughter was accepted with an 1890 SAT. As I recall, she was valedictorian of her class with excellent grades, showing the she could handle the coursework at Stanford; and she also won several state level Future Farmer’s of America awards, which I expect is quite unique among Stanford applicants and helps to really stand out. I was accepted unhooked several years ago with about the same combined SAT, but mine was split up as 500 CR with 800 math, and being a prospective engineering major they probably gave the math/science test scores more weight than CR. I showed I could handle Stanford coursework by taking a large number of university classes outside of HS and achieving a 4.0 GPA in those classes, while also standing out in other ways.

The Women’s Tennis team does especially well academically and often wins various Pac-12 Academic awards. As such, their GPAs are posted in news articles. The GPAs and majors of their starting players are below. I’d expect the player described in the YouTube video is also likely to do quite well academically and receive similar academic accolades.

Kostas - 3.99 (Economics)
Tsay - 3.87 (Biology)
Doyle - 3.86 (Undeclared)
Hardebeck - 3.75 (Political Science)
Zhao – 3.74 (STS)
Davidson - ? (academic “honorable mention” )

55

It was practically implied that she was a recruited athlete when she mentioned her SAT scores.

56

@Data10, I certainly agree that strong academics aren’t enough, but at the same time Stanford admits about 2,100 students a year and not all of them are the best in the country at something. And, the Common Data Set for Stanford shows that depending on the SAT section, between 69% and 78% of Stanford admits score 700 or above per section. Just mathematically, a large majority of admits are going to be at 2100 and above.

If Stanford rejects most with 2400 SATs it wouldn’t be a big surprise as it rejects 95% of applicants, but I’m willing to bet that a lot more than 5% of the students with high academics are admitted. There are fewer than 600 people a year with a 2400 by the way.

There’s an interesting interview with Dean Fitzsimmons of Harvard posted on the On Harvard Time YouTube channel. Admittedly it’s Harvard not Stanford, but he says in the case of Harvard, there are 200-300 admits each year who excel at a national/international level in something, 200-300 are academic stars, and the rest (the large majority of admits) are what he calls “good all arounders” at a very high level in multiple areas but not necessarily a star in any one thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSUcwGMwc2E

57

There are many false perceptions about the “How I got into Stanford” video by a student.
http://youtu.be/ZTwlsQR-K4E

Since I know her and the college process very well I can shed light on this subject. But before doingso I would like to clarify she is not an “Asian girl.” She is a human being, as we all are.

I have worked as a volunteer with over 80 students now in colleges like Stanford, Harvard, Wharton-Penn, Princeton, Georgetown, Vanderbilt and many others. She is as good or better than any of those students and in many cases out shines them all significantly.

I deal with hundreds of young students annually. It’s safe to say she is the most extraordinary all around young leader I have ever known in my fifteen years of doing this work. Further I will bet that she will be one of the most extraordinary students on the Stanford campus when she arrives. There is no doubt in my mind they got one of the best incoming students in the U.S.

One error she made in her video was allowing her innate humility and kindness get in the way of communicating effectively. She did not go into detail on what she has done as a human being, leader and student that set her apart. Yes she was ranked #1 in her class academically, never had one B, washer high school valedictorian, and was the #1 tennis player in America in every age division from 12 to 18. But these are standard pre requisites to be accepted at a school like Stanford. If these were her only accomplishments with an average SAT score she would likely never get in. To her there is so much more, all of which has nothing to do with her athletic prowess.

What sets her apart is who she is as a person and how that organically translated into doing some amazing things.

Very few times in life we come across a person who has so much depth, potential and spirit that you can not describe it in words. Such is the case with the student. However for the sake of this forum I will do my best by listing a few points.

NOTE: I am not talking about the typical community service, national awards, school projects, student council or volunteer hours that most Ivy level students have." She has plenty of those credentials but they are not worth listing. The items listed below are things that she spent hundreds and thousands of hours doing. Calling them “extra curricular activities” doesn’t do her projects and accomplishments justice. Here are just a few:

  1. This is a young women who is credited as a founding leader in a youth foundation that has helped hundreds of children. www.InspiringChildren.net
  2. As a result of her extremely kind and empathetic nature she from a young age was always taking the younger girls under her wing. As a sort of big sister she listened to their problems, tried to share wisdom and would do small things to inspire them. Being the #1 tennis player in America she had a platform, that she never boasted about, but would use to encourage others. After three years she took her organic efforts and created a formal non profit mentoring program, complete with in depth tools that are being used to inspire hundreds of children daily and will continue to do so for years to come. The program is so effective it is now being made into an app that creators feel could revolutionize mentoring and parenting.
  3. In her desire to help this mentoring program and the non profit foundation she and four other young leaders raised over $200,000. She personally led the team projects and personally raised close to $100,000.
  4. Her efforts caught the eye of four separate organizations who not only funded her efforts but later, after seeing her in action, asked her to be a spokesperson for their organizations, including the United States Tennis Foundation, USTA NJTL, Richard Branson's Necker Cup via NT Foundation and the TEAM BRYAN Program.

As a result of her accomplishments she has been interviewed on national television with Mary Carillo, arguably one of the best female sports journalists in the world, and for multiple publications.

  1. She was the only female junior tennis player in the world to be included into the International tennis Hall of Fame, which is determined by a persons contributions to the sport and their sportsmanship.
  2. She helped create and lead two "Apprentice" competitions among youth as part of her fundraising efforts. These lasted 6 months over two summers. One of the participants who now attends Wharton School of Business said the experience is what inspired her to go to Wharton.
  3. She spent all of her free time as an intern at a non profit building and running her mentor program and much more.

This summer for example was her daily schedule:

630am wake
730am practice to noon
Noon-130pm Yoga & Lunch
1:30pm- 630pm Interning in the foundation office with youth she mentors doing projects.
630-8 Dinner & family
8pm reading them sleep by 930pm
*All day Saturday on her mentor program and projects.

  1. Her achievements have resulted in her being invited to speak in front of thousands of guests, to board of directors and to play tennis in front of over 23,000 people.
  2. As a world class athlete she has always been #1 in her age division, has traveled the world, won over 35 national tournaments and achieved all of the above while training 3-5 hours a day.

Apart from these accomplishments what other 16 to 18 year old meditates, does yoga daily and puts together her own life plan?

  1. This is a young lady who seeks out wisdom, embraces criticism and is self aware. A girl who has a personal goal of never lying and always being honest, of seeking happiness and understanding, then sharing it with others. How do you quantify her depth and maturity? Her essays demonstrated on a deep level who she is. This is far more important than an SAT score.
  2. She has played in stadiums in front of 23,000 people and embraced the pressure. She has beaten players that are 300 in the world as professionals. If she was 300 in the world at baseball, basketball or football at 16 she would have been a millionaire and phenom - and what basketball or football player plays at that level with the grades and accomplishments of this student?
58

@Data10 makes some good points. I think that Stanford, more than anywhere else that I know of, seems to look for applicants who are out to “change the world” in some way, more than just academic achievers. I think it’s pretty predictable that the combination of athletic excellence and social outreach demonstrated by the young women discussed in the OP would be highly appealing to Stanford, and would far outweigh standardized test scores so long as there was other evidence that she was able to handle to academic rigor.

@bluewater2015, another way of looking at it is that even if Stanford rejects 69% of applicants with a 2400 SAT, that means they accept 31% of them, which is over 5 times higher than the general acceptance rate of 5.3%.

59

Depending on section, 45-59% of applicants are at 700 or above, so Stanford is going to have a large portion of 2100+ SAT students in the entering class even if they don’t consider test scores in their application process. However, the fact that the entering class has a greater portion of 700+ test scores than the applicants doesn’t mean one needs to have a 2100+ SAT to be admitted or tell us much about how Stanford weights SAT scores since you also need to consider that among the regular applicant pool (CC posters are an exception), test scores are positively correlated with other components of the application that Stanford values.

For example, if you compare applicants with a ~2400 SAT to applicants with a ~2000 SAT, I’d expect the top scoring applicants are more likely to have a high GPA/rank, high course rigor, excellent LORs, major awards, and good various other criteria that Stanford values. So if the ~2400 SAT applicants have a higher admit rate than the ~2000 SAT applicants that might primarily be due to the 2400 applicants excelling in a combination of criteria completely unrelated to test scores, rather than anything about the score itself. Looking at test score percentages of the entering students gives us little information about how Stanford weights scores. MIT’s website explains this more eloquently, in response to an applicant asking why the 750-800 scoring applicants had a higher admit rate than the 700-740 applicants.

So in short, I am saying that while a lot of Stanford students have high test scores, we don’t know how much their higher test scores influenced the admission decision. Clearly Stanford assigns some weight to test scores, but they also admit unhooked applicants with lower test scores than the Stanford 25th percentile. As such, I wouldn’t assume applicants need median test scores, 75th percentile test scores, or similar. I would assume applicants need to show that they would be academically successful at Stanford, which requires much more than scores; and also need to have more than just excellent stats/transcript, including “intellectual vitality”… something that is impressive on more than just a high school level.

Note that Stanford Superscores. The <600 total is for single sitting. They also have a good portion of applicants who take only the ACT.

60

You would have to look very hard to find examples of Stanford athletes who differ noticeably from the rest of the student mix. Because of that, I suspect that students who go to Stanford enter with quite a bit more athlete prejudice than they leave with.

It’s not surprising that the student would not want to mention it as she has probably already experienced that form of prejudice.