“It’s always funny and interesting to me how people can see the same thing but have different views of it. Some people read the story and came away asking why would he apply to 19 more school after he was already accepted to Stanford. I on the other hand just assumed he applied to all the school at the same time and by the time he found out about Stanford acceptance all of his other applications were already in.”
That’s not really plausible, the Stanford app is pretty time consuming wrt to their additional essays and to do that and other 19 apps and classwork, ECs at the same is really not believable. I guess you could do a lot of it in the summer before. And it’s not that hard to withdraw your application (most if not all ED admits have to), like maybe a phone call or email. And it would be good if other colleges didn’t have to process an application where the person has no intention of enrolling. Given he got accepted at all of them, maybe more time was spent on his app than the auto reject pile. We criticize people’s strategy all the time on cc for applying to all the ivies because they’re so different., the only thing tying them is prestige.