4 ms·
> I don't generally have a lot of empathy for people complaining about not being accepted to colleges but having a high GPA at a competitive school, and a high
by blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
> I don't generally have a lot of empathy for people complaining about not being accepted to colleges but having a high GPA at a competitive school, and a high SAT score, as well as having an interesting-enough 'hook' like his own moderately successful startup should've at least gotten him into one in-state school.
That’s the thing. It’s one thing for someone to be rejected from only the very best universities or to have a good-but-not-great resume and face rejection. But to have perfect grades, near-perfect test scores, multiple awards in coding competitions, a startup, and still get rejected by Cal Poly or UC Davis or Michigan or Wisconsin? It makes no sense and shows something is seriously wrong here.
- hn_user82179 2y agoMy only guess with Cal Poly/UC Davis (less certain about Michigan or Wisconsin) is that the many other extremely successful CS applicants from good Bay Area schools also applied there as their 'safeties' since they're in-state, and those schools had artificially high denials as a result? wild guess. I'd suspect there's some "I'm sure you're not going to go here"-denials coming from lower-ranked schools when they get applications from strong candidates. Given that he was accepted to UT and UM and he declined to attend either (I'm making the possibly wrong assumption that his family could've afforded the out-of-state tuition, but given his father's job I don't think that's an unreasonable assumption), I doubt he would've attended those "safeties" even given the opportunity.