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I'm a college admissions consultant, and this doesn't surprise me at all. People don't realize how competitive the landscape has become. His test scores and GPA

I'm a college admissions consultant, and this doesn't surprise me at all. People don't realize how competitive the landscape has become. His test scores and GPA are average at the schools he applied to. Really you'd need to know how many APs he took and his AP scores to understand how colleges will treat his academic record. To me, his college list indicates that he was mostly prestige hunting. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but colleges can tell when a student wants to attend based just on branding. It comes across as if he wants to use college as a resume booster rather than as a place to grow. The essay reads as a list of accomplishments, with little self-reflection. (Side note: referencing Steve Jobs is way overdone.) Long story short, college admissions is not a VC pitch. If I had been this guy's advisor, I would have recommended he write an essay about something not related to Cal AI. Colleges will already know about the app from his activities list (and resume and, presumably, recommendation letters). There's a huge missed opportunity for him to write about something else. The essays that worked for my students this year were often about more mundane topics that gave insight into their character. One of my favorites was from a student who started giving free haircuts to classmates. The essay implicitly shows that he's thoughtful and well-liked—someone you'd definitely want in your college community.

blitzar 2y ago
> huge missed opportunity for him to write about something else When you are locked in and have the grindset there is nothing else.
- closetkantian 2y ago
  If he absolutely insisted on writing about Cal AI, I would have recommended that he write more about why he was inspired to build it and the human impact. Instead, he just rattled off metrics that admissions officers will likely know from other places in his app.
  - blitzar 2y ago
    Talking about grindsets, ARR, DAU and getting up at 4:30am may be seen as good content for a twitter thread, but most grown adults cringe when they read copy and pasted fortune cookie wisdom memes. I would agree, talking about actual human stuff related to an actually interesting topic was a wasted oportunity. Nobody actually cares what the numbers on the app are, least of all admissions officers.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
Jensson 2y ago
> His test scores and GPA are average at the schools he applied to. Average is quite a bit above the floor though, so that just makes it sound like he should have been accepted.
- blitzar 2y ago
  For ever 100 applicants 3 seats are available. If you are "average" amongst the pool of applicants there are 46 better people than you that won't get in either.
  - pizzly 2y ago
    Having elite universities scale up the number of seats available can be done. Grow the pie instead of having the current scarcity mindset. This would actually solve much of the current problems. There is no reason you cannot have the same or better quality of education with more students per university. The only reason this problem exists is that by limiting the number of seats you create artificial scarcity and thus higher value.
djohnston 2y ago
Interesting context, thanks for sharing. It sounds like college admissions are broken in the same way SWE interviews are broken.
- Meekro 2y ago
  There was an HN story some years ago about the guy who created homebrew -- a Mac app used by a plurality of Google employees -- being rejected from a job at Google. This seems to follow that pattern: it's not enough that you achieve great things and talk/write about your achievement, you have to stroke the egos of people who could have never accomplished what you did, but still have the power to judge you because the bureaucracy has given them that power.
Meekro 2y ago
If the $30M ARR number is true, it's not hard to understand why he wants to talk about it as much as possible. Maybe if you come from family money, you can hear that kind of figure and yawn -- but as someone who came from poverty, I can tell you that this is like if the kid built a rocket out of spare parts in his garage and visited the moon. There's no words for how stunning this is, and everything else in his life must seem trivial by comparison. I can't understand why the admissions officers would rather read an essay about a kid who volunteered at an animal shelter or something. Anyone can do that.
- stuartjohnson12 2y ago
  It has been trendy in Silicon Valley recently to use inappropriate accounting methods to measure ARR. Joe, a regular guy: Makes $120k at his desk job Joe, the businessman: Made $20k in 32 days, $228k ARR Joe, who launched 5 months into development and did 60k in the first 2 weeks: $1.5M ARR In all three of these examples, Joe's financial outcome is the same. This business does not have any longevity, and all of its revenue is from converting paid advertising of various kinds. It's still impressive, but is most likely a >10x exaggeration on even the lifetime revenue he makes from this. Which is of course circular, because the reason he's doing all this is to make a business out of monetising the audience of people who want to make money. All of this is clever social climbing, but is clever social climbing the thing that should be rewarded by colleges?
- bfeynman 2y ago
  um - I would. Colleges don't want to get panned for hiring a scam artist which is exactly what this is. Unlike VC where that skill is slightly revered. The app is fake - at best its puffery, and the essay was littered with grammatical errors.
StefanBatory 2y ago
American system of admissions to me seems so weird. Is it only there that unis accept mostly on extra things and not grades/test scores itself? I'm Polish, here the only thing that matters is your final test scores, and nothing else. And I think it's same in the most of Europe and Asia too, right? My impression is that American unis care way more about social aspect and so on, which I don't understand (but I guess it's a fine way of looking at things, too.)
- tekla 2y ago
  It's because a good majority of these schools have thousands of applicants who might as well be perfect across the board grade and test scores wise, so its either they flip a coin, or choose some other standard. The tests need to be harder, but people would complain. I didn't study for the ACT at all (literally went in without knowing anything about it) and got a 35. It's a trivial exam.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - DontchaKnowit 2y ago
    What a douchey thing to say. You know the average score is like 20 right? Its definitely not trivial
    - tekla 2y ago
      The average for the SAT is 1050 https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/scores/what-scores-mean/what-is-good-score https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/scores/what-scores-mean/wh... I got a 1040 on the SAT in the 5th grade. The average score is useless for gauging how hard these exams are. Bragging how you got a 34 on the ACT or 1450+ on the SAT for an elite college is like bragging about clubbing a seal
      - punpunia 2y ago
        What you're saying doesn't make any sense, do you just enjoy bragging? Hardness of a task only makes sense in the context of who is doing the task. The fact that you scored highly means it was not a hard test for you compared to the average test taker. I could not determine this without the average score.
nilkn 2y ago
Just because it doesn't surprise you doesn't mean it's okay. You have to acknowledge that as an admissions consultant you're part of a small gatekeeping community bubble. Even though I attended one of these schools, I can recognize that universities have been rapidly losing their credibility, and this is only going to accelerate that trend. And by the way, this person is probably more accomplished than I am, even though I am now quite a bit older and my essay was apparently good enough to tick off the checkboxes. The question you need to be asking is how the university system made an enemy out of someone who is clearly one of the most talented members of his age cohort in the nation. That's a failure no matter how hard you try to explain or justify the status quo. It's time for some real accountability and soul searching from the system, not excuses. Trying to nit pick the essay and pointing out how he should have done X or Y instead is completely missing the point.

blitzar 2y ago

> huge missed opportunity for him to write about something else When you are locked in and have the grindset there is nothing else.

closetkantian 2y ago
If he absolutely insisted on writing about Cal AI, I would have recommended that he write more about why he was inspired to build it and the human impact. Instead, he just rattled off metrics that admissions officers will likely know from other places in his app.
- blitzar 2y ago
  Talking about grindsets, ARR, DAU and getting up at 4:30am may be seen as good content for a twitter thread, but most grown adults cringe when they read copy and pasted fortune cookie wisdom memes. I would agree, talking about actual human stuff related to an actually interesting topic was a wasted oportunity. Nobody actually cares what the numbers on the app are, least of all admissions officers.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

Jensson 2y ago

> His test scores and GPA are average at the schools he applied to. Average is quite a bit above the floor though, so that just makes it sound like he should have been accepted.

blitzar 2y ago
For ever 100 applicants 3 seats are available. If you are "average" amongst the pool of applicants there are 46 better people than you that won't get in either.
- pizzly 2y ago
  Having elite universities scale up the number of seats available can be done. Grow the pie instead of having the current scarcity mindset. This would actually solve much of the current problems. There is no reason you cannot have the same or better quality of education with more students per university. The only reason this problem exists is that by limiting the number of seats you create artificial scarcity and thus higher value.

djohnston 2y ago

Interesting context, thanks for sharing. It sounds like college admissions are broken in the same way SWE interviews are broken.

Meekro 2y ago
There was an HN story some years ago about the guy who created homebrew -- a Mac app used by a plurality of Google employees -- being rejected from a job at Google. This seems to follow that pattern: it's not enough that you achieve great things and talk/write about your achievement, you have to stroke the egos of people who could have never accomplished what you did, but still have the power to judge you because the bureaucracy has given them that power.

Meekro 2y ago

If the $30M ARR number is true, it's not hard to understand why he wants to talk about it as much as possible. Maybe if you come from family money, you can hear that kind of figure and yawn -- but as someone who came from poverty, I can tell you that this is like if the kid built a rocket out of spare parts in his garage and visited the moon. There's no words for how stunning this is, and everything else in his life must seem trivial by comparison. I can't understand why the admissions officers would rather read an essay about a kid who volunteered at an animal shelter or something. Anyone can do that.

stuartjohnson12 2y ago
It has been trendy in Silicon Valley recently to use inappropriate accounting methods to measure ARR. Joe, a regular guy: Makes $120k at his desk job Joe, the businessman: Made $20k in 32 days, $228k ARR Joe, who launched 5 months into development and did 60k in the first 2 weeks: $1.5M ARR In all three of these examples, Joe's financial outcome is the same. This business does not have any longevity, and all of its revenue is from converting paid advertising of various kinds. It's still impressive, but is most likely a >10x exaggeration on even the lifetime revenue he makes from this. Which is of course circular, because the reason he's doing all this is to make a business out of monetising the audience of people who want to make money. All of this is clever social climbing, but is clever social climbing the thing that should be rewarded by colleges?
bfeynman 2y ago
um - I would. Colleges don't want to get panned for hiring a scam artist which is exactly what this is. Unlike VC where that skill is slightly revered. The app is fake - at best its puffery, and the essay was littered with grammatical errors.

StefanBatory 2y ago

American system of admissions to me seems so weird. Is it only there that unis accept mostly on extra things and not grades/test scores itself? I'm Polish, here the only thing that matters is your final test scores, and nothing else. And I think it's same in the most of Europe and Asia too, right? My impression is that American unis care way more about social aspect and so on, which I don't understand (but I guess it's a fine way of looking at things, too.)

tekla 2y ago
It's because a good majority of these schools have thousands of applicants who might as well be perfect across the board grade and test scores wise, so its either they flip a coin, or choose some other standard. The tests need to be harder, but people would complain. I didn't study for the ACT at all (literally went in without knowing anything about it) and got a 35. It's a trivial exam.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- DontchaKnowit 2y ago
  What a douchey thing to say. You know the average score is like 20 right? Its definitely not trivial
  - tekla 2y ago
    The average for the SAT is 1050 https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/scores/what-scores-mean/what-is-good-score https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/scores/what-scores-mean/wh... I got a 1040 on the SAT in the 5th grade. The average score is useless for gauging how hard these exams are. Bragging how you got a 34 on the ACT or 1450+ on the SAT for an elite college is like bragging about clubbing a seal
    - punpunia 2y ago
      What you're saying doesn't make any sense, do you just enjoy bragging? Hardness of a task only makes sense in the context of who is doing the task. The fact that you scored highly means it was not a hard test for you compared to the average test taker. I could not determine this without the average score.

nilkn 2y ago

Just because it doesn't surprise you doesn't mean it's okay. You have to acknowledge that as an admissions consultant you're part of a small gatekeeping community bubble. Even though I attended one of these schools, I can recognize that universities have been rapidly losing their credibility, and this is only going to accelerate that trend. And by the way, this person is probably more accomplished than I am, even though I am now quite a bit older and my essay was apparently good enough to tick off the checkboxes. The question you need to be asking is how the university system made an enemy out of someone who is clearly one of the most talented members of his age cohort in the nation. That's a failure no matter how hard you try to explain or justify the status quo. It's time for some real accountability and soul searching from the system, not excuses. Trying to nit pick the essay and pointing out how he should have done X or Y instead is completely missing the point.