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Business Insider reports:
With a perfect ACT score and 13 Advanced Placement courses under his belt, Michael Wang applied to seven Ivy League universities and Stanford in 2013.
As an Asian-American, Wang suspected his race might work against him. But but he was still shocked when he was rejected by Stanford and every Ivy League school except for the University of Pennsylvania.
Wang says he worked incredibly hard and excelled in every area possible. But it still wasn't good enough.
"There was nothing humanly possible I could do," Wang told us, explaining that he felt utterly demoralized after his rejections.
After Wang was rejected from most of the Ivies, he says he filed a complaint with the US Department of Education alleging Yale, Stanford, and Princeton discriminated against him because he was Asian-American.
[...] Wang isn't alone in his belief that the Ivies discriminate against Asians. A coalition of Asian-American groups filed a lawsuit against Harvard University last month alleging the school and other Ivy League institutions use racial quotas to admit students to the detriment of more qualified Asian-American applicants. The more than 60 Asian groups are coming together to fight what they say are unfair admission practices.
[...] He also stressed that he was not just academically driven, but also a well-rounded applicant who maximized his extracurricular activities. He competed in national speech and debate competitions and math competitions. He also plays the piano and performed in the choir that sang at President Barack Obama's 2008 inauguration.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday June 03 2015, @03:19PM
> "Poor social skills" often were mentioned.
So, it seems those making the decisions explained to you why you were being passed over. Did you ever go out and study, practice, and overcome your incompetence? Or did you simply say "fuck that - this is hard and I did my learning in school, I'm done with it now" and give up?
As someone who dismissed social skills as pointless for most of my life I can feel your pain. But pain doesn't excuse us from continuing to grow and move forward in life. And in a world where pretty much everything of significance is a collaborative endeavor, social skills are arguably among the most important skills we can acquire. Even if they're bloody difficult for some of us to learn on the fly, and nobody has written a proper text book on the subject.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday June 03 2015, @04:51PM
social skills are arguably among the most important skills we can acquire.
Only because we live in a world filled with shallow idiots. While others try to focus on the argument at hand, or care whether or not someone can do the job and do it well, there are people who focus on what clothes you're wearing, the fact that you used a word they didn't like, or you said something in a way they didn't like. These are poisonous work environments.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday June 03 2015, @04:53PM
And by "social skills", what they usually mean is "Mindlessly doing what they are told in a way that the authority figure likes." Critical thinking and creativity is not valued. Why aren't you making smalltalk with those fools over there? Why aren't you being more 'social'?
In the end, a lot of people submit and then delude themselves into believing that this sort of thing is actually good, ensuring that nothing will change.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday June 04 2015, @03:37AM
Not really. If part of the job is "actively collaborating with others", and it usually is, then your ability to interact with teammates, support staff, and superiors in a manner that avoids unnecessary drama, hard feelings, and general social discomfort, is directly relevant to your suitability for the position. If nobody is comfortable working with you, then your presence is actively damaging the morale and productivity of everyone who is required to do so.
If we want to reap the rewards of playing society's game, we have to learn play by their rules. Or at least close enough that they can deal with us without suffering undue social discomfort/cognitive dissonance. Just as those who want to deal with us on a personal level have to learn to play by our rules.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday June 04 2015, @04:27AM
Not really. If part of the job is "actively collaborating with others", and it usually is, then your ability to interact with teammates, support staff, and superiors in a manner that avoids unnecessary drama, hard feelings, and general social discomfort, is directly relevant to your suitability for the position.
That's the shallowness I speak of. People are easily offended and expect others to speak, act, and dress exactly as they would prefer, and this is not a good thing.
If we want to reap the rewards of playing society's game, we have to learn play by their rules.
Or change the rules that are illogical. Giving up accomplishes nothing.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday June 04 2015, @02:32PM
Nothing illogical about avoiding using a gear whose teeth are cut differently than every other gear in the machine - it's the most efficient way to avoid problems.
Basically there's two options - either you change to fit the machine, or the whole F-ing machine changes to fit you. So, what do you have to offer that is so vastly superior to what the conforming candidates offer to make it worth the effort of changing the machine?
Think of social skills as grease - not strictly necessary for the functioning of the machine, but it makes everything run smoother and reduces long-term problems.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday June 05 2015, @03:49AM
Nothing illogical about avoiding using a gear whose teeth are cut differently than every other gear in the machine - it's the most efficient way to avoid problems.
Except that there are no problems. As I made clear, the hypothetical person is able to do the job well.
Basically there's two options - either you change to fit the machine, or the whole F-ing machine changes to fit you.
The latter is a better option when you're right and "the machine" is wrong.
So, what do you have to offer that is so vastly superior to what the conforming candidates offer to make it worth the effort of changing the machine?
Logical thinking. A very important skill, and one that most don't have enough of.
Think of social skills as grease - not strictly necessary for the functioning of the machine, but it makes everything run smoother and reduces long-term problems.
The problems are caused by others' oversensitivity and shallowness. I make a point to show up at every job interview dressed in rags because I don't want to work with shallow people; that led me to the job I have now. Though, I suppose it helps when you can make demands because they want the skills you offer, but I'm still not going to play their game.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2015, @04:17AM
Looking back in retrospect, your note of social skills being arguably among the most important skills we can acquire are validated. I did spend a lot of time doing my homework when I could have been socializing. I may not have known how to do the signal processing, but I would have been more social.
The trouble with me was I had work to do. I had a project I wanted done right, and that often meant I did it personally. I felt awful foolish going out and screwing around when I knew that every hour spent screwing around was yet another hour my work would be delayed. I guess it was an old hangover from my earlier school-days when my parents would say things like "is your homework finished?" before I could watch TV.
Quite simply, it never occurred to me that company CEO's would place me under management types who ranked party-skills over workmanship.
I saw a kindred spirit in Wang. It was a kind of confirmation and closure to my frustration about knowing the great abundance of workers we have in America - so many we can just toss them, while we go into national debt paying for both the people who reject the workman, and pay for the social services for the jobless.
If only our laws fomented productivity instead of banking/investment tricks like fractional reserve illusions and house flipping.
As it stands, management can always hire an H1-B to come in, do the work, get screwed, and leave. Management does not have to worry about burning them out. Employees are nothing more than a rental car.
The man who grows the apples is not nearly as valuable than the man who can pick up ten apples and throw away nine. Not in a world where apples are in great abundance. And apparently men like Wang are in great abundance... so much so they get thrown away.
I know how worthless I felt when I was terminated. I know its a common meme. Even Matt Groenig ran an episode of "The Simpsons" on that meme with Frank Grimes.
But then, this is what one pays for being allowed to do what one loves to do in the first place. I love to build things. No different than the one who loves to surf, play the guitar, or any number of things. I just could not see spending my life doing anything else than what I am internally driven to do. Problem is there is not much market for it.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Thursday June 04 2015, @07:26AM
Well, if you're a programmer or engineer, there is actually quite a market for your skills. And Wang didn't get "thrown away", he got into a highly selective universities. He just thought he deserved to get into more of them. The problem is really that some good, but fairly arbitrarily chosen, schools have better name recognition among the general public (i.e., parents) than other schools which are really just as good, and better in some areas, mostly for historical reasons. So everyone applies to those 10 or so schools, and those schools basically flip a coin deciding who to let in.
Wang thinks he "needed" to get into Harvard or Stanford, when he'll really probably be fine at UPenn and, if his college grades are good, will have a fairly easy time in the job market.
He really should have had a less selective safety school than UPenn, though. In fact, 2 less selective safety schools would probably have been safe. But that's application strategy.
OP START READING HERE IF YOU DON'T READ ANYTHING ELSE:
If you really don't like interacting with others THAT much, you should probably look for work where you can telecommute, or something like that. But I've been fortunate to have experience working in multiple non-toxic work environments and, as a fellow STEM devotee, I can say that interacting with co-workers can be more than doable, you can actually make friends that way. Maybe you should look for less toxic work environments when you apply for a job. Maybe you should also look at yourself, and see if you actually are the toxicity in your work environments. Please understand I don't mean that as an insult -- all I mean by that is you might be difficult to work with. Working well with others is a skill you can learn. In any case, you should probably get some counseling. Deciding to drink yourself to death is a pretty drastic decision, and one that shouldn't be made lightly, or without getting external input. And we do have universal healthcare in the US now, so you probably qualify for either Medicaid or at least premium subsidies if you're out of work but not old enough for Medicare, so hopefully and probably a few sessions with a therapist would be affordable for you no matter your financial condition.
I sincerely wish you the best of luck in finding happiness.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday June 04 2015, @02:49PM
On the plus side, it's never too late to start developing those social skills. And you don't even have to be *good* at them, just getting to the point where you can kind of fake it while the extroverts you're dealing with do the heavy lifting makes a world of difference. Let them be the engine - just being a bearing instead of a rock in the gears makes everything go far more smoothly. And with a bit of luck and attention, after a while all that rolling around will give you a much more intuitive sense of how the game is played, and let you start driving things a bit yourself.