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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: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday June 03 2015, @12:49PM
raised and groomed to go to an Ivy League school
No, he wasn't. We don't have much class migration or class mixing so its hilarious watching middle class folks try to figure out what upper class folks do in order to sneak into upper class institutions. Its a game, the school only wants upper class / aristocracy kids, so they select for upper class / aristocracy hobbies and even more importantly stuff only upper class can afford. Meanwhile the aspirational middle class "tiger" moms force their kids to do stuff that would have gotten them into an ivy maybe a generation or two ago. And the rigid class structure means the tiger moms don't know WTF they're doing, its very similar to security theater, in that getting in is a PITA so any random PITA must be a way to get in, thus play the chello and sing to the loser-in-chief. Some of the confusion is the admissions folks say a lot of politically correct BS about what they want, but what they really want is different.
Some things that rich white young upper class americans actually do in 2015:
Disaster / eco tourism. Its very expensive to take a summer off and fly to the other side of the planet and basically sit around getting in the way of actual aid workers while posting to twitter and facebook and tumblr about how you're personally saving starving kids in africa or doing earthquake relief in haiti or WTF. Make LOTS of social media posts of your well fed self and starving kids, and be sure to include the experience in your admissions essay. You'll have to wave about $10K to $20K in the face of starving 3rd world people so don't actually interact with them which would be awkward, just post the F out of it on facebook while in camp. There's a whole subculture of rich kids who talk about which disaster tourism site is better just like middle class kids talk about which spring break florida beach is better.
Don't do cheap sports or activities, lower class poor people can afford a soccer ball or afford to sing (wtf?) but only upper class can afford horse sports like that horse agility deal or WTF its called where they leap over hurdles or obviously polo. The admissions committee will understand you're the "right" kind of person if you own your own polo horse and better if dad owns the local polo field. Telling them you own your own soccer ball is not exactly the aspirational conspicuous consumption they're looking for.
Water sports. I believe this means something else in the fetish community. What I'm talking about is super expensive hobbies like sailing or water ski-ing. Make sure the admissions essay explains your parents own the $5M lakefront estate, not trailer you to a public access (ugh) lake. When I sailed as a teen in my used $1K (or so) sailboat at my uncles inherited family lakefront estate I met tons of rich kids who got a $20K new boat from their dad made of exotic tropical hardwoods instead of foam and fiberglass and their dad owned the $5M lakefront estate they sailed from, often multiple estates. I should have dated and married that ugly rich chick and become a trophy house-husband. Oh well.
Fundraisers. Forget joining the scouts. I mean its cool, but if you want to hang out with the upper classes you need to get into the fundraising racket. Its all a scam but nobody cares. So find a group that does nothing but collect money and pay fundraising exec salaries, its not THAT hard, most "charities" are like that, and get documented (important! Get documented!) as being THE guy who coordinated the "its for the children, Inc" fall fundraiser event or WTF. As a bonus these things swarm with bored upper class trophy MILF housewives who need something (someone?) to do, so you can get recommendations (Admissions person sees the wife of the president of Caterpillar Inc likes him, oh he must be OK). Also if you're a girl you can get a bored trophy wife MILF to take you under her wing which might help socially (let me introduce you to my sorta-daughter I never had) and if you're a teen boy surrounded by bored trophy MILFs I don't think a teen boy needs much explanation for what he can do "in the pool changing room" or at her house in the hot tub with her or whatever, just for gods sake don't get caught.
I can't believe tiger mom thought singing to obummer would get him in, like WTF Mom? Analysis failure of the 1st degree.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 03 2015, @02:28PM
This is...disturbingly astute.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2015, @02:38PM
What planet are you posting from?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2015, @04:20PM
Water skiing? I think of that as a white trash sport, not upper crust.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 03 2015, @07:20PM
Water skiing? I think of that as a white trash sport, not upper crust.
You're probably thinking more $75K bass boat and $75K truck to haul it parked in front of the $25K mobile home. Or a 200 HP fishing boat towing a skier. Or jet skis. I can't entirely disagree, those are stereotypical "took out the home equity loan" purchases.
A ski boat is more useful when the applicant owns a truly ridiculous one (like banker bonus size, not home equity loan size) and $5M of waterfront property to moor it. Lets say a 45 footer with triple 1500 HP engines, I donno maybe 70 knots top speed for something like that? The kind of thing where the fuel tank is measured in hundreds of gallons? Big enough to be an ocean cruiser if it didn't have giant 4500 HP of engines so its really just for going fast around the coast?
I guess the cruddy SN car analogy would be I'm not talking about the guy with a honda civic having a giant 6 inch exhaust tip and $10K stereo, 4 foot tall spoiler and no other mods at all, but more like a classic 80s Ferrari collection.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday June 03 2015, @04:24PM
Darn +5 cap... I may have to mod you overrated just so I can mod you Uber-Insightful
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Wednesday June 03 2015, @05:00PM
raised and groomed to go to an Ivy League school
No, he wasn't.
[...]
I can't believe tiger mom thought singing to obummer would get him in, like WTF Mom? Analysis failure of the 1st degree.
It sounds more like you are saying -- "Yes, he was. He just wasn't as good at it as he thought."
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 03 2015, @06:53PM
Mom must have watched some episodes of "beverly hillbillies" to think she learned about upper class culture providing some really weird ideas, then went into alpha tiger mom competition against the other tiger moms to be the very best at some fairly ridiculous tasks that unfortunately have very little to do with actually getting in.
The tiger mom's do have a limited point in that you can try to get in as upper class material, either wanna be or faking it, or you can try to get in via the diversity token admission, where they try to emulate "the village people" and accept exactly one of each. Just realize that there's maybe 10 CEO's kids, maybe 20, for each token quota admission so you're probably better off trying to get in as "almost a CEO's kid" than trying to be the one hardworking middle class asian kid, or the one goth kid or the one green skinned kid or whatever. So she was clearly hoping he'd get in as the diversity applicant for chello playing or maybe singing to obummer. That lotto ticket didn't pay off. Shoulda tried to get in as a psuedo-CEO's kid.
If you watch TV you'll learn that the only way to get thru difficult military training is having a family member killed on 9/11 or overseas, or believing Jesus told you, or being really poor and trying to escape a dangerous neighborhood, be a sociopath or psychopath or a meat head, or all kinds of ridiculous shit that makes for really compelling TV for people who've never been in the .mil and don't know anyone who was ever in the .mil. My personal experience is you really only have to be stubborn, patient, and at least moderately skilled at figuring out how to get from point A to point C by passing thru point B, and never panic, which has virtually nothing to do with the skills TV says you need. The details of this example aren't important, the point is its just another cultural example that a group of people who don't know anything will invent their own hierarchy and mythology of the right way to do it that usually has little if any relationship to reality. I suppose we could talk religion, workplace politics, maybe plain old politics, relationships, all on exactly the same topic of "so lost they don't even know they're lost".