Why Stanford REJECTED me, the "perfect" student

4.8 gpa 35 on the act and fives on 11 ap exams stanford rejected me and here's why i can't even blame them i f'ed up hey it's amy since that fateful day when i received my rejection letter i have been contemplating day and night about why i got rejected from my dream school and finally discovered three reasons that very well may explain why so let's go over the rejected application and those spicy reasons the last one's a little controversial look away from stanford you're not getting in i have my common app right here and it might be a little repetitive from my caltech one but there's something very different with my stanford application than with my caltech one while i go over my application can you find the mistakes i made so to start i'm obviously asian i speak and can read a little bit of mandarin all basic information under other colleges and universities i also put the nearby college that i did concurrent enrollment with and for grades i was number one out of 375 it says one i don't know i said five here literally and so i was valedictorian and my gpa was 4.82 weighted four unweighted these are all the classes first semester where i had one two three four aps and then second semester pretty much the same thing i qualified for aime the american invitational mathematics examination that was in 10th and 11th grade i was an all grades winner in the unc math contest i got the colorado math award and colorado math olympiad bronze medal a lot of math awards national merit semifinalist in my future plans i said i would like to be an engineer or doctorate i got a composite score of 35 where i had the breakdown here sat subject tests math level 2 i gotten 800 in chemistry i got a 790. ap subject test i got fives in all seven of these ap classes just breezing through this part so bear with me activity science and math i was president of mu alpha theta math society where i led the team to first place i did initiations in 11th grade i went to promise which is a prestigious math camp and then for work i was a math tutor i did community service in all four years of college spanish honor society in all four years i was also in knowledgeable and senior year i was captain president of national honor society i was on tennis varsity team captain jv basketball jv volleyball for the personal essay i did the comment application and i actually read it out loud here so that's the same one i use for stanford here's a kicker here that's different from my caltech application i actually submitted a whole entire resume which is so long basically i have a bunch of things like promise me alpha theta organized my math path tutoring program where i donated all 100 of profits to khan academy in the summer of 2016. more national honor society kind of repetitive i would say from the activities section of the actual common app i did the friends of rachel club i was a tournament assistant at the rocky mountain state games i was an eagle hour volunteer and i did armor prom committee iris and mario's mentor key club i don't even remember what half of these are anymore it's a very long list and then under that activity section in my resume i also have honor slash awards i have the awards i listed earlier but then also tacking on some additional awards that i didn't have room for in the actual common app part and that includes qualify for state knowledgeable competition ap scholar award ap scholar with distinction principal's honor roll and third place in a tennis tournament in the resume i repeated my work experience and i mentioned my skills like being fluent in mandarin english proficient in spanish and that i'm a certified avid tutor academic interest my first is chemical engineering electrical engineering and third is bioengineering i mentioned that with my enthusiasm and encouragement to my peers i recruited students to join me in new alpha theta math honor society so that was kind of showing the leadership and initiation i did to really bring people up and have this new alpha theta math honor society which i was passionate about just have more engagement i emphasize how i believe that the american mathematics competitions should be available to students of all schools so i collaborated with the district leaders for them to sponsor the exams annually doubling the amount of participants wow being president not only taught me to be a leader but how to spread my passion to make a difference in my community wow look at those buzzwords there okay okay not sure why i didn't get in so far yeah as i'm going through this maybe you guys can think in the back of your minds about why you think i got rejected and then comment before i reveal the reasons okay so short questions favorite books harry potter the maze runner life of pie and the picture of dorian gray films forrest gump the imitation game inception kung fu panda and avatar oh my gosh under newspapers i'm really trying to be cheeky here what's a newspaper just kidding i enjoy the new york times i don't think i read the new york times at that time i haven't read it now i just read the skin magazines discover magazine national geographic i think for this section kids these days are really gonna have to be pulling this out of their butt because who really reads this stuff anymore people are just on social media all the time anyway websites khan academy facebook youtube and tumblr.com forgot that was a thing most significant challenge society faces ooh speaking of which i said detaching from technology interesting last two summers i spent summer of 2015 exploring number theory at promise at boston university 2016 summer was spent learning the c plus plus programming language you can see that in this last summer i was really trying to use the last months i had to do something very entrepreneurial favorite events a lot of math competitions the world of color show and disneyland volleyball world cup regionals qualifier i think stanford application asks a lot more of these fun extra things historical moment or event the moon landing to see neil armstrong's first step on the moon and feeling the beauty of scientific breakthrough and humanity's legacy to hear armstrong say that's one small step for a man one giant week before mankind i remember how much thought i put into each of these like thinking about every single word and answer like oh my gosh it has to be perfect so i can get to stanford what five words best describe you inquisitive ambitious reliable quirky introspective fun fact i saw gohar khan he made a video about how he got into stanford with the five words and he said to approach it in a way that the typical student wouldn't so instead he said a five letter phrase very creative maybe that's why i didn't get in i'm not going to read all of these because like i said everyone has their own story and plus these are kind of long i said that i didn't used to like venturing into the unknown so traveling across the country to spend six weeks doing math was a very daunting prospect but the chance i took emphasized to me the importance of persistence for stem note to future roommate that's funny upon first glance you may think that i'm just another typical neat freak i talk about my punny jokes discussing rubik's cubes solving rubik's cubes and examining pencil flipping techniques wow this is not that interesting to you guys but you get the gist of it just be kind of yourself what matters to you and why maybe i'll read these essays in another video comment if you would like to see that because i think these are actually pretty interesting anyway i talked about eczema so what matters to me is just innovations and continual discovery to help everyone's lives be better and that is it why do you think i did not get in let's get into three reasons not entrepreneurial enough i was friends with a salutatorian and he would always tell me about how he created an app that would make marching in marching band easier with the formations and stuff and at the time i was like an app but have you done math competitions no to be honest like i knew that was really cool but i wasn't out there creating cool things like apps or like starting my own program until the very last summer before senior year when i made that math path math program that clearly was not enough and it probably even indicated two admissions that i was only creating initiating this program to get into college and i didn't show that consistent commitment and entrepreneurial mindset early throughout the four years even starting junior year yes i did lead some things in clubs but that was also with official leadership positions which there are a lot of people who have so it's nothing that special or entrepreneurial where you're going out of your way to create something new and we know that stanford loves that entrepreneurial spirit and the impact that you can have i also didn't have many leadership-based awards so overall stanford if you think about them wanting to maintain their reputation of that impact and the leadership coming out with a bunch of new startups and people who are going to create the next google then yeah i did not give them enough sense that i could be that person too unfocused stanford wants passion and strong character in terms of passion sure i had a lot of emphasis on math but as you saw in that resume which actually could have been a detriment or a con to my application i had a ton of variety and different activities in all different areas which yeah people tell you to try new things and have a breath and people think you should just stack up your resume and activities list but it's actually more beneficial to show that depth tennis friends of rachel key club and then math they all didn't align with a particular passion or interest there was no goal and again having that list and variety without much commitment in each of them visible probably indicated to stanford that i was only doing all these things for the purpose of college don't join clubs just to put on your application i'm doing close just to put on your application even in my last essay about what matters to me if discovery and technological advances helping human health matters so much to me then why did i not do anything related to that sure i can say oh being good at math will help me do things and help health and other human lives in the future well it's not really consistent and it's too much work for admissions to read between the lines and connect the dots you have to explicitly demonstrate the focus and passion woven through all parts of your application character wise i feel like my essays did not paint the picture of me as having particularly strong values and that's in the sense of how i talk about how passionate i am about math and stem related persistence and then about how i'm nostalgic and i love making connections with other people and then going into how i value human discovery to help people but i didn't say that i was the one who wanted to be the change to help those people from my experience which was a terrible mistake because my story of having suffered in the first few years of my life could have been so compelling to the reader to show oh my gosh this girl experienced this and so it makes complete sense why she wants to make sure that other people don't go through the same things that she did this is kind of related to that lack of focus and why i emphasize that stanford really values the strong values is that even in the mba you can see that their essay prompt is just what matters to you and why and they want a whole essay dedicated to that so that's an important aspect you just need to really hone in your stanford application i was about to say caltech two blank even if you are a student who should be accepted at a school like this you may not get in any way that in many cases has to do with a little thing called ethnicity i guess it's because they just think that we're like stereotypically asian because they think we're ap machines ap machines ap guzzling grade grubbers that plays into racial profiling in terms of smart aging kids that do really really well and then are put down for it after watching this documentary i was mind blown i'm not blaming it purely on ethnicity of course like i said i mean i do see why stanford wouldn't have chosen me over someone else but it was just insane how stanford actually admitted that they don't want everyone to be the same even if that means they have those qualifications that everyone thinks they need to get into a top school i kind of empathize with the students in that documentary who are just sad because they were selected against but then i realized yeah i mean that could very well be a factor why i didn't get in as well because yes i am an ap guzzling machine and yes i am a little too obsessed with math look at how cool these earrings are they prove the pythagorean theorem all the hallmarks of a great asian finally that's maybe why i got into caltech because caltech did not have affirmative action highly highly highly recommend this documentary though it will make you feel a little stressed along the way but it'll make you also feel like you're not alone in whatever journey you're going through for college and even though those kids and probably you are a little stressed about college don't worry because things work out eventually just like how caltech ended up being one of the most incredible experiences of my life anyway stanford may have the lowest acceptance rate but according to some caltech is actually the hardest school to get into because of its stats here's how i got into caltech let me know what you found most surprising or helpful about this video [Music] you

Channel: Amy Wang

Views: 1,073,608

Keywords: Stanford, how to get into Stanford, stats, how I got into Stanford, rejected from dream school, dream school, college rejection, college reactions, college admissions, college applications, common app, STEM, top 10 school, Ivy League, rejection, why I got rejected, rejected from Stanford, advice, college prep, perfect stats, MIT, Caltech, affirmative action, racial quota

Id: 5hs22GlP4kg

Length: 13min 41sec (821 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 17 2022