Decide your path of study...

The story seems to be odd: "Jacob applied to almost 30 schools in 2019, only to be waitlisted or rejected by all of them." If her son did well in High School with high SAT/ACT scores, why were all of them on the waitlist or rejected? I agree with the article that European colleges are way more cost-effective than American ones. However, US employers still treat American higher academic institutions unless you have graduated from well-known schools like Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, UCL, Warick, Edinburgh, Glasglow, etc.

 

Maybe his mother means that SHE did well in his school work and his SATs. I detected a bit of hovering, or helicopter parenting, in the article.

Since being rejected 30 times is such an outlier outcome, it's possible there might be reasons for the rejection--a known history of illegal behaviors, for example--that have nothing to do with academics and that hovering parents have blinded themselves. Administrators at European universities may be unaware of these reasons, and since they can charge overseas students so much more in fees and tuition, might be more willing to allow them in.

If I were an admissions director and knew that someone had applied to 30 colleges or universities, I'd believe they had no commitment. At best I would wait-list them. Otherwise I would reject them.

 

Ok, per the article, young Jacob has a parent who teaches at CSU-Monterey Bay and applied for/was rejected from 30 colleges in 2019.

Quick search for Jacob Zeidberg 2019 brings up his high school track recruiting website:
https://www.ncsasports.org/mens-track-recruiting/california/pacific-grove/pacific-grove-high-school/jacob-zeidberg
This indicates he graduated from Pacific Grove High School. The town of Pacific Grove is adjacent to Monterey/Monterey Bay, so I am pretty confident we are talking about the same person.

Lucky for us, Pacific Grove High School's 2019 commencement program is online:
https://www.pghsaa.org/commencements/PGHS-2019-Commencement.pdf

The program lays out various academic honors earned by graduates. Assuming the program is accurate, young Jacob had a sub 3.5 GPA, was not in the National Honor Society, or the recipient of a state academic seal on his diploma.

The article specifically mentioned UC-Berkeley as the sort of school Jacob wanted to attend. If Jacob applied for UC schools (particularly Berkeley, UCLA, San Diego, and Irvine) and similarly placed colleges and universities, he was going to need not just good but exceptional SAT scores, along with solid extracurricular, volunteering, etc. to counteract a less than stellar GPA.

And what, exactly, does it mean to do well on the SAT? The average SAT score is a tick over 1,000 these days. A 1250 puts you in the top 20 percent of test takers; a 1350 puts you in the top 10%. Those are definitely very good to excellent scores.

UCLA's average SAT, meanwhile, is 1455; their average GPA is 4.26; they reject more than 88% of their applicants.

Perhaps young Jacob got unlucky and made reasonable inferences about his admissions chances, applied to some safety schools, but was rejected from said safety schools. Or, he might well have applied to 30 reach schools and been rejected/waitlisted by all of them.

Finally, there are a lot of different ways that a student can get to, say, a 3.3 or 3.4 GPA (giving Jacob the benefit of the doubt). He could have been a very solid B+ student who made mostly B's with a few A's. He could also have been a student who made some C's, D's, and F's. Even a couple of those can doom your chances for competitive colleges, particularly if you don't have a compelling reason to explain why you earned those grades. With parents who are, respectively, a physician and a college professor, I doubt Jacob's admissions essays detailed how he spent summers moving from town to town as his parents tried to find work picking seasonal fruits and vegetables or the difficulty of having to take take 3 busses and a train from his high school to his grandmother's house so he could study while his single mom worked nights stocking shelves at Walmart and his dad worked on his GED in the state prison...

 

If he's from the west coast, they take DEI seriously, so could very well be true.

 

I am not sure where were colleges her son applied for, but if she works at a college, she should know her son should select 3-5 dream colleges, 3 -5 colleges based on his academic achievements, and the bottom 3 -5 colleges knowing he is 100% having a shot to get in. Somethings like this:

1) Stanford University
2) University of California at Berkey
3) University of California at Los Angeles
4) University of Southern California

1) University of California at San Diego
2) University of California at Irvine
3) University of California at Santa Barbara
4) University of California at Riverside

1) California State University at Long Beach
2) California State University at Fullerton
3) California State University at San Marcos
4) California State University at Channel Island

I am a minority, but I wouldn't say I like DEI. You should be getting into college admission or job offers based on your credentials and experiences. Not based on your legacy, race, gender, etc.