Student with 2 published books, 4.2 GPA and 1560 SAT score rejected by Harvard, MIT, Yale and Prince

Absolutely. And I think people who believe otherwise are - at best - mistaken. At worst, delusional.

 

What does his GPA of 4.2 actually mean in the context of his school?

The school he attended awards 0.5 additional quality points for honors classes and 1.0 for AP, IB, and dual enrollment.

I couldn’t figure out how many courses per year students take, but let’s assume it’s around 7. Honors courses are taught in math, English, science and social studies. To be competitive for premier schools, you really need to be taking honors or AP/IB/dual enrollment for most or all subjects, so let’s assume he did that.

If we assume 4 honors courses as a freshman and 2 honors/2 AP/IB/DE courses for soph-senior, his maximum possible GPA would have been around a 4.4.

If my suppositions are correct, he either a) didn’t take the hardest courses possible, or, didn’t have straight A’s. If my math is right, he probably had 5 or 6 B’s in high school.

Don’t get me wrong—that’s still very good, especially if he took a very tough course load. However, that likely means he wasn’t one of the top handful of students in his class. In my HS in the early 2000’s (admittedly a very small sample), a student with 5 or 6 B’s likely would have been in the top 10% (I would know, that was me).

This young man also attended a good, not great high school in one or the best school districts in the United States.

Harvard and the other schools he listed receive THOUSANDS of applications from people with stats like his that they reject every year. Has nothing to do with being a male. Has nothing to do with his race/ethnicity. If he wanted to go to Harvard, he should have taken harder classes and/or done better in his classes. I didn’t get in to those schools and neither did he. It’s that simple. Move on with life.

 

I think it depends on school. When I was in high school 21 years ago, I took AP Government, AP Computer Science, AP Calculus BC, and AP Physic. You have to earn an "A" include order to get 0.5 to make 4.0/4.5 per class. If you earn "B" and below you do not receive additional 0.5 for each class int the GPA.

 

Per the relevant regulation for Fairfax County Public Schools:

Advanced Placement (AP) courses, specified International Baccalaureate (IB) courses, and DE courses as designated by the inclusion of DE in the course title shall be weighted for students who pass the course by applying an additional 1.0quality point to the quality point value assigned to the final grade.

High school credit-bearing honors courses in mathematics, science, English, and social studies and other courses approved through the annual course review process also receive a 0.5 weight. For example, a final grade of A in an honors course receives 4.5 quality points for purposes of calculating GPA.

https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/AYKL5F51AE18/$file/R2462.pdf

 

Not even that. Unless we are talking recruited athlete, celebrity or a megadonor's kid, getting into this sort of school is always lottery. It all depends on what people "shaping the class" need at the moment. Having 4.5/1600 is not a guarantee either. Stats are the bare minimum, you need a "hook" on top of it. This is a good applicant with well-developed hook. Which paid off: he got into Stanford. No one (almost) can expect to get all acceptances to Ivy+ schools; I bet Princeton admitted a few kids Stanford rejected (and vice versa). This is a non-story.

 

This.
All we know for sure is Mindy Kaling's bro admitted to lying. And he's selling this story for money and publicity. The more I read about it, the less I like the guy. The only thing it shows is an example of cultural pressure on immigrant's kids to become a doctor. The parents may not even be all that happy with Mindy's career path after going to Dartmouth, despite all her sucess.

 

Also Ivy League schools are looking for legacy too.

 

I think it's an option, but that you don't have to? I don't remember either.

 

If he's majoring in physics, then Stanford is the best school for that field. If he's majoring in math, then Stanford is equal to Harvard. His LinkedIn profile mentions engineering, and Stanford is also the better school for that. I'm not understanding the issue.

He's Arab. Would his application say Asian? On the U.S. Census, Arabs are categorized as White. So, a Caucasian man got into Stanford, which is one of the best schools for his fields of study. This is such a non-story.

 

I am irritated by a number of issues in all of this, probably doubly so based on my own situation during undergrad from not having parents willing to fill out the FASFA, so I missed out on Pell grants I would have been eligible for. I grew up in a situation that was very different from what many assume based on looking at my skin etc. I realize as an adult the family I grew up in drastically changes how I experienced and see the world compared to other people who look similar to me. On the LSAC file I have opted not to answer for ethnicity for numerous reasons, including the fact that there's no way to effectively reflect this on the LSAC file.

Regarding scholarships for First Nations students, I have known many who have gone on full rides. From what I have seen though they tend to come from already well established families. I had a long-term ex who is 100% First Nations and was in the top 2% economically. He has three children (all with 4.0+ GPAs in high school) who all got full ride scholarships, two of which came from the Gates Foundation. The middle daughter had a really hard time emotionally dealing with both the pressure to get good grades and the guilt that the scholarships she and her siblings received did not go to students who needed the scholarships more. On numerous occasions she ended up in the emergency room during her freshman year from drinking out of guilt. She came and lived with us for a little bit and these behaviors continued. I told her early on that her father and I were going to be okay with whatever grades she got, but she needed to realize that the reason she got the scholarship was because the foundations and philanthropists want the scholarships to go to the students who have the best chance of helping their communities.