The Curious Case of the Rejected College Applicant: Three Key Lessons for Students Seeking Admission to Selective Schools

WIDESPREAD IGNORANCE about the college admissions process has once again been spotlighted, this time through the experience of a 2023 Gunn High School graduate named Stanley Zhong. Gunn is of course a highly ranked public high school (in Palo Alto, California), at which Stanley reportedly achieved an impressive 4.42 weighted GPA at the time of his applications. In addition to that, he is said to have scored an equally impressive 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT, the standardized test still widely used for purposes of college admissions in the US. On top of all this, he founded a free, favorably regarded e-signing startup company (RabbitSign).

Stanley’s college application story received wide coverage after his case was mentioned during a Congressional hearing on Sept. 29, 2023 by Yukong Zhao, a co-founder of the Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE). Despite Stanley’s impressive accomplishments, he was apparently rejected by 16 of the 18 schools to which he had applied. He was accepted by the University of Maryland (presumably College Park, though which of the 11 campuses was never actually specified) and the University of Texas at Austin. He was rejected by (in alphabetical order) Cal Poly SLO, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Georgia Tech, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UCLA, UCSB, UCSD, the University of Illinois, the University of Michigan, the University of Washington and the University of Wisconsin.

Stanley declined his offers of admission from UMaryland and UT Austin, to accept a job offer as a software engineer at Google. His story went viral, buoyed by the outrage expressed in the statement made by AACE’s Mr. Zhao to Congress: How is it that an 18-year-old with a 4.42 weighted GPA and a 1590 SAT score can get a software engineering job at Google, one of the world’s top high-tech companies, and yet have been rejected by so many colleges? The story of this young man’s experience—which by the way is not at all unusual (many valedictorians with perfect standardized test scores have been rejected by Ivy League schools)—unleashed a torrent of resentment toward the college admissions process.

In a series of interviews with a local television station (ABC7), Stanley and his father proposed that the “black-box” system of college admission be made more “transparent.” Part of the solution to the “zero-sum” nature of the college admissions process that the father, Nan Zhong (also a software engineer at Google), proposed is the involvement of “independent third parties” that would “audit” the admissions decisions made by schools, to institute a system of “checks and balances,” similar to the workings of government. They also say they want admissions committees to provide denied applicants with specific reasons for the denials. In his subsequent individual interview with ABC7, Nan implied that a lawsuit against the non-UC schools is still under consideration, as also reported in local Chinese media. Many interesting and significant issues are raised by this story but in the interest of brevity, my analysis will focus on three main points of practical value to those who are now or in the near future will be facing the college admissions process.

Point number 1: If you take a close look at Stanley’s situation, his 16 rejections of the 18 schools to which he applied are not surprising. In his follow-up interview with ABC7, Stanley described his three main extracurricular involvements: First, as mentioned above, he founded RabbitSign. Second, he co-founded a group (OpenBrackets) for teaching coding to children in underserved communities. Third, he co-founded a competitive programming club at high school. What, in the context of college applications, is wrong with this picture? The answer is that most everything in Stanley’s life seems to have revolved around CODING. As an admissions expert interviewed in a follow-up report on ABC7 put it, Stanley could be considered “too unidimensional for most universities.”

The lesson, for those who aspire to be admitted to competitive colleges and universities: Be less unidimensional. Broaden your horizons. You don’t have to run yourself ragged in an attempt to be breathtakingly “well-rounded” but you want to avoid coming across as having too much of a one-track mind. Colleges, for various—entirely legitimate—reasons want to fill their seats with students who have more diverse sets of interests. These interests of course need to fit together in a way that makes sense and is credible.

Point number 2: In his TV interviews, Stanley expressed surprise about the rejections he received from the “safety” schools on his list. This aspect of his experience, however, should not have been surprising, either. For all colleges and universities, “yield rate” factors into their admissions decisions. If there is reason to believe that an applicant is relatively unlikely to accept an offer of admission (typically because the applicant is likely to accept an offer from a more prestigious college), the school is unlikely to extend that offer of admission. This is because an offer that is declined will negatively affect the school’s “yield rate,” thereby negatively affecting the school’s all-important rankings on various lists.

The lesson here for prospective applicants is to be more careful with their application strategy than Stanley seemingly was. Hedge your bets by limiting both the “reach” and “safety” schools to which you apply, focusing on those sweet-spot “target” schools.

Point number 3: The big eye-rolling moment for me came when the TV interviewer for ABC7, Kristen Sze, stated that she had personally reviewed Stanley’s essay and determined there to be “no red flags”—as if she is an expert at assessing college application essays. She later asked Stanley whether, upon his re-reading of his own essay(s), anything suspect jumped out at him—to which he predictably said no.

Toward the end of the first TV appearance, however, something interesting happened. Ms. Sze asked Stanley what advice he would have for students applying to colleges. “Start essays as early as you can,” he replied, at which point his on-camera demeanor underwent a noticeable change. He suddenly went from chipper to pensive, with the previously ever-present smile fading away. Is it possible that he recognized, in hindsight, that devoting more time to writing those critical essays might have increased his odds of success?

The lesson here for prospective applicants is to begin working on your essays and related application collateral at the earliest opportunity. PLAN well and MANAGE YOUR TIME wisely. Do not underestimate the amount of work that is called for.

In conclusion, a couple of big-picture observations: In his follow-up TV appearance, Stanley told the interviewer, in effect, that he had declined the offer of acceptance from UT Austin—a highly ranked and relatively prestigious school, including in Stanley’s proposed major, computer science—because he really enjoys coding more than anything else. He expects to have more fun working at Google as a software engineer than he would as an undergraduate at UT Austin. This suggests that the system is actually working just the way it should. An applicant to multiple schools was admitted to two very good ones but decided not to accept because he came to the conclusion that he didn’t really want to attend college after all, if he could instead begin a career as a software engineer at Google, pursing his passion for coding.

Consider, finally, the proposal to make the college admissions process “transparent,” by (a) instituting some sort of algorithm to objectively determine which students gain admission to which schools, (b) involving “independent third parties” to “audit” the admissions decisions made by schools (equivalent to the governmental system of “checks and balances,” according to the Zhongs) and (c) requiring that admissions committees provide rejected applicants with specific reasons for the denials, which presumably could be disputed or appealed. All other issues notwithstanding, if this logic applies to educational entities, why would it not apply to business ones? Why wouldn’t job applicants to Google, for example, be entitled to the same above-mentioned considerations as applicants to colleges? How feasible is that and how likely is it to work out well, for all parties concerned?

Daniel K. Berman, PhD, has been serving as a college admission consultant for more than 30 years. Applicants to academic and professional programs at all levels are invited to view his website, for additional information.