"How did you get into Stanford?"

During the drive to the dance lesson today, my daughter suddenly asked me:

"How did you get into Stanford?"

If anyone had asked me the same question 5 or 10 years ago, I probably would have told them about my college GPA, GRE score, personal statement on research interest, etc.; but today, after thinking about it for a moment, I answered:

"At least 95% of the reason that I could go to Stanford, is probably because my dad went to college. Compared to 99% of the Chinese students at that time, I had that privilege that they didn't have."

1.

My daughter is in 9th grade now, the first year of high school.

She is always smart and driven. She only did one year of debate tournament so far and already got so much state points that the teacher appointed her as a debate captain before the summer - very rare for a freshman. Only two weeks after the summer break started, she already finished almost a semester of geometry class from UT online, completed the online driving training and got her learner's permit, and in between went with her friends several times for summer fun for ice cream, lunch, etc.

Naturally she is very interested in the top colleges such as the Ivy League.

So how does one get into them?

2.

Will simply doing your best and being the no.1 in your high school get one into an Ivy League?

Granted, being no.1 in any school is hard. It's very hard to be no.1 in a competitive high school, and I would argue it's probably even harder to be no.1 in a struggling high school.

I mentioned in my posts before a very inspiring UH student from Houston's Alief district by the name of Ayoola John. "The only reason that I could go to college, is because I'm smart", Ayoola said. "I don't say it to brag; I say it to make a point that my success is very accidental. Most of my classmates don't go to college."

The point is, to achieve academic success in an overall economically disadvantaged neighborhood, there is so much more one need to overcome.

So are all no.1 ranked high school students able to get into the Ivy?

One only need to look at the statistics to know the answer: in the US there are over 20,000 high schools, and the Ivys simply cannot take that many students. In fact, many high schools rarely send any one to an Ivy League - they either cannot get in, or think they cannot get in and not bother to apply; or they cannot afford it, or don't think they can afford it.

3.

So where do Ivy League get most of their students from?

It turns out, a well-known secret is that there are a small number of feeder schools, which send an outsized number of graduates into the Ivy Leagues.

According to some estimates, there are a handful of high schools which on average send more than 25% of their students to Ivy League colleges.

This post is not at all to criticize these feeder schools, because I know how selective they are in recruiting their own students and the rigorous and high standard education they are providing to their students.

However, the question again is - how accessible are these high schools by the normal average citizens, just as how accessible are Ivy Leagues by the normal average citizens?

The simple observation is "Talent is distributed evenly, but access to opportunities is not".

4.

So how did I get into Stanford (actually its graduate school)? After all, I came from a remote rural area in China as well.

As I think back, there were actually a few key factors.

1) My parents actually sent me to school.

I have many cousins. Most were fortunate to go to school, but some not at all. In particular, I have one uncle who have five children, all daughters. At that time most girls in the country receive less education, while in their case it was more extreme: none of them went to school for a single day.

Even today, there are still places on this planet where girls receive little to no education.

2) My mom actually cared about my grades.

Most of my cousins became the helper to their parents for farm work or household chores the moment they returned from school. Their parents didn't really care about their grades. The most common expectation they had for their children were to study for a few years to learn some basic words and numbers and that's enough to be a farmer.

For me, having seen how my father's college education changed his life, my mom always asked me to prioritize homework first when coming home from school.

3) I didn't go to a trade school but instead a high school - because of my parents.

In 1989 I graduated from middle school and got the second highest grade in the entire county. At the time, the entrance exam requirement for trade school is much higher than that for high schools, since there is a job guarantee for trade schools. I would estimate 99% of the top 5% of the middle school graduates chose to go to trade schools.

My father, who himself a college graduate (extremely rare in his generation), subtly suggested me to choose high school - and I did.

4) My classmates in college were mostly from the big cities and they totally changed my way of thinking.

I came from a rural area - and 90% of the population in China at the time were in rural areas. However once I got into college in 1992, I found almost 90% of my classmates were from cities.

And oh boy, did they not think differently from me! Less than one month into the college dorm, I found everyone was studying English and planning to go to overseas for graduate school.

While hesitating initially, I quickly learned that's probably the right thing to do.

So when I graduated from college, my Geophysics fellow graduates of about 40 students, produced two to Stanford, two to Yale, two to Columbia, two to Caltech, and a number of others to US, Canada, and Japan.

I didn't realize then, but I realized now - there could be many millions of kids in China who were just as smart as me, but may not even finish high school, just because they don't have a college graduate parent.

5.

I think Bill Gates once said, where you were born will to a large extent determine how far you can go.

I can totally understand his point now.

But the question is - should the society just give up and accept it?

Life is never fair; but can those of us who have some privileges, do something to make it a little bit more fair?

I think about a university admissions officer in talking about recognizing that some rural high schools may only offer one or two AP classes (while elite high schools may have many dozens), and hence why they have to take that into account into determining the qualifications of college applicants.

I think about a conversation I had with one leader in a university campus, where he mentioned that in their faculty interviews, they always ask the candidate to speak for about 15 minutes in terms of how they think about the possible approaches to make their research team and activities more inclusive.

I think about a company recruiter talking about the fairness of the onsite interview process. On the surface it's very fair - all their candidates get paid to fly to their company location and with the hotel room fully paid. However they learned that some applicants got declined when checking in to the hotel because they don't have the money to pay for the hotel deposit. As a result they changed the practice of pre-pay for the hotel guarantee as well for the onsite interviewees.

I know all these seem to be small things; however if more and more people recognize it, there may be a chance where we can prove Bill Gates is not always right.

6.

I consider myself extremely fortunate. I was able to come to Stanford, I was able to build a satisfying career and life, and now I am even blessed to be able to interface so directly with many people in the educational field across the globe.

Over the past few years, I have become more and more observant, on many of the barriers that may be hidden or not so hidden to many people in society, as well as the many inspiring educators who are doing so much to remove them.

I mentioned in a post before that UH president Renu Khator go to freshman classes to give her personal email address to incoming students - "if you are thinking to quit one day, I only have one request: send me an email so that I have a chance to try to keep you."

Examples like these are inspiring me to do my best to make a contribution to a more inclusive society - will you do the same?