After the Supreme Court declared an end to the use of race criteria in college admissions, many administrators pledged to find a way around the decision. Schools are using essay prompts to flag race while rejecting the use of standardized testing to boost diversity in admissions. In the meantime, these schools are rejecting students with stellar credentials. The latest is Zach Yadegari, whose rejection by top schools offers an insight into the skewed criteria still in use for admissions.
Some schools, like the University of California system, previously abandoned standardized testing to boost minority admissions and make challenges more difficult. A few schools have since reversed the decision to restore academic standards. However, schools appear to be using race criteria in more subtle ways, like prompting applicants to discuss how they overcame such discrimination or bias in their essays.
An example of the curious standards is evident in the rejection of Yadegari by 15 of the 18 colleges.
Yadegari had stellar grades, with a score of 34 out of 36 on the ACT and a 4.0 GPA. More importantly, He built an app, Cal AI, which drew over five million downloads and $2 million in monthly revenue, according to TechCrunch. He went on to sell the app for $30 million.
That would seem a tad more impressive than the usual summer internship with Greenpeace or a donation drive found in applications.
However, he was rejected by Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale, WashU, Columbia UPenn, Princeton, Duke, USC, UVA, NYU, Vanderbilt, Brown, and Cornell.
Notably, Harvard has fought the hardest to preserve racial criteria for admissions. It recently had to start a remedial high school-level math course for its students.
As discussed on sites like College Fix, he is not unique. Take Stanley Zhong, a 19-year-old with a 4.42 GPA and nearly perfect SAT score. He was also rejected from 16 of the 18 colleges. He and his father are now suing the University of California system for discrimination against Asian-American applicants.
The Trump Administration could assist these students by forcing schools to make greater disclosures. Harvard and other universities have spent millions in litigation resisting such disclosures.
These administrators have shown that they will not yield on the use of race. In California, voters repeatedly voted against using race, and a task force supported using standardized testing in admissions. Yet, University of California President Janet Napolitano still eliminated the use of standardized tests, and, as shown by Zhong, top students are still inexplicably rejected.
If these cases reflect the current criteria, the public and donors must do more to return our universities and colleges to a greater emphasis on scholastic credentials. This culture will not change without a substantial change in the administrators and staff at these schools.
I think these students made the mistake of not researching these universities very well. If you will notice most are private and used to be the elite of our nation. I would suspect the 1st student is applying for something in the sciences, engineering, computer sciences, aerospace. He should have applied to Purdue University and/or Georgia Tech. Both are ranked as high as most of those listed and have worldwide recognition. Purdue I know very well and Georgia Tech also but my data there is much older.
Students need to get away from the sclerotic and wasting old elites and look at the fresh blood arising in other centers. It won’t be long before those old schools start fading from the scene. If you fail to get the best students then someone else will build their reputation on those same students.
A recent column I read talked about college entrance advisers that many students and parents used. It seemed that almost every student accepted by Columbia went elsewhere if they had been accepted by another comparable school. The only students going to Columbia were those who were only accepted there. If true then I suspect Columbia is in real trouble. Time will tell if this article was correct.
You don’t compete against the administration or the professors, you compete against your fellow students. If your competition is mediocre, then your ability to compete in the wider world, against stiffer competition, will likely suffer.
Somebody somewhere will give those exceptional students a place to do their work. Those that don’t will die.
The University of Florida is the premier state school in Florida, with instate tuition, including fees, of about $7,000. Its outcomes are very highly rated. Governor DeSantis promised a place in Florida’s universities for Jewish students who wanted to leave their Ivy League schools because of antisemitism.
The Ivy League schools have an advantage because their alumni are frequently in a powerful position to help newer graduates. I know that Yale used to say everyone got a job from a major firm, but some who got jobs with high pay obtained them through Yale, which paid a portion of the fee. They then get to brag about the number of graduates in large, high-paying firms.
We are today seeing what the Ivy League schools have done. Look at those in positions of power who came from these schools and have been destroying America.
#. Very informative, Meyers, perhaps those univ are still paying part of the fees for job placement putting ill qualified people in high places. It bodes collapse.
The roof beams are rotten and the ceiling is collapsing. Rotten beams anywhere can collapse a building. It’s time for repair. (Chinese proverb).
I made delicious pastries this morning. It started with one apple chopped and cooked with sugar, butter, corn starch, cinnamon and vanilla. I cheated and bought the puff pastry, cut in squares, brushed the tops with egg white, sprinkled sugar and sliced almonds on tops, baked. I whipped the heavy cream. The reserved yolks made the egg custard. I assembled. Like a chemist I worked. Bowls and beaters and gas cooking went into the mix. Voila! No points off!
Take a look at how many people made that pastry square possible. I’d just be eating one apple picked from a tree that God made. I love that.
The fact is using race per se is illegal, but pointing out adversities overcome as a result of race is not illegal. I don’t know if a challenge could be made just because they’re giving extra points for overcoming specific types of adversities, including racial adversities, as race isn’t the determining factor (overcoming adversity is), although it’s used. The overcoming of the adversity is the admissions Factor. How much weight is given by the institution for the specific type of adversity is up to them they get to determine how much weight they give to it and I don’t think that could be challenged.
Sounds like a DEI program and an advocate for it reading your response.
Mediocrity is not the goal or reward we should see in placing our best and brightest where they can improve their abilities to add to the improvement of society.
Face it….if Harvard has to place its students into remedial math classes that is quite telling upon the American Public School systems and Harvard’s academic standards. Meritocracy is the correct path to success. Life is a competition not a grant program where government or other organizations put their thumbs on the scales of life by gifting the less able with advantages over others.
Life is not fair, we do not all start out as equals, and we darn tooting do not obtain equal outcomes in life….if one wishes to shine one has to work hard to do so and even then you might not be the brightest or most successful.
All we should be guaranteed is an equal chance and let us win by our own merits no matter how we obtained them.
Some are born smarter, some get smarter by study, some by hard work and perseverance and to artificially promote the less capable is a Fool’s Errand.
# Just make up a hard luck story like JD Vance did. Speaking of whom, does his wife have top security clearance? We’ve had enough of that after Joe and Jill went up the hill.
I am quietly, very cautiously, wondering about insider knowledge or suspicion, –even potentially misplaced.
Disclaimer: I am NOT a conspiracy theorist; indeed, I am merely contemplating the possibility of ERRONEOUS assumptions.
The surname Yadegari is of Iranian/Persian origin, and one of the most notorious criminal cases involving technology theft by foreigners goes back to Iran, not China. It relates to the theft and attempted shipment to Iran (to an entity working to supply Iran’s uranium enrichment program) https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/man-suspected-of-illicit-nuclear-trade-to-iran-found-guilty/ The criminal’s name was Yadegari. (Canadian case.)
Likewise, the father of student Stanley Zhong (also mentioned above by JT) directly immigrated from China and the family settled in IT-rich California. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14457977/Stanley-Zhong-rejected-colleges-Google-job-racial-discrimination.html
As we all know, the United States heavily monitors Iran for nuclear/uranium enrichment activity, -and China for theft of intellectual/IT property. In the old days, the U.S. was caught off guard while sharing scientific technology with foreign scientists from these countries.
Are we now afraid that, under the auspices of university education of the brightest, we may again fall victim to a new tactic?
Are we to be suspicious/wary of all Asian-Americans? Is it overreaction– or do these top schools share knowledge of potential technological compromise unknown to us? Is it a bit strange that so many top schools known for technology have rejected very bright persons who have each started their own companies or created/patented IT/IP projects.
Conversely, have Yadegari and Zhong become innocent brainiac victims of misplaced and discriminatory caution on the part of our top schools?
Good research, Lin.
His rejections were probably due to his personal essay submitted with his admission applications
One college admissions consultant explained that attitude may have been apparent through Yadegari’s personal statement and worked to his disadvantage.
The statement offers “no clear reason why he would benefit from attending college … At its essence, the personal statement must convey who the candidate is beyond his or her accomplishments and how they’ll uniquely contribute to the campus,” Christopher Rim, founder and CEO of college admissions consultancy firm Command Education, told The Post.
https://nypost.com/2025/04/09/us-news/he-has-a-4-0-gpa-and-his-company-makes-30-mill-per-year-but-he-still-couldnt-get-into-college/
On the bright side, one of the three schools he was accepted to was Miami, along with Texas and Georgia Tech. Going to school in Miami with $30 Million dollars in your pocket,,,sounds like he will have a great college experience,,,,
The statement offers “no clear reason why he would benefit from attending college … At its essence, the personal statement must convey who the candidate is beyond his or her accomplishments and how they’ll uniquely contribute to the campus,”
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He’s a multi-millionaire who probably has a dozen college admissions consultants on his payroll already, the notion that he could not put together a qualified personal statement is pretty crazy, actually borders on ludicrous.
# good research. The social life won’t be the same. He must be thinking elite students still attend who’ll show him the way to gramma’s house.
Anyone know the name of the etching in JT’s post?
Two Dogs faithfully waiting to go out and run (Not Unlike Luna – Jonathan!!!), An Old Professor searching the Globe (Could be JT’s Great Great Great Great Grandfather), and a younger HeShe/SheHe (?) Chilling while the Older Generation does all the brain-work. Not much has changed since this was made.
‘The Professor and His Pupil’, 1882. Artist: John Bagnold Burgess (engraving after)
Google “Images” Search: The Professor And His Pupil John Bagnold Burgess
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_professor_and_his_pupil.jpg
Thanks for that! (Back when art was still art.)
Wow, I could only guess but you got it right. Good job. I never used the image search in google. How does that work?
# omg, how did you find it! Good job.
# Engraver, Lumb Stocks R.A.
Right click on the image. Then click “save link as”. It will display the name it was saved under. In this case, “The Professor and his pupil.
Then do a Google image search on that phrase. Click the “View” button and it will take you to this brief description:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_professor_and_his_pupil.jpg
It’s an interesting artwork. The two dogs; the huge globe; the professor is prompted by the open book in his hand to look something up on the globe while the student is far more interested in the dog (his book is on the floor); the student’s fancy coat and hat are draped over the spare chair; and what I suppose is a spittoon? or chamber pot? by the door.
#. These do tell stories. Burgess the painter and Lumb Stocks the engraver have family histories with fathers and grandfathers, great grandfathers with the same talents.
Zhang and the other fellow might produce a portfolio showing their talent. Is talent measured by standardized tests? Perhaps fathers and grandfather’s and greats can be included. Legacy chairs…
Turley likely picked that old Dutch etching because it represents the teaching profession. It might be called The World but there are several with a teacher studying the world and a student sleeping. I think the student’s name is Anonymous.
# . It’s a very bored pupil being instructed by an old tutor in a musty library. It must be spring. He’s holding flowers. His hounds are more interesting.
He will be better off attending a public university. The 14th Amendment means full rights for white male students in state schools. Private schools sometimes try to avoid that requirement, woke etc. being the reason, state schools cannot.
No University, public or private, can use race as an admissions tool … if they do they lose federal student loan funding.
Jonathan In your Article I do not see the reason he was rejected by all these Universities.
There’s a reason you don’t see their “reasoning” or process, if you saw the use of race in the process it’d be in violation of federal law.
“. . . many administrators pledged to find a way around the decision.” (JT)
Affirmative action tribalists are infinitely sneaky.
Years ago, it became taboo to add points to a minority application (+20 pts for this minority app, +10 for that one . . .). So admissions committees switched to using colored sticky dots: A blue dot on the folder of this minority app, . . .
Different tactic; same tribalism.
Why the need to insult anon? Because anon criticized you? Suggest you learn to live with it.
These universities should be classified as ‘less competitive’ institutions as their acceptance standards are designed to accept less qualified applicants.
Why? and who would “classify” them as … less … Its a tort, not a criminal action.
Because by accepting less qualified applicants they are making themselves less competitive. Why the need to be contrary all the time? It really is weird.
I do think that this bogus “anonymous” is a compulsive contrarian and can’t truly help him/her/itself.
No one said it was criminal.
Do you know each of these universities’s acceptance criteria and acceptance rates?
It would be interesting to know their dropout rates
I have seen numbers concerning just how many of these student loans are to people who never had the ability to earn, at a minimum, an AA and eventually drop out with only debt and either no degree or a worthless affirmative action/DEI consolations prize degree.
All that these dumb/blind woke institutions have achieved (other than the approval from some progs) has been the utter devaluation of their product. Many businesses have discovered that DEI degreed individuals offer a higher probability of causing more problems than their worth within a workplace because of personal ideologies and less competency than that same degree offered half a century ago. When you need remedial courses on basic proficiencies in math and english for undergraduates, that should tell all.
“dumb/blind woke institutions”?
With a cadre of hundreds of thousands, billions in endowments you think they are dumb/blind? Lotta high caliber brains involved.
You are gullible to media interpretations of facts and events. Think critically.
“With a cadre of hundreds of thousands, billions in endowments you think they are dumb/blind?”
You excel at revealing your ignorance, while chronically trying to chop others down.
Those endowments are managed by seasoned financial professionals (internal and external). A university’s academics are controlled by faculty, deans, and administrators. And never the twain shall meet.
Your head can be filled with millions of erroneous thoughts, thereby earning you a, now questionable degree, but you may still be dumb as a box of rocks as we see demonstrated hourly from the likes of these woke, out of touch reality types who have been awarded tenure by virtue of their DEI index an nothing more.
You are willfully ignorant of this in order to justify your belligerently off-track agenda.
Diversity matters a great deal to these administrators, except within their own ranks. They are as uniform a pile of “dopes”, as Buggs Bunny would say, as one can find.
And to which Ivy League school did you gain admission?
Kevin points out how these schools are lowering their standards and weakening their product and Wally, in all his genius, tries to insult him by saying Kevin never went to one of these watered down schools.
Wally is dumb. Don’t be like Wally.
At this point in time I would not admit receiving a degree from an Ivy league school as it may probe detrimental to my employment options. I trust business people who operate within the bonds of reality before I would trust ANY thoughts emanating from any ivy tower that has been commandeered by progressive lunatics who actually believe that they have the ability to “perfect” man via their fiats issued from behind the ramparts of decaying old institutions laden heavily with woke nonsense.
The irony is that the best students will graduate to do great things, discovering early on what an illiberal monster liberalism has become, but the oddly-privileged and talentless graduates of liberal schools will eventually embarrass their own cause. Liberalism would be a self-correcting problem if it didn’t ruin everything it touched. It resembles a mental illness in anyone over 40.
Only the over 40? Better check the facts. Its starts at grade school. Are you saying that the geriatric commenters here are liberal?
Everybody knows Churchill’s quote. I’m basically agreeing with him.
Liberalism today is a death trap; low-effort, low-thought, high-noise. Our Constitutional Republic takes work: discipline, judgment, moral backbone. Mix the two, and entropy takes over. Disorder spreads fast when energy isn’t applied. If we don’t fight to maintain order, we lose it. Simple as that.
I do believe that chaos has always been the endgame for the progs. They know that they must first destroy a civilization before you can rebuild it.
As we see on this blog the progressive left theories are half-baked. They can destroy, but they cannot build.
It’s culture death…predatory when minority is elevated above majority. Science
S. Meyer: Your use of the word entropy is so poignant; I picture the fallout energy working against the upward thrust.
I regret that at one time, the inclusion of highly-motivated and exceptional students among a diverse mix –led to academic buoyancy (the buoyancy effect).
Now we seem to be working toward (as I often note) a decline in achievement to an “inclusive” platform representing the lowest common denominator.
Lin, you and Allen are always poignant commentators. Allen’s elegant description of social entropy is a metaphor for the corruption that comes with modernity. Many human beings, perhaps most, can’t handle success. You see it with people who win the lottery, only to destroy themselves with excess and regret. That is the root of my reluctant cynicism.
Diogenes and Lin, thank you for your critique. I am blushing.
To rise higher, we must sometimes look down.to see where the drag is coming from.
When a top university selects students by criteria other than merit, it is doomed to extinction, or at best mediocrity. Believe it or not, faculty at these top schools need top students to constantly challenge them by questions. It keeps them sharp. Mediocrity makes their thinking and teaching sloppy, pedantic, or formulaic. The duality between the quality of faculty and students is rarely mentioned, but it is a fact. And when top schools begin teaching remedial courses, this is the surest sign of a potential demise. For example, when any groups of students begin college taking remedial algebra, it is well documented that few ever rise to the level of calculus – which should be an entry level course. It all adds up to sort of a self-extinction.
“Believe it or not, faculty at these top schools need top students to constantly challenge them by questions. It keeps them sharp.”
I assume you’re talking about the sciences. With rare exceptions, in the liberal arts there is nothing to “keep sharp.”
In most if not all courses. With mediocre unmotivated students, instructors don’t teach, they preach. Not good.
An excellent differentiation. Also noted as the difference between knowledge and propaganda…something at which the prog/left excels.
“or at best mediocrity”, I would use the word irrelevancy instead.
# . Isn’t it really a Pygmalion exercise?
Perhaps these kids are better off not going to these institutionsm
That’s an alternative. But by suing the schools (who’s paying?) its obvious they are determined to inflict damage publicly. Is that the way to go?
Either way, he’s not getting in, but waiting out a multi year court case, then appeals. He’ll be 30 by then. Just move on and get satisfaction that they gave a public broadside.
When listening to them attempt to articulate, I doubt if they would even make good plumbers. I see them as not quite adequate to flip burgers for an entire shift at McDonald’s.
The reputation of these schools that rejected him are swirling the toilet. Those names will mean nothing in every sector except Law Firms and politics.
The proverbial “toilet mouth” eh?
He should apply to Rose Hulman Institute of Technology!
See the recent report “New research backs standardized tests as predictor of ‘college success—without bias’”
as described in “The College Fix”
So what.
So Anonymous, and this is tricky, it means that the students let in without merit will FAIL in their attempt to do well in school.
I do think that you are a congenital contrarian. Your arguments, such as they appear, are vapid, if not incorrect, but you delight in adding chaos to the mix. You should seek some sort of counseling for this abnormal obsession of yours.
Whimsicalmama, this is the closest he can get to keying Professor Turley’s car, so he overcompensates.
Unfortunately for students with good grades, test scores etc. the College system is rigged against them. The Liberal, Woke, Do Gooders who control many of the Universities following the Globalist/Woke agenda, allowing unqualified students, migrants, illegals, woke students in and rejecting the qualified, In many cases free ride? Trump admin. needs to come down hard on these Universities until then its going to be tuff for qualified students.
And you know all that as a fact? You just read repub news and think you’re being honestly informed. Time to think critically, instead of sucking in medias lies.
Yes, the poster and everyone else knows it as a fact. If you don’t, you probably got into one of these schools without meeting basic educational competence expectations also.
Why the need to insult anon? Because anon criticized you? Suggest you learn to live with it.
From my personal experience hiring high school interns, I know this insidious racial discrimination to be true.
At least, your perception of what the truth may be.
Time to think critically, instead of sucking in medias lies.
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Mr pot meet Mr kettle 🙀🙀🙀