Comment by nomilk
1 year ago
Not sure if it made it to hn, but the founder recently got rejected from a number of top universities, despite clear talent:
1 year ago
Not sure if it made it to hn, but the founder recently got rejected from a number of top universities, despite clear talent:
I'm a college admissions consultant, and this doesn't surprise me at all. People don't realize how competitive the landscape has become. His test scores and GPA are average at the schools he applied to. Really you'd need to know how many APs he took and his AP scores to understand how colleges will treat his academic record.
To me, his college list indicates that he was mostly prestige hunting. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but colleges can tell when a student wants to attend based just on branding. It comes across as if he wants to use college as a resume booster rather than as a place to grow.
The essay reads as a list of accomplishments, with little self-reflection. (Side note: referencing Steve Jobs is way overdone.)
Long story short, college admissions is not a VC pitch. If I had been this guy's advisor, I would have recommended he write an essay about something not related to Cal AI. Colleges will already know about the app from his activities list (and resume and, presumably, recommendation letters). There's a huge missed opportunity for him to write about something else.
The essays that worked for my students this year were often about more mundane topics that gave insight into their character. One of my favorites was from a student who started giving free haircuts to classmates. The essay implicitly shows that he's thoughtful and well-liked—someone you'd definitely want in your college community.
American system of admissions to me seems so weird. Is it only there that unis accept mostly on extra things and not grades/test scores itself?
I'm Polish, here the only thing that matters is your final test scores, and nothing else. And I think it's same in the most of Europe and Asia too, right?
My impression is that American unis care way more about social aspect and so on, which I don't understand (but I guess it's a fine way of looking at things, too.)
The problem with the SAT is that too many people can score above 1500. In the 1500-1600 range, you might have only made 1-2 mistakes on the entire test -- it's more luck than skill at that point. You could maybe improve things by having a harder test for the elite schools, but the Asian model is not ideal either. I live in Japan, where many kids will spend their evenings in cram school (after a day of regular school) to prepare for the absurdly competitive college entrance exams. As I recall, South Korea actually restricts air travel on the day of their entrance exams so some kids won't be disadvantaged by being distracted by the noise of the overflight.
It's true that this model is more fair, and that's good, but it still feels wrong. There are way too many professions where you're de-facto locked out if you didn't get the right credentials at the right age, regardless of your practical skills. That results in us putting teenagers through these absurd trials for no real reason.
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Parent already discussed this but at tier-one schools almost everyone (except legacy/athletic of course) has saturated the test score metric. Most applying have a max SAT or ACT. Most have a 4.0+ GPA. A 34 ACT score is in the bottom 40% of MIT applicants as far as I can tell.
The only thing that distinguishes applicants is the soft social stuff.
Japan and South Korea kind of fixed this problem with cram schools and ridiculously overtuned college admission exams. But e.g. KAIST isn’t really comparable to MIT.
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It's because a good majority of these schools have thousands of applicants who might as well be perfect across the board grade and test scores wise, so its either they flip a coin, or choose some other standard.
The tests need to be harder, but people would complain.
I didn't study for the ACT at all (literally went in without knowing anything about it) and got a 35. It's a trivial exam.
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> huge missed opportunity for him to write about something else
When you are locked in and have the grindset there is nothing else.
If he absolutely insisted on writing about Cal AI, I would have recommended that he write more about why he was inspired to build it and the human impact. Instead, he just rattled off metrics that admissions officers will likely know from other places in his app.
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> His test scores and GPA are average at the schools he applied to.
Average is quite a bit above the floor though, so that just makes it sound like he should have been accepted.
For ever 100 applicants 3 seats are available. If you are "average" amongst the pool of applicants there are 46 better people than you that won't get in either.
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Just because it doesn't surprise you doesn't mean it's okay. You have to acknowledge that as an admissions consultant you're part of a small gatekeeping community bubble. Even though I attended one of these schools, I can recognize that universities have been rapidly losing their credibility, and this is only going to accelerate that trend. And by the way, this person is probably more accomplished than I am, even though I am now quite a bit older and my essay was apparently good enough to tick off the checkboxes.
The question you need to be asking is how the university system made an enemy out of someone who is clearly one of the most talented members of his age cohort in the nation. That's a failure no matter how hard you try to explain or justify the status quo. It's time for some real accountability and soul searching from the system, not excuses. Trying to nit pick the essay and pointing out how he should have done X or Y instead is completely missing the point.
Interesting context, thanks for sharing. It sounds like college admissions are broken in the same way SWE interviews are broken.
There was an HN story some years ago about the guy who created homebrew -- a Mac app used by a plurality of Google employees -- being rejected from a job at Google. This seems to follow that pattern: it's not enough that you achieve great things and talk/write about your achievement, you have to stroke the egos of people who could have never accomplished what you did, but still have the power to judge you because the bureaucracy has given them that power.
If the $30M ARR number is true, it's not hard to understand why he wants to talk about it as much as possible. Maybe if you come from family money, you can hear that kind of figure and yawn -- but as someone who came from poverty, I can tell you that this is like if the kid built a rocket out of spare parts in his garage and visited the moon. There's no words for how stunning this is, and everything else in his life must seem trivial by comparison.
I can't understand why the admissions officers would rather read an essay about a kid who volunteered at an animal shelter or something. Anyone can do that.
It has been trendy in Silicon Valley recently to use inappropriate accounting methods to measure ARR.
Joe, a regular guy: Makes $120k at his desk job
Joe, the businessman: Made $20k in 32 days, $228k ARR
Joe, who launched 5 months into development and did 60k in the first 2 weeks: $1.5M ARR
In all three of these examples, Joe's financial outcome is the same. This business does not have any longevity, and all of its revenue is from converting paid advertising of various kinds. It's still impressive, but is most likely a >10x exaggeration on even the lifetime revenue he makes from this. Which is of course circular, because the reason he's doing all this is to make a business out of monetising the audience of people who want to make money.
All of this is clever social climbing, but is clever social climbing the thing that should be rewarded by colleges?
um - I would. Colleges don't want to get panned for hiring a scam artist which is exactly what this is. Unlike VC where that skill is slightly revered.
The app is fake - at best its puffery, and the essay was littered with grammatical errors.
Everything about this kid sends strong signals that one would not want him at their school, workplace, or social environment.
I think the average American today, including the average admissions officer, has a negative view of technology. So, an application that is unequivocally optimistic about technology is unlikely to be well received. I think that that is what happened here. We also have no visibility into letters of recommendation, which are likely a big factor.
This is an incredibly poor take - curious as to how you just completely made up that ridiculous claim? Ironic as well that you think letters of recommendation matter for college admissions when they are perfunctory for probably > 95% of them. Maybe you shouldn't espouse your opinions on this.
Things like this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/04/survey-americans...
I’m also quite sure letters matter for undergraduate admissions. They certainly do at the graduate level.
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His new statement: https://x.com/zach_yadegari/status/1907511557149569190
>The student that runs fake clubs and stacks extracurriculars is admitted over the student that runs a real business.
Yeah. That's how it works. When you do community building and participate in activities in addition to "the grind", people like you more.
This doesn't just apply to academia.
Ahhh this makes sense, another mediocre guy blaming minorities for his own failures
Surely this sort of thing happens all the time? Not to excuse it, but I really don't think any of those rejections was intended to be the personal attack he thinks it is.
> $30M ARR biz
Unlikely
Probably pointed the Biz AI app at himself to get that estimate.
Clear talent at making bullshit apps that can't possibly work the way he claims maybe
What are his talents?
I mean, maybe he deserved to get into more universities, but he did get into solid universities, even if they’re not at the very top. The application pool is very competitive at top universities, and I’m not sure business success should be an automatic in.
clear talent?