(no subject)
Being a Stanford alum, that this story has made the rounds in its various permutations amuses me greatly. There's actually another story, about a similar situation at Harvard, but that one is less compelling because he was doing it not out of desire to go to a good school as much as a sketchy desire to ingratiate himself amongst the undergrads and he was generally a lot less personable than Azia. Something in the Stanford story seems to draw in the particular crowd of bloggers that I follow.
It's been interesting watching what people emphasized in their various discussions. There's the fact that she seems to have gotten away with it which has been attributed variously to Stanford's open nature, the students' generosity or obliviousness, to her cleverness and to her deceit. As far as reasons, a lot of people mention her race, general societal pressures, that good schools are harder to get into. As far as responses, there's a little shock, a little discomfort, a good amount of awe and a lot of empathy for her predicament.
Honestly, I don't really see why people feel sorry for her in any way. Getting rejected from school is not the worst thing in the world. The fact that she didn't learn from it or pursue a rational course of action that would have improved her odds (like trying to transfer in or taking a year off and reapplying) and instead did something that would ensure that she never gets a good college education only shows the lack of foresight and ethical balance that probably got her rejected in the first place. I hear people commenting that Stanford admissions should allow her in for having the wits to outsmart everyone; I think they should be patting themselves on the back for having dodged this bullet.
Consider this, had she gotten in and ended up the premed she was pretending to be, what do you think her chances of letting something as pesky as Honor Code prevent her from getting the straight A's needed to go to a top med school are? Yeah, exactly.
--C.
It's been interesting watching what people emphasized in their various discussions. There's the fact that she seems to have gotten away with it which has been attributed variously to Stanford's open nature, the students' generosity or obliviousness, to her cleverness and to her deceit. As far as reasons, a lot of people mention her race, general societal pressures, that good schools are harder to get into. As far as responses, there's a little shock, a little discomfort, a good amount of awe and a lot of empathy for her predicament.
Honestly, I don't really see why people feel sorry for her in any way. Getting rejected from school is not the worst thing in the world. The fact that she didn't learn from it or pursue a rational course of action that would have improved her odds (like trying to transfer in or taking a year off and reapplying) and instead did something that would ensure that she never gets a good college education only shows the lack of foresight and ethical balance that probably got her rejected in the first place. I hear people commenting that Stanford admissions should allow her in for having the wits to outsmart everyone; I think they should be patting themselves on the back for having dodged this bullet.
Consider this, had she gotten in and ended up the premed she was pretending to be, what do you think her chances of letting something as pesky as Honor Code prevent her from getting the straight A's needed to go to a top med school are? Yeah, exactly.
--C.