University Application: Fill & Download for Free

Several things irritate me about this story, mostly about what is not said:To apply to Stanford you have to write eleven (yes, eleven) additional essays plus the general Common App essay. One of those 11 has the prompt is write 100 words on a cause which is meaningful to you (which he did, in a highly unconventional way).Most commentary I have read seems to assume this was the only essay that he submitted - he of course submitted ten others, plus the Common App essay. But for some reason nobody is curious about what he wrote in his other eleven pieces of submitted written work. It is the very definition of taking a tiny part of an application and judging the whole application on the basis of that tiny part.Mr Ahmed was also admitted to Yale and Princeton (for whom he didn’t write about the BLM movement). So by all accounts, most elite universities seem to agree he was an outstanding student regardless, whom they would have liked to see enroll.Mr Ahmed was an otherwise a generally outstanding candidate. Top grades. Long history of community service and other extra curriculars. In 2015, he was named among MTV’s Top 9 Teens Changing the World, and in 2016, he was named one of Business Insider’s Top 15 “young prodigies”. Very, very few of the press reports take the time to make this clear.I dislike the misleading slant the media has taken pretending that writing BLM 100 times was what got him in to Stanford. That is almost certainly false, but it is an appealing narrative for journalists because (a) it will provoke an emotional response from some people (most people?) - key giveaway: why mention that he is a Muslim unless you are trying to trigger a response? Religion has nothing to do with either university applications or BLM. And (b) it feeds into idea that there is a “hack” that if you think of a clever trick like writing BLM 100 times (and nothing more) then you too could have gotten into Stanford.This Muslim teen wrote '#BlackLivesMatter' 100 times as an answer on his Stanford application — and he got in

“What happens if you apply to Oxford and Cambridge at the same time even though it isn't allowed?”It’s not that you’re not allowed to. It’s that you can’t apply to both (except for Organ Scholarships).You don’t apply directly to British universities. Applications go through UCAS. UCAS doesn’t let you put both Oxford and Cambridge on the form as two of your choices. If your application is online, as the vast majority are, the system won’t accept an application that has both (by the time Organ Scholars get to the submission point, they know which university they’re going for). If your application is on paper, it will be rejected. It simply won’t be accepted as an application.Can’t be done.

My son was accepted to Oxford this year. His other university applications were:UK: Bristol, Durham, Edinburgh, Manchester (he was accepted to all, but Manchester gave him a ‘f-you’ offer of 3 A*s).US: Duke, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Yale (he was accepted ‘early action’ to Yale)