 And it's welcome to the score channel. It has been a couple of weeks since I went live for you guys. We had the thrilling conclusion to the Discover University series. And I took a week off to celebrate my virtual graduation. What can I say? You know, I needed a little bit of time for number one. And we got some interesting stuff coming up. And I also want to talk about some news that's hit in the world of college admissions that have been seen over the last couple of weeks. And I want to talk to you guys about it a little bit and share some thoughts as well as some plans for what's coming up on the channel related to some of this news, actually. So we're going to get into all that today. Next week, the plan is to do a little Q&A as well, like an open Q&A week. You know, this is like a really good time to kind of check some stuff out. Because we've got a whole bunch of people that have just finished deciding which college they're going to go to. And they're getting ready to move. And then you've got a whole bunch of people that just finished school. And they're going to be starting to think about this whole topic. So this is kind of that moment where it's the down season, like the off season. But there's a lot going on. So I want to talk to you guys about some of the stuff that's happening in the world of college admissions today. Interesting news coming out of the UK that I want to start by talking about. Because I think it's pretty interesting. I'll show you guys this a little bit. There's actually this article came out very recently about the United Kingdom having a new work visa rule. And it is tied to the universities that people go to. And I think this is like a really interesting case, right? It's actually gotten a lot of criticism and a lot of controversy just because of who it works for, like who it benefits and who it completely ignores. So I think it's good. I've talked on this channel before about how the UK has become a much more difficult country to study in for international students. Like international students have been getting blocked and blocked to the UK. Ever since Brexit, you have lost a whole bunch of easy access for Europeans. Prices have gone up. And then you look at the way that the UK handled the visa scandal with the TOEIC test and everything. It's really just been a bad run of problems for international students looking to go to the UK. And so this rule is sort of like the next move from that. Now, they even quoted this phrase, attract the best and brightest workers. And that is something that Theresa May has really emphasized a lot. Like this current government has really emphasized this idea of bringing in the best and the brightest. Like we don't want the crappy ones. We only want the good ones. And this law is actually one of the most significant visa changes in the UK by far. So the way it works is that if you have a bachelor's or a master's, then you can apply directly for a two year work visa and bring your family. This is like a full blown immigrant visa. No questions asked. There's just one condition. And the one condition is that you must have graduated from a top 50 university. And that is really the controversial part of this topic because the vast majority of these top 50 universities are in the United States. And the majority of them are very technical schools. They establish actually down here some of the more like specific requirements. I'll zoom in on that a little bit for you. So it actually says that you have to appear in the top 50 rankings of two different rankings. So for you to qualify and get this easy access work visa to the UK, you first have to have graduated from one of these top 50 schools. And your school must be in the top 50 in at least two rankings. Now they only have authorized three different rankings. That would be the Times Higher Education World University rankings. And then there's the QS World Rankings. And then there's these guys, the Academic Ranking of World Universities, which is also known as the Shanghai Rankings. They're the main rankings that are used in China. So basically if your university is in the top 50 on two of these, then you can get a work visa to the UK and you can bring your family, bring your wife, bring your kids, bring everybody. As long as you graduated in the last five years. So they're gonna publish the list online as far as like their analysis. And again, most of these, again, two dozen US universities, a handful in a few other countries. But the controversy kind of comes into play where they talk about how like no African university. There's a lot of countries that won't have a single university on this list. And I mean, yeah, that's what happens because rankings are generally very biased towards English speaking locations. And the reason for that is that like English speaking universities tend to collaborate more on an international scale. They tend to publish more research in English. And that is one of the biggest drivers for rankings. I've talked about why rankings are a load of crap on this channel before. I've said it many, many times, rankings suck. And the biggest factor for rankings is that they, all they gotta do is really pump a lot of money into science and publishing papers and having a lot of like tenured professors and they can really boost their rankings very quickly. So, you know, that's great. Maybe for the doctoral candidates, you know, then you can say, well, okay, they participated in research and it was really significant. But like for the guy at the bachelor's level, that doesn't really matter. And I can tell you right now that like, yeah, University of Michigan probably appears on this list, but there's a ton of other good universities in Michigan that would prepare you very well for a successful life in the UK. And unfortunately, the UK is just doing this whole best and brightest thing. And it's basically gotten to the point where like the only immigration that they want is this like top tier S tier immigration. And I just feel like they're leaving so many good talented people on the outside looking in. But that seems to be what they want. And, you know, when you look at the countries that most of these universities are from, it just feels like they're very specifically targeting, you know, a certain range, a certain area. Yeah, here's actually the list of the universities. You can check this out here. So these are the ones that like, if you graduated a qualifications award between November, 2021 and October, 2022. So if you graduated just recently from school, from university, then you can get in. So we're talking about Caltech, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, MIT, NYU in Northwestern, Princeton and Stanford. It's like all the Ivy Leagues and like then the best hits, you know? Call it all like three of the UCs. I mean, there's a ton of great universities here, but like they're leaving out so many good ones. I mean, UT Austin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Again, we're talking about Ivy Leagues or like near Ivy League level, but then you've got places like Purdue for engineering that are top 10 engineering schools. They're not gonna show up here, you know? And I just think it's kind of ridiculous that the UK's basically saying, yeah, we'll let people come in and move in if they've graduated basically from the most elite of the United States. Outside the United States, you see there's a handful of options from Switzerland. You got what here? Kyoto University from Japan, a couple from Singapore, you know, PSL from France, UBC for Canada and University of Toronto for Canada. I think those were the only two. Oh, and McGill. So like your top three Canadian universities are here too. But yeah, it's just very, very elitist, to say the least. And I'm not a fan, honestly, of this whole system. I think it's kind of ridiculous that also because you have to have graduated in the last five years, it seems to be a strange policy because you could have a very accomplished adult who graduated six or seven years ago from an Ivy League school and now they can't immigrate to the UK, but like a fresh graduate who hasn't even gotten a job yet could theoretically go to the UK and like work there. Like it's not clear to me who they're trying to attract or who they're trying to benefit with this, but this high potential individual visa, it's definitely code for like we want wealthy successful individuals, we don't want anybody else. I'm not a fan, honestly, of this decision. But that's what's going on in the UK right now. A lot of people talking about this, we may have to revise some of our guidance for students looking to study abroad, especially people looking to study in the UK. We've had a lot of issues regarding that. So here at Scorewall, we try to give people good recommendations for places they can go and also succeed in. And honestly, we've been recommending the UK less and less because as much as a lot of people wanna go there, it's just not the best option for a lot of students these days. So I gotta say, if you think about the UK, you might wanna think twice, you might wanna look at some other options. So that's the latest UK news. I wanna get into some more American news. Now that pretty much everything else here I got is related to the United States. I wanna give a shout out to Northwood University, Northwood University, your Rocket League Collegiate Rocket League champions. Congratulations to Northwood from Midland, Michigan. I've been out that way. I haven't had the chance yet to do a university episode at Northwood, but I hope to. I was watching Rocket League Collegiate series over the weekend and I saw that these guys won and super proud of them, Michigan boys. Interesting, like these guys, they're esports, not only do they actually have an esports program for competing in all these different games like League of Legends and Overwatch and Madden and all that stuff in Fortnite, but they also have a major in esports management. So you could actually learn esports while you play esports here. These guys just won the Rocket League championships. And I'm working on some ideas for some content related to esports because I have been in contact with some esports players. And in particular, I'm really looking for Rocket League because that's my game of choice. But I wanna interview some of these guys. I wanna talk to some of these guys. I wanna know what it's like to play for an esports team at the college level. And some of these guys get scholarships. Some of them get, because Northwood's a division two NCAA school. And if you're division two, that means that you can give scholarships to your student athletes. And there are more universities now considering their students to be student athletes, even if they're just playing esports. Like the term athlete has really been expanded in recent years. And I think it's awesome. Like I think this is a great shift, a great change for people who are looking to get into that scene. Maybe they want to be involved in the athletic scene a little bit, but they don't have the physical athletic skills to get them onto a normal traditional sports team. The fact that esports now has that kind of potential is awesome. I think it opens up the doors for so many people. And it's definitely the way forward. Like I'm firmly believing that esports is going to grow. It is going to explode in popularity. It already has, but I think it's just going to keep growing from here. And while it always takes the old people at the university a little bit of time to kind of catch up, I'm already seeing trends that tell me that we're getting there soon. You know, when I was at Milwaukee School of Engineering, I went to their new athletic facility that they built a couple of years ago. It's a whole city block. It's a massive structure. It's got like a soccer field on top of the building, like on the roof. And then like below that, there's the gym and the track and doors. There's the swimming pools. There's a hockey stadium down below in the basement. And then they also had a bunch of computer labs. And I was like, what's up with these? And they're like, that's MSOE Esports. And they had their own section, a whole part of the building dedicated to esports so that they're in the same spaces as the athletes. Like they can go down the hall and use the same showers, use the same facilities as the rest of the athletes. And I think it's cool that they're not, you know, separating the esports guys and saying, no, no, you're not really athletes. Like you go over here. No, it's more like the esports guys are being treated exactly the same as everybody else. And I think that's awesome. You know, I was even tracking a little bit of the Collegiate Rocket League qualifiers before the tournament. And our guys at Sienna Heights almost made it in. They were actually like semi-finalists. They were this close to knocking out the other team and getting in, which would have been super cool. So I love seeing that there are scholarships now for esports for all these different types of activities. I think it's super cool that you have this option. And if you're good at a game, like if you legitimately can play comp at a high level, you should let us know and like talk to us about the possibility of getting esports scholarships because it is possible. And I think that there's a lot of people that would think it's not possible, right? They would assume no way. I mean, if you had told me even 10 years ago, you could get a scholarship for playing video games, I would have thought you were crazy. That would never have entered my mind. Five years ago, I would have said maybe, maybe soon, but I don't know. Tell me that today and I'm blown away. I'm honestly blown away by the number of possibilities that are out there for esports athletes. So I think it's cool. We're seeing a growth in this college esports scene in general, like collegiate leagues growing, I think is an important step for the professional scene as well, having that sort of middle space, just like we do in American sports. Like we have all these college players that go from basketball or football into the NFL or the NBA, that is a very formative league. And I think we could start to see the same kind of thing happen on university campuses where very talented individuals develop their talent at the college level and then we might even eventually some day see a draft. I mean, can you imagine the day where there's like the esports draft and you're drafting Fortnite players from different universities or like whatever the game is, right? I think it's super cool that those possibilities are starting to emerge. And I for one, I'm a big fan. I hope we get to see a lot more of this and Kudos to Northwood for getting their win on. So hopefully I can go visit some more of these guys and on that note of Rocket League, I'm gonna be going to Texas soon. I got some Texas news to tell you guys about too, but I'm gonna be going to Texas in about two months. And I'm going for the Rocket League World Championships that are gonna be held in Dallas, Texas. So I have always wanted to go see an esports event live and it's something that just seems really interesting to me. So I am gonna go and check it out over there in Dallas. However, while I'm there, I also wanna visit some universities and I wanna try to talk to some of these esports players. Like I have a feeling that some of the college esports guys will be there since it's still the world championship. And if you're a big fan of the sport, you might come down there for that. So I'm gonna try to meet up with some of them, try to talk to some of those guys. I'll definitely be bringing my kit. And we're also gonna be trying to visit some universities in Texas as they wrap up their summer semesters. So it's kind of a nice window because if I get in there like at the beginning of August, it's summertime, there's still people on campus for summer semesters. I should have no problem meeting people and talking to people on the campuses. And Texas, it's a huge place. We got a ton of possible places. I'll show you a little bit of just you know what I'm thinking about right now. We got, I'm gonna be doing my initial outreach pretty soon to talk to different universities. I'm looking at maybe flying into Houston because there's a lot of low flights, low cost flights straight from Peru to Houston. So I might start out there and then drive my way up to Dallas for the event. And if I can get in maybe a couple of days earlier, hit up some universities in Dallas as well. Obviously like big hitters like Texas A&M are high on my list because like they're on the way, college station, if I could get access into one of these awesome universities in Texas, that would be just amazing. And I really hope so. I really hope I could pull that off. So we're gonna be talking reaching out to universities in the state of Texas. If there's any universities in Texas that you really wanna see, like tell me about them, let me know. I like to use your comments as evidence of why I should go visit a university. Like I have set screenshots to AOs and be like, yo, we got like four or five people that really wanna check out your university. I make videos, let's go. And hopefully maybe someone will say yes, you know, that's the idea. And I think they will. I've been doing these university tours now. I've done a couple and I've gotten to the point where I always get a few and now that I've done a few, it's a lot easier to get more. So I'm looking forward to reaching out to Texas, finding out what's over there, hitting up some universities in Texas and maybe we'll take a little trip out there and see what's going on and get some Rocket League content made because that's what I want. And while we're on the subject of Texas, there's actually a university that I would really like to check out because I saw this news today and it got my attention. So the University of St. Thomas Houston, I'm gonna be talking to these guys if I go there. I wanna talk to these guys because they're doing something that you never see in the United States which is an associate degree program taught entirely in Spanish. I think this is fascinating. So it is online and it is only an associate's degree. So it's only a two year degree, but it's a start, you know. This is like a pilot project. I think that may grow into something more. So a lot of people don't realize that like the United States actually doesn't have an official language. Like the U.S. does not legally ever say that English is the official language of the country. You can check the Constitution. You can go through every single law in the United States while there have been movements to codify that into law and say that English is the official language. It has never been approved or anything. So in the United States, there is no law that requires universities to put out content in English. And therefore there's also no law that prohibits them from creating material in Spanish. And, you know, you look at areas like Los Angeles, Miami, Texas, places with a high percentage of Hispanics, you know, a lot of Latinos. It makes sense that there would be some education in Spanish, especially at the higher level because you've got a lot of families that have immigrated. Maybe they didn't finish their studies back home. So this could be a good opportunity for them even if their English isn't that strong. And while there are always some people that kind of push back against this because they feel like, hey, this is America and you should speak American. We speak English here, come back to your country. Most people I think don't feel that way. And I think most people appreciate the linguistic diversity that we have in the United States. So I think it's very cool to see a university trying to do this because think of what this opens up. Like, okay, right now it's one university saying, hey, let's try it out. They said they're gonna try to cap it at like a hundred students here, I think they said around. Yeah, they said they hope to attract up to a hundred students to the program, but there's no limit. So they're hoping to get more. But think about where this could start, right? You get a hundred students right now in Spanish. Well, maybe pretty soon, another university opens up and offers a program in another language. Maybe there's a university that does like a program in French, right? So if you wanna immerse yourself in the French language and really learn and master French, you could do that while living in the United States. I could see very easily like having, you know, university programs that teach in other languages as well, right, other languages. I mean, we could start learning Chinese better because we're gonna need to when they take over the world. You know, German, maybe you wanna get your German on and get a little better at another language from Europe. Like, I think there could be programs in specific languages that would give you a really strong foundation in that language and would also benefit those large immigrant communities. Cause like in the United States, we have some very large immigrant communities and, you know, not all of those people learn English fluently. And I think they should still have an option for higher education. So it could serve two purposes. It could help people who come to the US don't know a lot of English, still wanna get a degree, still wanna learn, still wanna improve their situation, you know? But also people who maybe want to immerse themselves in that language. You can totally see, you know, maybe a young American person who wants to practice in Spanish taking this degree program and, you know, studying all in Spanish. I think that would be an amazing opportunity for somebody. Right now you do it through Spanish language classes and maybe a couple of Spanish literature classes and at the best it'll be a minor, you know, for your degree. But like, you're probably not gonna get a full 100% study experience in Spanish. And that's something that these guys are trying to do. So I think it's very interesting and, you know, it also makes a lot of sense for the location. Obviously they say here, like the area is 42% Latino at this university, which is similar to the population of the city. So obviously, yeah, this area is ripe for this type of option. But I think it is a super interesting program that they're gonna put out there. And so like they say, it's, you know, might be people who don't speak fluent English or students fluent in English who wanna strengthen their Spanish skills. The fact that they're offering this I think is super cool. I hope that this grows. I would like to go see it and talk about it. I know it's an online program, you know, but I would still like to go in there and just talk to these guys about this program and learn a little bit more, you know. This is where small universities can do big things. Like University of St. Thomas Houston. I honestly don't know much about these guys. Like how big are they? How many students they got? They probably don't have a lot. I'm willing to bet. Let's see what the Wikipedia says. Yeah, there you go. 2000 undergraduates, small university, right? Small university, but this is the kind of university that can afford to experiment with these things. They can try some of this stuff out. And that is what I think makes it very cool. Like you have a small university that you wouldn't normally think of as being a like progressive leader on language programs, but here they are doing something big. So they're gonna be one of the first ones that I reach out to if I go visit Houston and make some visits over there because I'm really interested in what they got going on. I think that this is a cool idea and it's the kind of thing that can maybe catch on and become a trend, you know. I would love to personally see more classes offered in multiple languages, especially, you know, in those areas where it's justified. Like you could easily see a UCLA offering courses that don't have to do with Spanish language and culture, right? Like just other courses, like a sociology course or a psychology course, like business course. You just had a couple handful of courses from different, you know, faculties that were offered in Spanish in addition to English. I think that would be super interesting. I personally, if I were trying to learn another language, I would love to have the opportunity to learn another, you know, a full course in that language. That's something I did here when I studied in Peru. I, you know, took both English and Spanish courses. My program was bilingual and like having the opportunity to practice in both languages and study in both languages and learn in both languages really strengthened my understanding of the material, especially because like sometimes you'd have a course in Spanish and then another course in English and you had to take the information you learned from the Spanish course, bring it over to the English course and vice versa. And that, that really like forces your brain to process it, forces your brain to learn a lot. So it's very cool, very, very interesting idea. So I'm down with that. I think that would be cool. So yeah, that's possibly our next university tour. If all goes well and we get where we wanna go, then we're gonna be going to Houston. We're gonna be doing some cool things in Houston. I'm looking forward to it. I'm hoping that it works out. Gonna do Houston and Dallas. We'll see. I doubt that I'm gonna be able to make it to Austin because Texas is huge, man. If you take a look at the map on Texas, it is massive. It is a big state. And so while they do drive super fast over there, which is awesome, it does take a while to get places. I mean, literally like driving around Texas is like the whole last tour that I did. The last tour that I did where I went from like Michigan to Milwaukee, Chicago, Purdue and back, that travel distance is very similar to what it's like to drive around Texas. Texas is several states packed together. So I don't know that I'll be able to visit every city in Texas and visit all these universities, but I wanna at least get a few. And if I can queue up two or three in those first days and then go see the Rocket League event, I will be a very happy person. So that's what we're looking forward to. Now, staying in the United States, there's two other stories I wanna talk to y'all about because I think they're both very interesting. One has to do with the Varsity Blues scandal. If you don't know about the Varsity Blues scandal, that was where rich people paid other people to help get their kids into colleges like super elite schools through large donations and like a lot of money under the table. In most cases, the parents would pretend that their child was a student athlete and there would get large scholarship money, right? So they could get in. Of course, with the agreement being that the parents would put a lot of money into the university to help them out. So essentially, mom and dad pretend that you play Highly and you get a scholarship for Highly and then there's a magic donation the next day at the university that makes the university very happy. So a lot of those cases have already been wrapped up but this is like one of the last ones and this one also I think is kind of interesting. So this one is about a guy who tried to get his child into Georgetown University through the tennis program and he's about to go to trial and this is one of the last ones. This guy, I'm in curry. They say that he wasn't the main character. He didn't work with this mastermind that, I like how they call him a mastermind. It's not that, you're not a mastermind. All you did was contact people and offer to bribe them. There's really, really no masterminding going on there. That's just you had a bunch of money in your pocket and people will fall for money. I mean, you know, if I was an admissions officer making 50, 60 K a year and someone came up to me and was like, listen, here's a hundred grand, here's 50 grand, if you just help this person get in, I might think about it, okay? Not saying I would do it, but I might think about it. But this guy here basically was doing the exact same thing. And you know, this is, there's other evidence, right? They've looked up some other evidence. There's other cases involving Georgetown. All these universities were like very top schools, very high end universities, you know, like the ones that the UK would give you a visa to. Ironically, a lot of these kids who got into these universities under false pretenses could very easily go ahead and, you know, get a visa in the UK. Cause that's the kind of people that the UK wants, right? But yeah, they, you know, the coach has already pled guilty in this probe. So the coach was tied to the varsity blues probe, but this particular student case is not because this guy, Rick Singer, was like the main one. And you know, the coach is already under investigation. Like apparently he was a Michelle Obama's tennis coach. So talk about connections, man. If you're teaching Michelle Obama how to swing a racket, you're doing pretty good, which is pretty cool. And the coach has already been, you know, put to jail. And so yeah, no more than four years. Gotta love how they get no more than four years for like this. This kind of, you know, white color crime, right? You never really get major punishments ranged from probation to 15 months behind bars. That's the part that really bothers me is like how none of these people will actually do serious hard time. And it's, I mean, look, it's kind of a victimless crime. It's not like they hurt people physically, but they didn't mess with other people's opportunities. I mean, directly they're getting admitted. And in these schools, if somebody gets admitted, that means somebody else doesn't. So there's definitely somebody who, you know, might've gotten in the didn't because of these people's cheating and bribery. And it just goes to show how much shady stuff is going on in the background of a lot of these elite college admissions. And I see so many people that are interested in applying to these colleges. And I stop and I say, why? Like, why do you want to be in that environment, man? It's there's some toxicity there that you should watch out for. I understand that you can get an amazing education in some of these places. And I understand that prestige might seem to have some value, but it's not really that important. And honestly, even if I were super rich, I wouldn't pay 200 grand to get my kid to go to one of these schools. I would like, all right, look, if you're stupid, then you can go to a lesser school and it'll be fine. I don't care. I'm not gonna force you into an Ivy League school that you're just gonna be miserable at because you can't bribe people forever. And that's the thing people don't realize is like you can't do this forever. This pay your way through is not sustainable. Don't recommend it. But that's, you know, this scandal continues to unfold. They continue to find more and more cases of these things. And so I don't know if any of you guys have seen the like Netflix documentary, but they did the whole like varsity blues thing on Netflix about it. It really goes deep into like everything they've uncovered so far. But like this kind of stuff happens much more frequently, I think, than we realize. There's the, you know, the cases we hear about, right? There's the case that we hear about and they get blown open because they get a little too greedy, a little too big and before you know it, people find out. But there's also other cases that we probably have never heard of. There's probably cases that we've never seen. And that's the thing. Whenever you get into these hyper competitive environments, people are more willing to do cutthroat things. People are more willing to do stuff that they shouldn't do. They're not as interested in ethics anymore. And so just something to keep in mind, like as you apply to colleges, as you think about your list, remember that if you are looking at these very top universities, these very elite schools, you're gonna run into some bad people. And there's bad people everywhere, but there's bad people with a lot of power, with a lot of money, who don't care about how their actions affect other people, they are just in it for themselves. And I think that is a systematic problem right now in the United States, talking about inequalities, talking about the difficulties and elitism in these college admissions levels, it's, you know, they're not all getting there the honest way. Like you applying honestly with our help or not, you're not getting the same opportunity as someone who comes in from a wealthy family who has the ability to afford all kinds of support and care who can influence people, you know, and really make something that is easier for them, you know, make it easier for them compared to what we have to deal with. So I would just say, keep that in mind when you apply to these schools, you're entering a race and some people are driving Ferraris and you're probably not. So don't be shocked when you don't get in. There's a reason there's a low, low, low acceptance rate and there's also a reason why they're allowing everyone to apply test optional because it can make them even more money. These big colleges are big business. You got to understand that. Last case I want to talk about today, last story, this is also related to the United States and it also involves one of our Ivy League universities, Harvard in particular is the case that I want to talk about. This I think is a very interesting topic and it's one that is poorly understood by international students. But I also want to talk about it in relation to how it affects domestic students like nationals in the United States. So the United States is going to hear a case probably soon this year on the topic of affirmative action. Now affirmative action, if you don't know is a doctrine in the United States that has existed basically since the time of integration when we had to go back to segregation when black and white schools were separate, swimming pools were separate, drinking fountains, bathrooms, it was all separate, right? And they had the separate but equal doctrine which was basically saying, hey, it's okay if they're separate as long as they're equal which in practice they never were. It was a terrible arrangement, it was horrible. We then integrated and there were still many places that were reluctant to integrate. They set up barriers that made it difficult for people to enter those spaces. That's our Jim Crow era. Now affirmative action is meant to try to undo that. It's sort of meant to encourage schools, universities, governments, jobs, to give chances to underrepresented groups, okay? Underrepresented is the keyword. Oftentimes those are groups that had a history of discrimination like African Americans in the United States but these are primarily underrepresented groups. So you take a look at the data and you say, well, historically this place has always had a large percentage of white people. Well, how do we fix that? We encourage them to bring in more candidates from other backgrounds. And universities have since embraced these policies and they are seemingly very much in favor of affirmative action. And they want a diverse campus. They're willing to bring in students from other backgrounds, from other countries, from all around the world. And so they produce this very diverse campus where 50 to 100 to 150 countries are represented and they are of the opinion that that is better for the campus and better for the student body. I personally tend to agree. I think that diversity is a good thing. I think it's nice to be exposed to people from different backgrounds to not just be surrounded by a bunch of people like yourselves and that's one of the reasons I moved to Peru was to get away from the same kind of people to like go and experience what other people think and feel. And this is where we kind of run into now a modern day issue with this affirmative action because some people argue that it has done its job. It has run its course. Like we have solved a lot of the inequalities. We've seen the rates of admission for Latino, black, Asian, whatever minority group you want, they've all risen. So some people think it's unnecessary but there's a more insidious take on this that I think is important to talk about. There are everybody who's against affirmative action in terms of political activism. I mean, I shouldn't say everybody. I'm sure there's always people on both sides but the vast majority of the money and efforts and campaigns against affirmative action come from conservative groups. And these conservative groups typically want to repeal laws that allow affirmative action to take place. Their argument is that it essentially is a different form of racism. That you are essentially acting in a reverse racist way. So if Harvard admits a student, let's say who is a Pacific Islander, like I don't know from Samoa and they're not as good on paper as a white student who has a better GPA, a better SAT score. Well, affirmative action would say, well, take a look at the history and should you maybe give that spot to that Pacific Islander person because they deserve an opportunity and their family historically has not had that opportunity. Maybe this is a first generation student. Maybe this is like somebody who simply wouldn't have had the opportunity to attend here otherwise. Or do you just say, well, the white guy has better grades so I want to go with him. And that's where this affirmative action topic really gets debated because the thing is they are now pushing against affirmative action precisely because they want to make it a meritocracy. They say they want only merit to determine who gets into college. And on paper that sounds really nice. On paper when you say, oh, a meritocracy, I get in because I have good grades. This person doesn't get in because they don't have good grades. That sounds perfect, but there's a huge problem with that. And the problem with it is that those grades and that performance are often determined by socioeconomic factors. And I talked about this when I did a video about the history of the SAT. The SAT was created to perpetuate the racist notion that black people were inferior. The actual guy that wrote the SAT straight up said that if we make this test really hard and use a lot of complex vocabulary, only white people will be able to answer it and black people will stay in the back. Like he literally said that. He wrote a book where he said that. I made a video about it. And then the issue there is like, okay, so if testing is not totally neutral, then can we really have a merit-based admission system? Like, because the fact is if you grow up in an inner city school, a mostly black school in a poor part of an inner city like in Detroit where I'm from, if you grow up in one of those schools, you have, unfortunately, inferior facilities, inferior infrastructure. You have typically inferior teachers because most teachers just don't wanna work there. They would rather go to a better school and work in a better place. Like the whole system is not supporting those students. It's not that those students are dumb. It's not that they're inferior. It is that the system around them is inferior. Those students are statistically much less likely to get a good SAT score. They are more likely to have disciplinary problems which will prevent them from ever applying to college in some cases. So you have these people who are in a disadvantaged system and these people who hate affirmative action are coming out and saying, well, it should be a meritocracy. We should just look at GPA and SAT scores. But like, how are we getting those scores? And that right there is the problem. So what affirmative action says is like, well, look, knowing that some people have some disadvantages, we will encourage admission to those groups. We'll evaluate them a little bit differently. Maybe, okay, maybe we'll take a look at just this group, this particular racial or ethnic group and say, well, what's their best SAT score? Okay, well, it's a little lower. All right, let's adjust. Like it's fair is what I'm trying to say. In my opinion, it's fair. These people are not taking anything away from the successful people. And this is where, so what are the lawsuits coming up against the Supreme Court? The Supreme Court of the United States will hear two cases this year on this topic of affirmative action. And if it decides that affirmative action is unconstitutional, then it will be prohibited for all universities in the United States to even look at the topic of race when considering admissions. They cannot use it as a factor ever again. Now, already there are a couple of states in the United States, there are several actually that have already banned this practice. Michigan did so not too long ago actually was one of the most recent ones. But there are, most states still have affirmative action and they still allow it at the university level. And most universities want it. This is the interesting thing. So one of the lawsuits is against Harvard University. Harvard is defending affirmative action to the court. And the allegations against Harvard are brought on by a conservative funded group that is representing a large number of Asian Americans. Their argument is basically that these Asian Americans were discriminated against because the university already had too many Asians and was not going to admit more Asians. But they should admit more Asians because these Asians are more qualified than the other students that the university admits. Now, here's the thing. What I can't understand about this topic and what drives me crazy about this topic is like think about what you're crying about. Okay, group of people that are suing Harvard. Like I would love to sue Harvard. Don't get me wrong. I'm proud of you for suing Harvard. But like you're complaining that you didn't get into Harvard. Do you know how much of a spoiled baby you sound? Like I didn't get into Harvard. I'm only gonna get to go to a really good university. Like it's not like Harvard is the only good university on the planet. There's a bunch of other good universities. If you're good enough to get into Harvard, you're good enough to get into almost anywhere. So like why are you trying to destroy an advantage for some people who really need it? Just because you didn't get into Harvard? Like what, you couldn't go to a really good public school like UC Berkeley or University of Michigan where they already don't practice affirmative action? Like you could have, you could have gone there. But no, you need to have Harvard because Harvard rejected you because Harvard wants diversity because Harvard supports affirmative action, you're gonna sue them and it's gonna go to the Supreme Court. That's insane to me. That's literally what's going on right now. So I share this story with you because I also want you to understand how this affects not only admissions of the United States but abroad. If you're coming from abroad, like they are looking for diversity in these universities and your location, I actually am doing a video that's gonna come out soon on the common data set and how you can increase your chances of getting into elite colleges like the Ivy Leagues and the Top 10s. And one of the factors they take into consideration at these schools is your geographic location, like where you are from and that and also race and ethnic status. If that is removed, then they have no way to really like treat internationals differently. I feel like they will end up having to treat them all the same as all of the other domestic applicants which then maybe creates problems for the internationals because the fact is international students are oftentimes at a disadvantage. If you present an SAT score as an international, it is so much harder for you to get a really high score. How do you get a really high score in a test that's not in your first language? Like the SAT is just harder because you speak Spanish as your first language, because you speak Gujarati, because you speak Chinese. And so we're now gonna have a problem where universities aren't gonna be able to go, well, he's international, I can treat him differently because I want diversity. The government's about to say, no, you're not allowed to consider his ethnicity or race because that's racism. You can't help someone who comes from a disadvantaged background if that disadvantaged background is because of race. Nevermind that we broke the system and that we made it racist in the first place and that's why they're disadvantaged. You can't fix that because fixing it would be racist. Doing something good for somebody on the basis of race is racism. Essentially is what they're arguing. And it's absurd to me. Now, will this actually change? Will the law actually change when the Supreme Court hears this decision? I don't know because I don't know what the Supreme Court is thinking but I will say this. This Supreme Court is an extremely conservative Supreme Court and as I said, this affirmative action resistance comes from conservative parties and conservative groups. It stands to reason that this Supreme Court is likely to say no more affirmative action. And when the Supreme Court of the United States makes a decision, it applies everywhere. It applies to all the states and all the counties, all the King's horses and all the King's men. It is everybody. So that is a risk and that could have a major impact on college admissions going forward this year. I am not sure yet how that's gonna affect our stuff and our cases that we're helping right now. We're helping a bunch of people get ready for their applications that are gonna open up in like August, September. We're gonna try to apply early because that's what you do. But I'm not sure we'll have to see. Like if this decision comes down in the next couple of months, it could literally change everything for college admissions this year. It could completely disrupt this year's application process, could have a massive impact on the admission class of next year. Now, you know, then it becomes a question of, well, how will they evaluate students entirely? Obviously they're gonna have to focus more on GPA. They're gonna have to focus more on things like class rank, things like the SAT scores. And that puts us right back in the problem that we started with. The problem where we have these tests, these standardized tests that favor wealthy people, people who went to good schools because their parents were born with more money, people who speak English as a first language. It does not promote a diverse environment. It promotes a very standardized environment. That's why it's called a standardized test. And we're heading back in that direction. And that's what concerns me. I would like to see them have full freedom. I believe universities should have full freedom to admit whoever they want for whatever reason they want, honestly. And if a university says I wanna pick all these people from this particular group, they should be allowed to. Because that's what makes each university different. If a university says I wanna be a university where only Asians can study, cool, do it. If it works, great. If not, you go bankrupt. Like I don't see why we should say, no, you have to treat every single person exactly the same. At the public level, sure, public universities should not be able, I think, to discriminate, but private universities too? Because that thing, Harvard's a private university. So this applies to private and public schools. This is not just a decision that will only affect the public sector because that's often what happens with these things. Like it's often just limited to, oh, public universities in this state. Well, now we're talking about the federal level. And the reason that matters is because the private universities also get federal funding, right? They get money from the federal government when they get students who get FAFSA loans. So, or FAFSA grants. So you apply for financial aid in the United States. You get admitted to Harvard. Harvard gives you a full ride scholarship, but a little part of that full ride scholarship came from the government in the form of FAFSA. And that is how they help pay for these things. So because those private universities also take federal money, then they also have to follow federal rules. There could possibly be some situations where maybe some private universities could continue to do affirmative action, but then they wouldn't have access to federal funding. That is technically maybe possible. In fact, the opposite of that actually happens already at Hillsdale College. I visited Hillsdale College. And one of the things that I thought was interesting from my interview with Alexander was that Hillsdale has not been a fan of affirmative action, and they want freedom to choose people as they please. So what they have done is they refuse to accept federal funding because that gives them permission to do whatever they want. Now, that's how it currently works. Hillsdale can, I don't know if the opposite will be true. I don't know if, because right now, Hillsdale says, no affirmative action. We do what we want, but we don't take money. I don't know if it'll go the other way around where you can, because if SCOTUS prohibits affirmative action, that could be a full hard prohibition across the board with no room for freedom there. I'm not sure. That, to be honest, is a little bit above my pay grade. I'm curious to see how that goes. But this is kind of what the issue boils down to now is what other factors will they use. And I wanted to share a little bit of this article because I saw this on higher ed dive examining some of the arguments against affirmative action. And some of the arguments saying, well, like, look, like one of them was that colleges and states that have blocked affirmative action have no problem creating diverse classes. And they've actually found that it made very little change. Like it was sticking to trends that were already happening. And also I thought something was interesting is like, what did Texas do then? So when Texas killed affirmative action, which by the way, they brought it back. They killed it and brought it back. So we have this like little window to study. What they did was they said, okay, you get guaranteed admission to public colleges if you're in the top 10% of your graduating class. But notice in the state, not in your school, in the state, it didn't help anybody. You could be top 10% in a mostly Hispanic school or a mostly black school, but if you still weren't top 10% in the state, you didn't go up. And again, this does not address the fact that some schools have more resources. Some schools have better teachers. Some schools, and it's not just some schools, it's oftentimes the schools that are located in predominantly wealthy white neighborhoods. I went to one of those schools. I saw that difference myself. My dad did not. I went by my dad's school. My dad grew up in a downtown urban environment, went to a mostly black school. Unfortunately in the United States, because of many years of segregation and practices that prohibited black families from accumulating wealth in the city and policies that encouraged white families to leave the city, the wealth is outside of the city. It's in the suburbs. The nicest schools are in the suburbs. The crappy schools are in the city. And that's why my dad can't spell. That's why I can. My dad doesn't know how to spell. I used to have to correct all his emails. I was 10 years old, corrected my dad's emails, and he was a manager. That's how it went straight up. So he went to a school that, none of those people would have cracked that top 10% in the state and got instant admission. My school did. Madonna went to my school. She turned out okay, I guess. So that's the big difference. If you look at these different schools, just where you live will determine how good of a school you go to as far as public schools in the United States. And so where you live is now gonna have a direct impact on whether you are successful. I think it's ridiculous to me that a handful of qualified Asian American students, and I understand the frustration. I understand the feeling of I should be going to Harvard. I'm good enough for Harvard, but I didn't get in because of my race. And I think at the same time it's like, yeah, but you realize you have every choice in front of you. Some people have very few choices. They could, it would radically change a person's life if they were from a lower class or from an underrepresented minority. You take them and put them in Harvard, completely changes their life, I think. For as much crap as I talk about Ivy League schools, I will admit, if you come from nothing and go to one of those places, it will have a transformative effect on your life. But the Asian American person that was already good enough to get in there, instead of going to Caltech or MIT, they get to go to Georgia Tech. They still get to go to one of the top five schools in the nation for their career and they still get to have an amazing job and have an amazing life. They're not losing that much, but these groups are willing to use these people. And that's the thing I think a lot of these people don't realize. The conservative group is using these Asian groups to basically flip the script, right? They're using these people, and instead of saying, hey, be grateful, okay? You got all the options in the world. Congratulations. They're saying, no, no, no. You were discriminated against. This is racism. We got to fight this racism and we're gonna do it through the courts and we're gonna sue the hell out of Harvard and we're gonna take it all back. And it's looking bad, honestly. It's looking bad. I think that affirmative action is probably gonna die with this Supreme Court. And I think that when that happens, then we are gonna see problems for domestic students from the traditionally underrepresented minorities, but then also we're gonna see international students struggle to make their way in. And it just goes back to why I keep saying you as an international student need to take the SAT because they're gonna keep focusing on this stuff. Even if they go test optional, right? If they can't use any other factors, if all they can do is focus on like academics and merit, then forget test optional. SAT is coming back full swing, definitely. And I'm sure they'll still keep it test optional so they can make some more money. Because by the way, acceptance rates are at an all-time low. All across the country, more and more people are applying to college and applying to more colleges because of test optional. Because they think, oh, I'll apply here. I would never have applied to Harvard with my 1350 test score. But let me go ahead and try now that I'm test optional. And yeah, maybe one or two people will get in. But I did the numbers. I'll actually show you a little preview of my numbers because I was doing some research recently. Let me pull that up for you. So for this video that I'm working on, give you a little sneak preview of this. It's actually, I shouldn't say I'm working on it. It's done. I just gotta make the thumbnail. But the, let me zoom in on this a little bit. It's not very pretty. I don't usually get pretty with my numbers. But anyway, on the left here, let me slide that over a little so you can see that. Yeah, so these are all publicly available numbers. I didn't hack any computers or anything. We got Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Brown, Cornell, Columbia, UPenn, Dartmouth, Caltech. I just picked like some of the top 10, right? All of these are ones that have data available. Well, you got your acceptance rates here, right? So this is like 4% acceptance rate for Harvard. This is from the people that applied in 2020 to get in for 2021, right? So this is the latest data available. We obviously don't have any data on the 2022 entry yet because they're not there yet. We'll get that data next year. But 21 entry, right? 57,786 people applied to Harvard. 2,318 got admitted, 4% acceptance rate. Now, that is an astonishingly low acceptance rate. Even for Harvard, a few years ago, that was like 7% or 8%. That's because test optional, right? But okay, you would think, well, all right, thousands of people are now applying test optional. I bet the students that get in didn't put a test, right? They didn't provide a test result. Well, look at this. What percent of the enrolled of these guys, right? Of these admitted, mind you, only some of them enroll, right? Not all of them enroll, right? So of the percentage that enrolled from this group, but everybody in this was admitted, right? 54% brought an SAT score, 31% brought an ACT score. That's, if we add those together, that's 85% of these people that were admitted to Harvard and enrolled presented a test score. And you're telling me it's test optional? Like, same numbers for Yale, 54 and 35. Princeton, similar, 56, 35. Again, 91%, sorry, 89%, I'm bad at math. Wait, that's, yeah, that's 91, right? Yeah, there we go. Again, over 80 some percent though for these numbers. Like these universities are admitting far more of the students that bring a good test score. So this idea that like, oh, I can just not take the SAT and get into Harvard and Yale, that's a lie, man. That was never true. These are the people from the test optional year. They applied in 2020. That was the year that everything got canceled where they couldn't take the test in March. They couldn't take the test in May. They had to wait all the way to like June or even maybe like August, November to take their SATs when they finally started opening up in some parts of the country. These people still went and got their SATs, still went and did their ACTs, sent them to Harvard and got in with their test scores. And yeah, some of these people, okay. Hey, 85%, that means 15% were test optional. I'm happy for them. That's better than before. But still, it's not like test optional is, what's test optional doing? It's adding 20,000 applications over here. And it's not really translating to a bunch of successes over here. So why are they doing it? Money, because you gotta pay an application fee for each one of these. They're gonna make hundreds of thousands of dollars just because of test optional. Most of those are gonna go in the garbage. There are some exceptions to this. I wanna give credit where it's due. Stanford, interesting case. Very low acceptance rate, lower than Harvard. But curiously, their SAT and ACT scores do reflect a very strong test optional bias. Like here we see only about 21% presented an SAT or ACT scores. So that's a good sign. That would suggest that they are legitimately a test optional school where you can get in test optional because 80% of this class is test optional. So that is a good sign, right? And it varies from place to place. You look at Brown, it's 81%. Again, if we add these two numbers, Cornell is 41 and 20, 61, pretty fair split. U-Pen, 65, 35, 100%. 100% if you wanna get into U-Pen, you better bring a test score. Like, this is the stuff they don't tell you. They don't want to talk about. The data's out there, but they're not happy about sharing this. I can tell you right now. And my proof is in the fact that Dartmouth and Caltech, by the way, did not publish this data. These, now, of all these universities, one of them does not publish the CDS. That is Columbia. They do not do a CDS. On their website, they do share admission data. So we have this, nothing else. The common data set though, all these other universities publish it. The whole thing, though, is optional. So they can choose what they share and what they don't. And they chose not to share this data about the SAT and ACT. Dartmouth and Caltech just left it blank. Pretended like that part was never even on the test. Why? To me, it says that this data probably looks pretty similar to Penn. Cause if I were in their school, right? If I were Dartmouth, and I saw that my numbers look like Stanford's, I would wanna publish those numbers. I would wanna say, look guys, look how many test optional cases we took. Totally changed the game. Brand new admissions methods for us. We're so proud of our test optionals. Caltech too, you would think they would say the same thing, right? But no, no data, right? Now Caltech said they didn't consider, that's why they're NC. They said they didn't consider them this year, but they were accepting them. So it makes you wonder. But again, yeah, if Dartmouth looked like Stanford, you think they would share it. I'm guessing they look a lot more like Penn. What if it's even higher than 100%? And you might think that that's crazy, but it actually is possible. Now, something that I don't know about this data, I do have to say this honestly. We don't know if any of these people are double counted. Like, what if somebody presents an SAT and an ACT score? They count for both. And we don't know exactly what the distribution is. I mean, because hypothetically, we could say 100% of the SAT students also did the SAT or ACT. And so the number is 65%, right? In reality, that's not usually how it works. It's a handful of try-hards that do both tests. But the point is, I don't have perfect data, but I can tell you that pretty much everybody at UPenn brought a test result. Before the pandemic, before this year, all of these universities had over 100% combined. I went and did that math. I was actually working on this investigation. I started this back in the United States around like December when I went up there. I was doing the research on the previous CDSs and I saw that like most of those universities had over 100% if you combine the ACT and SAT. And it got me thinking like, I wonder how it's gonna change. So now that I'm looking at this data, we're gonna start drawing some connections. I got my research assistants, shout out to Mika and Kamoche working on this to gather some data. And we're gonna put out some deeper analysis on the channel of whether test optional is real or not. How much of a lie is it? Where should you apply test optional? Where shouldn't you apply test optional? Like where are the universities that actually mean it when they say test optional? Where are the universities where if you don't bring a test score, you're not getting it. This test optional thing has really made it harder to analyze the situation. It's becoming more difficult to read the circumstances. But I do believe we can figure it out. I do believe we can get it done. So that is my goal going forward is to do some more research into this topic. The video that's gonna come out in a couple of weeks talks about how to increase your chances to get into Ivy League schools. So if that's something you wanna check out, I would encourage you to. We're gonna talk about not just Ivy Leagues, but like these same top universities that you saw in this Excel here. We're gonna look at just what factors can increase your chances of getting in without paying a coach like $200,000 to bribe your way into the university. We're not gonna do that. We're gonna discourage bribery. But that's basically our rundown for today in terms of like our different topics. So again, we covered the United Kingdom news with the new visa rule at the very beginning. I talked a little bit about eSports. Shout outs to the winners of the Rocket League tournament. We're gonna be doing Rocket League. I'm going to Texas. And yeah, we're talking about Texas universities too because we're gonna go to Texas in a couple of months. Yeah, and Supreme Court ruling big deal. I will obviously do some more followup news live streams in the future when maybe some big news breaks on some of this stuff. We'll cover it again in more detail when we'll talk about it, the mission stuff, affirmative actions really what I wanna keep an eye on. I think that's a big deal. That has major potential impacts for our work going forward. So I'm gonna keep an eye on that for you guys and let you know if that changes, how that affects everything. Maybe make a video about it. We'll talk about it. It's a complex topic. Anytime you get into things like race, things like discrimination, things like equal opportunity, it's complex, but I do believe that we should be making decisions that benefit the largest number of people who need the most benefit. That is my personal approach. I believe that is the right way for score to operate as well. What decisions can we make that benefit more people who need benefits? The way I see these lawsuits against affirmative action, they don't benefit people that need benefits. They benefit people who already have benefits at the expense of people who need benefits. And to me, while you can argue that maybe in a perfect world, I would totally agree that a meritocracy is fair, right? In a perfect world where everything else is equal, SAT scores and GPA, let's do it. But we don't live in that world. We live in a much more complex world and we need to have complex solutions sometimes to those problems. So that's my take if you care. Thank you anyway for watching and hanging out. That's gonna be all for me tonight. Next week I'm gonna do another Q&A stream. It's been a while since I've done a Q&A stream. We're gonna do a Q&A next week. And then the week after that, my Peruvian birthday is coming up. So I'm not gonna do a live stream on Monday. I'm actually gonna do a longer Thursday live stream to kind of replace my usual video content. I'm gonna be ranking Peruvian foods and doing some other fun Peruvian things. So that should be a fun day. I hope you can make that for that. That'll be a good time. So I will see you next week, my people. Thank you very much for watching. Have a good one.