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I have a hard time not reading this as a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps".

I grew up poor as the child of refugee immigrants. I was food insecure. My dad was an alcoholic. Being obsessed with computers was literally the thing that changed my life.

That's just my experience, YMMV.

> That's just my experience, YMMV.

The vast majority of people like that aren't (and don't) getting into Stanford, period, because impressive-to-admissions-committee folks are usually children of other impressive people (not always, usually). I don't think it's possible to interpret this as anything but "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps".

I guess I was one of those middle class scholarship kids. There were lots of them around and they were my friends. The private school kids honestly tended to keep to themselves. It's a part of my Stanford experience I found most jarring.

I know several "middle class" kids who went to Stanford. All of their parents were professors (or at least PhDs). The rest had parents who were doctors.

So, maybe things are different now.

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