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".
So, maybe things are different now.