Viral Post Suggests Student Got Rejected From Cornell Because 'He's White,' But Many Aren't So Sure

Applying for college is a very stressful and sometimes depressing time for high schoolers, as their results from four years of education get judged and sometimes rejected by their dream schools.

This appears to have been the case with a young TikToker who recently posted their reaction upon learning they'd been rejected from Cornell University, an Ivy League school in upstate New York.

In @haagers' video, now deleted, they list their achievements and qualifications they believed could help them get into Cornell. These include a 4.6 GPA, a 1460 SAT score, 460-plus hours of community service, skipping a grade and "playing the clarinet for 10 years." Despite these achievements, Cornell appears to have rejected his application.

Several commenters on TikTok wished him condolences and good luck, but several others appeared to argue that haagers' race played into his rejection, in line with a popular conservative idea that higher education institutions are prioritizing admitting non-white students for the sake of diversity at the expense of white students with impressive qualifications. However, @haagers himself has not made this argument.

This idea led the TikTok video to go viral on Twitter / X, after user @JoshLekach reposted it with the caption, "Bro got rejected bc he's white." He deleted the post after a request from haagers.

Once on Twitter, users were quick to discuss whether the qualifications laid out by @haagers in his original video were deserving of admission to Cornell, regardless of his race.

According to prepscholar, the average SAT score among Cornell admissions is 1480, which @haagers fell just shy of. Many commenters pointed out this and some of haagers' other statistics likely made him an unremarkable applicant in Cornell's pool.

Amid the debate, some users also noted that the Supreme Court outlawed affirmative action earlier this year, speculating that this shouldn't have played a role in the rejection.