I was in the American school system up until HS and then moved to France. The _way_ stricter grading compared to what I had in the US was very hard to get used to.

One thing that I did witness while studying for the engineering school exams (which is a whole two year affair) was seeing a lot of people who were very used to being the top of their class and getting good grades flame out, because they had already been working super hard in high school to keep their grades up.

I think there's a good chunk of "straight A students" who might struggle with the hit to their ego in that environment. But it was helpful and humbling to me.

> Bay Area high school grad rejected by 16 colleges hired by Google -- Zhong had a 3.97 unweighted and 4.42 weighted GPA, scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT's

How does that relate to Berkeley?

> Bay Area high school grad rejected by 16 colleges hired by Google -- Zhong had a 3.97 unweighted and 4.42 weighted GPA, scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT's

What's the point here? Whatever happened with that person, there are many more Berkeley applicants who have exceptional records.

(There must be more to the story - neither citation says why he was rejected. To the degree there is discrimination, I expect it would be against borderline applicants and not exceptional ones.)

And no, to be clear, you are totally mistaken about "school break" thing. In fact, you have to be enrolled in credits to get CPT, not on a full break (this is in no way a new rule.)