When a Chicago dentist heard that his patient, a child of undocumented workers, was going to Stanford, he was shocked and began peppering the 18-year-old with questions about his test scores.
And then the dentist commented that the young man’s score wasn’t as good as his daughter’s score who didn’t get into Stanford but she didn’t come from a poor neighborhood as did the teen. He told the teen he was “luck” to get into such a top school.
When he got home from the dentist Guillermo Camarillo penned a Facebook account of the dental visit, which has gone viral. He wrote:
“You’re telling me that pure luck got me admitted into not only Stanford, but schools like Princeton, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, and WashU, and waitlisted at Tufts, Penn, and Columbia?! To say that I was admitted into a school simply because of my background is ridiculous. OF COURSE, YOUR DAUGHTER WAS GOING TO SCORE HIGHER THAN ME. You’re a dentist that can afford to send her to a school that will help her achieve a score like that. You’re an educated dentist, with a college degree and dentistry degree. My parents, two undocumented immigrants that only obtained a grammar school education, couldn’t afford to send me to private schools. Yes, I may have grown up in a neighborhood that doesn’t have many young kids going to schools like Stanford. But it doesn’t mean that people where I come from don’t have the potential to succeed at Stanford. We deserve to go to places like Stanford.”
To read the rest of the teen's fiery post to see why it has become a topic of debate nationwide, go to the AJC Get Schooled blog.
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