Try Harder!

When you first come in from middle school

you'll want to cry.

I will give you a test every other Wednesday.

It's really stressful.

You aren't as smart as you think you are.

Okay, that's like a B minus, you can do a lot better.

Go to class.

I am going to class!

It's tangible in some of those classes, you know,

you can feel how worried people are about college.

It's a nationally ranked school.

My mom pretty much forced me to go to Lowell.

Lowell is tiger mom central.

That's motivation.

My friend, he said,

"Oh, you go to an Asian excellency school."

The kids who come here know they are competing

in a world that is very high achieving.

I would love UC Berkeley.

Harvard, Stanford.

Columbia.

Stanford. Stanford.

Stanford's my dream school.

Lowell is the ultimate selfconfidence crusher.

It's the best.

All right, so, this is Lowell.

It's very unlike all the other high schools in like the area

in that, it's not in that great of condition.

I've had friends from like MenloAtherton come up here,

and they say that Lowell kind of looks like a prison,

and I go over to their school

and I know exactly what they're talking about.

Yeah, so, should we go check it out now?

Yeah, so this is like the flagpole.

This is like the front entrance,

this is where everyone goes in,

and yeah...

this is all our awards and stuff.

This is what alumni get to brag about.

So, we have the library.

After school, this place gets packed, like packed,

like you can't find a seat.

This is the computer lab, it's always really crowded...

but it's a great place to gain access to computers.

Yo, Ian.

Christian.

So this hallway is usually packed

and that intersection is one of the worst.

I think a lot of kids at Lowell,

they're actually pretty amazing.

My mom wants me to go to Stanford

but that's like, whoa, kind of far out there.

Obviously Stanford would be great,

but even if I had a 4.0 GPA and I got a nearly perfect score

on the SAT, I would have a one in five chance of getting in.

Bye, Sophia.

Bye.

Bye.

Okay.

Stanford is probably my top choice, yeah.

What is funny and not funny will depend on who are and...

Like a lot of freshmen have a lot of Stanford gear

and I was one of them.

But by sophomore year...

you don't see any Stanford gear on them anymore.

Maybe it's like Cal and UCLA.

By junior year you see people with like...

Occidental, or like... what's another

west coast private college

that's not that hard to get into?

I got to dance.

What's up? Hi.

My dream school would be probably UCLA.

UCs, baby!

This is the AP physics C class

and only like the most devoted to like learning

and like the best at math and the best at physics

and the best at like learning in general take this class.

I would say that most kids that end up in an Ivy

would have taken this class in high school.

I guess you're just looking at like,

the cream of the crop right here.

So yeah.

We're gonna start hopefully in a few seconds.

Oh, I'm not taking it,

because I didn't take an AP physics before

and I think that's like sort of like the prerequisite,

and because like, I'm just too scared to take

like a really hard math related class.

Ladies and gentlemen, let's get focused,

you're gonna need every second.

You can use calculators, and your brains

and your hands and nothing else.

Please begin.

I've been teaching at Lowell since 1990.

In the 90s, if you went to Lowell,

and had a good solid B average in honors courses

you got into Berkeley, you just walked in, everyone got in.

Now you don't.

They're objectively under more pressure

in terms of college acceptance.

The physics students essentially are all seniors,

so this is their last grade for college application.

One wrong answer could potentially mean the difference

between an A and a B or B and a C, right?

Which would be a difference in your overall grade,

which would be a difference in your GPA,

which would be a difference

in the college and everything else.

We want to see whether or not potentially exosomes,

the release of exosomes could maintain homeostasis

in a cell.

So, in this overlay where we inhibit lysosomes

and we got rid of exosomes,

there was a worsening of homeostasis.

So yours is mostly just as a compensation

to loss of lysosomes?

Yeah, loss of lysosomes.

Great. Good work.

I'm really impressed.

I'm impressed that anyone let alone a high school

summer student could do this much work in one summer.

We also did a western blot of the same protein C63

which is extra enriched.

And then we found that there was an increase

of C63 in .

And knowing that there's increase of both

So what do you think you're gonna do in the future?

Probably become a surgeon.

Become a surgeon? Yeah.

What kind of surgeon?

Like a brain surgeon.

Turn your shoulders a little that way.

Turn your head, a little tilt, big smile.

Perfect.

For Lowell students, I feel like there's definitely

a pressure from your classmates.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Thank you very much.

And also a pressure at home too.

It's like a war on two fronts.

You want to go to the college,

I want to get out of the college,

I have to be better than you to get into that college.

So, I'll work my tail off to be better than you.

Sometimes at Lowell, it's hard to have a strong sense

of selfesteem because you're always comparing yourself

to other people like, oh,

this person has a higher grade point average than me,

they got a better ACT score than me

so, how am I gonna measure up?

You jump in the water, swim an hour that way then swim,

that's two hours.

Going to Lowell, I have been introduced

to so many like actual like geniuses.

I mean, I feel like every class has a superstar.

Jonathan Chu, for example.

Jonathan Chu.

Jonathan Chu, he's our class president.

He is really, really smart.

Really smart

He's just a superhuman.

Well JChu is god.

He's just really smart, really social

like probably like the Renaissance man

at Lowell per se.

Jonathan is among the top five violinists we've ever had

and that's really saying something.

He's the perfect Lowell student, he takes like,

I guess every AP and like aces everything.

A 4.7 GPA.

He once got a zero on his bio test on purpose

because that he can still do that and get an A

to lower the curve.

Johnathan got 100, I'm not surprised,

I'll have to make it harder next time.

I think there was little doubt

that he was destined for greatness.

I guess I came into Lowell thinking

that I would go to Lowell,

breeze through it, go to Stanford

like do really well at Stanford, go to med school

and then become a doctor like typical Asian path right?

But when I would get like barely passing

there would always be someone that gets like 120%

and that's when I sort of realized, oh geez.

I'm really not even close to the best of the best.

I see you're at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,

16, 17, 18, almost 20 schools.