Teen writes #BlackLivesMatter 100 times on Stanford application, gets accepted

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Ziad Ahmed was surprised when he was accepted into Stanford, especially because he knew his answer to one of the application questions had been unapologetically activist.

“What matters to you, and why?” was the question posed by the application, and Ahmed could only think of one way to answer it: #BlackLivesMatter. So, he wrote the hashtag one hundred times and then submitted it.

Then, on Friday, Ahmed got his acceptance letter, and he posted to Twitter on Saturday showing both his submitted statement and the acceptance letter, saying: “I submitted this in my @Stanford application, & yesterday, I was admitted…#BlackLivesMatter.”

I submitted this answer in my @Stanford application, & yesterday, I was admitted…#BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/R5YxM77bWL

— Ziad Ahmed (@ziadtheactivist) April 1, 2017

“I was actually stunned when I opened the update and saw that I was admitted. I didn’t think I would get admitted to Stanford at all, but it’s quite refreshing to see that they view my unapologetic activism as an asset rather than a liability,” Ahmed said, according to a Mic profile.

Ahmed explained that his “unapologetic progressivism” is deeply enmeshed in his identity, further explaining that he did not feel like he would be a good Muslim if he was not an ally to the black community.

“To me, to be Muslim is to be a BLM ally, and I honestly can’t imagine it being any other way for me,” Ahmed said. “Furthermore, it’s critical to realize that one-fourth to one-third of the Muslim community in America are black … and to separate justice for Muslims from justices for the black community is to erase the realities of the plurality of our community.”