A Bangladeshi-American, who was a high school senior at a private school in Princeton, N.J., has been admitted to Stanford University for doing the unusual.

He got the prestigious admission after writing #BlackLivesMatter 100 times on his application.

Ziad Ahmed, who attends Princeton Day School, was told to answer in 100 words or less: “What matters to you, and why?”

For Ahmed, the answer was three words and a hashtag.

“When I thought about why, I realized that the insistence on explaining the meaning of the hashtag is inherently problematic and the ‘why’ is embodied in the words themselves,” Ahmed told CBS News in an email Wednesday.

“Declaring the humanity and value of black lives is necessitated by the painful reality that the collective humanity is frequently denied when perpetrators of violence enjoy impunity.”

Ahmed, 18, said he wanted his application to be “authentic.”

“I am many things, but I am an unapologetic progressive activist first and foremost,” he said. “To be an ally, to me, means to listen, to show up, and to constructively contribute. That looks like volunteering for organizations that have been on the ground doing change-making, adding my voice to those who are peacefully protesting, amplifying narratives that are grounded in facts not fear, and naming injustice.”

On Saturday, Ahmed announced his Stanford acceptance letter with a single tweet on Twitter.

“I submitted this answer in my Stanford application, and yesterday, I was admitted,” he wrote, a copy of his answer and an email from Stanford’s admissions office.
The tweet went viral.