Hard work got me into Stanford, says Chinese student in $8.9 million scandal

Zhao Yusi, the Chinese student whose family paid US$6.5 million for her fraudulent admission to Stanford University, has gone viral on social media in 2017. In the video, she claims she was accepted because of her "hard work".

In the 90-minute video, made when she was 17, Zhao offered viewers advice on getting into prestigious American universities while admitting that her "natural IQ isn't particularly high".

"I want to tell everyone that getting into Stanford isn't just a dream. You just need to have a clear goal and work as hard as you can towards it," she said.

Zhao is one of the students caught up in a US college admissions scandal that resulted in 33 parents, including celebrities, investors, lawyers and company executives, facing fraud charges.

Zhao Yusi said that getting into Stanford was her "No 1 dream" and that she planned to return to China after graduation.

But now, as a result of the admissions scandal inquiry, her future is unknown.