I considered writing a blog about the Vietnam trip and even started quite a few paragraphs, but I decided to delete it because it was all very dull and anyhow, you guys were there too so there’s no point in me describing it again.
I’m also choosing not to write it because I feel very bitter about the whole thing. While I was in Vietnam, I was deeply thinking about how my Vietnam blog would turn out, because I had a lot to say. Most of it wasn’t about Vietnam though. It would have been my negative thoughts toward the rest of my family, and how with every passing year, the word “family” comes to mean very little, if anything at all.
I go by a philosophy of honesty and sincerity. I don’t want to dress up my opinions to make them more palatable or easier to swallow. If I feel some way, that’s how I’ll say it, and filtering my words will only dilute the quality of my voice and result in a worse piece of writing. But, I understand that a 2000 word long blog that’s just completely hateful isn’t a fun read for everyone. So, instead of watering down my feelings towards the trip and making a disingenuous piece, I just won’t write it at all.
Instead, I’ll write about how the college application process has been. That’s made up the majority of my trip anyhow, so in a sense this still is a Vietnam vacation post. Also, I think it’s good to make the issue more comprehensible for the adults, who from my short discussions with them about the subject, are hopelessly out of touch with how the modern-day college application works. As for the kids, I suppose this might make them concerned for their future. Or maybe they won’t care.
Anyway.
To sum up the experience, it’s pretty depressing.
Prefacing this, I’ll say that getting into college is not hard. If you truly desire a higher-level education, you can achieve it (provided you have some cash). What I’m discussing is mainly the experience of trying to get into an upper-tier university, which is just a sad and miserable thing to do. And yet, like moths to a flame, hundreds of thousands of other idiot high school seniors like me are drawn to the allure of an “elite education,” and a “prestigious university.” Who even are you if you don’t go to a Top 20 University? Don’t you know that these top schools are the only place worth getting in to?
It’s sort of a status thing among us seniors. Get into the Ivy League and everyone will think you’re a genius. You’ll be the hero of your local high school, you’ll be validated everywhere you go, smugly mentioning to everyone you meet that you happen to attend a little school on the East Coast known as Harvard.
Everybody wants to mean something, to feel like they’re special. Getting into a top university is how us insecure high schoolers go about trying to tangibly manifest that desire. To prove that we’re worth something more than everyone else.
But for most, it isn’t to be. With exclusiveness and prestige comes selectivity.
I recall my dad saying that I probably had a 50/50 chance to get into Cornell, and I think that really exemplifies how out of touch the older generation is now with the college application process. Back in the day, the selectivity was still there, but relatively more lax. Now, however, the competition is vicious.
All of these Top 20 schools have an acceptance rate lower than 10%. And if you think that you probably fall in the top 10% of the country and therefore could get in, think again. The application pool isn’t filled with your average 2.0 GPA slackers; it’s flooded with the best students from the entire nation all applying to the same schools, and still only 10% or fewer actually get in. You’ll have to be in the top 1% of students to have even a chance, because there’s no guarantees. Kids are out here in fifty different clubs, volunteering for the Red Cross, professionally playing piano, founding their own business, speaking six languages and having perfect SAT scores, yet they’re still getting rejected. That might sound unbelievable, but that’s really how it is.
The competition is so fierce that kids in middle school are already thinking about their application, planning how they’ll spend their four-years at high school making themselves seem like a good fit for their dream school. This isn’t a rare case; this is probably at least half of the applicant pool who have been planning out their Ivy League journey since they were fourteen, joining so many clubs and founding so many organizations that it’s impossible to compete.
So, no. I do not have a “50/50” chance of getting into Cornell. I’d be lucky to have even a 5% chance. When I look online, I see people posting things like how they cured cancer yet still got rejected, or I see people applying to the same schools as me sharing what their resumes looks like, resumes that are far more impressive than mine.
It’s all just so frustrating. I’m fortunate enough to be pretty secure in my abilities, and so I don’t feel inadequate when I compare myself to people who are smarter and more talented. I more so just feel upset that I didn’t do more during my time in high school to make myself stand out. But a lot of kids have mental breakdowns over this, feeling so insignificant and constantly comparing themselves to these super geniuses, even if they’re actually pretty intelligent by most standards. It’s just the Ivy League standard that seems to matter, and this ties back into the feelings of wanting prestige and honor.
The top schools want driven students who have been locked in on their talents and interests since day one, but that’s completely ridiculous. How can you fault a fourteen-year-old kid for not joining any clubs freshman year, for not knowing what it is he wants to do? Hell, people in their late twenties are still trying to figure themselves out. It’s just an impossible standard for anyone who hasn’t been drooling over a Top 20 since they were born or wasn’t born into a rich family. And don’t get me started on legacy admissions, kids who just get in based on their last name. The Supreme Court took down Affirmative Action, and now legacy admissions should be the next to go.
For the past month, I have been slaving over my college essays, writing, revising, and then deleting because it’s all crap and terrible. In all honesty, for a Top 20 school, my academics are meh, my extracurriculars are bad, and my letters of recommendation aren’t very good. With that in mind, I knew I had to write a god-tier essay to even have a tiny fraction of a chance of getting in. This idea of absolute perfection was always hanging over me as I wrote, knowing that one sentence could possibly change whether or not I get into Columbia or Cornell, and that’s why it took me forever. Constantly second-guessing myself, wondering how the admissions officers will see me if I write this, or if it might be better to scrap the idea and write about something else instead.
In the end, I decided to just turn the essays in. I was stressing out too much over them. I don’t think they’re bad. They’re okay. But in a sea of 66,000 other applicants, most of them having a far more stellar record, okay is not okay. Okay is terrible.
How can you condense someone’s life into a single resume anyway? How can you judge someone like that? I’m only seventeen, yes, but I consider myself to be an entire character, someone whose seventeen years of existence can’t be truly expressed in some college application. Colleges strip your life down to your academics and if you’ll make their institutions look good. They say otherwise, but that’s really what it is.
All of this being said, you might wonder why I went through the pain of applying to Top 20 schools. Yes, there’s the “prestige” and “elite education” like I mentioned at the start, me foolishly fantasizing about having the Ivy League distinction, but that’s only a part of it.
The other part is that it will be free for me to go, unlike Ohio State or something.
But the other, bigger part is this strange feeling of escape.
Sometimes I feel as if nothing I do really matters. My life is on rails. I do my schoolwork well, but not exceptionally well. I have a creative mind and express it artistically, but not in an astonishing way. I attend class and have As, and that is good enough for Ohio State. My life is headed there. I think that I can pretty much tell how my life will go on from this point. I’ll go to Ohio State, study for four years, get some normal job, live a normal life, and then die having done nothing notable. That’s how everyone expects my life to play out, and I don’t disagree. There’s no special expectations placed upon me.
But getting into a Top 20, leaving the state to live on my own, working under a renowned institution to truly make a difference, that’s what I’m reaching for. I’d be getting out from this average, nothing life and be out there, at the center of academic pursuit, actually doing something meaningful.
Now, I know that’s a little stupid. Great people go to their state universities all the time and do great things. Whether I go to Ohio State or move to New York to attend Columbia, my life won’t be drastically different, even if the Ivy League will try to sell me on the idea that it will be.
Regardless, however, I can’t shake this feeling of sameness if I have to go to Ohio State. I’ll probably have fun there, and soon enough I’ll forget about my Top 20 dreams. But then I’d be continuing down the set rail of life, none of my decisions having mattered much, never stepping outside the contained scope of my own existence.
In truth, I’m not getting in. Reviewing all of my submitted materials, I can say that’s not just an opinion, it’s a fact. I made a terrible video profile for UChicago and wrote some boring and unremarkable essays. I didn’t spend my time in high school making a difference. Objectively speaking, my resume is unimpressive. I’m not a genius. I’m not good enough. I’m just another name amidst tens of thousands of others. I toiled away for hours on end, all for nothing, nothing but to chase this sliver of hope that didn’t even really exist.
So there you have it. The college application experience. It’s all so depressing.