Options
To (All) the Colleges that rejected me
xmacro
Posts: 3,402 ✭
From an Op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. This girl has a future in writing for sure. Biting, and uncannily accurate; having gone through the admissions process for college and post-grad school, I can say this is all 100% accurate
Like me, millions of high-school seniors with sour grapes are asking themselves this week how they failed to get into the colleges of their dreams. It's simple: For years, theywewere lied to.
Colleges tell you, "Just be yourself." That is great advice, as long as yourself has nine extracurriculars, six leadership positions, three varsity sports, killer SAT scores and two moms. Then by all means, be yourself! If you work at a local pizza shop and are the slowest person on the cross-country team, consider taking your business elsewhere.
What could I have done differently over the past years?
For starters, had I known two years ago what I know now, I would have gladly worn a headdress to school. Show me to any closet, and I would've happily come out of it. "Diversity!" I offer about as much diversity as a saltine cracker. If it were up to me, I would've been any of the diversities: Navajo, Pacific Islander, anything. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, I salute you and your 1/32 Cherokee heritage.
I also probably should have started a fake charity. Providing veterinary services for homeless people's pets. Collecting donations for the underprivileged chimpanzees of the Congo. Raising awareness for Chapped-Lips-in-the-Winter Syndrome. Fun-runs, dance-a-thons, bake salesas long as you're using someone else's misfortunes to try to propel yourself into the Ivy League, you're golden.
Having a tiger mom helps, too. As the youngest of four daughters, I noticed long ago that my parents gave up on parenting me. It has been great in certain ways: Instead of "Be home by 11," it's "Don't wake us up when you come through the door, we're trying to sleep." But my parents also left me with a dearth of hobbies that make admissions committees salivate. I've never sat down at a piano, never plucked a violin. Karate lasted about a week and the swim team didn't last past the first lap. Why couldn't Amy Chua have adopted me as one of her cubs?
Then there was summer camp. I should've done what I knew was bestgo to Africa, scoop up some suffering child, take a few pictures, and write my essays about how spending that afternoon with Kinto changed my life. Because everyone knows that if you don't have anything difficult going on in your own life, you should just hop on a plane so you're able to talk about what other people have to deal with.
Or at least hop to an internship. Get a precocious-sounding title to put on your resume. "Assistant Director of Mail Services." "Chairwoman of Coffee Logistics." I could have been a gopher in the office of someone I was related to. Work experience!
To those kids who by age 14 got their doctorate, cured a disease, or discovered a guilt-free brownie recipe: My parents make me watch your "60 Minutes" segments, and they've clipped your newspaper articles for me to read before bed. You make us mere mortals look bad. (Also, I am desperately jealous and willing to pay a lot to learn your secrets.)
To those claiming that I am bitteryou bet I am! An underachieving selfish teenager making excuses for her own failures? That too! To those of you disgusted by this, shocked that I take for granted the wonderful gifts I have been afforded, I say shhhh"The Real Housewives" is on.
Ms. Weiss is a senior at Taylor Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh.
0
Comments
Is the problem the kids, or the politically correct admissions officers who expect these HS grads to have a resume that would put a 50 yr old CEO of a non-profit to shame?
What she did fail to mention was... you get out of an education what you put in. I consider my dad to be a success and he attended a tiny state school at night for 10 yrs to get a bach, and moved on to a banking masters at stonier. It doesnt take an "ivy league" school to get a good degree and come out prepared. I did attend the school of my dreams, Marshall U in WV! And I am thrilled to go to UK for my Ph.D. id take on a harvard grad anyday
if high schoolers need to hear anything, it's this: work hard, be persistent, and take opportunites when they come. Being denied at vanderbilt isnt the end!
Kids need to realize though, you do not have to jump through those kind of hoops to be successful. Certainly it's a great aspiration to have to attend a top school, but will you come out better prepared ?? Depends. Will you have opportunities there that you wouldnt have at a lesser known school? Absolutely. But, you can do well anywhere if you work and keep your head up looking for ways to be successful in what you want.
"The Pittsburgh high school senior has a 4.5 GPA, scored 2120 on her SATs and worked as a page in the U.S. Senate."
Its' not like she was just an average student. She excelled at school. She just didn't have the diversity badge.
link
The sad thing is... even if she is accepted to many schools in PA, colleges are insanely expensive there, even for bright students who receive scholarships.
I'm more inclined to pin the blame for this on college admissions officers; they take increasingly fluffed resumes as standard, and if you don't have parents who can foot the bill for a trip to Africa or a lawyer friend to set up a charity for homeless peoples pets, then you're behind the curve. It's less and less about actual merit or tenacity and more about "How much have you padded your resume" or how "diverse" you are in regards to your skin color or ethnicity. Heaven forbid they take intellectual diversity into account; the circumstances of your birth (race/ethincity) and parentage (gay/straight parents) are all that really matter.
EDIT: And IIRC, Harvard only requires a "B" average to apply; at least it did when I was applying for post-grad school.
I think it is obscene at how colleges are **** over people. I mean it shouldn't cost a fortune for a person to be educated. Hell it should be FREE! A educated populace is needed to build a strong country and we are surely lacking in it. This all stems from many issues our country faces which I'm sure a lot of you would disagree with me on (hell we have had these debates) but at the core the **** for money has really killed our country. College use to be free or at least cheap enough so that one could work part time and pay for it. That time has past and student loans are the new bubble. Sooner or later it will burst and we will once again be at cross roads.
There have been many great comments already about how college does not make or break you. I really feel that too many politicians in the past have used "college education" as an easy platform for them to stand on and that too many people have fell into this idea that everyone needs to attend college. For the average citizen that I run into who is having trouble figuring it out, I recommend trade schools to them all the time. Can't figure out what you want to do, pick up a trade in 1.5 years or less and go to work. Get out in the real world, make some money, and you'll figure it out pretty quick. Much faster than living the, very often but not always, sheltered life of a high school or college student.
All-in-all, I was pretty impressed by the writer's whit. I enjoyed reading it just as much as I disagreed with almost all of it. She would like to appear intelligent, much more intelligent than the average college official, but the fact that she hasn't figured out that she doesn't really need to attend one of these schools lets me know that she really doesn't have it all figured out.
I think the obsession with getting into a "wow" school really comes from insecurity. You either don't what you're doing yet, or lack confidence, and so you feel you need that amazing name to get you the job. I know my stuff now. I'm almost done, and ready to transfer, and there's no way I am going to put my family in debt for 30 years so I can say I graduated from some "wow" school. I want to buy a house, not pay off loans when I get a job.