The Problem With Applying to College

The admissions game went from colleges competing for students to students competing for colleges.

I dedicated the entirety of high school to getting into a "good college." And then I got to my good school, and hated most of my time there because I realized I never liked anything that I did or learned in high school. I now bake cookies for a living. Be a curious person, and you'll enjoy your life so much more no matter what freaking school you go to.

As a dutch person, I was shocked to learn that people were doing the most to barely get accepted into college 😭

Nowadays, Universities/Colleges/Conservatories practically want students who are almost PROFESSIONALS in their field of studies. They are ridiculous. You are supposed to go to college to learn. The conservatories they say that they want student with potential, but that is absolutely not truth! They only want to accept Prodigies who spend 6hrs/day playing their instrument. That is not what is supposed to be.

Another thing is the abhorrent mental health issues facing kids fighting for top colleges and kids who, in their eyes, "failed". I'm a freshman at a relatively prestigious public school with very prestigious engineering programs, and many of the kids I know are downright depressed because they did not get into better schools. My school is very popular among "Ivy rejects", so a lot of the student body thinks they deserve better and is very demotivated. I know a kid that's depressed because he got rejected from Berkeley, even though for his major our school is just one ranking lower on US News (not that that matters, but that seems to be the metric everyone uses to judge). It doesn't stop there, when I go home for break, my friends at my home state's state school tell me that they think their career is over.

Something that I wished you had touched on was the romanticization of the “college experience”. Kids are pressured to not stay home for college so they can get the whole “college experience”. That being sharing a cardboard box with 2 other kids for a year or 2, getting shitfaced on the weekends, and making life long friends. Kids are led to believe they will be social outcast and not fit in being a commuters so they are fed a lie they need to go away for college to have any enjoyment out of it. Some schools even fully market their college by the good student life and not even the academics such as High Point University in NC. High schoolers like myself are stressed that if we stay home we will miss out on so much enjoyment and fun that the “college experience” is. Yet most college kids don’t even have the time to enjoy the “college experience” because they forget they’re actually there to get an education and are bogged down with other responsibilities likes sports or work if they have those.

I went to an Ivy League. I got into every school I applied to. Wanna know what I did to get there? I had a 3.9 gpa, scored a 35 on the ACT, took 9 APs, earning a 4+ on all of them, founded several organizations and clubs including the first MSF club in the nation, was a part of my school’s honor choir and the state choir, I spoke 4 languages fluently, literally ran a national campaign lowering the price of the pneumonia vaccine, was nominated as a student of the year for a national organization, won a presidential service award, did medical research at Johns Hopkins school of medicine, published a paper on the anthropological evolution of racism, served as a camp counselor for an overnight camp, and honestly I can go on and on. I did A LOT of stuff to get there. And all the while I served also as my mom’s caretaker when she was battling cancer. And yet when I got in, there were people who felt I didn’t deserve it (I’m Indian American, no legacy, no nothing) all cause a rich legacy from my school was rejected. The fact is what I did as a student is the expectation if you want to go to an Ivy League as a non legacy. You need to be a topper in every single way, having earned a ton of honors and accolades. If you don’t do all this… you won’t get any consideration. I learned that when I worked with admissions at Cornell and saw how non legacies especially were treated. You make a mistake: you are screwed. And yes. Asians you’re kinda screwed. I hate saying that but honestly the way they spoke about Asian kids is… bad. But it’s worse for how they talked about LatinX and African American applicants. They’d force them into a summer program called PSP and constantly infer black and Hispanic students weren’t as smart: basically DONT BE A MINORITY :/. Because they don’t care about ANY OF US. And unsurprisingly I had an awful time at college. Because when you pack every superstar into one place it’s a bloodbath of hell. Over competitive and toxic culture to the point people would just leave and turn to drugs. And an admin that saw all of us as replaceable. Go to your local state school. Save your money, enjoy the college experience, and live your life

I almost committed suicide when I was 18 and college selection pressure was the leading cause of it. I am the eldest son in an Asian-mother household and my white father played extremely hard into the academic exceptionalism above all in my childhood. Thankfully I made good friends and still participated in things I loved, and that saved my life. My parents still don’t know this because it’d make them angry. They’d call me lazy and all this other shit. I ended up getting into a wonderful dresam private school, but the damage was done. I failed my first year of college due to the fallout of my relationship with academics and my lack of care for the system, and hatred for my family who told me I’d still fail. Yes, they told me I was guaranteed to fail. So I failed out of hatred for them. Now I’m 21 and my life has changed significantly because I’m not in college. Almost everyone else I know is in college and if I just didn’t care so much about the little things and wasn’t told I my value was tied to letters on a card I’d be in a much better place. Yeah, my life is ok now but I’d much rather not be 3 years behind the cultural norm (even if I hate the cultural norm). It’s a hard pill to swallow. Fuck college, fuck College Board, fuck parents who pressure their kids to pursue college, fuck degrees. Do what you love.

When people says a school is "Prestigious", I say Prestige comes from a French word meaning image and illusion.

17:17 THANK YOU OMHG. My mom, who has a rare disease, had a major surgery which results in months of bedridden recovery and then her body rejected the hardware resulting in more surgery and need for longer recovery!?! During the same time my father was diagnosed with early onset alz! Once I confided in my friend that I was a youth caregiver and the reality of it. (The reality of basically being a nurse and the emotional toll it had/has me and my whole family!!) and they said “oh well that will look good on your college applications”. They weren’t the only one who said so- I was told to write about my experience as a yc by teachers and college counselor. I was never asked it if I wanted to. No one should be pushed to tell there story of hardship on there college application if they don’t want to. There is so much more to the life I had lived that far. There is so much more that defines a person than the hardships they went through.

As a student at Cornell (who despised that subreddit, didn't do the SAT, and told I "shouldnt've gotten in" on a similar subreddit) it's amazing to me just how much their fetish gets hyper focused on just HYPSM (similar point made around 12 mins in). A lot of them will flat out dismiss "bad ivies" or "useless majors" and think that there's 0 purpose to go to a high ranked college if you aren't doing a lucrative major at the best program possible (Look at how A2C only ever brings up Cornell when talking about CS). I've been told i was an affirmative action admit, that I only got in for doing a niche major, and that I should "give up my spot to someone more deserving". So unbelievably toxic

Coming from a high school senior, this is easily one of the best video essays I've ever seen. As someone who went on the journey from dreaming about attending ivies to being committed now to a middle-of-the-road college, I agree with every point that's been made here. Additionally, I didn't end up applying to any ivies because I was horrified by the thought of having 4 more years of extreme stress after already going through that same thing in high school. People tend to perform better whenever they are calm and comfortable and I believe that top schools strip both of those feelings away in their clasrooms.

I was rejected from my Dream school, UChicago not too long ago, and ever since then I’ve felt really bad about myself. My grades freshman year were bad (covid), but honestly I thought I had a chance with a 35 ACT and an incredible essay. The essay was about me learning about complex analysis on my own because I was so enthralled by its elegance. My college counselors and English teachers said that my essay was one of the most impressive they had read, capturing my curiosity and ambition in a way that they thought was very good. My U Chicago essay itself was also one of the most unique they had seen, it had a different approach and wasn’t necessarily just an essay, I put more on that page than just words. Yet, I was rejected. Watching this video made me realize that I’m not a failure because I didn’t get in. If I was capable of learning about hard field of mathematics on my own, then I don’t need UChicago to learn, I just need passion and ambition. Thank you.

as someone who submitted their final college app a few days ago, this is so so real and so so depressing. glad to finally have it captured on tape.

I go to a "top 10" school (it's showed up in this video a couple times actually lol), and my honest take is high schoolers idolize "good schools" too much because it's all they know. Prestige gives you bragging rights to your friends, but that's about it Here are some things to note when applying to college that DONT involve academics/prestige: 1. *Affordability*. As an unemployed high school student, $70k tuition doesn't seem terrible, or it will at least pay off in the end. No it doesn't 😭 For reference, the average salary (generalizing a lot) in the US is $60k-80k. You could spend every single cent of your salary just towards loans, and it would still take 4-5 years to pay off. 2. Gender/race ratios. If you're a women in STEM, would you be okay attending a school where you're only one of 3 girls in a class of 50 people? Same for if you're a minority 3. Student population. Additionally, number of students in your major/department. Going to a small school will allow you to know everyone, while being in a large school allows you to be more anonymous. Both have their pros and cons 4. Location. Do you want to be in a more urban setting, or are you fine with a small college town? How's transportation? College will be an opportunity to gauge where you'd like to live long-term Good luck with applications y'all 🫡

As someone who was more focused on enjoying highschool life than preparing for university, I can proudly tell you that I landed decent engineering / IT jobs while being a student, even though I was not attending a prestigious university nor did I have outstanding exam results (heck, I failed so many lectures in the first three semesters that I've had to prolong my bachelor's degree from 3 to 4.5 years). But this is only possible because the country I live in does not have exorbitant college fees, nor anything resembling a SAT test, and you can survive on minimum wage jobs while being a student (emphasis on survive). Students in my class are aged between 18 - 39 btw, so some of them wanted a career change and went to university for that. So yeah, the US system is completely rigged.

I begun taking AP classes in my sophomore year. Working on grades and extracirriculars slowly consumed my free time, and I had to shove aside the pursuit of my own personal desires like learning music production. Im a senior now and I often ponder how much I could have learnt and created had I not sacrificed my life for "the GPA game."

I get your anger at rich kids using "fake" sports to get into ivy leagues, but those are all olympic sports, and the ivy league schools do have a legitimate reason to want them. Olympic medals bring even more prestige to the school

God, I really hope this video hits the algorithm because this is so good. I'm a junior, used to put a crazy amount of pressure on myself to get into a high-ranked college but progressively opened my eyes to how absurd it all really is. Really great video, keep it up!!

The sport of rowing is actually way more difficult than you'd imagine. You can learn to row within a day or two but perfecting form takes years and the amount of conditioning you need to be elite is staggering. Its a pretty expensive sport like you said but my mother could afford it despite living under the poverty line. I would practice 2 hours every day after school and it took almost 3 years to become competitive. I graduated in the top seat of the top boat and still believe joining that team was the best decision of my life, I wish more people had access to high school teams or more affordable clubs.