College Admissions Teaches Kids About America’s Shittiness
College Admissions Teaches Kids About America’s Shittiness
Welcome to the real world, kid
Every December, high school seniors all over the country who applied early decision receive their admission decisions.
The hallways of high schools across the country are peppered with excited shrieks or disappointed sobs (gone are the days when students waited by the mailbox for a fat packet; now they refresh their phone’s email for an invitation to log into their portal). After this week, some students will know their destination for the next four years, making the last seven months of high school a mere formality, while other kids will have to wait until April to learn their fates.
All of these college-bound students will have run the grueling gauntlet that is the admissions process. Those that get in — and can pay — will get the opportunity to spend four years preparing themselves for the real world. But, in point of fact, their preparation for the real world has already begun.
Because few courses of study could provide as powerful a lesson on the shittiness of American society as the college admissions process.
Bureaucracies don’t care about you
Applying for college is a bewildering process that asks students to make difficult choices on incomplete information and do a huge amount of unnecessary labor on top of their normal schoolwork.
In addition to the standard essay, lots of colleges require “supplemental” essays, where students get the opportunity to answer a special long-form question from an individual college — sometimes several per college. Many of the schools make their questions quirky, to make them “fun,” requiring high schoolers to stay up late after finishing their regular homework trying to come up with an answer to “What advice would a wisdom tooth have?” that distinguishes them from tens of thousands of other kids, expressing their unique essence and excellence in a lighthearted but also serious and impressive way. In 500 words or less. Like I said, fun!
And don’t forget to check multiple websites at each of the schools for the very complicated rules about scholarships and financial aid!
Students who want the better chances of admission that come with early decision are forced to waive their ability to compare financial-aid offers and be ready to commit to a college by October of their senior year. Students who need a little more time or need more financial aid will enjoy a lower chance of getting into the college they want to attend.
Do the colleges — institutions that are ostensibly all about helping young people — set up the system this way because it is the right thing to do for the 17-year-olds who are applying? They do not. They do it because it is best for the adults who make admission decisions. Systems like these help the adults in the system to “manage enrollment” more effectively.
It’s not that admissions officers are monsters; I’m sure they are lovely people who think that they’re making a positive difference in the world. But the system that they’re a part of — a system that was probably constructed by people with good intentions — constrains what they can do and incentivizes them to treat kids badly.
By the end of college application season, high school students will have learned all too well that they’re going to spend much of their lives at the mercy of unnecessarily cruel systems.
Systems are easily gamed by the rich
Kids also quickly learn that, in America, wealthy people can easily manipulate the system.
College admissions are supposedly meritocratic. The “best” students get into the “best” colleges. But everybody knows this isn’t true.
There are really two admissions systems: one for the wealthy and one for everyone else. Wealthy people can game the system in all sorts of ways— they can:
Spend the money to visit lots of schools to “demonstrate interest” (which improves your chances of admission) in a way that poorer kids can’t.
Send their kids to private schools with personalized college counseling and better rates of “elite” college admissions.
Hire private college counselors to guide their students through the process and “package” them in a way that will catch the eye of admissions officers.
Get their kids an internship in a friend’s law office.
Hire test-prep tutors to get their kids better scores, and have their kids take the SAT or ACT multiple times (at $50+ a pop) to get a better “superscore.”
Enroll their kids in traveling sports teams — or, better yet, a rich-people sport like squash or rowing that gives their kids a greater chance of getting recruited and signals, “we can pay full price.”
Or just donate gobs of money, getting the family onto the “dean’s interest list.”
If you’re a middle-class or working-class kid, you won’t be able to game the system in these ways. Instead, you’ll be subject to an unfriendly system that operates as a black box. What will get you into the college you want to attend? Will you be able to afford college if you get in? Who knows? The admissions officials hold all the cards and the students — who, I feel I must keep reminding you, are 17-year-old kids — hold none.
By the end of the college admissions process, every college-bound kid in America has learned that there are two systems in America — a smooth path for rich people and a harder road for everybody else.
There are artificial limitations on the “good” stuff
Harvard and Yale could double their size, use their gargantuan endowments to let everyone attend free of charge, or both. They could easily admit many more students without diluting the “quality” of their student bodies (and, as we’ve seen, many of the markers of “quality” can be bought).
Prestigious colleges could make their impressive resources available to so many more people and do so much more good in the world. But they don’t. They prefer instead to reject 95% of the people who apply.
It’s not just the prestigious private schools. The colleges that most people attend — bigger public institutions — are also becoming less accessible. Many states have cut their funding of state colleges which, along with the administrative bloat that is taking over higher education, has caused the cost of public college to rise even faster than private-school net prices. to my thing
We could have more students going to college. We could have more students going to the colleges with the most resources. But we choose to limit the opportunities that are available to our young people. College admission teaches our young people that Americans could have nice things, but we choose not to.
Our country is governed by silly status hierarchies
So why do Harvard, Yale, and the like aggressively market themselves to students around the world, soliciting applications from thousands of 17-year-olds only to reject almost all of them? Why do they restrict access to their remarkable resources when they could admit more students? Well, because, as Scott Galloway writes,
we have embraced an exclusionary, rejectionist culture such that the beneficiaries of great public education and infrastructure can entrench their own wealth and influence and limit new entrants into the market.
Why are these colleges considered the “best?” Not because they do a lot of social good (though I’m sure they do some good). Not because they help to move lots of people up the socioeconomic ladder (though they do some of that, too). Not because they have reputations for excellent teaching or research (although I’m sure they’re pretty good at these). Not because their students are happy.
No, these colleges are considered the “best” because they reject the most children and have the most money.
What a morally bankrupt way to think about education, or anything else.
And, though rejectionist colleges deserve to be shamed for their approach to admissions, we deserve shame, too, because these colleges wouldn’t be prestigious without the help of every American. Why do we let ourselves be impressed by rejectionism and the hoarding of resources? Why are 50-year-olds judging other 50-year-olds based on where they spent time between the ages of 18 and 22?
Our fetishization of rejectionist colleges is especially ridiculous given the fact that students’ success in life is far more correlated to their habits and tendencies than the brand on the diploma (i.e., a kid smart and accomplished enough to get into Harvard will probably do just as well in life if they go to Penn State).
Not only are these status hierarchies unfair, they’re bullshit.
So, kids, what have you learned by the time you send that hefty deposit to the college of your choice? You’re going to spend your life being squashed by cruel systems. We live in a country with different rules and opportunities for the rich. We could have a more abundant society but choose not to. And we have deeply flawed hierarchies of prestige.
Even before they set foot in their dorm room, the college admissions process will have taught kids an awful lot about the shittiness of American society.