Growing up in an immigrant family, I was painfully aware of the sacrifices my parents made for me to be educated in the United States. Their love and support were boundless, embodied by their long hours of work and their emphasis on education from an early age.
One day, I remember taking it upon myself to try to give them the best of everything by chasing after the golden ticket to success: getting into an elite college. It had been emphasized to me that those schools had the best resources, and if I wanted to become a successful scientist, this was seemingly the only way.
The benefits of an Ivy-plus education were drilled into my head from early childhood. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and actress Natalie Portman went to Harvard. Sal Khan (founder of Khan Academy) went to MIT.
And the colleges referenced in popular media and literature are always the hardest to get into: In the popular television show The Summer I Turned Pretty, Conrad, one of the main love interests and heartthrobs, transfers from Brown to Stanford. Many of Ali Hazelwood’s bestseller books are centered around premier institutions like Stanford and MIT. And I haven’t even begun to mention the arbitrary U.S. News Rankings.
In addition, teen social media feeds are filled with reels like “Do these five things if you want to get into Harvard” and “You’ll never believe where this INSANE applicant got accepted to college!”
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However, elite colleges aren’t a guaranteed means to success, and the immeasurable value we are placing on them sends harmful and dangerous messages to today’s youth.
From eighth grade on, I participated in activities that I loved and, of course, made me stand out. I even wound up on the news. College admission was always on my mind. I put everything I had into getting into one of the most prestigious colleges in the U.S.
This year, my senior year in high school, changed things. The Supreme Court’s ruling striking down affirmative action and changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) process induced an atmosphere of confusion and tension. Still, I applied to schools like Columbia and the California Institute of Technology.
My classmates and I vehemently expressed our frustrations with the FAFSA delays; some had to postpone making college commitments (early action) until they were sure that going to their school of choice wouldn’t place them under financial stress. Though we were encouraged to seek out help in school, we only had one counselor dedicated to helping a class of almost 800 seniors with their FAFSA and college application concerns.
For a family with no experience with American college admissions, the best free advice I could find was on platforms like Reddit, College Confidential and Instagram. When news hit that FAFSA had a calculation error, our physics group chat went wild.
The FAFSA errors and delays had the power to impact where we would spend ournext four years. And, from youth, we were taught that these four years had the sole power to determine the rest of our lives. I was lucky to have supportive friends and family and the luxury of a computer and internet at home. But without thousands to spend on expert advice and services, many of my classmates and I were often left in the dark.
Some of my friends expressed having no clue how to fill out the FAFSA with its tricky wording. My dad and I watched a step-by-step YouTube video and an Instagram reel I saved, “What NOT to do on the FAFSA,” to help us figure out how to fill it out.
As the months passed, rejections and waitlists hit me hard. I learned that college admission is not a meritocracy. On a popular Reddit community, I found posts of people lamenting their broken futures now that their Ivy dreams had been crushed.
I heard the stories of kids who stopped talking with friends and family and whose perceptions of themselves changed after getting rejection letters from elite schools. I felt the same. After six rejections, I wondered if I was good enough to pursue astrophysics, the subject I want to study in college.
My ambitious dreams felt foolish. After years of effort, I was planning to stay in my home state of Texas to attend UT Austin.
Just like that, some people changed their attitude toward me even though, in reality, I was the same girl. I had just been overwhelmed by an increasingly stressful and competitive process.
A person who goes to a state school is no less capable of success than a person who goes to Harvard. I’m tired of the college tutors, essay-writing companies and social media creators who are making some teenagers think otherwise.
I got a call from one of my dream schools, the University of Chicago. I had been accepted off the waitlist, but it seemed likely that I wouldn’t be able to attend because of the cost.
Ultimately, with the help of financial aid, I’ll head there this fall.
We are forced to believe that only the very top colleges matter. When high schoolers are immersed in that mindset, it’s no wonder some feel like their world is ending if they can’t get in.
There is so much that goes into the college admissions process that we can’t control, but we can change the narrative of the culture surrounding it. We can start by providing free support to families who need it.
Siddhi Raut is graduating from Ronald Reagan High School in San Antonio, Texas, and she will be a freshman at the University of Chicago this fall.
This story about elite college applications was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.
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Growing up in an immigrant family, I was painfully aware of the sacrifices my parents made for me to be educated in the United States. Their love and support were boundless, embodied by their long hours of work and their emphasis on education from an early age. One day, I remember taking it upon myself
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