Your College Essay Didn't Get You Accepted, You're Just Rich

With Ivy Day approaching, students will begin to open their decision letters from schools such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, UPenn, Cornell and Dartmouth. Whether they get accepted or denied is not merely up to their stats, their extracurriculars, SAT score, GPA, or ACT score; a large factor is their personal privilege. As the genre of "reading the college essay that got me into the Ivy League" becomes evermore popular, it's time to evaluate the role that elite private schools play in the college admissions process.

[bobbyjones]

The nepotism and elitism is insane. For example, I went to a good public high school. The valedictorian who did everything "right" was denied from Harvard. He spent summer courses there, had a professor write him a letter, etc. He showed immense interest for years, had insane stats, and obviously was first in the class. He got rejected. Another girl in his grade, who wasn't even in the top 50, mysteriously got into Harvard. Academically, she did decently well, but wasn't very impressive. A few months later most kids around the school found out that her parents donate millions to Harvard. What's annoying is that my high school has her come back to speak to students about her experience, advice, etc. It makes me super frustrated. Just wanted to let people know about personal info I have and that this privilege cannot be ignored!! Don't beat yourself up about rejections please

[ringer]

Hey guys I just got accepted into my favorite university because my essay! Now yes I know my father owns the school and I promised him to do the dishes for once if he let me in his but I promise it was just my amazing essay!!!

[inter]

As an English teacher who has his seniors do college essays - her (full) essay felt…empty and vapid. It’s screams “I’m privileged and have nothing to offer.” There’s so soul

[katrinasammons]

I go to a VERY underfunded, understaffed, poorly rated public high school that is infamously known to be dangerous (fights, gangs, etc.) The teachers try their best but we honestly have no resources because our donated funding gets pulled out when the news covers the bad things that happen at school. My one school friend is genuinely the smartest girl Ive ever met. She is naturally just genius- valedictorian, class president, insanely good sat score, and kindest person ever. She recently got accepted to Columbia and it makes me so mad to see that she has dedicated her whole life thus far to her education in hopes of achieving that goal, yet some other students can be given a free pass for being rich or more privileged while she struggles to be able to find money for the tuition after working her ass of for 18 years

[-topic]

the sentence "single digit student to teacher ratio" is just incomprehensible to my public school graduate brain

[claflin]

It’s sad because we all know wealth helps people get into college, but the wealthy students will almost always deny it and just say they worked hard. I don’t doubt the hard work, but it’s just so much easier to work hard on school when your housing, health, water, and food are never one or two paychecks away from being lost. They don’t understand the setbacks middle to lower class people face.

[mattweippert]

I took 17 AP classes in High School, had a GPA of 4.657, had an SAT of 1530, and was filled with excitement for the college admissions process. I applied to 17 schools, and most of them were reaches or near-reaches. I only got accepted into 3 of them, and have never felt more crushed in my life. The sheer weight of wasting my teenage years under constant stress to end up at my state school was depressing... until I realized I would've been more miserable around elitist ivy-league students anyway. For anyone currently experiencing self doubt after the latest college decisions, I truly believe once you get to your college of choice, you'll be glad they rejected you.

[tayonic]

My best friend in high school literally had the most insane stats. Perfect SAT, 4.4 GPA, Valedictorian, played on the football team with me as a starting linebacker and plenty of other extra circular. He got rejected from ever single IVY. Another girl from our grade, smart but did no extra cuticular stuff and generally a mean girl, got accepted to Princeton and surprise surprise, both of her parents went there!!

[VioletStone]

Hearing the selection of “AP computer science, AP Chinese, ceramics” made me realize the privilege of my public school.

[saigeferko]

There's also the factor of financial aid offers (or lack thereof) from the Ivy league schools. A girl in my graduating class got into Yale, and she absolutely deserved it, but she had to reject them because they didn't offer her ANY grants or scholarships. Even when non-legacy students get in, taking on tens of thousands of dollars in loans is just too much for a lot of them. When these colleges accept legacy students and kids from private schools, they KNOW they'll get that money.

[vivibee]

Additionally, the students who have to work part-time during high school simply don't have the same amount of time to for academic pursuits than those who don't. Don't get me wrong, many hard-working students have worked and received high scores thorough high school, but it's certainly a privilege to not have to think about earning money.

[CaulkMongler]

Hot take: college level education, particularly Ivy League type schools, are going to become outdated unless they can reform how it’s structured. We keep hearing these stories of how you just take on unnecessary debt for no reason, stress to the point of suicide and extreme mental illness, unfairness in the selection process, profit over quality, look at how these colleges responded to the pandemic. Students weren’t allowed on campus and yet look how many students received no amount of tuition reduction. the list really goes on.

[mulholandalcoholic]

You're absolutely right, Robert. 36% of Harvard's students are legacy students, i.e., someone in their family has attended Harvard. Their average acceptance rate is around 5%. The admissions process is highly subjective and nebulous, and it has led to a guild system at these universities. HBS even considers if a parent is in an upper management position or CEO in a top company, because they know that the incoming student is much likely to "succeed" in their parent's company.

Edit: The acceptance rate for Harvard for legacy students is 33%, as opposed to 6% for the others

[tangyferbreze]

at my NYC "college prep" public high school, where each graduating student was mandated to apply to at least 10 colleges, the very few POC were told by the college counsellor that many of their colleges were too much of a reach. she dissuaded them from applying to "better" schools because she thought they couldn't get in, and if they didn't go to college right out of high school, it would hurt the school's statistics.

my best friend was put in this horrible, racist situation, and she applied anyway. she got into her top "reach" school, ended up an honors student, and spoke at her graduation.

[TOFUtokkii]

This is so interesting coming from a Canadian perspective, or at least more specifically from my province (Ontario). It's sort of an unspoken understanding that private school students run the risk of Ontario's top universities actually looking at them in a WORSE light than public school students. The rumour is that schools like U of T and Waterloo will take the GPA/average of a student (we go with %) and knock it down ~5% if they're from a private school. Because private schools are funded by parents paying tuition for the most part, if their kids get less than stellar grades, they might take their kids elsewhere. Essentially, where I'm from, private schools are notorious for having a much easier curriculum than public schools to keep parents paying for tuition, so universities take that into account when looking at your overall grade average.

Great video by the way!!!

[alisalaska]

If I was an admissions counselor and a student even mentioned Twitter in the first paragraph, I wouldn’t even finish it lol. Definitely not what got her in…

[burpworm]

being compared to twitter posts is what hemingway deserves honestly

[tictacmaybeau]

It’s difficult. I remember being so excited when I was informed that I’d been accepted into Cornell. But then financials came into play and I realized there was no way in hell I could manage, and Cornell doesn’t offer merit scholarships. 59, 000 for a year is insane. Let alone four years.

So I went to my state school instead. I received a full scholarship for all four years and never had to pay a single dime for my education. Cornell certainly has better academics and provides more opportunities to make important connections in your respective field of study, but the overall price wasn’t worth it to me. Anyways, I want to go to either medical school or graduate school. Both of these paths are extremely pricey, but I’d rather go into them both debt-free instead of adding on to any pre-existing debt.

[Comrade_mommy]

My brother won the dad lottery (trust fund who married an heiress after my mom divorced him) & went to an insanely expensive boarding school. Even so his GPA was to low to get into his sch of choice, but luckily for him, his dad & gradfather went there so he got in as an legacy admission. (I def pulled the short stick with my dad since I got the drunk deadbeat dad who nvr paid child support.) But my brother is a great guy. He even just bought me and my kid a house.

[viys]

This is why I’m so glad the Australian university admission process is so simple. You only need a score and it’s guaranteed entry- no essay, no extracurriculars required etc.