If you went up to any typical student on campus today and asked them what their biggest worry for their future is, chances are that they’ll say college. And who’s to blame them? Time after time, students are told that education is one of the most powerful tools you can have to help pave your future, and while it might be true, hearing about it so much turns college into a “make-it or break-it” deal. Nowadays, from nearly every conversation I’ve had concerning colleges, I get an impression that ending up in an institution that’s not nationally-recognized for prestige and academics is considered a failure, rather than an opportunity to get into higher education and to build a career out of it. Following this notion, students begin to think of college admissions less as a means for schools to take a look into the real you, but they begin to treat it as a test to see if they can become what a university might want them to be.
As they begin to mold their life to best suit what they hear schools might want, they believe that every move they make academically or in their extracurriculars will be critiqued piece by piece by colleges to decide whether to let them onto their campus, or slam the doors shut and cut them off from a pathway into future careers. With this in mind, students do their best to observe their lives through the eyes of an admissions officer, questioning whether how they present themselves would make them stand out amongst thousands of other applicants. Due to this pressure, activities that are meant for exploration and fun turn into boosters on a resume while genuine interests are pushed aside out of fear that they don’t look good enough for college, ultimately, shaping students into manufactured versions of themselves.
To start, because of the constant pressure students feel to get into top colleges and universities, they often warp the actions they take or how they act solely to try to construct a “strong” application, with disregard for their true feelings. Time and time again, I’ve had friends complain to me about activities that they do outside of the classroom. A few years ago, when I was picking up trash around Lake Mead in Nevada in boy scouts, a friend of mine complained, “This makes nearly no sense, we’re breaking our backs to help a miniscule amount.”
I replied, “If you truly believe that, why do you do it?”
“To build up my resume for college.” He answered with an honest and neutral tone.
It’s in conversations like these that I realize that the students around me don’t do what they do because it’s what their heart says, and in a study by the SheKnows Teen Council, this pattern is found to be persistent among many students. Surveying many teens between the ages of 16-18, it was found that nearly 45% of teens admitted that they do some activities for the sole purpose of putting them in college applications. This emphasizes that in reality, teens often feel forced to put on a show for universities and colleges, who would decide whether their choreography was an acceptable performance or if it wasn’t a “compelling” act. Either way, people who are true to themselves and really feel what they display shine brighter than the individuals in which their passions are fake and “acted out,” directly translating to the idea that a genuine and authentic applicant who’s true to themself is better than one who contrives who they are.
Even then, people might be inclined to think that colleges push students to be ambitious and to strive for more in what they do, but in truth, that’s not the case. In a study mentioned by Writer Derek Newton, admissions rates drop rapidly as students’ extracurriculars exceed four, with students with four having a 30% acceptance rate at an unnamed university, and students with six dropping down to 7%, less than 25% of the original four number. As students begin to hear about intimidating statistics such as this, they begin to question if they do too much and begin to cut down their extracurriculars. Most of the time, students go as far as to not pursue passions, concerned that they might become less defined applicants. In all, this directly kills and crushes curiosity and takes away from what students could become.
In the end, college admissions are actually meant to identify students who will contribute to the university community, yet the process ironically discourages the very qualities that make people interesting in the first place. When students are taught to view every quality, achievement, and activity of theirs in the eyes of an admissions officer, they stop asking themselves, “What do I actually wanna do?” and begin to ask, “What would look best?” While students can’t control whether their qualities are “college-worthy,” they can be aware that college admissions indirectly push them to try to be “college-worthy,” incurious, and overall artificial versions of themselves.
