I’m a high schooler who’s been on a rollercoaster ride of failure and success. From the start of junior year, I’d knew it would be impossible to get into schools like the Ivy League. I can’t be one to judge on how application processes for colleges are filled with holes with the position I’m in. From reading this final chapter (Chapter 12) on the part about improving acceptance processes, it makes me wonder, are all students with their high GPA and SAT scores really better for the spot in the college they apply to, rather than the one who did a little worse in school? What if the person who got rejected could have ended doing much better than the one who got accepted?
Like a lot of schools, we’re all just different products created from primary and secondary schools and we are looked at by our serial number. You scan us all like grocery items and compare which one of us is better in price, rather than quality. More expensive cereal means better valued cereal? You’d rather do that then give the same cheaper cereal a try. Maybe it has better taste and is of better quality. We are looked on the outside rather than the inside. Just like judging a book by its cover, grades are looked at the same way.
I’m not one to judge though, remember that my GPA is not that great as the others who apply to Ivy League. William Deresiewicz is a little right in saying that colleges should be more focused on their students rather than their own prestige. For example, in higher education colleges, students aren’t treated with much priority as you may think.
“Professors don’t care because they have no incentive to care. They want to do their research; and they don’t want to have to think about anything else. The courses offered, Lewis says, do not bear any necessary relation to what students want or need to know.” (63)
The actual education should come first for us. Most of us come with our brains growling from the hunger we have for knowledge. How a school teaches their students to become better learners is what is key in education. Many of us can get mistaken into going into particular colleges because we’re fooled. We search online and see that a particular college you see is high ranked yet in all honesty, its a trap you’re falling for once you apply.
“U.S. News rank : schools : SAT score : students. Each is dubious as a measure of academic excellence and meaningless as a standard of self-worth…’Selectivity’ is a factor in the rankings, so colleges aggressively recruit more applicants, even though they know a lot of them have no chance of admission.”(68)
Some colleges act as the devil by reeling you in with a hook(marketing campaign) and just throw you back out. You get pretty talked into wanting to apply to a college, when in reality they’re abusing your mind into thinking they actually want you. No, apparently they don’t buddy. They have to maintain that rank somehow, and its gotta be by reeling in students with mediocre grades like me. All these kinds of naive students apply by the thousands and only a few are selected. This is done to just show that, “Hey, I’m a selective school, and you should be applying to me. Look at all the people that have applied, since I’m such a great school.”
Then, yes, the ones with the highest grades and scores of all are accepted. Honestly, we’re all just numbers to a lot of schools. Its almost like a game, because in order to keep a rank, colleges have to play the cards right by choosing the highest numbers they see and trash the rest. No values are put into consideration, so its only a mystery if A+ student #349 is worth accepting then B+ student #212.