College admissions are supposed to be a fair process through which students apply to universities, to be evaluated and either admitted or denied. Unfortunately, that is far from the truth. From my experience, you could join every extracurricular, play multiple sports, and take countless accelerated and AP classes, yet your classmate who cheats on every test will get into the school you wanted to. The standards are inconsistent because things like alumni status, test scores, and monetary status are rewarded over hard work.
One major flaw in college admissions is the preference for legacy students. Countless people have an ongoing family line at a prestigious college. Regardless of how fair admissions claim to be, they prioritize those traditions and even more so when a family has donated to the school. This unspoken advantage completely disregards the merit of other students trying to earn a spot at the same university. While it may be important for colleges to uphold a reputation and keep families coming back, a person’s family is completely out of their control and this undermines the validity of who is chosen over who.
Another thing that I personally struggled with a lot was test scores. The ACT and SAT are known for being extremely tasking tests, especially on top of hard classes and commitments other than school. Plenty of students are beyond intelligent but just do not excel when it comes to standardized testing. Unfortunately for them, most colleges seem to use that as a major deciding factor. When my decisions started coming back and I was comparing them to my friends, I began to question if they even read my college essay or if they looked at the extracurriculars I was a part of. From my point of view, it was solely numbers based for many big schools. Those who can invest the money and time that it takes to get a great score on either the ACT or SAT have the upper hand no matter what. Many colleges have websites to tell you your chances of getting in and no wonder the first thing that pops up is their average ACT score for admitted students. I don’t even want to start on the grade inflation nowadays with CCP classes, AP, Accel, and honors.
The one thing I just can’t seem to wrap my head around is all the forms to be filled out about monetary status. Your assets, parents income, and employment status should have nothing to do with the education you can receive in the future. There are all sorts of biases and prejudices intertwined with that aspect of college admissions and it is so unfair for those who have been unlucky in the past, but want to be great in the future.
When all is said and done, nothing can truly be done about any of this. The grade inflation will continue to get worse, kids will be rejected from their dream schools, and the work we put in now will never seem to meet all of the standards. All congratulations to everyone that had college admissions work out in their favor, and I feel for those that didn’t. We are all smart and have great potential, so do not let the system stop you from being great.