And it can be yours for just four yearly payments of $50,000!
The idea that admission to the most selective colleges and universities is based on merit presumes that a fast track to comfort, status and wealth doesn't exist. But that's just an illusion. |
 | | Albert Tercero |
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By Anna Marks Editorial Assistant, Opinion |
Each spring, I find myself temporarily entranced by videos of high school seniors opening their college admissions letters. Sometimes, their faces crumple in rejection. Other times, they jump up from behind their laptops to cheer or cry or hug their families, reveling in a dream realized. |
For students who post these videos, getting into — or getting rejected from — the right college can feel like the ultimate judgment on their entire life. They're the ones who have been striving for perfect grades in the most challenging classes. They've studied late into the night for standardized tests that are supposed to quantify their potential. And they've poured their hearts out into admissions essays aimed at tugging the heartstrings of admissions officers they've never met. |
Given the stakes, students often presume that the colleges of their dreams award only the best, most deserving students with admission. But in her essay today for Times Opinion, Sophie Callcott, now a junior at Stanford, argues that the admissions process can be a pay-to-win game that favors those who know how to play. |
I got to know Sophie after a colleague passed along a series of sharp, critical essays that she wrote about college admissions for her student newspaper. When we spoke, I was surprised to hear that she felt that her college application process began with another application — in eighth grade, when she sought admission to an elite private school. |
Getting into the right high school, she told me, was even more important than getting into the right college; if her family could afford four years at one of the best private schools in the country — many of which cost as much as college itself — it would give her an edge for the rest of her life. |
Sophie says that elite private schools are "nationally ranked overachiever factories designed to churn out catnip for college admission offices." Having benefited from this system herself, she reveals the ways that it can perpetuate cycles of privilege — and why it remains so difficult to disrupt. "If you had the financial resources," she asks, "would you deny your kids the education and opportunities that private high schools can give them?" |
| READ SOPHIE'S FULL ESSAY HERE | | |
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