One thing that irks me about the portrayal in college in fiction is that it's EXACTLY the same as high school, complete with nerds being bullied by jocks, the focus on relationship drama, and how nobody seems to be overally focused on their academics, instead spending more time on extracurriculars. (Pitch Perfect, I'm talking about you!)
Pitch Perfect was based on the college I used to go to (Belmont University). It was just like that there. Highschool 2.0. That’s why I left to go to a public state school, so much better.
It's crazy how in most Netflix Teen movies, most notably "The Kissing Booth", its leads are somehow able to get into prestigious universities, despite not having demonstrated any academic smarts. They make it look insanely easy.
That was my first thought too when i saw this video. I personally think its partially because of recognizability, especially internationally. As a european who IS interested in american colleges, i know what UC Irvine is, but 99% of people won’t know that.
You are not wrong but I mean I feel like rarely do we see kids struggle with thier academics but oddly enough that is how it felt like in high school when I went it's really weird like when I went to high school I rarely saw kids get straight A's in class and if they did they were a bit of the expectations at least that's how I felt
Same with Peter Kavinsky honestly - he's an incredibly good lacrosse player in the movies and books, to the point that the school gets more hyped for his team than they do for like... football or soccer. He gets scouted, and if he has decent grades, he probably would get into Stanford. That's how it works for a lot of student-athletes. What I don't buy is him having time to do all these cutesy dates with Lara Jean and get into all sorts of drama. The athletes I know in high school who wanted to go D1 (one of whom is now committing to Yale) are either doing homework, at the gym, or at practice. That's it. They date people on the opposite-sex team, if they have time to date at all.
One thing that always irked me about To All the Boys I Loved Before is that the movie changed what colleges LJ and Peter go to from the books! In the books Peter gets into UVA (still a CRAZY competitive school but it's no Stanford) and Lara Jean goes to UNC. I always loved that about the books because it felt more realistic and made the characters feel less unrelatable :( When they changed it to NYU and Stanford in the last movie I was so sad, especially because by then I was out of high school and KNEW how unattainable those schools are.
Yes that annoyed me too! I live in NC and loved seeing those colleges in the series and hate that they had to change it to even harder to get into schools for the movies!
As someone who busted my ass my entire life, got into MIT, couldn't afford it and ended up going to a school most people don't know... these tv shows and movies drive me absolutely crazy. LIke seriously you're biggest struggle is deciding if you want to go to Stanford to be close to your bf or Harvard because its your dream school? Go to hell honestly
Our school district made us start researching colleges in THIRD GRADE. Like sit in front of a computer and google college websites to decide which one we wanted to go to. Pretty sure we did something similar every single year after that…insanity. It definitely contributed to my anxiety, and I didn’t even recognize it until I was a sophomore or junior into college. There’s NO reason to make little kids research colleges or seriously look that far into the future….
I’ve been saying this for YEARS after watching To All The Boys, The Kissing Booth, and TSITP!! Like no way Conrad who ditched his finals got into an even better college… it just bothers me so much as someone who did really well academically and still got rejected from lots of schools to see Ivy League/Ivy adjacent schools being set as the standard in every piece of teen media! And in no world is NYU/UC Berkeley someone’s safety school ffs
TSITP really bothered me on this issue. That one guy is all moping and depressed that he has to settle for Brown, when he really rather be at Stanford. Literally the show wants me to think he's short changed for being at a slightly less well regarded incredibly elite school. No.
It is so confusing to me why movies and tv only show characters going to literally crazy schools, even the most average individuals. as a kid i literally thought that was like the only option for schools. I am now 22 and PLEASE if you live in California - go to a community college first. It is COMPLETELY free for california residents for two years as long as you’re enrolled full time. i went to a community college then transferred to a cal state and i have NO debt, i have a very good savings account for my age, and i got my bachelors in three and a half years. Do not go into insane debt for a degree when you can literally do it for less than $10k.
I always romanticized going to college but now that i have 1 final year in highschool, i feel SCARED like, will it actually be a good experience? Will i actually fit in? I have NO idea..
Colleges are a lot more designed for you to roll with a crowd. The people in the same major as you, clubs. College is MUCH bigger than highschool you simply will not encounter so many highschool archetypes (jocks, cheerleaders, brainiacs) especially if you’re not partaking in activities where you would meet such people
You'll be fine. I still have mates from Uni that I hang out with to this day. The hard part is after you get out of college. When you start working full time, and so do your friends. So you can't hang out like you used to. That bit stings.
College is worth the romanticization, it’s so much better than high school because if you don’t fit in, you find another crowd and you WILL find your crowd. Don’t be scared to put yourself out there and try new things, because everyone wants to have friends just as much as you!!!
Just listen to yourself. I wound up in a school that was not a good fit for me, and a major that wasn't quite right because I wasn't honest with myself, and defaulted to what seemed safe. I still had some good experiences, but I know college would have been way more rewarding if I'd gone after what I really wanted.
I was watching Never Have I Ever and was when I saw the hyperfixation on Ivys. Spoilersfor anyone who han't finished the series- I was glad to see some characters NOT go to Ivy League school because it made it a little bit more real. It's still crazy that three people from the same school got into an Ivy at all but I liked that with Devi her mom yelled about how stupid it was that she only applied to Ivy and how the show was aware of how stupid it was for her to have no backups because she gets completely denied. It's a reality most of these shows don't acknowledge that even if you're the best, being the best isn't nothing when you're competing with thousands or hundreds of thousands of the best. She gets into Princeton eventually but it's definetely treated like a big deal also because gurl was literally hanging on by a thread. 😭
Three people from a large cali high school isn’t rare at all. I wnat to a generic suburban high school outside of Philly and in my grad class we had three go to Princeton and two to upen
Thank you for covering this! I just finished my apps, and the MOST COMMON THING I get from adults (even family friends who are professors!!) is they pressure me to apply to ivy leagues, just because I do well with academics. They think because I’ve worked hard, and I am a legacy, that “Im guaranteed admission”???? No individual is entitled to any one school! Success does not equal giving hundreds of thousands of dollars away to institutions! My mom went to Cornell, and her anxiety began there. She hated it and tried to transfer out twice. There are hundreds if not thousands of videos on youtube of kids who feel worthless after attending these schools. And yet, no matter the hierarchal, economic, and systemic issues that occur at these schools, they’re still portrayed as unicorns and rainbows in media and everywhere!!! So sad. Abolish “prestige”!!!!
I went to a small rural college that honestly wasn't even that academically rigorous. And in my time there I was still the most anxious and depressed I had ever been. I can only imagine it's like 50x worse for the people who DO get into these prestigious schools.
Its getting ridiculous, I live in a SUPER competitive area and high school and the constant one upping is so deteriorating. I was so obsessed with getting into a good college, I would on watch admission tik toks and would constantly stress about it. To make it worse I have ADHD and its so mentally awful when I can't get the same grades as my peers but I study twice as hard. Its an awful place to be and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I had a girl tell me once she only slept for one hour bc she was studying and I'm like..thats a flex? Honestly, go to a community college an transfer, its so much easier and much less competitive that way.
as a senior who has finished submitting my college applications but is now realizing that i will be receiving (more) decisions soon and that i have to then make a decision fairly soon….thank you for making this video 😭 i’ve been so stressed for YEARS since i’ve always been a perfectionist taking like the hardest classes i can, and i really hope that everything kinda falls into place for me bc i am soooo anxious rn edit: also like with extracurriculars im so mad at myself for not getting stuff together earlier (as in freshman year), but also it’s not like i could because we were completely online and i barely set foot in the school building until march/april. PLUS all the applications are asking about leadership stuff and it’s basically a popularity contest to get captain or club president….OH and not to keep ranting but the gpa boost and class rank and people taking online community college courses and cheating on every assignment while other people are taking 5 aps where i have to pass the fucking exam to get credit and we’re both getting 5.0s???? like it’s so much i just need to get out of high school 💀 edit edit: also i never really registered how much me taking aps is costing my parents????? like literally $1000 by the end of this year unless research costs something (which i don’t think it does but still)
I'd like to remind the council that AP's ARE saving money in the long run (along with thosee CCPs). AP test costs $100? THE COLLEGE EQUIVALENT COSTS $3,000. Trust me, you are doing well. Leadership can be as little as seeing a problem and thinking of a way to change it, even if it's not actually fixing the problem. You're doing fine.
@@M.M.Y.B depending on where you go that is. As a Cornell student, not even my 5’s are accepted for credit and even the ones that would be, it was better to take the course because some med schools would not accept AP credit the issue of cost is so accurate!! i only applied to 5 schools and had waivers for 2 of them. i fantasized about applying to all 8 ivies and several other schools just because i grew up on decision reaction videos. at the end of the day i feel as though i succeeded because i had more time to focus on each application
Yes! Thank you for talking about this. I am a junior and high school, and I plan on attending a local state school, because I want to be close to home, and save money. College has gotten so expensive- NYU, where Lara Jean goes to school in TATBILB costs $90,000 a year. Even with significant financial aid, that pricetag is unattainable for many families. One of my favorite teachers this year told a story about how she got accepted into Columbia University, but instead attended one of the schools in our state system due to financial reasons. She's currently completing a doctorate degree, and it really proves that if you are motivated and willing to work hard, you will succeed wherever you go. An Ivy/T10 school is just a label, and more and more people are coming to realize that your personality traits and work ethic are 100x more important than some paper diploma. Sending good vibes to anyone else dealing with the college pressure! Try not to let all the chatter get to you. College really isn't as big of a deal as it is made out to be, it's only 4-5 years of your life, and it isn't even the right path for everyone!
I'm so glad that my high school is part of a college so we are taught how to get into colleges since we are freshmen and gain the experience of college before actually having to go
As a current high school senior, this video hit deep. I've been stressed about college since Middle School and had a lot of pressure from my parents to get good grades so I can go to college, only to find out that it doesn't matter that much and I can't tell my parents that because they're my parents and don't respect me as an equal. I also ended up applying to 14 colleges because my parents decided to just keep adding to my list and they made me complete all of them before October was even over despite many of them only have Regular Decision, which was not due until Dec. 15. The amount of money it costs just to apply is also maddening. I think in general we need to educate people about college younger so there's less unnecessary stress and just make it less money to apply at the very least.
I go to one of these “elite” schools and the journey to get here was honestly not worth it. While I am very happy with the quality of education I am getting and the environment of the school I go to, the amount of struggles to get there is not a way to live. I did 3 different sports, did volunteer work, took ap classes, took community college classes, had 2 different leadership positions and was working 35 hours a week on top of that. The amount of pressure from literally elementary school and even still to this day is so constraining. In my junior year of high school I literally wanted to unalive myself because I got a B in a class I didn’t have time to study for. And honestly now that I’m out of high school nothing has changed. I’m still overextending myself and still crumbling from pressure. I don’t sleep consistently, I don’t eat as much as I should, I spend 12 hours a day working and I can’t even afford this college in the first place. TLDR: Don’t go to an elite school if you don’t have to. Sadly it matters for the field I want to go into… but please do not do it if you don’t have to. My best friends go to state schools and they are learning the same things just from a different mouth and paying $100,000 less
Shows like gossip girl which started in 2008 also pushed this thing about how every character can get into colleges when all the time on screen there partying there heads off and painting the picture in young people’s minds that you don’t need to work hard and the process is not so stressful and anxious when they show none of the process I can’t believe there still doing this for more than a decade…
I feel like it actually made sense for gossip girl, they were all rich (even dan Humphrey in his poverty loft in Brooklyn). Constance and st Jude’s were top tier private high schools that rich parents sent their privileged children off to specifically to get a leg up when it came to college admissions. a bunch of the parents being legacy’s of these ivys definitely helped as well (Blair and Nate at least). The families in that show had money, power and legacy which is the golden trifecta in the eyes of prestigious ivy leagues. These characters automatically had an advantage unrelated to their merit. At least Blair showed SOME struggle and effort when it came to Yale lol
Gotta agree with @unbakedalaska, since they didn't get in based on grades at all. It was about money and they would definitely have a leg up in that respect. High schools matter too! Specifically the stats of the average test scores coming out of high schools (your school is graded on their average ACT and SAT scores, did you know) and how many of those kids graduate college.
@@M.M.Y.B exactly. What connections you have/“who you know” is another major factor as well. GG’s characters had access to very influential/high level people representing those schools, and even then you had Nate the legacy have an advantage over Dan due to his fathers influence. GG dedicated half of a season to the college admissions process and the politics around it, showcasing how it wasn’t a matter of “can I get into this Ivy League”, it was “I hope I can get into my preferred Ivy League”. I’d say they did a better job showing the “how” and the “why” these characters get into their respective universities better than any other show or wattpad derived movie, where it’s never a topic of discussion until the one special episode or final scene where our rando main character who’s only extracurricular was getting into shenanigans somehow got accepted into Juilliard or (insert Ivy League here). Like how tf did El from the kissing booth get into HARVARD
@@unbakedalaska1301 I will never forget how they pictured NYU? lmao. They made it seem like the worst possible school and cheap compared to Columbia and Yale when they are literally the same price? Looking back it hilarious since NYU is like the most sought after school for international students.
My dream college was a lowly state school. I dreamed of going to Purdue University. I don't understand why Ivy league school are the be all to end all. I graduated from Purdue got a great education. I had the time of my life in college and made friends for life. I have a GREAT job. You don't need to go to an Ivy league school to be successful. 6:37
the college search process is absolute BS. everyone I know who went to an Ivy league school was either absolutely miserable or absolutely miserable to be around.
One thing I hate with these college narratives is they make community college sound like nothing. There are good community colleges out there and at the time I attended one, mine did not ACT and SAT scores. Major plus. I was able to change my major a couple of times while deciding what I wanted to do. It is cheaper than going to a four year. I did decide to go to a four year school because I fell in love with it during a tour. Don’t forget, some schools require a deposit to hold your place. Anyways, I was able to finish in 2 years because I was able to transfer my community college credits to the four year. Honestly, my high school grades weren’t amazing, but colleges focused more of how I succeeded in my community college classes. That experience is what they cared more about. I do agree that any college should not cost as much as they do. You shouldn’t have to fear being broke just to pay for college.
Yep. If community college is ever mentioned it's like "Oh well I guess you could go to a community college", before the character buckles down to get into a "good" school, or it's where the guy who just got out of prison or something goes. Community colleges can be freaking excellent and they're sooooo cheap. I wish tv and film would stop shitting on them. It's literally classist.
Imagine for us international students from developing countries… undervalued money so everything costs actually 5x more, plus having to do an English proficiency test which also costs money, plus paying for the translation of transcripts. Not to mention our tuition will always be out-of-state. It is tough indeed…
One of the best ways that a TV Show portrayed how competitive and harsh the process of getting into an elite/top university is in Modern Family; Alex's university journey. Alex is consistently shown to be a distressed, hard-working student, and even after all of what she had done and achieved, she was rejected by universities that she wanted to join, and eventually being accepted into Caltech (even then, the way they portray it is as though she barely got to enter the top university world). Alex's journey is why my favorite episode is the one where she makes an appointment with a psychologist, discussing the stress and alienation she feels as a product of her innate character and the decisions she made as she ventures into the competitive world of academia.
I’m a senior this year and wouldn’t wish the college application process on my worst enemy. It is actually stress hell. I got into my top choice school (not an Ivy) and they didn’t give me enough financial aid so I had to appeal and I’m still waiting to hear back. Meanwhile I’m trying to decide if I want to apply to a couple more schools before their deadlines or if I’m wasting money on the applications because my appeal could be approved. I literally hate this process so much and it’s the most stressed I’ve ever been in my life.
6th grade determines which classes you are tracked into. I got tracked into a program for 1/2 of algebra I in 7th grade. I also tested into a University program that covered 4 times as much material in 2 hours a week (Algebra I and II). But not enough people passed the test so they delayed it a year. The math track is locked in stone. You can't change it. English was more flexible. None of my friends qualified for AP English. They let us take the test anyways and we all got the max score (all the people I knew who took AP class got the second highest). But we were the first class to take AP exams without taking the class. Not all schools allow/encourage that. Boosted grades are not common here in public schools. Weighted grades are bad. Because they force you to drop things like orchestra - because a 4.0 is an irrecoverable bad grade. And your ability to get into weighted classes will be impacted potentially by how you are tracked after 6th grade. /random
Beyond that, as a professor, an even bigger thing is that colleges are depicted as only R1s, and sanitized versions of them at that. SLACs, state regionals, and community colleges may as well not exist as far as they are concerned.
Fucking thank you for making this. This is something that has been bothering me soooo much for years. I was a total slacker in high school, never even cracked a 2.0 GPA, barely graduated, and then started (as a first gen college student) at a local community college. The education was excellent. I did very well, and later transferred to an affordable, local Cal State for my bachelors, and a just few month back I finished my PhD at a UC. I'm now I'm teaching at a Cal State, and I love my job. I took a highly accessible and affordable route in all my education, and I'm so glad I did it that way, but honestly, it was also the only way I could have done it realistically. For years I've been watching the judgement of affordable higher ed in tv and film, and getting increasingly annoyed with the false perspective it presents to young people, making them think that higher ed is only valuable if it's some goddamn elite and expensive school. I think about that, and think about all the smart underachievers and financially limited students in high school right now who will never pursue the options that would be available to them because they're under a mistaken impression that those options are worthless, and it makes me furious. And almost nobody notices this toxic bullshit, or calls it out. This video is the clearest discussion of this issue I've seen to date, after having googled it several times over the years (mostly while rewatching Gilmore Girls, haha). Again, thank you for talking about this.
YESSSS, this video spoke to me on such an insane level. I'm now in the second semester of my sophomore year of college and I think back to my senior year of high school, the perceptions I had of college from the media, and the pressure I felt to go to an elite one. I was valedictorian of my class, took several AP Classes and got 4s and 5s on all of them except for one, was president of three clubs, had pretty decent SAT scores, and I still new that despite pushing myself like crazy to achieve those accomplishments, I was probably not going to be Ivy material. The realization that you didn't just have to be "smart" or "special" but rather "an actual superhuman" to get into these schools hit me hard. I applied to one Ivy as a reach and really had my hopes up for a pretty competitive non-Ivy school (I think they had a 23% acceptance rate or something like that?), as well as eight other schools ranging from like 40-90 % acceptance rates. In the end, I got accepted into the eight safeties, deferred and then accepted into the other competitive school, and rejected from the Ivy. But even though I got accepted to my "dream" school, I literally could not justify taking the loans out to pay the absolutely insane tuition cost. I had spent days and days working on a separate full-tuition scholarship application for that university which I got disqualified from when I got deferred instead of accepted during the Early Action admission season, and so the measly portion of financial aid I received after I got accepted during regular decision wasn't even enough to put a noticeable drop in the bucket. I ended up committing to a different school that did award me a full-tuition scholarship, and even then I was worried that I was disappointing everyone for not following the traditional narrative. I mean, I was valedictorian, how embarrassing was it that I was going to (insert college that has no notoriety in the media)? Now, looking back, I'm so glad I picked the college that I did. I have taken many interesting and challenging classes that have made me a better student and a better person, I have made incredible friends and created wonderful memories with them, and I am genuinely excited to continue my undergrad education there. And, pretty importantly, I did not make a horrible, crippling financial decision that would've put me in debt for who knows how long, and the freedom in knowing that I will be lucky enough to graduate debt-free is the biggest weight off my shoulders. If anyone who is applying for college now is reading this, please know that the prestige of your college does not define your worth, you can be so so happy at a school that many people have never heard of, and please do not throw away every penny you have to go to your "dream school." At the end of the day, it's an institution babe.
I can't belive that culture of picking a prestigious school as a child and just sticking through it all your life. I think it might be an American thing, but when I watched Gilmore Girls I thought it was so toxic, how much of Rory's personality relied on wanting to go to Hardavrd. In my country, most people don't ask about college until you're in high school.
As a junior i have completely wasted my hs years as i only have my academics to count on. I’ve had classes like theater and art but not precisely in a club, I have no ec activities.I’ve had to navigate everything myself with no older sibling to help or guide me and my mom isn’t from America so she couldn’t help me either. I’m only now starting to realize how not everything revolves around my grades, chat I’m cooked.
girl, I am so so so sorry that whatever environment you're growing up in has taught you that 3 APs is not that many. that's a LOT of work. for reference I'm a recent college graduate and when I was in high school (a private, college-prep high school), you physically couldn't take more than 4. They wouldn't let you. You could pay to take the test, but you literally couldn't take more than 4 AP classes in one school year. and to even do that many in one year you had to get special paperwork signed. even if you're talking about how many you took over the whole four years of high school, that's still a HUGE amount of work. I was up there with the honor roll kids, not the highest of the high but solid 4.0, and I ended highschool having taken 4 AP classes and taken 5 tests*. like. I started seeing a therapist bc of how stressful school was. that shit kick-started a long slow decline in mental health. do not kill yourself trying to get good grades. any amount of APs is hard, tbh school is plenty hard without them. (genuine) *my honors chem teacher was like hey why not take the AP chem test it'll be fine you're doing great in my class and we want to try and do an AP chem class next year and i was like i'm doing well in your class in spite of you, bc you're a shit teacher and a shit person, but why not take the test maybe I'll get some college credit out of it (I did not)
This doesn’t even take into account that you could have perfect grades, and yet still not even get into your top STATE school. I’m from Virginia, and so many of my classmates and myself all applied to UVA, and many of us didn’t get in 🙄
"Modern Family," did a good job. Only one character went to an elite school. Everyone else either didn't go to college, or went to a "normal," school (Fresno State, University of Illinois)
this video is so true! as a student currently in community college and planning to transfer to a public state school, television and the media makes me feel so insecure for not going to a big fancy notable school.
They too often portray it as “get good grades and you get in.” In reality its more like “Get good grades, get a perfect SAT or ACT score, be in like 10 extracurricular activities, win at least one national award, have an internship at nasa, dont be a white or asian male, have billionaire parents, run a business you started at age 10, and have at least 3 generations of your family be legacy. Then maybe you’ll have a 1 in 100 chance of getting in.”
I remember this really super incredibly rich kid at my school (possibly billionaire, dad owned several large companies and mansions) (claimed their dad created C++) told me that they lied on a college application to Harvard and said they were the only leader of a club for people with learning disabilities (that they never once attended.) I was running it with three others. I was so pissed. I felt like they were taking advantage of us. "Look how kind I am helping these disadvantaged special ed kids". I still sometimes wish I'd narced on them. Just the privilege to afford anything and the audacity to use people they'd never really met as a stepping stone made me hate them so much. The rest of us will work so much harder and something like Harvard might never be attainable even with a full ride.
I had expectations upon me both of my parents are doctors and they payed this thing called educative insurance for me when I was a little kid, which basically pays for the semesters of college later on as long as you don't have extra credits, thinking I would study medicine as it is the most expensive major in my country, what this allowed me to do was to not worry about the cost and what not originally I wanted to go to the national university that despite being public university and have most of the buildings cumbling down is quite prestigious academically, and in here you don't need extra curriculars or even grades aren't that important, you just need to take our equivalent ofr the SAT and like some schools have their own entrance exam, like this first one and the result of said exam determines what majors you can apply to, and I did so well on that entrance exam that I couls choose anything and even get a full discount on the price, I chose chemestry and I hated it. So I changed schools and decided to do eingeneering in a religious school also with some prestige and connected to my school, also not for me, and seeing too many of my former classmates was a bit traumatic, so I changed again into my current major of modern languages in a smaller school and I feel so much more comfortable.
I'll be curious to see how this is portrayed 20+ years down the line. I went through this process during the peak of Covid, right as many colleges were getting rid of requriing the SAT and ACT exams.
College was presented to me by media too. And because I knew at an early age what I wanted to do for a career, I looked into colleges for it immediately and had a dream school (I wasn't even in middle school yet). Thankfully I figured out the whole middle school grades don't matter thing early on so my good grades and extracurriculars were because I wanted too. I moved right before freshman year too, which made me depressed and destroyed the excitement I had about going to college (I dreaded it). Anyway, the college process sucks, and I had to do it twice once I chose to take a gap year. It'd be nice if shows with senior characters actually presented the college process accurately, AND showed characters choosing to go to non elite colleges.
I think one of my favorite college applications portrayals is Seth Cohen from the OC only applying to Brown, since it was his life dream to go there, and not getting in.
I think the reason why it's just so easy for the characters to get into those big name schools is that for rich people, like the ones in the show, it is. And that was the experience the screenwriters either had or saw around them because it's sure as heck true for the actors' kids. The idea of struggling to get into a Top10 college is as foreign to them as...milking a cow so you can make breakfast.
European here who pays a measly 600ish euros (which is about the same in USD) per year for tuition, who applied to college for funsies because the financial benefits far outweigh tuition fees. Applications cost?? And what on Earth do colleges do with that crazy amount of money?? Why do Americans hate affordable education???? And affordable health care for that matter??
Even more seemingly realistic and modern movie portrayals of teens has the Stanford bias like Booksmart, if I remember right. It's not much of a big deal but A NUMBER of students get into an Ivy even though they're technically from a regular school and some of them are good but not exemplary. Sometimes names could just be swapped out, they don't *need* to be Ivys
I remember when I was in High school only a few years ago - students had really weird views on colleges They saw UC’s as amazing and top notch, CSU’s as good, and community college as a failure But now that I’m in a UC/college- I hear people wish they were in a CSU, and people who took the community college route are looked highly on cause they saved the money and worked hard Also when I was in high school most students looked down on the arts- and up on stem - but once they actually get into college, the people who forced themselves into stem majors ( when they didn’t quite want it )became miserable Happy I went into arts and video games as my major, but wish I knew more about colleges/my options first o7
Pretty accurate. I had a similar experience from middle school to high school. Looking back, I would say it doesn't matter that much where you go to college. I know people who went to Harvard but are not financially successful as adults at all. I also have a friend who went to some third-tier college in China, but works for Meta and is quite rich now. It's more important to get good financial aid or pick a school that doesn't cost much, to pick a major that has good career prospects, and you can always try to go to a more prestigious grad school if that's something that interests you.
The reality is that colleges DON'T look at those grades you get in middle school, but they DO matter. The skills and concepts you learn in middle school are building towards more complex ideas and learning in Highschool. That Algebra 1 is super important across all subjects in STEM, so definitely invest time in understanding what they are trying to teach you (not necessarily getting an A with perfect attendance or test scores). The other subject that will affect you long-term is actually English Comprehension/Reading class. Does the wallpaper color need to have an explanation? NO. Should you be able to pick out cues and tones from a body of text? YES. This will help with media literacy (what the news and entertainment tells you subconsciously). Learning how to effectively communicate with people is the most important skill you can learn going into the world, whether that be through writing, speaking in person, or through online discussion. Also, I just learned this year that American Freshman Science (in some states/counties) is not a class about science, but is actually a class teaching you how to study. If the class seems useless, it's because the content of the class IS, but the context of how you are learning it is the point. Apparently a lot of American Learning is built like this.
I was a pretty average student in middle school and didn't care about college at all. Freshman year 2020 I became "above average" for the first time in a while. Like my transcript showed almost straight As. Stopping the bragging now, this year I applied to mostly target and reach schools because I need them the most. Whcih sounds dumb but its my reality. I'm a low income, first generation, and come from an immigrate family. I was blessed to not pay for college applications, css profile, sat, etc because im broke. I need to get into at least ONE reach or target school because those schools give me the most benefits. Not only will I get an amazing financial aid package but also a higher status. I wish Tv shows actually showed how tough it is to get into these top universities, but also show other type of students applying. Most students I see form tv show applying to these schools come from exceptional backgrounds (having all the resources in the world). Idk I wish they showed more low income and first-generation students trying to get into this school because it would be more beneficial for them.
Also, the shows never touch upon the money aspect. My grades were really good in high school, I had a high SAT score, lots of extracurriculars and a part-time job, but I went to my local state university because the "high-end" schools I applied to were way too expensive. The TV shows never seem to touch upon that aspect, they never talk about the loans or even the basic, "I like this place, but can I afford it?" I didn't want to take out 100k+ in student loans and bury myself financially to attend a university for the brand name. It's just not worth it. I'm hard pressed to find the ROI for an Ivy League school or any university charging 75k+ a year. Sure, the campus environment and the alumni connections help, but are they really worth that 100k - 200k price tag that you'll be paying back your whole life? Or having a $1,000+ payment monthly out of university? It's just not worth it. Go where you can get the best education possible for the cheapest price possible! From someone on the other side of it, who is paying their student loans, one of the best choices I ever made was going to that local state university. It's allowed me to save money, as opposed to pouring it all into high interest student loans.
I honestly would take this video a step even further to say that it's difficult to know what college is right for you until you end up there as a student, and to recognize that you never know what's going to happen in your life, and that things can change in an instant, shifting your life privileges and circumstances. I was a student at the best high school in my state, I had a decent GPA and I earned my associates degree in high school. I got a decent ACT score, took over ten AP courses (two of which I self-studied because my school didn't offer them). I knew what I wanted to major in, had extracurriculars with extreme long term commitment and had won some national awards. But, in my junior year of high school I became disabled. I developed a chronic illness so severe that I was in and out of the hospital constantly, and couldn't physically do any sort of school. in between surgeries and procedures, my grades slipped, and despite being the "best high school in the state" I didn't have any support to drop my college courses, or take a leave of absence from school. Despite having accommodations, I was ousted from this (public) school for failing to meet their academic standards, leaving me in November of senior year with no one to write my recommendation letters, give me advice on fee assistance (I'm low income), or guide me in the admissions process. I got rejected from my top choice, Barnard College. I applied to 60 colleges (all for free with the fee waiver program) and was accepted to the majority of them, outside of the top ones (Columbia, Wellesley, Vassar, Swarthmore etc). Despite getting into quite a few prestigious schools outside of the top 20, I decided to go to a small largely unknown womens college in Minnesota. Why? Because they flew me out. They paid for my hotel room, they read my file and KNEW my story. They met up with my mom and I and showed me around campus one-on-one, they set up a meeting with the disability office and the head of my prospective major, and they lined up an academic plan for if I had to take a leave of absence due to my disability. I got an entirely full ride, and they even helped me look into what kind of dorms they had to accommodate my health conditions, making sure to reserve one for me if I paid my deposit. My school is like 270th in the country-- most people have never heard of it. All of my peers from high school go to WashU, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford etc-- but I'm the happiest. I've done multiple internships, worked for Mayo Clinic, run organizations and started initiatives for diversity, equity, and inclusion. I'm sorry this is all so long, this is just an issue I'm super passionate about and I want everyone to know that college is a struggle regardless of where you go-- things will come up and circumstances will change. Go to a school that you know is equipped to help you through that when it does inevitably happen. College is largely what you make of it. Are there advantages to going to a top 20-50 institution? of course, but they're not exclusive to those universities by any means, and those experiences (besides brand recognition) can for the most part be replicated at any other institution (or a combination of institutions through consortium agreements, internships, or transferring). Sorry again this is so long!
i find it insane that miley from hannah montana was able to get into stanford despite traveling the country for tours and concerts, it made sense that lily got in, but i never understood how miley did
I find it crazy that while applications and going to college were never much of a focus in a lot of these shows, these details end up getting noticed anyway. I watched some of the teen Disney shows when I was a kid, but these were definitely plot items I never gave much thought to. But as someone who went through the process myself with a very different experience and did end up at an Ivy, I just wanted to add a few things: - The most important thing in middle/high school is not really grades, but rather knowing yourself: what you might want out of life in the medium/long term, why you want to go to college (or even IF you want to attend in the first place), how you pace yourself to meet those goals, etc. Even on applications, a lot of universities are pivoting to interesting and driven applicants over those with just good grades (especially since standardized tests are becoming increasingly optional). - Grades don't matter as much as most people think, but depending on where you are located, state exams DO matter. I recommend that people at least graduate high school, and doing well on exams might help you later when applying to college. For example, my HS was in NYS, and I received scholarships and awards due to performance on state exams which looked good on my application. - Ivy League tuition is misleading. I would disagree that ONLY the rich and wealthy should even CONSIDER applying to them. Because these schools are rich, they can have more generous financial aid packages than most other schools. It is not merit-based, either, since by being accepted you are already considered a good student. They are need-based, and often contain tens of thousands of dollars in grants (this money is given with little to no strings attached, and are NOT loans that need to be paid back later). I had many classmates who came from poverty-stricken conditions and received full rides for tuition, room & board, textbooks, and even laptops/smartphones. As for myself, even though my family was around medium income, thanks to financial aid and scholarships I was able to graduate debt-free.
My parents really didn't push college on me, but it was sort of automatic for me because I knew I wanted to be a computer programmer, and so I applied to DePaul University to be a computer science major and it was all good because it was a local school.
in middle school and freshman year i REALLY wanted to go to mit. then during sophomore year, my gpa took a hit and i got 3 b's. and then i got one more b my junior year. i still had a 3.87 gpa and a 1590 sat and various clubs, dual enrollment, 12 aps, and national awards, but i ended up getting rejected from most of my state schools. the school i'm at is considered a good school, but people on r/applyingtocollege and people at my ultracompetitive high school think it's overrated and a bad school. i've struggled with my self-esteem and have faced bouts of depression because of the college admissions process, and i'm still struggling with the aftereffects. when i see people on TV get into these schools like it's nothing, it only makes me feel worse about myself.
I got pretty good grades and did a ton of extracurricular activities but I still decided to go to community college to avoid a bunch of debt and I’m still very happy. And plus I still got some outside scholarships due to my good grades so I’ll transfer without having paid a cent of my own money for 3 years worth of classes and 2 associates degrees. And I’ll still have some of that scholarship money left over to pay for my bachelor’s when I transfer in a few months. Never EVER judge community college. If you get along with your parents and they’ll let you live at home and if they’re possibly even okay with you living there rent free, fucking TAKE IT Y’ALL. The college experience is nice and all but I’m very happy at my CC and I’ve made plenty of friends throughout my time there so in my opinion, cash cash money is just as nice.
I slopped around early, put hedonistic pleasure ahead of diligence, and still won the big prize. My high school extracurriculars were going to rock concerts with my hippy friends, leaving campus to partake of the El Supremo, riding a Yamaha 175 Enduro on pipelines, and shacking up with my girlfriend. I managed - just barely I imagine- to get into my local state university. Three years later, I had graduated from college with a 3.5 GPA. I made a 93rd percentile GRE score and was accepted at Stanford and Brown for graduate school. I completed a masters degree (M.A.) at Stanford, and later a second graduate degree (M.S.) at Johns Hopkins University. Many things are possible in life.
I live in the UK and I’m in the last year of high school I think/ I’m in year 11 I’m doing my exams in May but I would say in the UK there is a lot less pressure of going to a amazing Uni (which is college in the US) for example the only top Unis we have are Oxford and Cambridge so there is much less pressure since there aren’t as many prestigious schools!
thank you youre awesome im a senior right now its insane (i was expected to go to an ivy cause why not but finally didn't apply thank god) and its so nice to see a cool big sister youtuber lay it all out like it is :)
Did I go to an especially prestigious school? No. Do I remember literally anything I learned for my degree? Not really. But did I find my closest friends and have a blast, despite the Covid of it all? Very much so. I have no regrets. And I've managed to do pretty well since graduating, even applying to grad school for next year. My high school grades weren't extraordinary and I pretty much only had one main extracurricular but I feel pretty good about where my life ended up. I know some people may not want to hear it but Ivy Leagues really aren't everything.
Here in Canada, the application fee to apply at a college or uni is between 90-140$. How do I know? Because I payed almost 400$ for three university applications alone. And don’t even get me started on the deposit fees for when you get accepted.
as a senior in high school, i only applied to one college that i knew would give me good scholarships! i’ve been accepted already but the hardest part now is applying for scholarships 😭
I was lucky enough to get into my top university choice (New Mexico Tech) but as an Australian living in America and graduating high school over there things got pretty expensive fast. I’m now back in Australia in a very good geology and archaeology program that I can actually afford, as in less uni debt than as an international in the US. New Mexico State and Tech are the two I wanted and got into, NMT I was aiming for because of their geology and cave research program aka the Mount Erebus Volcano Observatory in Antarctica and all the research that comes with it. One day I hope I can go there for research but until then I will be finishing my concurrent degree here in Australia.
If you're in california, I highly recommend going to community college. Its so much cheaper (~$1,600/year). I went to community college, transferred to UC Berkeley and finished my degree in bioengineering. Now, I'm pursuing a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford.
Admittedly its been a long time since I've watched one of these teenage shows, but I really have to give a nod to the "Friday Night Lights" show that was on NBC years ago. This kids all talked like kids, not like say "Dawson's Creek" where all the kids talk in soliloquys to each other. They also made a point of having a girl work her ass off, and be overjoyed, when she was accepted to UT at Austin.
I love studying in europe, the grades here are irrelevant for college bc you only need to graduate highschool to enter university. Plus the tuition fees are like less than 30€ per semester.
god damn i wish i was born 9 years earlier than my actual birth so that i could attend eu universities instead of being locking in england as its more convienient.
Wow hearing how many schools people apply is weird. I only applied to like two schools (ones that I knew pretty reasonably I could get in) but maybe it’s different in canada
I live in the US and applied to only one, but I picked that specific school because the acceptance rate was really high and I knew I had a solid chance
I've personally never been interested in Ivy leagues. Tbh it doesn't really matter what school you go to in the sense that the difference in the quality of education between colleges is vastly smaller than the things between schools that aren't really education like sports, campus, student size, downtown life, amenities, etc. (i hope that explanation made sense). So i've put value in the college I wanted to go to largely on if it offers my desired major, the college that houses my major, amenities, culture, and ofc money. Because I'm not rich and didn't get a stupid good scholarship I stayed in state. school is roughly 40% acceptance rate, so it wasn't a safety or anything. Please don't put your worth in the college you go to! What matters more than the college you go to is what you do at whatever college you go to!
At the end of the day when we’re applying for a job they will care what degree you have and not so much the college. You can still do to community college and become a lawyer.
Among one of the only times I've seen a college mentioned that wasn't the likes of an Ivy, Stanford, or Duke, was when Girl Meets World casually dropped Rutgers in, and I kind of liked that they mentioned an elite public school that wasn't Berkley or UCLA
I never went to college...:'3. I wanted to, but I didn't get a diploma, just a certificate. I did graduate. But...I guess college just wasn't in the cards for me. I wanted to go to college, still kinda do. But like, I'm mentally disabled and not good at math or science and you kinda _have_ to be good at those subjects in order to get into _any_ good college or university, whether it's an Ivy League college or not.
Honestly, I’m just waiting for an intelligent hardworking character that faced many obstacles in their life, attending a not so prestigious university, and later successfully fulfilling their goals and dreams. I watched a video where it talks about the downfall of the MCU writing and I pointed out Iron Heart being a merry sue and attending MIT for absolute no reason but because “she’s smart”. It’s more interesting if a character has a more moral reason of why they are attending a certain university (being prestigious or not) than a character who attends a university just for the sake of telling but not showing. It’s sad because I believe Hollywood could be a good influence to teens if they continue writing stories with good morals and themes but instead we just keep getting unnecessary, cliched, and picture perfect life movies and tv shows that can affect teen’s mental health. So in conclusion: We need more realistic movies where we can highly relate to a character.
Maybe this isn't the norm, but I live in Chicago and the middle school grades do matter here (or did when I was going to highschool in the 2010's). Here, you apply to high schools like colleges with your 7th and 8th grade grades and a placement test, and each school has drastically different levels of funding, resources, and location. You have the option of just going to your neighborhood school, but those are often very underfunded and/or dangerous. It was way too much stress for 13 year old me!
As a person who does not live in the US I have always thought this is the weirdest thing ever. In some countries public universities tend to be the most prestigious ones and no one really cares that much about where you went to college. It blows my mind tbh.
A bit late to this but don't forget about the mid to late 2000s American Pie style movies on Comedy Central that portrayed college as a "go lucky party experience where the stakes are low and everyone can get some". This molded a whole generation of millennials to go and take out ridiculous loans for BS degrees, while at the same time encouraged toxic gender situations and substance use. I believe in the conspiracy that colleges, while they wouldn't outwardly encourage it, turned a blind eye to this so they can attract more people to spend money on their campus.
Swooping in as a now 27 year old grad student, meaning that come May it would've been exactly a decade ago I did this whole college application dance. I grew up with one parent as a prof in a public/state university, so prestigious university was kind of a "eh, whateves" for me. And with the scholarships I was getting, in-state colleges were gonna be the best bet. So I remember being almost too practical with my applications and expectations, lol. My mom suggested I have a *dream school* in mind, which seemed like a total waste of energy 😆😆 Teenage me was smart, but maybe could've used more chill
As a non-American, I really didn't know how bad the college/university acceptance culture was in the US before watching this omg In my country, college/university is definitely made out to be an "all-or-nothing" and we do have prestigious schools, but they're not super glamorized. It's made known to students that no matter what college/uni you attend, employers don't generally care, all that matters is your degree. If you're worried about your post-secondary education experience, personally as someone who's been in uni for a couple years, you literally start to just not care. You make friends, hang out on campus, be bombarded by homework and exams, procrastinate, get stressed, pull all-nighters, wonder how you ever got through it, rinse and repeat, and then wow the year is over. It's not as amazing as a lot of media makes it out to be, most people including myself just treat it as the place you go to get your degree. Of course there are a ton of clubs and fantastic opportunities offered if you're interested, but most who take part use it to look good on resumes and such, otherwise you're gonna be too busy with homework and studying to care about having fun. 4 or so years fly by super fast and before you know it, you're out of school, so don't feel the need to treat college/uni life it's THE years of your life. You might end up disappointed.
I actually helped lobby my school to stop using a 5.0 for AP classes, which resulted in a drop of about 10 places in my class ranking. Seems silly now, but I really disliked the idea of getting above 4.0
I am a child of a Korean immigrant my family is poor we are the 1980s wave of Korean immigrants when it was still a poor country mainly the early 80s My family is poor i was never homeless yet i left home at 17 I see that it is hard to get a job without a degree college is not useless especially if you are from a poor family The U.S for Asians is you need a good education there is a focus on acedemicis achievements rather than talent the ghosts from Korea don't really leave they attach to you because you are bared from jobs ect just like Korea Chaebols don't exist in the U.S but you still see some similarities to those better off than you if you settle for a cheap community college that looks bad for someone like me compared to say non Asians so I went straight into a Public Ivy school it sucks to see others better off than you Want to meet people have meaningful connections with other Koreans well if you are a Korean born abroad poor well they don't like you especially if you have a white father because you are not one of them whites won't welcome you either because you are not a real American because your mother is from a foreign country You live as a foreigner not just your whole life but also in college you feel isolated it sucks There is no media ever addressing what it is like to be an actual poor child of an immigrant I was lead to believe to be a good little model minority because the system treats you fairly if you play by the rules but some people in my classes can cheat and suffer no reprercussions because they can bribe their way out I essentially attend college without much care for anything other than a letter and number because I will be judged based on how much my numbers are because fuck talent like in Asian countries you need to submit no fun just work until you drop dead for about ten minutes to sleep get up repeat who cares about making friends just get a piece of paper to prove you got good academic achievements to land a job you will hate Then you say I want a good paying job some old whites tell you "but you are living the American dream you made your immigrant family happy" expect I have to work three times as much and hope I get paid more by saying nothing yet will never happen then I have to pay for my parent to live because her health will decline more than it has
I’m a University of Minnesota College of Biological Sciences legacy. Never ever considered an Ivy League school and I love being the next CBS student in my family. My future kids can do whatever they want though :)
lol I wish AP classes boosted your GPA at my school. We didn’t do weighted GPA so the valedictorians were the ones who took 1 honors class freshman year and the people who actually challenged themselves were penalized.
Damn i didnt realise it was so expensive to get into uni in America. I had to pay about 30 quid to apply to 5 schools, and that was the stabdard number for applicants. (UK)
One thing that irks me about the portrayal in college in fiction is that it's EXACTLY the same as high school, complete with nerds being bullied by jocks, the focus on relationship drama, and how nobody seems to be overally focused on their academics, instead spending more time on extracurriculars. (Pitch Perfect, I'm talking about you!)
Pitch Perfect was based on the college I used to go to (Belmont University). It was just like that there. Highschool 2.0. That’s why I left to go to a public state school, so much better.
@@Sherbishi’m lowkey interested in going to belmont- would you recommend it? is it a good college or not actually the best?
Isn't Belmont known for being that way though?
@@Sherbishomg 😨
I mean, like anything, college has its niches, but no one cared which one you are a part of.
It's crazy how in most Netflix Teen movies, most notably "The Kissing Booth", its leads are somehow able to get into prestigious universities, despite not having demonstrated any academic smarts. They make it look insanely easy.
I thought it was realistic considering how rich Noah was. His parents probably just bought them a building
I almost fell from the chair when they just casually said that Noah was going to Harvard
That was my first thought too when i saw this video. I personally think its partially because of recognizability, especially internationally. As a european who IS interested in american colleges, i know what UC Irvine is, but 99% of people won’t know that.
You are not wrong but I mean I feel like rarely do we see kids struggle with thier academics but oddly enough that is how it felt like in high school when I went it's really weird like when I went to high school I rarely saw kids get straight A's in class and if they did they were a bit of the expectations at least that's how I felt
Every character in the original Gossip Girl getting into Brown
To be fair I think Gabriella was a literal genius and had extra curriculars and a job. I think she could believably get into Stanford
Gabriella getting into Stanford and Teddy Duncan getting into Yale were the only times this was believable.
@@user74027nh it was also believable with Devi, besides her outburst.
My brother got into Standford and I know he did a lot but really it was his interest in math and physics that made him stand out to the institution
Same with Peter Kavinsky honestly - he's an incredibly good lacrosse player in the movies and books, to the point that the school gets more hyped for his team than they do for like... football or soccer. He gets scouted, and if he has decent grades, he probably would get into Stanford. That's how it works for a lot of student-athletes. What I don't buy is him having time to do all these cutesy dates with Lara Jean and get into all sorts of drama. The athletes I know in high school who wanted to go D1 (one of whom is now committing to Yale) are either doing homework, at the gym, or at practice. That's it. They date people on the opposite-sex team, if they have time to date at all.
@@user74027nh Neither would have stood a chance at those schools if they were to actually apply as real people in today's age.
One thing that always irked me about To All the Boys I Loved Before is that the movie changed what colleges LJ and Peter go to from the books! In the books Peter gets into UVA (still a CRAZY competitive school but it's no Stanford) and Lara Jean goes to UNC. I always loved that about the books because it felt more realistic and made the characters feel less unrelatable :( When they changed it to NYU and Stanford in the last movie I was so sad, especially because by then I was out of high school and KNEW how unattainable those schools are.
Yes that annoyed me too! I live in NC and loved seeing those colleges in the series and hate that they had to change it to even harder to get into schools for the movies!
And UNC, out-of-state, is just crazy hard; you may as well be applying to Duke...
As someone who busted my ass my entire life, got into MIT, couldn't afford it and ended up going to a school most people don't know... these tv shows and movies drive me absolutely crazy. LIke seriously you're biggest struggle is deciding if you want to go to Stanford to be close to your bf or Harvard because its your dream school? Go to hell honestly
Our school district made us start researching colleges in THIRD GRADE. Like sit in front of a computer and google college websites to decide which one we wanted to go to. Pretty sure we did something similar every single year after that…insanity. It definitely contributed to my anxiety, and I didn’t even recognize it until I was a sophomore or junior into college. There’s NO reason to make little kids research colleges or seriously look that far into the future….
I’ve been saying this for YEARS after watching To All The Boys, The Kissing Booth, and TSITP!! Like no way Conrad who ditched his finals got into an even better college… it just bothers me so much as someone who did really well academically and still got rejected from lots of schools to see Ivy League/Ivy adjacent schools being set as the standard in every piece of teen media! And in no world is NYU/UC Berkeley someone’s safety school ffs
TSITP really bothered me on this issue. That one guy is all moping and depressed that he has to settle for Brown, when he really rather be at Stanford. Literally the show wants me to think he's short changed for being at a slightly less well regarded incredibly elite school. No.
It is so confusing to me why movies and tv only show characters going to literally crazy schools, even the most average individuals. as a kid i literally thought that was like the only option for schools. I am now 22 and PLEASE if you live in California - go to a community college first. It is COMPLETELY free for california residents for two years as long as you’re enrolled full time. i went to a community college then transferred to a cal state and i have NO debt, i have a very good savings account for my age, and i got my bachelors in three and a half years. Do not go into insane debt for a degree when you can literally do it for less than $10k.
I always romanticized going to college but now that i have 1 final year in highschool, i feel SCARED like, will it actually be a good experience? Will i actually fit in? I have NO idea..
Colleges are a lot more designed for you to roll with a crowd. The people in the same major as you, clubs. College is MUCH bigger than highschool you simply will not encounter so many highschool archetypes (jocks, cheerleaders, brainiacs) especially if you’re not partaking in activities where you would meet such people
But also my major had like 14 people so it was easier to memorize my classmates and get to know them
You'll be fine. I still have mates from Uni that I hang out with to this day.
The hard part is after you get out of college. When you start working full time, and so do your friends. So you can't hang out like you used to.
That bit stings.
College is worth the romanticization, it’s so much better than high school because if you don’t fit in, you find another crowd and you WILL find your crowd. Don’t be scared to put yourself out there and try new things, because everyone wants to have friends just as much as you!!!
Just listen to yourself. I wound up in a school that was not a good fit for me, and a major that wasn't quite right because I wasn't honest with myself, and defaulted to what seemed safe. I still had some good experiences, but I know college would have been way more rewarding if I'd gone after what I really wanted.
I was watching Never Have I Ever and was when I saw the hyperfixation on Ivys. Spoilersfor anyone who han't finished the series-
I was glad to see some characters NOT go to Ivy League school because it made it a little bit more real. It's still crazy that three people from the same school got into an Ivy at all but I liked that with Devi her mom yelled about how stupid it was that she only applied to Ivy and how the show was aware of how stupid it was for her to have no backups because she gets completely denied. It's a reality most of these shows don't acknowledge that even if you're the best, being the best isn't nothing when you're competing with thousands or hundreds of thousands of the best. She gets into Princeton eventually but it's definetely treated like a big deal also because gurl was literally hanging on by a thread. 😭
Three people from a large cali high school isn’t rare at all. I wnat to a generic suburban high school outside of Philly and in my grad class we had three go to Princeton and two to upen
Thank you for covering this! I just finished my apps, and the MOST COMMON THING I get from adults (even family friends who are professors!!) is they pressure me to apply to ivy leagues, just because I do well with academics. They think because I’ve worked hard, and I am a legacy, that “Im guaranteed admission”???? No individual is entitled to any one school! Success does not equal giving hundreds of thousands of dollars away to institutions! My mom went to Cornell, and her anxiety began there. She hated it and tried to transfer out twice. There are hundreds if not thousands of videos on youtube of kids who feel worthless after attending these schools. And yet, no matter the hierarchal, economic, and systemic issues that occur at these schools, they’re still portrayed as unicorns and rainbows in media and everywhere!!! So sad. Abolish “prestige”!!!!
I went to a small rural college that honestly wasn't even that academically rigorous. And in my time there I was still the most anxious and depressed I had ever been.
I can only imagine it's like 50x worse for the people who DO get into these prestigious schools.
Its getting ridiculous, I live in a SUPER competitive area and high school and the constant one upping is so deteriorating. I was so obsessed with getting into a good college, I would on watch admission tik toks and would constantly stress about it. To make it worse I have ADHD and its so mentally awful when I can't get the same grades as my peers but I study twice as hard. Its an awful place to be and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I had a girl tell me once she only slept for one hour bc she was studying and I'm like..thats a flex? Honestly, go to a community college an transfer, its so much easier and much less competitive that way.
as a senior who has finished submitting my college applications but is now realizing that i will be receiving (more) decisions soon and that i have to then make a decision fairly soon….thank you for making this video 😭 i’ve been so stressed for YEARS since i’ve always been a perfectionist taking like the hardest classes i can, and i really hope that everything kinda falls into place for me bc i am soooo anxious rn
edit: also like with extracurriculars im so mad at myself for not getting stuff together earlier (as in freshman year), but also it’s not like i could because we were completely online and i barely set foot in the school building until march/april. PLUS all the applications are asking about leadership stuff and it’s basically a popularity contest to get captain or club president….OH and not to keep ranting but the gpa boost and class rank and people taking online community college courses and cheating on every assignment while other people are taking 5 aps where i have to pass the fucking exam to get credit and we’re both getting 5.0s???? like it’s so much i just need to get out of high school 💀
edit edit: also i never really registered how much me taking aps is costing my parents????? like literally $1000 by the end of this year unless research costs something (which i don’t think it does but still)
I'd like to remind the council that AP's ARE saving money in the long run (along with thosee CCPs). AP test costs $100? THE COLLEGE EQUIVALENT COSTS $3,000. Trust me, you are doing well. Leadership can be as little as seeing a problem and thinking of a way to change it, even if it's not actually fixing the problem. You're doing fine.
@@M.M.Y.B depending on where you go that is. As a Cornell student, not even my 5’s are accepted for credit and even the ones that would be, it was better to take the course because some med schools would not accept AP credit
the issue of cost is so accurate!! i only applied to 5 schools and had waivers for 2 of them. i fantasized about applying to all 8 ivies and several other schools just because i grew up on decision reaction videos. at the end of the day i feel as though i succeeded because i had more time to focus on each application
Proud drop out without any dept here lol
College such a pain, never going through that again
Agreed, college seems to be overally romanticised. In real life, it's not for everyone, and there's no shame if you drop out, or decide not to attend.
What did u major in?? (If u don't mind me asking )
@@Luv4pookie visual arts
Yes! Thank you for talking about this. I am a junior and high school, and I plan on attending a local state school, because I want to be close to home, and save money. College has gotten so expensive- NYU, where Lara Jean goes to school in TATBILB costs $90,000 a year. Even with significant financial aid, that pricetag is unattainable for many families.
One of my favorite teachers this year told a story about how she got accepted into Columbia University, but instead attended one of the schools in our state system due to financial reasons. She's currently completing a doctorate degree, and it really proves that if you are motivated and willing to work hard, you will succeed wherever you go. An Ivy/T10 school is just a label, and more and more people are coming to realize that your personality traits and work ethic are 100x more important than some paper diploma.
Sending good vibes to anyone else dealing with the college pressure! Try not to let all the chatter get to you. College really isn't as big of a deal as it is made out to be, it's only 4-5 years of your life, and it isn't even the right path for everyone!
I'm so glad that my high school is part of a college so we are taught how to get into colleges since we are freshmen and gain the experience of college before actually having to go
As a current high school senior, this video hit deep. I've been stressed about college since Middle School and had a lot of pressure from my parents to get good grades so I can go to college, only to find out that it doesn't matter that much and I can't tell my parents that because they're my parents and don't respect me as an equal. I also ended up applying to 14 colleges because my parents decided to just keep adding to my list and they made me complete all of them before October was even over despite many of them only have Regular Decision, which was not due until Dec. 15. The amount of money it costs just to apply is also maddening. I think in general we need to educate people about college younger so there's less unnecessary stress and just make it less money to apply at the very least.
I go to one of these “elite” schools and the journey to get here was honestly not worth it. While I am very happy with the quality of education I am getting and the environment of the school I go to, the amount of struggles to get there is not a way to live. I did 3 different sports, did volunteer work, took ap classes, took community college classes, had 2 different leadership positions and was working 35 hours a week on top of that. The amount of pressure from literally elementary school and even still to this day is so constraining. In my junior year of high school I literally wanted to unalive myself because I got a B in a class I didn’t have time to study for.
And honestly now that I’m out of high school nothing has changed. I’m still overextending myself and still crumbling from pressure. I don’t sleep consistently, I don’t eat as much as I should, I spend 12 hours a day working and I can’t even afford this college in the first place.
TLDR: Don’t go to an elite school if you don’t have to. Sadly it matters for the field I want to go into… but please do not do it if you don’t have to. My best friends go to state schools and they are learning the same things just from a different mouth and paying $100,000 less
Shows like gossip girl which started in 2008 also pushed this thing about how every character can get into colleges when all the time on screen there partying there heads off and painting the picture in young people’s minds that you don’t need to work hard and the process is not so stressful and anxious when they show none of the process I can’t believe there still doing this for more than a decade…
I feel like it actually made sense for gossip girl, they were all rich (even dan Humphrey in his poverty loft in Brooklyn). Constance and st Jude’s were top tier private high schools that rich parents sent their privileged children off to specifically to get a leg up when it came to college admissions. a bunch of the parents being legacy’s of these ivys definitely helped as well (Blair and Nate at least). The families in that show had money, power and legacy which is the golden trifecta in the eyes of prestigious ivy leagues. These characters automatically had an advantage unrelated to their merit. At least Blair showed SOME struggle and effort when it came to Yale lol
Gotta agree with @unbakedalaska, since they didn't get in based on grades at all. It was about money and they would definitely have a leg up in that respect. High schools matter too! Specifically the stats of the average test scores coming out of high schools (your school is graded on their average ACT and SAT scores, did you know) and how many of those kids graduate college.
@@M.M.Y.B exactly. What connections you have/“who you know” is another major factor as well. GG’s characters had access to very influential/high level people representing those schools, and even then you had Nate the legacy have an advantage over Dan due to his fathers influence. GG dedicated half of a season to the college admissions process and the politics around it, showcasing how it wasn’t a matter of “can I get into this Ivy League”, it was “I hope I can get into my preferred Ivy League”. I’d say they did a better job showing the “how” and the “why” these characters get into their respective universities better than any other show or wattpad derived movie, where it’s never a topic of discussion until the one special episode or final scene where our rando main character who’s only extracurricular was getting into shenanigans somehow got accepted into Juilliard or (insert Ivy League here). Like how tf did El from the kissing booth get into HARVARD
@@unbakedalaska1301 I will never forget how they pictured NYU? lmao. They made it seem like the worst possible school and cheap compared to Columbia and Yale when they are literally the same price? Looking back it hilarious since NYU is like the most sought after school for international students.
My dream college was a lowly state school. I dreamed of going to Purdue University. I don't understand why Ivy league school are the be all to end all. I graduated from Purdue got a great education. I had the time of my life in college and made friends for life. I have a GREAT job. You don't need to go to an Ivy league school to be successful. 6:37
the college search process is absolute BS. everyone I know who went to an Ivy league school was either absolutely miserable or absolutely miserable to be around.
as a senior applying to college this hit hard omg. application szn was literally the death of me, but waiting for decisions feels so terrible too
One thing I hate with these college narratives is they make community college sound like nothing.
There are good community colleges out there and at the time I attended one, mine did not ACT and SAT scores. Major plus. I was able to change my major a couple of times while deciding what I wanted to do. It is cheaper than going to a four year.
I did decide to go to a four year school because I fell in love with it during a tour. Don’t forget, some schools require a deposit to hold your place.
Anyways, I was able to finish in 2 years because I was able to transfer my community college credits to the four year.
Honestly, my high school grades weren’t amazing, but colleges focused more of how I succeeded in my community college classes. That experience is what they cared more about.
I do agree that any college should not cost as much as they do. You shouldn’t have to fear being broke just to pay for college.
Yep. If community college is ever mentioned it's like "Oh well I guess you could go to a community college", before the character buckles down to get into a "good" school, or it's where the guy who just got out of prison or something goes. Community colleges can be freaking excellent and they're sooooo cheap. I wish tv and film would stop shitting on them. It's literally classist.
@@glenmorrison8080 agreed.
Imagine for us international students from developing countries… undervalued money so everything costs actually 5x more, plus having to do an English proficiency test which also costs money, plus paying for the translation of transcripts. Not to mention our tuition will always be out-of-state. It is tough indeed…
One of the best ways that a TV Show portrayed how competitive and harsh the process of getting into an elite/top university is in Modern Family; Alex's university journey. Alex is consistently shown to be a distressed, hard-working student, and even after all of what she had done and achieved, she was rejected by universities that she wanted to join, and eventually being accepted into Caltech (even then, the way they portray it is as though she barely got to enter the top university world). Alex's journey is why my favorite episode is the one where she makes an appointment with a psychologist, discussing the stress and alienation she feels as a product of her innate character and the decisions she made as she ventures into the competitive world of academia.
I’m a senior this year and wouldn’t wish the college application process on my worst enemy. It is actually stress hell. I got into my top choice school (not an Ivy) and they didn’t give me enough financial aid so I had to appeal and I’m still waiting to hear back. Meanwhile I’m trying to decide if I want to apply to a couple more schools before their deadlines or if I’m wasting money on the applications because my appeal could be approved. I literally hate this process so much and it’s the most stressed I’ve ever been in my life.
try applying for scholarships if you can, I don't think there's a cap on how many scholarships you can apply for
6th grade determines which classes you are tracked into. I got tracked into a program for 1/2 of algebra I in 7th grade. I also tested into a University program that covered 4 times as much material in 2 hours a week (Algebra I and II). But not enough people passed the test so they delayed it a year.
The math track is locked in stone. You can't change it.
English was more flexible. None of my friends qualified for AP English. They let us take the test anyways and we all got the max score (all the people I knew who took AP class got the second highest). But we were the first class to take AP exams without taking the class. Not all schools allow/encourage that.
Boosted grades are not common here in public schools. Weighted grades are bad. Because they force you to drop things like orchestra - because a 4.0 is an irrecoverable bad grade. And your ability to get into weighted classes will be impacted potentially by how you are tracked after 6th grade.
/random
Beyond that, as a professor, an even bigger thing is that colleges are depicted as only R1s, and sanitized versions of them at that. SLACs, state regionals, and community colleges may as well not exist as far as they are concerned.
Fucking thank you for making this. This is something that has been bothering me soooo much for years. I was a total slacker in high school, never even cracked a 2.0 GPA, barely graduated, and then started (as a first gen college student) at a local community college. The education was excellent. I did very well, and later transferred to an affordable, local Cal State for my bachelors, and a just few month back I finished my PhD at a UC. I'm now I'm teaching at a Cal State, and I love my job. I took a highly accessible and affordable route in all my education, and I'm so glad I did it that way, but honestly, it was also the only way I could have done it realistically.
For years I've been watching the judgement of affordable higher ed in tv and film, and getting increasingly annoyed with the false perspective it presents to young people, making them think that higher ed is only valuable if it's some goddamn elite and expensive school. I think about that, and think about all the smart underachievers and financially limited students in high school right now who will never pursue the options that would be available to them because they're under a mistaken impression that those options are worthless, and it makes me furious. And almost nobody notices this toxic bullshit, or calls it out. This video is the clearest discussion of this issue I've seen to date, after having googled it several times over the years (mostly while rewatching Gilmore Girls, haha). Again, thank you for talking about this.
YESSSS, this video spoke to me on such an insane level. I'm now in the second semester of my sophomore year of college and I think back to my senior year of high school, the perceptions I had of college from the media, and the pressure I felt to go to an elite one. I was valedictorian of my class, took several AP Classes and got 4s and 5s on all of them except for one, was president of three clubs, had pretty decent SAT scores, and I still new that despite pushing myself like crazy to achieve those accomplishments, I was probably not going to be Ivy material. The realization that you didn't just have to be "smart" or "special" but rather "an actual superhuman" to get into these schools hit me hard. I applied to one Ivy as a reach and really had my hopes up for a pretty competitive non-Ivy school (I think they had a 23% acceptance rate or something like that?), as well as eight other schools ranging from like 40-90 % acceptance rates. In the end, I got accepted into the eight safeties, deferred and then accepted into the other competitive school, and rejected from the Ivy. But even though I got accepted to my "dream" school, I literally could not justify taking the loans out to pay the absolutely insane tuition cost. I had spent days and days working on a separate full-tuition scholarship application for that university which I got disqualified from when I got deferred instead of accepted during the Early Action admission season, and so the measly portion of financial aid I received after I got accepted during regular decision wasn't even enough to put a noticeable drop in the bucket. I ended up committing to a different school that did award me a full-tuition scholarship, and even then I was worried that I was disappointing everyone for not following the traditional narrative. I mean, I was valedictorian, how embarrassing was it that I was going to (insert college that has no notoriety in the media)? Now, looking back, I'm so glad I picked the college that I did. I have taken many interesting and challenging classes that have made me a better student and a better person, I have made incredible friends and created wonderful memories with them, and I am genuinely excited to continue my undergrad education there. And, pretty importantly, I did not make a horrible, crippling financial decision that would've put me in debt for who knows how long, and the freedom in knowing that I will be lucky enough to graduate debt-free is the biggest weight off my shoulders. If anyone who is applying for college now is reading this, please know that the prestige of your college does not define your worth, you can be so so happy at a school that many people have never heard of, and please do not throw away every penny you have to go to your "dream school." At the end of the day, it's an institution babe.
I can't belive that culture of picking a prestigious school as a child and just sticking through it all your life. I think it might be an American thing, but when I watched Gilmore Girls I thought it was so toxic, how much of Rory's personality relied on wanting to go to Hardavrd. In my country, most people don't ask about college until you're in high school.
The Summer I Turned Pretty had Steven going to Princeton and Conrad going to Stanford after spending a year at Brown as his backup college.
As a junior i have completely wasted my hs years as i only have my academics to count on. I’ve had classes like theater and art but not precisely in a club, I have no ec activities.I’ve had to navigate everything myself with no older sibling to help or guide me and my mom isn’t from America so she couldn’t help me either. I’m only now starting to realize how not everything revolves around my grades, chat I’m cooked.
girl, I am so so so sorry that whatever environment you're growing up in has taught you that 3 APs is not that many. that's a LOT of work. for reference I'm a recent college graduate and when I was in high school (a private, college-prep high school), you physically couldn't take more than 4. They wouldn't let you. You could pay to take the test, but you literally couldn't take more than 4 AP classes in one school year. and to even do that many in one year you had to get special paperwork signed. even if you're talking about how many you took over the whole four years of high school, that's still a HUGE amount of work. I was up there with the honor roll kids, not the highest of the high but solid 4.0, and I ended highschool having taken 4 AP classes and taken 5 tests*. like. I started seeing a therapist bc of how stressful school was. that shit kick-started a long slow decline in mental health. do not kill yourself trying to get good grades. any amount of APs is hard, tbh school is plenty hard without them. (genuine)
*my honors chem teacher was like hey why not take the AP chem test it'll be fine you're doing great in my class and we want to try and do an AP chem class next year and i was like i'm doing well in your class in spite of you, bc you're a shit teacher and a shit person, but why not take the test maybe I'll get some college credit out of it (I did not)
This doesn’t even take into account that you could have perfect grades, and yet still not even get into your top STATE school. I’m from Virginia, and so many of my classmates and myself all applied to UVA, and many of us didn’t get in 🙄
HOLY SHIT A 1570 SAT!?! my highest is 1210 💀 but got into the school I wanted so 😩
"Modern Family," did a good job. Only one character went to an elite school. Everyone else either didn't go to college, or went to a "normal," school (Fresno State, University of Illinois)
this video is so true! as a student currently in community college and planning to transfer to a public state school, television and the media makes me feel so insecure for not going to a big fancy notable school.
They too often portray it as “get good grades and you get in.” In reality its more like “Get good grades, get a perfect SAT or ACT score, be in like 10 extracurricular activities, win at least one national award, have an internship at nasa, dont be a white or asian male, have billionaire parents, run a business you started at age 10, and have at least 3 generations of your family be legacy. Then maybe you’ll have a 1 in 100 chance of getting in.”
I remember this really super incredibly rich kid at my school (possibly billionaire, dad owned several large companies and mansions) (claimed their dad created C++) told me that they lied on a college application to Harvard and said they were the only leader of a club for people with learning disabilities (that they never once attended.)
I was running it with three others. I was so pissed. I felt like they were taking advantage of us. "Look how kind I am helping these disadvantaged special ed kids". I still sometimes wish I'd narced on them.
Just the privilege to afford anything and the audacity to use people they'd never really met as a stepping stone made me hate them so much. The rest of us will work so much harder and something like Harvard might never be attainable even with a full ride.
Based off of this video you should read Radio Silence by Alice Oseman
I had expectations upon me both of my parents are doctors and they payed this thing called educative insurance for me when I was a little kid, which basically pays for the semesters of college later on as long as you don't have extra credits, thinking I would study medicine as it is the most expensive major in my country, what this allowed me to do was to not worry about the cost and what not originally I wanted to go to the national university that despite being public university and have most of the buildings cumbling down is quite prestigious academically, and in here you don't need extra curriculars or even grades aren't that important, you just need to take our equivalent ofr the SAT and like some schools have their own entrance exam, like this first one and the result of said exam determines what majors you can apply to, and I did so well on that entrance exam that I couls choose anything and even get a full discount on the price, I chose chemestry and I hated it. So I changed schools and decided to do eingeneering in a religious school also with some prestige and connected to my school, also not for me, and seeing too many of my former classmates was a bit traumatic, so I changed again into my current major of modern languages in a smaller school and I feel so much more comfortable.
as someone who is a senior and into her dream school, this is very helpful and timely. love the video!
I'll be curious to see how this is portrayed 20+ years down the line. I went through this process during the peak of Covid, right as many colleges were getting rid of requriing the SAT and ACT exams.
College was presented to me by media too. And because I knew at an early age what I wanted to do for a career, I looked into colleges for it immediately and had a dream school (I wasn't even in middle school yet). Thankfully I figured out the whole middle school grades don't matter thing early on so my good grades and extracurriculars were because I wanted too. I moved right before freshman year too, which made me depressed and destroyed the excitement I had about going to college (I dreaded it). Anyway, the college process sucks, and I had to do it twice once I chose to take a gap year. It'd be nice if shows with senior characters actually presented the college process accurately, AND showed characters choosing to go to non elite colleges.
I think one of my favorite college applications portrayals is Seth Cohen from the OC only applying to Brown, since it was his life dream to go there, and not getting in.
I think the reason why it's just so easy for the characters to get into those big name schools is that for rich people, like the ones in the show, it is. And that was the experience the screenwriters either had or saw around them because it's sure as heck true for the actors' kids. The idea of struggling to get into a Top10 college is as foreign to them as...milking a cow so you can make breakfast.
European here who pays a measly 600ish euros (which is about the same in USD) per year for tuition, who applied to college for funsies because the financial benefits far outweigh tuition fees. Applications cost?? And what on Earth do colleges do with that crazy amount of money?? Why do Americans hate affordable education???? And affordable health care for that matter??
Even more seemingly realistic and modern movie portrayals of teens has the Stanford bias like Booksmart, if I remember right. It's not much of a big deal but A NUMBER of students get into an Ivy even though they're technically from a regular school and some of them are good but not exemplary. Sometimes names could just be swapped out, they don't *need* to be Ivys
I remember when I was in High school only a few years ago - students had really weird views on colleges
They saw UC’s as amazing and top notch, CSU’s as good, and community college as a failure
But now that I’m in a UC/college- I hear people wish they were in a CSU, and people who took the community college route are looked highly on cause they saved the money and worked hard
Also when I was in high school most students looked down on the arts- and up on stem - but once they actually get into college, the people who forced themselves into stem majors ( when they didn’t quite want it )became miserable
Happy I went into arts and video games as my major, but wish I knew more about colleges/my options first o7
Pretty accurate. I had a similar experience from middle school to high school. Looking back, I would say it doesn't matter that much where you go to college. I know people who went to Harvard but are not financially successful as adults at all. I also have a friend who went to some third-tier college in China, but works for Meta and is quite rich now.
It's more important to get good financial aid or pick a school that doesn't cost much, to pick a major that has good career prospects, and you can always try to go to a more prestigious grad school if that's something that interests you.
The reality is that colleges DON'T look at those grades you get in middle school, but they DO matter. The skills and concepts you learn in middle school are building towards more complex ideas and learning in Highschool. That Algebra 1 is super important across all subjects in STEM, so definitely invest time in understanding what they are trying to teach you (not necessarily getting an A with perfect attendance or test scores).
The other subject that will affect you long-term is actually English Comprehension/Reading class. Does the wallpaper color need to have an explanation? NO. Should you be able to pick out cues and tones from a body of text? YES. This will help with media literacy (what the news and entertainment tells you subconsciously). Learning how to effectively communicate with people is the most important skill you can learn going into the world, whether that be through writing, speaking in person, or through online discussion.
Also, I just learned this year that American Freshman Science (in some states/counties) is not a class about science, but is actually a class teaching you how to study. If the class seems useless, it's because the content of the class IS, but the context of how you are learning it is the point. Apparently a lot of American Learning is built like this.
I was a pretty average student in middle school and didn't care about college at all. Freshman year 2020 I became "above average" for the first time in a while. Like my transcript showed almost straight As. Stopping the bragging now, this year I applied to mostly target and reach schools because I need them the most. Whcih sounds dumb but its my reality. I'm a low income, first generation, and come from an immigrate family. I was blessed to not pay for college applications, css profile, sat, etc because im broke. I need to get into at least ONE reach or target school because those schools give me the most benefits. Not only will I get an amazing financial aid package but also a higher status. I wish Tv shows actually showed how tough it is to get into these top universities, but also show other type of students applying. Most students I see form tv show applying to these schools come from exceptional backgrounds (having all the resources in the world). Idk I wish they showed more low income and first-generation students trying to get into this school because it would be more beneficial for them.
Also, the shows never touch upon the money aspect. My grades were really good in high school, I had a high SAT score, lots of extracurriculars and a part-time job, but I went to my local state university because the "high-end" schools I applied to were way too expensive. The TV shows never seem to touch upon that aspect, they never talk about the loans or even the basic, "I like this place, but can I afford it?" I didn't want to take out 100k+ in student loans and bury myself financially to attend a university for the brand name. It's just not worth it. I'm hard pressed to find the ROI for an Ivy League school or any university charging 75k+ a year. Sure, the campus environment and the alumni connections help, but are they really worth that 100k - 200k price tag that you'll be paying back your whole life? Or having a $1,000+ payment monthly out of university? It's just not worth it. Go where you can get the best education possible for the cheapest price possible! From someone on the other side of it, who is paying their student loans, one of the best choices I ever made was going to that local state university. It's allowed me to save money, as opposed to pouring it all into high interest student loans.
I honestly would take this video a step even further to say that it's difficult to know what college is right for you until you end up there as a student, and to recognize that you never know what's going to happen in your life, and that things can change in an instant, shifting your life privileges and circumstances.
I was a student at the best high school in my state, I had a decent GPA and I earned my associates degree in high school. I got a decent ACT score, took over ten AP courses (two of which I self-studied because my school didn't offer them). I knew what I wanted to major in, had extracurriculars with extreme long term commitment and had won some national awards.
But, in my junior year of high school I became disabled. I developed a chronic illness so severe that I was in and out of the hospital constantly, and couldn't physically do any sort of school. in between surgeries and procedures, my grades slipped, and despite being the "best high school in the state" I didn't have any support to drop my college courses, or take a leave of absence from school. Despite having accommodations, I was ousted from this (public) school for failing to meet their academic standards, leaving me in November of senior year with no one to write my recommendation letters, give me advice on fee assistance (I'm low income), or guide me in the admissions process.
I got rejected from my top choice, Barnard College. I applied to 60 colleges (all for free with the fee waiver program) and was accepted to the majority of them, outside of the top ones (Columbia, Wellesley, Vassar, Swarthmore etc).
Despite getting into quite a few prestigious schools outside of the top 20, I decided to go to a small largely unknown womens college in Minnesota. Why? Because they flew me out. They paid for my hotel room, they read my file and KNEW my story. They met up with my mom and I and showed me around campus one-on-one, they set up a meeting with the disability office and the head of my prospective major, and they lined up an academic plan for if I had to take a leave of absence due to my disability. I got an entirely full ride, and they even helped me look into what kind of dorms they had to accommodate my health conditions, making sure to reserve one for me if I paid my deposit.
My school is like 270th in the country-- most people have never heard of it. All of my peers from high school go to WashU, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford etc-- but I'm the happiest. I've done multiple internships, worked for Mayo Clinic, run organizations and started initiatives for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
I'm sorry this is all so long, this is just an issue I'm super passionate about and I want everyone to know that college is a struggle regardless of where you go-- things will come up and circumstances will change. Go to a school that you know is equipped to help you through that when it does inevitably happen. College is largely what you make of it. Are there advantages to going to a top 20-50 institution? of course, but they're not exclusive to those universities by any means, and those experiences (besides brand recognition) can for the most part be replicated at any other institution (or a combination of institutions through consortium agreements, internships, or transferring).
Sorry again this is so long!
i find it insane that miley from hannah montana was able to get into stanford despite traveling the country for tours and concerts, it made sense that lily got in, but i never understood how miley did
I find it crazy that while applications and going to college were never much of a focus in a lot of these shows, these details end up getting noticed anyway. I watched some of the teen Disney shows when I was a kid, but these were definitely plot items I never gave much thought to.
But as someone who went through the process myself with a very different experience and did end up at an Ivy, I just wanted to add a few things:
- The most important thing in middle/high school is not really grades, but rather knowing yourself: what you might want out of life in the medium/long term, why you want to go to college (or even IF you want to attend in the first place), how you pace yourself to meet those goals, etc. Even on applications, a lot of universities are pivoting to interesting and driven applicants over those with just good grades (especially since standardized tests are becoming increasingly optional).
- Grades don't matter as much as most people think, but depending on where you are located, state exams DO matter. I recommend that people at least graduate high school, and doing well on exams might help you later when applying to college. For example, my HS was in NYS, and I received scholarships and awards due to performance on state exams which looked good on my application.
- Ivy League tuition is misleading. I would disagree that ONLY the rich and wealthy should even CONSIDER applying to them. Because these schools are rich, they can have more generous financial aid packages than most other schools. It is not merit-based, either, since by being accepted you are already considered a good student. They are need-based, and often contain tens of thousands of dollars in grants (this money is given with little to no strings attached, and are NOT loans that need to be paid back later). I had many classmates who came from poverty-stricken conditions and received full rides for tuition, room & board, textbooks, and even laptops/smartphones. As for myself, even though my family was around medium income, thanks to financial aid and scholarships I was able to graduate debt-free.
I’m mentally blocking out anything related to my college applications which isn’t helpful when I’m actively getting messages from them
My parents really didn't push college on me, but it was sort of automatic for me because I knew I wanted to be a computer programmer, and so I applied to DePaul University to be a computer science major and it was all good because it was a local school.
in middle school and freshman year i REALLY wanted to go to mit. then during sophomore year, my gpa took a hit and i got 3 b's. and then i got one more b my junior year. i still had a 3.87 gpa and a 1590 sat and various clubs, dual enrollment, 12 aps, and national awards, but i ended up getting rejected from most of my state schools. the school i'm at is considered a good school, but people on r/applyingtocollege and people at my ultracompetitive high school think it's overrated and a bad school. i've struggled with my self-esteem and have faced bouts of depression because of the college admissions process, and i'm still struggling with the aftereffects. when i see people on TV get into these schools like it's nothing, it only makes me feel worse about myself.
I got pretty good grades and did a ton of extracurricular activities but I still decided to go to community college to avoid a bunch of debt and I’m still very happy. And plus I still got some outside scholarships due to my good grades so I’ll transfer without having paid a cent of my own money for 3 years worth of classes and 2 associates degrees. And I’ll still have some of that scholarship money left over to pay for my bachelor’s when I transfer in a few months. Never EVER judge community college. If you get along with your parents and they’ll let you live at home and if they’re possibly even okay with you living there rent free, fucking TAKE IT Y’ALL. The college experience is nice and all but I’m very happy at my CC and I’ve made plenty of friends throughout my time there so in my opinion, cash cash money is just as nice.
I slopped around early, put hedonistic pleasure ahead of diligence, and still won the big prize. My high school extracurriculars were going to rock concerts with my hippy friends, leaving campus to partake of the El Supremo, riding a Yamaha 175 Enduro on pipelines, and shacking up with my girlfriend. I managed - just barely I imagine- to get into my local state university. Three years later, I had graduated from college with a 3.5 GPA. I made a 93rd percentile GRE score and was accepted at Stanford and Brown for graduate school. I completed a masters degree (M.A.) at Stanford, and later a second graduate degree (M.S.) at Johns Hopkins University. Many things are possible in life.
Two shows on Disney that kinda show this are "Phineas and Ferb", and "Gravity Falls".
I live in the UK and I’m in the last year of high school I think/ I’m in year 11 I’m doing my exams in May but I would say in the UK there is a lot less pressure of going to a amazing Uni (which is college in the US) for example the only top Unis we have are Oxford and Cambridge so there is much less pressure since there aren’t as many prestigious schools!
thank you youre awesome
im a senior right now its insane (i was expected to go to an ivy cause why not but finally didn't apply thank god) and its so nice to see a cool big sister youtuber lay it all out like it is :)
Did I go to an especially prestigious school? No. Do I remember literally anything I learned for my degree? Not really. But did I find my closest friends and have a blast, despite the Covid of it all? Very much so. I have no regrets. And I've managed to do pretty well since graduating, even applying to grad school for next year. My high school grades weren't extraordinary and I pretty much only had one main extracurricular but I feel pretty good about where my life ended up. I know some people may not want to hear it but Ivy Leagues really aren't everything.
Here in Canada, the application fee to apply at a college or uni is between 90-140$. How do I know? Because I payed almost 400$ for three university applications alone. And don’t even get me started on the deposit fees for when you get accepted.
Ms Amanda, please can we have more Percy Jackson content? Yours Kindly, Me
Thank You
as a senior in high school, i only applied to one college that i knew would give me good scholarships! i’ve been accepted already but the hardest part now is applying for scholarships 😭
I was lucky enough to get into my top university choice (New Mexico Tech) but as an Australian living in America and graduating high school over there things got pretty expensive fast. I’m now back in Australia in a very good geology and archaeology program that I can actually afford, as in less uni debt than as an international in the US. New Mexico State and Tech are the two I wanted and got into, NMT I was aiming for because of their geology and cave research program aka the Mount Erebus Volcano Observatory in Antarctica and all the research that comes with it. One day I hope I can go there for research but until then I will be finishing my concurrent degree here in Australia.
If you're in california, I highly recommend going to community college. Its so much cheaper (~$1,600/year). I went to community college, transferred to UC Berkeley and finished my degree in bioengineering. Now, I'm pursuing a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford.
You also have to pay money to get your SAT score officially sent to a school!!
18:03 the only question you need to ask before applying for college
I have no idea why in the new live-action Fairly Odd Parents reboot, they decided to have Timmy Turner go to PRINCETON
Admittedly its been a long time since I've watched one of these teenage shows, but I really have to give a nod to the "Friday Night Lights" show that was on NBC years ago. This kids all talked like kids, not like say "Dawson's Creek" where all the kids talk in soliloquys to each other. They also made a point of having a girl work her ass off, and be overjoyed, when she was accepted to UT at Austin.
I love studying in europe, the grades here are irrelevant for college bc you only need to graduate highschool to enter university. Plus the tuition fees are like less than 30€ per semester.
god damn i wish i was born 9 years earlier than my actual birth so that i could attend eu universities instead of being locking in england as its more convienient.
Wow hearing how many schools people apply is weird. I only applied to like two schools (ones that I knew pretty reasonably I could get in) but maybe it’s different in canada
I live in the US and applied to only one, but I picked that specific school because the acceptance rate was really high and I knew I had a solid chance
I've personally never been interested in Ivy leagues. Tbh it doesn't really matter what school you go to in the sense that the difference in the quality of education between colleges is vastly smaller than the things between schools that aren't really education like sports, campus, student size, downtown life, amenities, etc. (i hope that explanation made sense). So i've put value in the college I wanted to go to largely on if it offers my desired major, the college that houses my major, amenities, culture, and ofc money. Because I'm not rich and didn't get a stupid good scholarship I stayed in state. school is roughly 40% acceptance rate, so it wasn't a safety or anything.
Please don't put your worth in the college you go to! What matters more than the college you go to is what you do at whatever college you go to!
At the end of the day when we’re applying for a job they will care what degree you have and not so much the college. You can still do to community college and become a lawyer.
Among one of the only times I've seen a college mentioned that wasn't the likes of an Ivy, Stanford, or Duke, was when Girl Meets World casually dropped Rutgers in, and I kind of liked that they mentioned an elite public school that wasn't Berkley or UCLA
I never went to college...:'3. I wanted to, but I didn't get a diploma, just a certificate. I did graduate. But...I guess college just wasn't in the cards for me. I wanted to go to college, still kinda do. But like, I'm mentally disabled and not good at math or science and you kinda _have_ to be good at those subjects in order to get into _any_ good college or university, whether it's an Ivy League college or not.
Honestly, I’m just waiting for an intelligent hardworking character that faced many obstacles in their life, attending a not so prestigious university, and later successfully fulfilling their goals and dreams. I watched a video where it talks about the downfall of the MCU writing and I pointed out Iron Heart being a merry sue and attending MIT for absolute no reason but because “she’s smart”. It’s more interesting if a character has a more moral reason of why they are attending a certain university (being prestigious or not) than a character who attends a university just for the sake of telling but not showing. It’s sad because I believe Hollywood could be a good influence to teens if they continue writing stories with good morals and themes but instead we just keep getting unnecessary, cliched, and picture perfect life movies and tv shows that can affect teen’s mental health.
So in conclusion: We need more realistic movies where we can highly relate to a character.
Maybe this isn't the norm, but I live in Chicago and the middle school grades do matter here (or did when I was going to highschool in the 2010's). Here, you apply to high schools like colleges with your 7th and 8th grade grades and a placement test, and each school has drastically different levels of funding, resources, and location. You have the option of just going to your neighborhood school, but those are often very underfunded and/or dangerous. It was way too much stress for 13 year old me!
As a person who does not live in the US I have always thought this is the weirdest thing ever. In some countries public universities tend to be the most prestigious ones and no one really cares that much about where you went to college. It blows my mind tbh.
A bit late to this but don't forget about the mid to late 2000s American Pie style movies on Comedy Central that portrayed college as a "go lucky party experience where the stakes are low and everyone can get some".
This molded a whole generation of millennials to go and take out ridiculous loans for BS degrees, while at the same time encouraged toxic gender situations and substance use.
I believe in the conspiracy that colleges, while they wouldn't outwardly encourage it, turned a blind eye to this so they can attract more people to spend money on their campus.
Also don’t sleep on gap years, Amanda briefly mentioned it, but I recommend a gap year if you’re not sure what you’re doing yet
Swooping in as a now 27 year old grad student, meaning that come May it would've been exactly a decade ago I did this whole college application dance. I grew up with one parent as a prof in a public/state university, so prestigious university was kind of a "eh, whateves" for me. And with the scholarships I was getting, in-state colleges were gonna be the best bet. So I remember being almost too practical with my applications and expectations, lol. My mom suggested I have a *dream school* in mind, which seemed like a total waste of energy 😆😆 Teenage me was smart, but maybe could've used more chill
As a non-American, I really didn't know how bad the college/university acceptance culture was in the US before watching this omg
In my country, college/university is definitely made out to be an "all-or-nothing" and we do have prestigious schools, but they're not super glamorized. It's made known to students that no matter what college/uni you attend, employers don't generally care, all that matters is your degree.
If you're worried about your post-secondary education experience, personally as someone who's been in uni for a couple years, you literally start to just not care. You make friends, hang out on campus, be bombarded by homework and exams, procrastinate, get stressed, pull all-nighters, wonder how you ever got through it, rinse and repeat, and then wow the year is over. It's not as amazing as a lot of media makes it out to be, most people including myself just treat it as the place you go to get your degree. Of course there are a ton of clubs and fantastic opportunities offered if you're interested, but most who take part use it to look good on resumes and such, otherwise you're gonna be too busy with homework and studying to care about having fun. 4 or so years fly by super fast and before you know it, you're out of school, so don't feel the need to treat college/uni life it's THE years of your life. You might end up disappointed.
Yes! Finally someone is talking about this
I actually helped lobby my school to stop using a 5.0 for AP classes, which resulted in a drop of about 10 places in my class ranking. Seems silly now, but I really disliked the idea of getting above 4.0
Not living in the US I always figured movies is what US college are like.
Im ALMOST done with apps, it is NOT fun
she’s back! she’s back!
I am a child of a Korean immigrant my family is poor we are the 1980s wave of Korean immigrants when it was still a poor country mainly the early 80s
My family is poor i was never homeless yet i left home at 17 I see that it is hard to get a job without a degree college is not useless especially if you are from a poor family
The U.S for Asians is you need a good education there is a focus on acedemicis achievements rather than talent the ghosts from Korea don't really leave they attach to you because you are bared from jobs ect just like Korea
Chaebols don't exist in the U.S but you still see some similarities to those better off than you if you settle for a cheap community college that looks bad for someone like me compared to say non Asians so I went straight into a Public Ivy school it sucks to see others better off than you
Want to meet people have meaningful connections with other Koreans well if you are a Korean born abroad poor well they don't like you especially if you have a white father because you are not one of them whites won't welcome you either because you are not a real American because your mother is from a foreign country
You live as a foreigner not just your whole life but also in college you feel isolated it sucks
There is no media ever addressing what it is like to be an actual poor child of an immigrant I was lead to believe to be a good little model minority because the system treats you fairly if you play by the rules but some people in my classes can cheat and suffer no reprercussions because they can bribe their way out
I essentially attend college without much care for anything other than a letter and number because I will be judged based on how much my numbers are because fuck talent like in Asian countries you need to submit no fun just work until you drop dead for about ten minutes to sleep get up repeat who cares about making friends just get a piece of paper to prove you got good academic achievements to land a job you will hate
Then you say I want a good paying job some old whites tell you "but you are living the American dream you made your immigrant family happy" expect I have to work three times as much and hope I get paid more by saying nothing yet will never happen then I have to pay for my parent to live because her health will decline more than it has
I’m a University of Minnesota College of Biological Sciences legacy. Never ever considered an Ivy League school and I love being the next CBS student in my family. My future kids can do whatever they want though :)
I feel like the only show that did it right was Sister Sister. You really saw them struggle to get in.
Your job won't care where your degree is from, just go to community college and save money.
What a beautiful and articulate young woman
lol I wish AP classes boosted your GPA at my school. We didn’t do weighted GPA so the valedictorians were the ones who took 1 honors class freshman year and the people who actually challenged themselves were penalized.
Damn i didnt realise it was so expensive to get into uni in America. I had to pay about 30 quid to apply to 5 schools, and that was the stabdard number for applicants. (UK)
It sounds hellish I feel sorry for u girl