The nepotism and elitism is insane. For example, I went to a good public high school. The valedictorian who did everything "right" was denied from Harvard. He spent summer courses there, had a professor write him a letter, etc. He showed immense interest for years, had insane stats, and obviously was first in the class. He got rejected. Another girl in his grade, who wasn't even in the top 50, mysteriously got into Harvard. Academically, she did decently well, but wasn't very impressive. A few months later most kids around the school found out that her parents donate millions to Harvard. What's annoying is that my high school has her come back to speak to students about her experience, advice, etc. It makes me super frustrated. Just wanted to let people know about personal info I have and that this privilege cannot be ignored!! Don't beat yourself up about rejections please
Hey guys I just got accepted into my favorite university because my essay! Now yes I know my father owns the school and I promised him to do the dishes for once if he let me in his but I promise it was just my amazing essay!!!
i got into that school too! my essay was also amazing just like yours, not just because of the world renowned college advisors who helped me, it was all me!!! also, i hope your father enjoys the new science building my parents donated as well, which don’t get me wrong, didn’t affect my acceptance into the school!
Right??? Even at the public school I went to, which had the IB program and was pretty well funded, classes were still mostly 20-30 people. The thought of being in a high school classroom with less than 10 classmates is wild to me
In my highschool (be it it is a special case, you apply to go here) it is 30 max per class and they fill in the capacity. Some people change schools, but generaly the number is arouns 25-30 kids. Now each seminar for the 7th year of the 8 yesr program and 3rd year for the 4 year program requiers I BELIEVE 8-10 kids MINIMUM to open. The 8 applies to stuff like art or music because it generaly is a low-pick, but when the students pick it, they usualy need it because they target an art uni or smt like that. Srsly. Half the time they have to shift students away from seminars bcs they are full and top capacity. This is ridiculous. And I live in a country w a decent student to teacher ratio.
The only place I ever got to experience something close to that was in philosophy class, which had 11 students to a teacher in my last year, and that because 1. we had an unusually small year 2. no one in my year wanted to do philosophy 3. people kept dropping out of school, condensing the small class even further We had a great time and sometimes just straight-up heckled the teacher if we didn't agree. To have that kind of environment in every course would be mind-blowing.
As an English teacher who has his seniors do college essays - her (full) essay felt…empty and vapid. It’s screams “I’m privileged and have nothing to offer.” There’s so soul
One kid in my class was into making candles and soap and she literally just wrote about that and got into the school she wanted. Even if you just wrote about soap 😂😂🤷♂️ real passion and clear vision for the future stand out a lot
I took 17 AP classes in High School, had a GPA of 4.657, had an SAT of 1530, and was filled with excitement for the college admissions process. I applied to 17 schools, and most of them were reaches or near-reaches. I only got accepted into 3 of them, and have never felt more crushed in my life. The sheer weight of wasting my teenage years under constant stress to end up at my state school was depressing... until I realized I would've been more miserable around elitist ivy-league students anyway. For anyone currently experiencing self doubt after the latest college decisions, I truly believe once you get to your college of choice, you'll be glad they rejected you.
I was crushed when I didn't get into my dream school. Then I got a full ride scholarship to a private out of state school. I worked my ass off there and landed an internship at Johns Hopkins where I surprisingly ended up interning with many of my peers who'd been accepted to my dream school. I took a different route but ended up at the same location. Moral of the Story: life is what you make it. Grow where ever you are planted. Trust me, it all works out in the end. Also, life is just beginning for you. Work hard, but remember to play hard too.
My psychologist in HS told me not to aim for Ivy leagues; not bc he thought I couldn’t do it, but bc if I did do it I’d be immensely discouraged by being “a small fish in a big pond.” And I would run a very good chance of fucking up my perception of college by being surrounded by the smartest people to go to college, meanwhile I’m a slightly above-average type person.
I completely feel this comment in my bones! For the longest time I thought that my high GPA would be enough to get me into an Ivy League but recently I’ve been listening to the student experience at these schools and it seems that the students lack actual perspective and joy in what they do. I thought a state school would make me less worthy as a student because they weren’t as selective but then I got this piece of great advice. “Education is what you make of it.” Regardless of where you go, be active in student events and look for internships and work experience in your field and your resume out of college will speak for itself. No employer will really be able to recognize what college you went to unless it’s an Ivy League, but that’s okay! Tons of people don’t go to Ivy leagues and they still have successful careers with much less debt. Don’t be discouraged by their rejection! And make sure the schools you are applying to are schools you can actually see yourself in.
It’s sad because we all know wealth helps people get into college, but the wealthy students will almost always deny it and just say they worked hard. I don’t doubt the hard work, but it’s just so much easier to work hard on school when your housing, health, water, and food are never one or two paychecks away from being lost. They don’t understand the setbacks middle to lower class people face.
and they live in prime neighborhoods right next to the school and have access to multiple private tutors. They get to vacation a few times a year and destress over break and make friendships partying.
I go to a private school (albeit, not a super "bougie" one, and it's not in the US, definitely not an Ivy feeder). And I agree with everything said in the video. But not one person at my school denies their privilege. Yes--there are awful people like these who try and hide away from their privilege, but I have a hard time believing that's the majority. Every day I feel incredibly thankful--almost guilty--about my privilege. I understand where your statement comes from. And there's no denying people in the world think like how you described (i.e., being blind to the setbacks of working class) but I cannot help but feel as if you are making some sweeping generalizations here. "They" as in, the wealthy students, covers a HUGE range of people. I think instead of just using wealth as a measure of ignorance, we should use actual ignorance as a measure of ignorance. Sure, wealth makes your more sheltered and thus more susceptible to it, but not every rich person is living under a rock to the realities of the middle-working classes. Anyways, sorry for the long rant. I hope this doesn't come off as an effort to defend people like the girl in the video.
@@lulupollitt1797 For me I don't mind the ignorance as much as the fact that the financial system is setup so someone's overall level of success is mostly set at birth. Sure there's exceptions, but for the most part a person stays in the income bracket they're born into. To me that really makes the whole system lose a lot of legitimacy and have a lot less value.
@@lulupollitt1797 i agree completely! i, too, often feel thankful yet guilty about my privilege. 'wealthy students' are not ignorant, ignorant wealthy students are ignorant. most of my friends in similar positions recognise our privilege and the fact that our systems are broken in a way that makes it easier for certain groups to navigate ivies. the original comment makes complete sense - wealth helps people get into college, but a small minority of ignorant people deny it.
Not just US, it also happens in my country i think most of parents and high school students here knows that if you can invest big amount of money into the university they will accept you regardless of your essay. Essay is just for formality.
There's also the factor of financial aid offers (or lack thereof) from the Ivy league schools. A girl in my graduating class got into Yale, and she absolutely deserved it, but she had to reject them because they didn't offer her ANY grants or scholarships. Even when non-legacy students get in, taking on tens of thousands of dollars in loans is just too much for a lot of them. When these colleges accept legacy students and kids from private schools, they KNOW they'll get that money.
Yep, 100%! Not only that, but these loans and scholarships are taxed to the recipient. So, if you receive scholarships, be prepared to pay that tax. I knew someone who had to turn down a scholarship because he couldn't pay those taxes, plus living on the mainland away from his parents and social structure (Hawaii)
@@grass666 fax, my parents make a solid amount of money but not nearly enough to pay full price for these schools, my parents are willing to pay for about half of what my top schools are charging😭.
Absolutely. Not to mention that international students typically pay full tuition. Hence the shift away from the SAT as a key determiner for admission.
You're absolutely right, Robert. 36% of Harvard's students are legacy students, i.e., someone in their family has attended Harvard. Their average acceptance rate is around 5%. The admissions process is highly subjective and nebulous, and it has led to a guild system at these universities. HBS even considers if a parent is in an upper management position or CEO in a top company, because they know that the incoming student is much likely to "succeed" in their parent's company. Edit: The acceptance rate for Harvard for legacy students is 33%, as opposed to 6% for the others
Of course the percentage of Harvard students of any group is likely larger than the percentage of students that get in. A better stat would be comparing the acceptance rate of legacy students that apply compared to other groups (not sure what that stat is). Did you know over 50% of Harvard students are on some form of financial aid? I’m speaking from experience. I recently graduated from Harvard and a significant majority were on financial aid and many were paying 0$ to go there because their families were unable to financially support them due to being low income. Sure some kids there were rich and some were legacy, but it was far from the majority. Edit: I’m only talking about Harvard college because I have experience there. Not commenting on Harvard Business School or other Ivy schools where what you’re saying could very well be true.
@@mulholandalcoholic I’m not sure where this stat is from. Maybe it’s an average of across the years? I just looked it up and saw one now that says 36% of class of 2022 was legacy but the more recent class of 2025 was only 16% and class of 2025 was 12%. Not sure if this is a downward trend or coincidence as I haven’t looked into a ton of stats. And I think they’re defining legacy as any relative in your family that has previously gone to Harvard including grandparents and such. Compare that to the class of 2025 (which again had 16% legacy) which has 18.6% of the class being first Gen college students. Just to clarify I’m not saying being legacy wouldn’t help. I’m sure it does in multiple ways other than what is seen on the application (access to more resources etc.) but I just don’t want people to think that Harvard is mostly filled by rich legacy kids when those people only make up a small percentage.
Wait- being 36% of the student body means something way different than just having a 36% acceptance rate. Might wanna change your wording in the beginning if you’re just talking about acceptance rate and not how much of the student population they comprise.
@@so3594 You can't really look at it by class of x, because there's too many factors that inflate or deflate the stats (i.e, biggest one being each major takes different amount of years to complete a BA or MA, etc, students taking different amount of years to complete, etc). That's why people look at the yearly acceptance rates instead, which for Harvard legacy seems to be around 33% on a regular basis. No educator or counselor in higher ed ever weighs stats by Class of X unless the statistics specifically revolves on graduation rates, which in this case it doesn't because it's solely the rate of admission acceptance.
My best friend in high school literally had the most insane stats. Perfect SAT, 4.4 GPA, Valedictorian, played on the football team with me as a starting linebacker and plenty of other extra circular. He got rejected from ever single IVY. Another girl from our grade, smart but did no extra cuticular stuff and generally a mean girl, got accepted to Princeton and surprise surprise,both of her parents went there!!
Additionally, the students who have to work part-time during high school simply don't have the same amount of time to for academic pursuits than those who don't. Don't get me wrong, many hard-working students have worked and received high scores thorough high school, but it's certainly a privilege to not have to think about earning money.
I had to work part time in high school at a job I hated for a long time, one of my parents passed when I was younger and the other was out of the picture; lived with extended family. You basically NEED a car where I live so that's what I had to work for so I could live a normal life. Sure I had good grades, but it was a struggle.
This is so True. I'm from Poland and we have university education for free, but I had to move for my studies and this meant I had to pay for place to live, take care of food and anything else with small allowance my mum was able to send me plus what I earned myself. I needed money, so I coudn't really do free internships above what was required by my course. My ex, who was in the same university (although diffrent course) didn't had to worry abour living expenses (he was local and could live with his rather wealthy family), so he did some work for free for big company and even goverment. Guess who was better off in the end of the day, him with Ministery of finance in his resume, or me with some contract and part time Jobs including freaking KFC and DVD rental? Later on we both worked in bank sector, I in consumer service, dealing with clients, him in headquarters, doing some analytic job for 5 Times my salary. What option you had early in your life, really set you up or/and limit you for the rest of your life. And I was not really that bad off, I still had some help from home, I was Lucky to be born in the country, where I at least didn't had to go into debt, to get my degree.
@@midori9566my family is not in the financial status to pay for my future schooling so I needed to get a part time job and you need a car to literally go to the neighbors house and to go to the only middle/high school basically in the area,so I can relate some. Its definitely possible, but the struggle is real
I go to a VERY underfunded, understaffed, poorly rated public high school that is infamously known to be dangerous (fights, gangs, etc.) The teachers try their best but we honestly have no resources because our donated funding gets pulled out when the news covers the bad things that happen at school. My one school friend is genuinely the smartest girl Ive ever met. She is naturally just genius- valedictorian, class president, insanely good sat score, and kindest person ever. She recently got accepted to Columbia and it makes me so mad to see that she has dedicated her whole life thus far to her education in hopes of achieving that goal, yet some other students can be given a free pass for being rich or more privileged while she struggles to be able to find money for the tuition after working her ass of for 18 years
Free pass? 🤣. I don’t know where you assume that private high school is easy. Where I go, students frequently will sleep through class or during free periods because of the workload. I myself have already had 5 sleepless nights this school year and around 25 where I got less then 6 hours. Now if I didn’t do sports I would get sleep every day, but activities like sports are mandatory for 1/3 of the year where I go to school. And to graduate you have to average about 7/8 class blocks filled to get the credits. I’m not even close to being the valedictorian and I have it easy as I live a block away from the school. Bust some students commute an hour a day on top of the workload. Students will often drink energy drinks during clases to stay engaged. It’s not easy.
@@aman-qj5sx it's justified because they got an almost free pass for being rich, and even after college, their rich influence will always get them what they want. It's not like once college is over they are like everyone else. No, they are still insanely rich and can do whatever they please.
True shit I was very lucky to live near a rich area and be able to go for free; but the school treated underprivileged students very badly socially and systematically I was bullied by staff and principals for being poor or Lgbt+, im very lucky to have had the opportunity to go to that school but overall It was a shit show if you weren't rich and white
at my NYC "college prep" public high school, where each graduating student was mandated to apply to at least 10 colleges, the very few POC were told by the college counsellor that many of their colleges were too much of a reach. she dissuaded them from applying to "better" schools because she thought they couldn't get in, and if they didn't go to college right out of high school, it would hurt the school's statistics. my best friend was put in this horrible, racist situation, and she applied anyway. she got into her top "reach" school, ended up an honors student, and spoke at her graduation.
Same here, when I said I wanted to be a psychologist, I was told to “start smaller” and that it might be too much for me. I can’t help but wonder if said this to me bc I’m a poc
I went to an elite university over 25 years ago as a public school kid. It also translates to the school itself where the richest kids socialize with each other, join expensive fraternities and sororities and vacation together in spring break. I worked and graduated early to save money and didn’t get any of the “connections” you supposedly get from an elite school.
As a person from good school I still feel alienated in my elite university. It is just two different worlds socially. The privilege is unmatched. I don't know how to socialise with people when we literally had different experiences for the whole life and different upbringing. I feel like I won't be able to make great connections and It's better to transfer to my local uni
I’m from a public school but sad because my essay was really good and I knew it,, the college i chose to go to even sent me a handwritten letter from admissions praising my essay and offering an even higher scholarship than the Ivy,, learned I was one of the only to get that kind of recognition from the university,, instantly knew I wanted to go to a college where I felt seen and I have never regretted choosing the smaller university because I feel like im with students who I can actually relate to and are far more compassionate
Same, but I used to be charter school student. And let me explain to you, it wasn't that good enough because charter school I've experienced there was a racism surrounding me. I got sent to public school in 8th grade. I was offered to go bls but got rejected because of my special needs. So they sent me to school where low income people struggled and I considered myself upper middle class(my dad was a clothing business and my mother used to actress(I will follow my mom's footsteps in the future), now she's training to be businesswomen like my dad). I didn't get enough respect by everyone because I'm different
It’s difficult. I remember being so excited when I was informed that I’d been accepted into Cornell. But then financials came into play and I realized there was no way in hell I could manage, and Cornell doesn’t offer merit scholarships. 59,000 for a year is insane. Let alone four years. So I went to my state school instead. I received a full scholarship for all four years and never had to pay a single dime for my education. Cornell certainly has better academics and provides more opportunities to make important connections in your respective field of study, but the overall price wasn’t worth it to me. Anyways, I want to go to either medical school or graduate school. Both of these paths are extremely pricey, but I’d rather go into them both debt-free instead of adding on to any pre-existing debt.
If you are going to grad school or med school, debt-free could be a great choice! It plays a lot in mental health and early on finance. Wish all the best for you.
I’m so torn on this exact same issue. I really want to attend an Ivy League, because that’s what is expected of me and I’m no one if not a people-pleaser. However, the tuition is just so *expensive*. I’d never be able to afford it. I’m currently in high school on a full ride scholarship, so I don’t doubt my ability to get a scholarship at a state school. Of course, I’m not obliged to make a decision for a little bit, but I’m starting to get questions and it’s really freaking me out.
@@yukijames1321 Yes, and private schools seem to be better for the middle class. At some public schools for out of state they treat earning $100,000 a year the same as earning $1,000,000 a year.
@@fluffyunicorn57 for low income students that may be true but for middle income students, you're fucked. Your parents make enough money to not be in poverty but not enough to pay for your college.
i went to a public NYC high school, and it was considered a "college preparatory school." it's on the upper east side of manhattan, a notoriously rich section of the city that mostly comes from old money. nyc has the most segregated school system, because the public high school (and middle school) system is application-based. you could go to your zoned school, but nobody wanted to unless it was their last choice. schools like mine were only open to application, and that is the norm. the vast majority of the student populace at my school was white, and the school restricts admissions to highly prioritize those who live close by. i was one of the only students in my grade who was from another borough (brooklyn), and since my year the admissions process has gotten even more stringent. the school is poised to take in rich, white students, many of which went to private elementary and middle schools and lived their entire lives within a five-block radius. i had an awful time. the principal only cared about school retention/graduation rate, testing scores, and what colleges the graduating seniors went to. the culture was hostile to anyone experiencing hardship, not only from the principal but from many of the teachers and most of the students as well. i had a friend who was (unofficially, of course) kicked out of the school because he was not performing to the arbitrary standards set forth. his mom had died and once he began to act out, the adults around him pigeonholed him into that identity instead of giving him empathy and compassion. the school mandated that every graduating senior apply to AT LEAST ten colleges. it was hellish to make that list. there were SAT/ACT after school classes, but you had to pay to be in them. the way the school was set up only afforded these luxuries to the kids who already had private tutors and college prep since they were in middle school. we were not poor, but it was too expensive for our family. my peers had credit cards & unlimited funds, and they didn't understand when i couldn't pay them back for gum because i only got a set amount of lunch money a week. i ended up going to an ivy-adjacent school, and again i had a horrible experience. i have always struggled with mental health issues, and my father died right before i went away. i had trouble keeping up with schoolwork, and every semester my financial aid was so convoluted and last-minute that i was restricted from registering for classes. there are so many roadblocks built into school systems, both public and private. much of it is deeply classist and racist, meant to maintain the current caste systems. academia is a scam-in order to enter and succeed in the realm of higher education, you must already be of that echelon. it is a privilege to be able to get into and attend these schools. there is another layer that is often not discussed, though. when someone slips through the cracks into that echelon, they are not equipped with the requisite skills to thrive there. there's an expectation that students not only arrive with the proper etiquette and (arbitrary) prerequisite knowledge, but that their families can pay for textbooks, housing, food, tuition, and amenities. or that students even have families to support them. if anyone has read this, thank you. i expected to write a paragraph but it turned into an essay! maybe i can sell it to someone to use on the common app 🥴
Damn, I stuck on that part that these rich ass kids expected you to pay them back for gum. 😂 If I had unlimited funds, I would've definitely adopted my financially disabled but brilliant friends and try to pay their way through school 😭😂
I remember my older brother getting into one of the top universities in my country (not America to clarify) and when asked by other people what everyone was like there, he described by saying "There's two types of people there: ones who are got there by being the best, or their family is rich."
I got into one of the top five universities in my country produced many influential people from national artist, ceos , governors, secretaries of the president to presidents themselves, ect ect and i gotta say i agree mfers are either stinking rich or really hard working i find the latter to be the most prevalent although it is not to say i don’t see the former fuck im friends with alot of them lol
If I was an admissions counselor and a student even mentioned Twitter in the first paragraph, I wouldn’t even finish it lol. Definitely not what got her in…
I'm a low income high school senior. I just got accepted to UPenn and was accepted to NYU yesterday, and was waitlisted or rejected from every other Ivy. The UPenn acceptance was really surprising for me, but I'm set on NYU. But NYU is crazy expensive and definitely the most expensive after aid from all my acceptances...but I still really want to go there. Update: I've decided to go to UPenn!! They gave me a full ride 🥳
What is your intended field of study? Is there a reason you are shying away from Penn. I can imagine they will give you a generous financial package and NYU is notorious for overcharging their students to attend.
@@richardberman8342 political science, but the reason isn't because of my major.it's mostly because NYU is my dream school and I didn't expect to get into UPenn so I already planned out going to college in New York 😓 I'ts closer to where I live and I have multiple friends going there. UPenn is a great school obviously but I guess it just scares me more bc its so different than what I'm used to
@@bryanna9458 do not go to a certain school just because it’s a dream school and your friends are nearby please UPenn has a great program for what you want to do and it provides better aid you’ll make amazing friends there
its very true, robert. the luck of the draw admissions doesn't even begin at ivy league colleges, it starts with the schools too. I went to a public charter school by luck. My name was placed in a random bingo-like drawing by my mom, and i got in. For context, i live below the poverty line in a poor, below average scoring parish. None of the public schools here had opportunities and above adequate schooling...except this one charter school. I experienced hardships learning-wise, yes, but a harder part of it was simply existing among my wealthy peers as a poor student in an upper-class setting. All kids brought their lunch, a select few ate the school's free lunches. People would giggle if you were in line for your meal. 4 out of 5 class days i didn't get lunch to avoid the humiliation. one semester i was outright refused lunch because the lunch lady "saw me bringing my own" and thought i was faking, in reality i was eating a friend's boxed lunch they generously offered to me. There were large admission fees. The lottery didnt pay for my schooling. Many times she spoke with the Dean, explaining how broke we were, arranging payment plans. Students bought our own expensive uniforms from a single shop. When my only two shirts got massively stained with bleach, i couldn't get new ones. every time a teacher saw it, i was dress-coded for wearing "a distracting altered uniform." and sent to the office. My principal was highly upset I didn't come on the class trips. She couldn't understand why i didn't spend 200, 500, up to 1k on the various class trips. Told her I couldn't afford them. She then suggested i set up a loan or payment plan with the school instead. When i still refused, she made me write a 8 page report on wherever the class went and why i didn't go there. I failed a final because i didn't go on a "final trip" that was really just an attendance grade for a fieldtrip WE had to pay. I've since graduated from that school in 2020 and am now a sophomore in college. and I don't miss the experience one bit. Schools like that painted the experience as "equal for all", but there should be asterisk after that. It's equal only if you're willing to pay up. the majority of my school was white, with the rest being black students. I am white, so i do have inherent privilege in my case. I'm still so grateful i attended and graduated from there, dont get me wrong. While my experience was tough, i can't image how much harder it was from my poor black friends who attended as well. i'll never know how that felt, so it's not my place to speak on that. Even when the disadvantaged make it, they still have a ways to go. the door is open, but they have to fight to stay inside. Its not just getting in, its staying in as well. thank you for this video robert
Hot take: college level education, particularly Ivy League type schools, are going to become outdated unless they can reform how it’s structured. We keep hearing these stories of how you just take on unnecessary debt for no reason, stress to the point of suicide and extreme mental illness, unfairness in the selection process, profit over quality, look at how these colleges responded to the pandemic. Students weren’t allowed on campus and yet look how many students received no amount of tuition reduction. the list really goes on.
Funny enough, some of my scholarships were actually REDUCED because of the pandemic. I had to pay more for tuition specifically because we couldn’t go on campus!!
The debt and even the time wasted. In Europe, people with master degres can't find jobs and sometimes end up changing their field. There is no point killing yourself for a useless degree. Better to have free time.
Honestly these schools ARENT WORTH IT. I am only get degrees so set my self in a position to be over qualified for a job I want as many view my hearing loss as a disadvantage to the field. I honestly have a few recommendations to people interest in careers like the FBI, Public safety Law Enforcement Fire and EMS . - Become a volunteer first.. typically you get free training and lot of of it I am going to get fire fighter 2 Hazmat and tech rescue -Go to community college tends to be cheap help you figure things out and gain connections...my professors were high level NYPD -Learn wide variety of skills Their plenty other tips but takes as many civil service exams as well
I feel like this won't affect the wealthy very much but create more of a problem for the less fortunate--like most of our human history. Yay, classism.
This is why I’m so glad the Australian university admission process is so simple. You only need a score and it’s guaranteed entry- no essay, no extracurriculars required etc.
@@-BarathKumarSSure, but the JEE and NEET take it way, way too far. And I'm not even Indian and I still know how brutal those exams are (not inherently difficult but still doable like Oxbridge tests, but designed just to be sadistic to the student from the start)
I men, it works the same way in America. Most colleges aren't super uptight about what you have to do, or what the quality of your work has to be. Almost anyone who actually tries to get into a college will get into one. It's the "elite" schools that are quite literally for the elite. Anyone else has to work their assess off, and have a good amount of luck to get in.
My brother won the dad lottery (trust fund who married an heiress after my mom divorced him) & went to an insanely expensive boarding school. Even so his GPA was to low to get into his sch of choice, but luckily for him, his dad & gradfather went there so he got in as an legacy admission. (I def pulled the short stick with my dad since I got the drunk deadbeat dad who nvr paid child support.) But my brother is a great guy. He even just bought me and my kid a house.
@@Bingskii I forget the name but it’s in Ojai, CA. I just remember it being stupid expensive but it was beautiful. He got a horse to care for while he was there and was able to ride on a trail that took him down to the beach & up a mountain.
@@greenthinggg it’s especially amazing since we weren’t raised together past the first two years of his life. It’s a long and sad story but a big part of him buying me and my kid a house is bc I took care of our mom after she suffered a head injury causing predementia, & while she suffered from a chronic disease that ultimately took her from us way to soon. He was very appreciative of me taking on the work and emotional labor. He had very young children & lived over 2k miles away so him taking care of mom was unfeasible.
I dropped out of catholic high school. my brother got Harvard letters. he's going to a normal college because he wants to study computer software and be close to home. he's neurotypical and I'm autistic and lemme fucking tell you, private schools have ZERO idea how to handle special needs kids. at all. no special Ed class either, just shitty accommodations I had to fight for tooth and nail and a world of bullying and guilt tripping. it's bullshit. it was a good school for "normal" kids but they treated kids who were different like they're broken
That's unfortunately common in our ableist society. I'm so sorry for what you and your brother endured, hopefully you understand that comments like that aren't your fault and you don't need to change a single thing about yourselves!
No offense, but getting letters from Harvard or any top university doesn’t mean that you will be accepted or that they even want you as a student. It costs them much less to send you a letter than it does for you to apply (application fee to each college) so those letters are more of a financial benefit to them than an indication of merit of the recipient.
@@sallystories yeah I know. But he got a perfect score on his pre-college test (I forgot what it's called) so a lot of ivy league schools were interested
Omg i dealt w this as well!! I have chronic illness and had to switch schools because my catholic school punished me for missing days and needing extra help. I felt so alienated and awful about myself being there. I went to a good public high school and had a much better experience, literally saved my life
I feel like public schools don’t really know how to make accommodations either. I just have these blanket accommodations that don’t really specifically help me, but they’re so broad that they kinda help. I guess public schools and private schools are at polar opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to accommodations. Public gives too much and private gives too little. It’s so disheartening to hear that private schools(that you have to pay for) can’t even make proper accommodations for a neurodivergent person.
As someone at a top 20 university, I 100% agree - not enough people here understand how their privilege gave them opportunities to outshine their less-advantaged peers. As soon as you bring it up, they take it as an accusation that they didn’t work for their place at the university. But when there’s an abundance of qualified applicants with the proper grades and test scores to do well at these universities, hallmarks of privilege like fancy internships or research with your dad’s colleagues, are what make an application stand out. While in my average suburb in the Midwest, I could’ve easily been considered upper middle class, the distortion surrounding class and wealth is so extreme here that I come off as middle class to lower middle class to some of my peers when that is definitely not the case. I can only imagine how much more difficult this web is to navigate for my peers that are actually from low-SES backgrounds
I am kind of shocked by this, I got accepted to Cornell even offered a scholarship. My family not rich at all we actually live with my grandparents. I was gonna purse Engineering and my grades were average A's and B's I honestly didn't know it was an Ivy league school. I honestly think it was partly cause of my grades and essay, which was about be a volunteer fire fighter with hearing loss and my goal to help others. I know my Uncle was a Highschool drop had his GED and still went to Cornell farrier program. But I never mentioned it on my application. I decided to go to community college and purse homeland security but I honestly think they only accepted me to meet diversity quotas. I know a lot big school do this they deny certain people based on skin color and gender I believe it might've been Harvard but they were in a lawsuit where they were rejecting people because they were Asian to allow other POC into the college. I believe they lost but form my understanding a lot other groups like the FDNY and NYPD also implented diversity quotas which is great but also can cause people that are more qualified to lose a spot to someone less qualified
@@chinookh4713 I think you missed the point in my comment. of course some people who are on paper less qualified might get chosen over more qualified people - this must be so if we don’t want elite schools to be filled with only the privileged children of the top 5-10%. Those children had the opportunity to become more qualified through fancy internships and research opportunities through their connections, while less privileged applicants don’t even get the chance to become nearly as “qualified” before college. That doesn’t mean they aren’t as- if not more - capable as their wealthier peers - they simply didn’t have the chance to show it.
I went to a feeder school for 10 years (it was prek-12) and I dropped out in my freshman year due to the horrible mental health problems the environment gave me and the cost, as my family fell on hard times. While I was extremely fortunate to get the education I did from them (I graduated from my local public school), a lot of the kids really were oblivious to the privilege they had and the reality of the world. When I was trying to leave, I had guidance councilors and even the dean of students pull me aside and berate me; calling me lazy and wasting potential. The administration fed the reasons I was leaving to the staff and even other parents and it led to kids looking up my local public school and bullying me during free periods. I had already felt alienated in that environment and whenever I think about my time there, I remember all of the terrible stuff that got brushed under the rug to "protect" the male students futures over "mistakes" they made towards their female peers. I think about the bullying they encouraged towards students who had less disposable income and the attitude they just had towards public school and the students/teachers there. Case in point, I am glad that someone has done research on this and talked about it. I struggled to get into college and I had a former peer's parents tell me that it's what I "got" for leaving. Those videos weren't sitting right with me and that makes a lot more sense now.
also imagine: these are gonna be some of the most powerful people in the world when they grow up and this is what they teach them from such a young age on.. no wonder the world is the place it is right now :(
@@meladversity It is really upsetting! A lot of those kids did/do have potential, but a lot of them were kept in bubbles and spoiled rotten (not all of course, like my best friend graduated from there and she's very down to earth and genuinely brilliant). I think a few of my former peers were involved with that college admissions scandal, and truthfully I have to wonder where they are now.
@@SpecialBlanket I've heard of cptsd before but never put much thought into it. I have some diagnosed mental health issues and a quick google search resonated a bit? I was taken off my previous medications cold turkey a while ago and it's been worse. Maybe if I get the courage to go through diagnosis again to get meds I can look into it. Though I guess it's not impossible 😅
i go to a private school, and while it's by no means an ivy training school, i never realized how good i had it until i started talking about it with my gf who goes to public school. they are so much more qualified than i am but oh my god my college application experience was so much easier than theirs. while i've already been aware of my privilege, this really helped contextualize it, great video!
same!! i went to private school, but i went to the cheapest one in my area by FAR. i transferred from public to said private school freshman year and the difference in privileges between the two astounded me. i had a specialized college counselor as there were only 27 people in my grade!! my public school had over 600 and no way to fund that same privilege for everyone. anyway, i totally get where you're coming from. glad someone else gets it :)
All my friends went to the same private school, while I went to a public highschool. Almost all of them went to private/prestigious colleges while I had no choice but to go to a state school. Not only were their English classes geared towards writing college application essays while mine were geared towards basic reading comprehension, but my school was known throughout the country as a "bad school" basically meaning that my gpa was marked down simply bc of the district I came from (kind of like the inverse of a feeder school). Even if I had got in, I simply can't afford the ridiculous tuition or plane tickets to go anywhere but a state school.
What is insane is I was valedictorian (albeit I went to a severely underfunded school in Brooklyn, NY), I was a published writer in WSJ at 18, did sports, did band, took college courses in school, took AP courses, went test-optional, first-gen, and I had four internships and wrote a well-round essay, and I still got rejected. I tell the younger kids (I'm 21 now) that you must live your life. I threw away my high school experience to make my "academic" resume look pristine and marketable to these top-tier colleges. Although I attend NYU now, do not throw away your youth to impress these colleges. Primarily when kids work way less than you and still get in due to legacy, wealth, or access to more resources. It will never be enough when you, a student who needs aid to attend but is undoubtedly exceptional, are going against someone who can afford to make donations to the school or can pay out of pocket. Not to mention, I have a ton of college debt just after 2.5 years. It is definitely not worth it.
Be careful though, not too much longer, you will have another "life check" in your way, your first job after college is really important on how your career will end up in life, if you so chose the corporate America way of life. This is another place where knowing someone will really help.
This is always weird for me, I went to a top school, but I'm Black, and my mom is a lawyer, so the mix of class privilege and being Black in these spaces has led me to some real unpleasant experiences. But luckily I've turned it into writing/examination of all these axes of oppression. (Also lol she really thought that terrible essay was good.) UConn is fine tho!
Tbh I think the class status negates all the tangible effects of racial discrimination because at the end of the day you're still rich and nobody can take that from you.
@@justingerald It is true though. If all else goes wrong in life you have a solid safety net to fall back on. The luxury of failure without dire consequences is a privilege that's hard to understand from your position. For the average black person in the states it's make it or be homeless/destitute. Your qualms are tertiary.
@@justingerald Disabled with money. Which is a lot more livable than the alternative. It always comes back to class no matter what. People with money are the ones who try to pivot and move the goal posts when that point is made.
yeah... i don't doubt that she got in with that essay, seeing as most college essays (not all, but most I'd say) are shit by merit of being written by teenagers, even the ones that get you into top schools. but it's absolutely not something to show off. and it most definitely wasn't the thing that got you in.
This is so interesting coming from a Canadian perspective, or at least more specifically from my province (Ontario). It's sort of an unspoken understanding that private school students run the risk of Ontario's top universities actually looking at them in a WORSE light than public school students. The rumour is that schools like U of T and Waterloo will take the GPA/average of a student (we go with %) and knock it down ~5% if they're from a private school. Because private schools are funded by parents paying tuition for the most part, if their kids get less than stellar grades, they might take their kids elsewhere. Essentially, where I'm from, private schools are notorious for having a much easier curriculum than public schools to keep parents paying for tuition, so universities take that into account when looking at your overall grade average. Great video by the way!!!
It's the same in Croatia. Private colleges are seen for stupid rich kids that were not bright enough to get into regular, public, one. And the only majors you can get at private colleges are usually business, graphic design or some other easier subject. Their curriculum is much easier and you can buy exams. They are definitively not as valued as public ones.
I go to a private school in Ontario. I used to go to a public high school, so I have experienced both worlds. About 80% of our student population ends up at UofT, Mcmaster, Waterloo or Queens. I think it honestly depends on the reputation of the individual school. Some are parent-sponsored wealth pots, and others are genuinely academically rigorous environments. There's definitely an element of truth to what you're saying, but most of the COSSOT schools in Toronto I wouldn't place as being "easier than public schools". Every friend I still have at public school is shocked at the level of difficulty our school pushes us to achieve. Taking multiple classes a year ahead is a requirement, not dropping STEM subjects is a requirement; it's not uncommon to have 3 hours of homework in 1 night. Anyways, point is: I wouldn't allow a schools private or public status to determine its rigour. I think it's an honest case-by-case basis.
Might have its own wrinkles, but what can you add to the nepotism aspect of it all? Because rather or not a nation state’s public or private education is better or worse than privets institutions does that mean admission processes for either system intrinsically more fair? Genuine question, for you and other replies.
Sounds similar to rumors I've heard years ago. Lot of my friends (especially esl kids) did g12 eng in private schools since it was basically a guaranteed 90. Some smarter and richer kids will take multiple courses in private school since it bumps up their average allowing them to get scholarships which more or less offset the private school tuition cost. Also heard rumors that Unis will knock up/down depending on which HS you went to public or private included.
I would have loved an easy curriculum in my private school. While I think maybe some schools are like that, I wouldn't generalize this idea over all private schools. I think it is very dependent on the school and the students. I don't think going to a private school guarantees you success in life. Lots of my friends had scholarships to go to my school. Some would have been successful no matter where they went to school. I ended up at UofT and I was no way more prepared than my friends who went to public or catholic schools.
Remember brothers and sisters, nothing wrong with starting at community college, saves you so much money and time :) ( just make sure classes transfer)
I remember when I was touring Cornell back in the early 2010s the tour guide kept talking about how something like 30% (can't remember exact number) of their students were recieving some form of financial aid. They said this like it was a brag and proof that anyone can get into Cornell and it was a true meritocracy, but i kept thinking like only 1% of the population could affort to attend this school with literaly 0 financial aid so like 1% of the population represents 70% of your students...
I wrote a story about a frog that somehow got into my bathroom and was next to my toilet at 5am and it looked like a rat cuz it was covered with hair and I saved it’s life. I did it sort of a joke to my literature teacher who said it was a good idea but didn’t seem like it to me, but I got accepted into 2 colleges with decently competitive acceptance rates, and I have mid/avg a-c grades… I think they thought it was funny and different. It’s true they don’t like sob stories and u have a greater chance putting something kinda funny but also meaningful to your character! Edit: Rephrased some things since some people decided to attack my character because I didn’t word it *perfectly* Also wanted to add some advice if you want to try and write something funny- - make sure it is telling of your character and not just a comedy script - add funny descriptors and reactions you had
I really personally don’t find that much to brag about. Many students are not privileged enough to be able to take their application essays as jokes. Congratulations on getting in, but considering how much effort some put into their applications, being accepted with minimal effort is nothing to brag about.
I wish a video like this existed in 2013-2014 when I was applying to college. Don’t get me wrong I come from a place of immense privilege, I went to a public school in a wealthy town in New Jersey; but they added so much pressure on me to attend a big name school. Almost so much I felt lesser than if I couldn’t “be someone” and the only way I could do that was through a great college. It would’ve been nice to know so much of this was out of my control.
And the end of the day, I feel like where you went for college doesn't really determine your success as a working professional or even where you work after finishing college. I'm working with a mix of people who went to local colleges/state colleges as well as with those who went to Harvard and MIT.
As an Australian, it’s absolute bonkers to me how much pressure there is to go to a “Big name school” in the US. To me, at least in my circle, you can still make good money without a degree.
If you have that privilege use it to it full advantage if I were you I would probably apply to a ivy school I'm going myself to community college since I can't afford state college but if you have money I don't blame you tbh if it for good intentions
@@Kekoa552 girl what? I wouldn’t have gotten into an Ivy League and if I did I wouldn’t be able to afford it not every privileged person is at the top 1%
I see a lot of people online who think rich kids are faking learning disabilities to get extra time on tests. And I feel like we’re not getting mad enough about the fact that most normal, functioning, smart kids *without* learning disabilities aren’t able to finish the SATs in time provided. We should be less mad about rich kids getting the accommodations they need and more mad about everyone else NOT getting the accommodations they need.
Thanks for this! I know my public school was pretty decent (AP psychology, AP art history, AP computer science,,,) but it is NOWHERE near the level of the private highschool on the hilltop nearby. Ive been on the campus several times and it's like a small university, it's insane (observatory, aquarium with a shark and a stingray, 2 gyms, I could go on). They have college coaches there and a better student-teacher ratio and for me who did merely okay in highschool (I'm a senior) and is planning on going to community college, this video really helped! Even at my public school, it's kind of assumed that you're going to go to a 4-year. Honestly, you should make a video in the future about the grip these elite schools have on highschoolers. I know multiple people who are fully obsessed and dream of going to these schools...I mean, I never understood the concept of a "dream school" anyways. You're going there to do homework and maybe go to a party once in a while, which you can do at pretty much any college for a much better price.
your last part, i fully agree!! i think our education system completely overhypes the idea of how a prestigious college is the pinnacle of success and the college experience. at most, your dream school should be such because of its location, or the program it can offer you, not because of it’s name that you are paying upwards of 60k a YEAR for (which is already an insane price even for people that get in but cannot afford). i genuinely know some people that completely base college prestige off of the name, while bashing other great, affordable colleges as well. saying that even the ivy leagues are what you should expect to get in, while bashing even the “mid-tier uc’s”. like why are we doing this? college education in america is honestly all the same experience. i swear, some people just like the high of the name™️ that “rejected everyone else except me”
I totally resonate with your last point! I’m planning on attending community college as well, not only because the price for things is overall cheaper, but because of a grant that was given to students in my school district that covers massive amounts of tuition costs. This has saved me from a lot about going to college.
@@afterglcw5050 totally agree. when I tell people I'm going to community college (a decision I had already made before my sophomore year), I get mostly positive responses from people saying "Good for you! that's the smartest way to get your education" but there's always a few who just assume that I'm going to jc to take it slow bc I "couldn't handle" a more rigorous school, or because I'm just lazy and want to stay at home with parents. neither could be further from the truth, but even so, whats wrong with wanting your first years to be a little easier, or wanting the ease of living at home? it really just seems to me that people simply have a desire to judge others, and they use community college students to do that.
I feel like I already knew this was the case with ivy league schools and I appreciate the research you must have done to put together this video. Really interesting stuff.
The US collage system seems so ridiculous to me as an Aussie. It’s different in each Australian state but in NSW we do our exams called the HSC and get an ATAR, which is a ranking of everyone in the state. Below 30 is a mystery mark (you don’t know what you get) and the highest mark is 99.95. We basically just select the uni courses we want to do and apply with our ATAR score. Each course has different marks required, eg a bachelor or Arts might be a 75 ATAR acceptance mark. There are also lots of opportunities for early entry into university. I applied for early entry and got into the course I wanted despite not getting the marks I needed. There also isn’t this level of prestige with university. Some are considered better than others, or better for specific areas of study, but no one cares at all where you go to uni
We really don't care where people go to college in the US either. The universities in this video make up a tiny portion of schools here and they aren't a good representation of college/university life in the rest of the country. All of these "prestigious" schools only exist along the east coast and this Ivy League mindset doesn't exist outside of that region.
I've never met anyone who attended an ivy league school, and I live in a fairly metropolitan area of the USA. It's fairly easy to make it into your University of choice and even college of choice, in my experience, but I suppose that's variable based on where you live, etc.
Your HSC aggregated mark is a combined score of your final higher school certificate marks and assessment marks through your final year of school. You apply for 6 degree programs via UAC. A difference between the USA and Australia is that you go straight into a degree program when you go to university so many students will apply for say electrical engineering or nursing or teaching or finance at 6 universities in locations that they can get to from home or can live cheaply at. Most university students live with parents due to the high cost of living in Australian cities unless they are rural and then they will live on campus. Though we have arts degrees the majority of students are applying for a specific professional degree. Most degree programs don’t have access through portfolios, interviews, essays or preliminary course work with exceptions for visual arts, medicine and acting or for mature aged students applying years after doing the HSC. Once you are in a degree program changing your course of study is a pain. Our bachelor degree is 3 years with exceptions for allied health and health degrees. Masters are 2 years and PHDs generally 2 years full time. The idea of starting in an arts program for 4 years before working out what you want to do is pretty foreign to Australian students unless they are current Liberal politicians (though most of them did law or in the case of the prime minister marketing). Having spent time in the states, it’s odd to us that colleges are often chosen before degrees even for students not looking for ivies. We are aware that cost often come into it that state colleges are cheaper for students in that state but for example that you’d be like I’m applying to Penn state and Wisconsin and Tulane before you’d decided on architecture, biomedical engineering, psychology or tourism and hospitality management seems a kind of nuts. But then the USA seems to think of university as a right if passage and a cultural experience rather than accreditation for employment.
@@ajwashere8996 And some people don't even care to go to Uni because we also have a thing called TAFE. You don't need a mark to enter TAFE and it's more hands on with their courses, so you can do things like hairdressing and nursing with some courses from Uni also being there too. We also have a thing where our last 2 year's of high school is optional but if you go, they allow you to do TAFE courses while attending. Basically, Aussies get given plenty of options of what you want to do in your adulthood. TAFE, Uni and even just going straight to the workforce are all valid, well the last option is only possible once you complete the legal amount of schooling and marks.
Not to mention our university tuition is affordable for everyone regardless of your socioeconomic background, thanks to the government loan program (HECS). They also recently reduced some degrees, for example nursing is only $3700 aud a year now.
Fun thing: When my older sister was little, she had a best friend who was her age. That girl’s mother decided to send her to only private religious schools k-12. My mother was never into that and my sister and I were sent to public schools k-12. We couldn’t afford it anyways. (My parents were not college graduates either btw) My mother hoped that encouraging us through our time at public school would get us to college. She hoped we wouldn’t fall behind my sister’s friend. My sister and I are both UCSD/UCSB grads in STEM fields and my sister has a doctorate from USC. The friend also did well, but got a masters from a decent school. So, we did just fine. Our hard work got us to where we are and yes, some privilege too. Btw me discussing this isn’t discounting privilege at all. Privilege is enormous in academia. I’m just grateful my sister and I managed to beat the odds that were in the favor of our family friend.
I'm glad you beat the odds you worked hard, studied hard and you do acknowledge that privilege is existing that is a rare thing most of the time if anybody thinks that they worked hard and that's all that got them to be successful they don't really recognize the privilege. Almost all of us are privileged in some form or another but it does vary by degree. I'm privileged because I have good health and privilege because I have a normal to high intelligence. I'm privileged because I live in a country that is fairly stable that has plenty of opportunities. But I also have a lot of stuff that I am not privileged with either. Having a learning disability, coming from a working class home etc. But in many ways I hate the obstacles I've had to face, but in a way they make me appreciate my success more. And make me understand and empathize with others because I wasn't as privileged as some people could be. The problem of privilege is it makes it hard for us to truly empathize and have compassion for others especially without belittling them or treating them in a way that they come across as not as human. And in some ways I think it actually kind of made me smarter and wiser. I realize that now as I get older that even my obstacles were in some ways a lesson, and weren't just unfair.
As someone that goes to one of these private schools, I can confirm this is all true. We all work very hard, so it’s not that we’re just getting a free ride, but we have access to so many more opportunities and knowledge. Private college coaches will charge an entire year’s worth of tuition at my school for their advice. I can also confirm that certain especially wealthy parents can pay their child’s way into top schools *without* their kid needing to work hard :/
it's both. not everyone has dad's money. I'm a doctor from legit the ground up. stop justifying your failures by thinking everyone successful didn't work hard for it. work harder. realize the world is unfair and suck it up butter cup. yes it does suck people have connections, but far more people don't have connections than do. change your mentality.
When I didnt get into college on my 9th try on 3 years it destroyed my entire life. My depression was so intense I just wanted to ef myslef but couldnt cause I was literally catatonic.
I'm so sorry you went through that. I didn't get in anywhere my first time applying and I had a 3.8 GPA and only applied to public schools. You are more than what college you did or didn't go to and I'm sorry societal pressures made you feel so depressed. I hope you're doing better now.
you cant place so much importance on something so arbitrary and classicist and elitist. college doesnt matter. and grades have no correlation to intelligence. i will never understand why people do this.
I'm a recent high school graduate and have been going to my local community college for nearly a year. Don't let people convince you not to go to one because it's not as prestigious or valuable!! It is completely worth it as it can be way more affordable and a good start in taking your required classes! I'm not sure if this happens in all cc's but as a low income full-time student I am given extra aid every semester along with FAFSA. Please consider community college y'all, it could save you so much time and money.
Here in India the prestigious colleges are publically funded (the private ones are looked down upon) and take admissions based on standardised tests - there are three of these based on your career choice but they're trying to merge them all into a gaokao like exam. It ensures connections play no factor into which college you get into but it's also a bit annoying since you're judged based on one 3 hour MCQ test with a fixed curriculum that you have to memorize, not to mention the ridiculous acceptance rates where 10k people qualify from 1.8 million + applicants with the rest just taking drop years to keep giving the exam in hopes of qualifying some day.
In India you’re auto-accepted if you meet a certain score threshold. Rich people game that test to get into India’s top schools. There’s a reason most people don’t know about them internationally-it doesn’t promote creativity and research, which is why most of them leave to do PhDs/grad degrees at US schools.
@@Jacosmi This is idiotic, rich people can't game that system unless they cheat (It does happen but it's done by desperate rich people not elites like in the U.S). BTW low scorers love to say "muh test is about memorization" it isn't. You can look at pyq's the questions measure your 1) Knowledge 2)Speed 3) Creativity through making questions tricky 4) Your knowledge application skills Obviously most people who actually do score great come from the rich background (rich compared to the median). since, rich people in general have more IQ The reason most people don't know these schools is the exact same reason people cannot name elite colleges of brazil or south africa or heck I don't even think 90% of Americans would be able to name top schools of China "It doesn't promote creativity and research" Man I don't know what to say to you but you are delusional if you think even the top 0.1%tile of High schoolers are legit researching most of the high schoolers doing their "research at NASA/Govt agencies/top tier private institutions" are actually leveraging their parent's resources to the fullest. The fact is Indian grad school system is more fair and just, it even has 10% reservation for people from poor background, and 50% reservation for people from historically oppressed communities "Which is why most of them leave to do PhDs/grad degrees at U.S schools" This is because they want to earn in $$$s and need a better lifestyle don't you realise India is poverty ridden country? and most of the elites be it intellectual or wealthy want to leave this country. GDP per capita of India is 15 times smaller than the U.S This is a foolish comment delete it lmao
Add in reservations as well .Be someone of the lower caste and get into the best colleges of the country while general candidates at double the marks take drop years lmao.
I went on her TikTok to hear the rest of part one. It. Got. Worse. I went to public school in Canada. I’ve peer edited my classmates' essays during university bound English in 11th and 12th grades. None of them were this bad. Now this has me questioning what kind of education American private schools actually offer. Either this girl didn’t apply herself in English class or they were lenient not to upset the rich parents who expect their kids to bring good grades with the amount they’re paying.
this video is making me have a meltdown bc I've been trying to get my sister to REALLY work at our podunk public high school, dreaming of her going to an amazing college, potentially even ivy leagues, and just knowing the private high school stamp gets you so ahead of the game is so frustrating!!! this country goes on and on about how Anyone Can Make It but people with generational wealth have made it before they're ever born. they have the resources and connections to do anything they want & we're left questioning every decision about our futures. how is this fair at all? how is that meritocracy? how is that democracy? i had no idea languages besides spanish (sometimes french) were even offered at other schools. all those AP classes, the college tutors, the guaranteed work after school.......growing up poor has rippling effects on my self confidence to this day. i swear public institutions in the US are forever underfunded so the wealthy can look at private institutions and say look, private ownership is better! personally i'm fucking over it. imagine the poorest school you can think of getting budgets like this. it's always "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" and never "maybe the people born millionaires shouldn't get everything they want without trying"
It’s not just to self confidence, it has very real world effects that make upward mobility incredibly difficult. When you’re poor, you have to put in much more effort than your privileged counterparts and it often isn’t enough unless you’re lucky. It’s generational too.
Hang in there don't lose hope. Not all private high schools have this advantage. Just a handful of feeder and target private schools and magnet public schools. If you want your blood to boil more, The feeder and target high school kids are just one of several preferred constituencies that elite and Ivy League schools are giving preference to. Recruited athletes, often we'll to do field hickey and water pool players with great stats are shoe ins. Underrepresented minorities, some of them children of presidents, get a massive boost, then come the legacies, donors, political favor kids, geniuses who cured disease or won an oscar at 14, rich overseas boarding school kids and finally elite high school feeders. And that's how 65% of the class is accounted for. The rest are fighting for 35% of spots. But a grinder with less means can always shine through. Seek resources such as Questbridge for low income applicants. There are college admissions private counselors who do incredible work for free for those who Cole from disadvantaged backgrounds and encourage your sister to look beyond her high school and take college level courses to convince these schools that she is academically prepared.
Is it getting her into the name brand schools that you’re worried about or just any school? I heard the less stressful path is just doing your best in high school (but not killing your mental health over it), then of course applying to the schools you hope to get in. If that doesn’t work, don’t stress it. Apply to the no name schools. Get in, do your year and transfer in second year to the brand school if she still wants to go there.
As a person who just started their first job out of college, to be honest, where you go to school doesn't really matter in terms of jobs you can land out of college. What really matter are GPA (should aim for 3.5 or higher) and internship experiences. I work with a mix of people who went to local/state colleges as well as some who went to MIT and Harvard.
@@trawrtster6097 it doesn’t matter in terms of jobs (though it might. Idk) but if you are low income and get into a private university, they will cover your full tuition. I went to Columbia for cheaper than my friends who went to the state university.
My Public highschool had no extracurriculars till my senior year. Having a interest in art meant that for most of the time, I was drawing during a few regular classes. Luckily I’m now taking my major in the college of choice. Feeling wanted by any university was fairly hard when my scores didn’t save me nor did having an art portfolio when no one told me about what needed to be in it. I even decribed my situation to one university and they really just didn’t care. When all seems lost, if you know you tried your best to get through school. Tell your story since it wouldn’t hurt. Maybe some schools will understand.
Keep drawing, definitely! Am at this odd 8 year program thats 4 years of elementary + all years of highschool. I am targetting an art uni after this and let me tell you, the seminars for art barely ever open. I pray it opens this year, but srsly, I am losing faith. Theres 4 of us from 2 classes, the other two classes we dont know. I pray I get in, I need it to be able to apply to an artschool. Fortunately, if it doesn't open, the art teachers offered us individual plans as we all want to go to art school as a serious thing and she doesnt want to let us down. Wish us luck, cuz if it doesnt open, gosh.
You're 100% right. I was lucky enough to go to public school my first two years of highschool, and private school the last two years of highschool. Not from a wealthy family, my private school provided a lot of need-based financial aid that allowed me to go *(as opposed to merit based, need based was just based on how much you/your family can pay). Anyway, this is the difference in art classes available between the two schools I went to: Public School: Art Choir Private School: Painting and drawing Glassblowing Siversmithing Blacksmithing 1 Blacksmithing 2 Blacksmithing 3 Pottery 3D Game Design Beggining Music Intermediate Music Advanced Music Senior Music *(Only for seniors who could play at an "Advanced" level) Portfolio *(only for seniors who wanted to apply to art colleges)
@09CZS This will most likely help someone else, I make portfolios now in my major for varying art courses. I just always describe what I’ve been through cause after I was denied I felt like really giving up on my passions all because some school just couldn’t take me.
Mine told me “it’s such a shame, you weren’t born in this country, right? You could have gotten into any college if you’d worked harder” in NINTH GRADE after getting a C in AP Government 😩🤣 she was a pile of pure trash.
i don’t go to a private school, and i have a standard middle class 50k single parent income, but my school is top ranked and really prepares you for college. i also live in an area where there are lots of extremely wealthy kids. i’m more understanding of my privilege after watching this video and didn’t realize the full extent of the advantages my school gives out because i’ve been conditioned to think of it as just a regular education. thank you for the insightful video
I really like how you presented your ideas and also how you were careful not to exaggerate or present any superiority over anyone. Great thoughts, humble guy.
I was so lost in high school. The college counselor put her eggs in a couple of baskets and didn’t pay the rest of us any mind. I once traded my essay for an extracurricular program for a list of scholarships with my college counselor, absolutely crazy. She wanted her son to get in to the same program and was willing to trade info 🤪😭 I got into my reach (without help) and couldn’t afford it, no $ offered and didn’t know how to ask for money, I ended up going to school out of state which is still an achievement. Grad school was a better story, but still not great 😬
Same. I *”could”* go to college but I literally don’t have a lot of money back if I applied. Graduated from my high school last year with a 3.8 GPA but I don’t have the mindset and lost my motivation since COVID hit. I could go to a vocational school but I’ll probably have to pay class since I’m no longer a high school student (high school students don’t have to pay since for the ones applied, they have a half day of high school and vocational school in a certain county.)
So many great points 👏 not to mention there are so many high school students that have to also work to support themselves and their families, which can take a lot of crucial time away from studying, extracurriculars, volunteering, etc.
Reminder: Most US states don't have Ivy league schools, and the great majority of Americans don't give a damn about these institutions. Then again I grew up low income. Public schools/universities all my life. I still have a pretty good and privileged life now.
The irony is that your sister will probably also use her legacy status to help her own kids get into Brown one day. When life gives you privileges, use them.
I think the point is though to recognize your privileges instead of descending into such a deluded state that you'd think this trite nonsense is what actually got you accepted into Columbia U.
Legacy only matters if there is a donation history. Most legacies do not have donation histories meaning they got a nonexistent boost and benefitted because their parents cared enough to help get their kids into the ivies.
I got into an Ivy League school for graduate school but attended public school K-12 and a state university for undergrad. There’s definitely a lot of truth to this, a lot of people think they got in on 100% their own merit but really they had access to the best resources. The world works in weird ways, if you didn’t go to an elite high school then it can almost seem random who gets in and who doesn’t.
If the numbers show anything you should be embarrassed of more people than, because Ivy Leagues is full of legacy students, rich people and foreign (specially China and India) with tons of cash.
@@user-zu6dd4qm3m first of all, she held an unmasked birthday party when COVID was at its peak in NYC (over 1k New York City residents died from COVID on the day of her party, for context) and then doubled down when she was called out and reported to the administration for violating COVID policies. She also said that addicts should just “stop doing drugs” and “buy Prada bags instead.”
The “lazy” argument may be true sometimes but I do believe people are results of their material surroundings. When shit is harder people either have to work harder or they get discouraged, understandably so.
I did apply for admission to an Ivy League for the school year of 2003 - 2004. I did research to find out what I needed to apply and be considered for admission because I was a public school student in Louisiana. I played high school sports, I was active in volunteer work, and my grades were above 3.7 GPA. When it came time to submit the application with my essays, I was just a nervous wreck. It is very difficult to understand how much stress I had just to submit the application. After some time, I received a reply. I was wait-listed. I was proud that I made it that far, but I also understood that I was most likely not going to get in from the wait list. However, I had applied for other universities and colleges. I knew that I would have been able to attend university. Now, I have an MBA in data analytics.
As an academic, this makes me so sad. This is why I root for the growth of Flagship state schools. They are excellent ways for students from diverse backgrounds to get access to larger communities. Although, even large Flagships are quite skewed to privileged students, it still provides better scholarship and tuition packages for those coming from low-income backgrounds.
In academia your PhD advisor and institution is what matters the most. While PhD admissions are somewhat random, they’re at least a bit more meritocratic/based on your skills, and they come with full funding.
I went to a local community college, and a local University and i turned out alright, mostly through grants and a mini loan. i have a job that i love. It's about affording college, not essay con-jobs.
This is a brilliant video. I came across this channel randomly, and I am definitely going to follow your work. Outcomes are hardly a pure function of your efforts. Luck, social standing, wealth, and connections all ultimately help propel these privileged individuals. For those who are in that lap of luxury, this is no knock on you; however, please be aware that there are variables for your standing.
That is an incredibly casual writing style. I was expecting an essay to enter a high profile academic institution to be academic. Somewhere between formal and semiformal language, with thesis statement, premises, cited arguements, and thought provoking conclusion/discussion.
I got into my dream music school, and I was so excited. When the financial aid award came through, I was crushed, because it is tens of thousands of dollars above my family's ability to contribute. I'm going to send in an appeal, but I'm not super hopeful about it.
Well I can say this. Your style of narrating is very essay-like and I think it’s excellent. I actually prefer it to some of the Ivy League graduates who do this for a living.
I was really blessed to grow up in a Chinese immigrant community in Vancouver, Canada. Because of this my public highschool had AP Mandarin classes and a really good Mandarin teacher. On top of this, my public school was a French Immersion school (which in Canada students get entered into by lottery) so I got a "double dogwood diploma" when I graduated proving total fluency. I didn't end up going to an Ivy League because Canada doesn't really have those, but I did end up going to one of the highest ranked universities in the county, and got into a program that is extremely competitive. My overall grades weren't exceptional so I think that these language programs were the thing that set me apart from other applicants. I really agree with the premis of this video that funding has a huge influence on schooling but I think it can also come down to the culture and diversity of your town/city and taking advantage of those unsual opportunities available to you. I was the only non-Chinese person my Mandarin teacher had ever seen finish grade 12 Chinese, let alone ace and I ended up peer tutoring the grade 9 class in my senior year on top of that. If you go to a public school, I really recommend looking into any/all niche classes your school might have a narrowing in on that as much as you can. All this isn't to diminish the absolutely necessary restructuring required to equalize public schooling in North America and hopefully eliminate for-profit schooling. This gap in opportunities is clearly a relic of systemic classism and needs to be destroyed.
Over the past few years I’ve realized a lot of the things stated in the video also apply to me. I’m in my final year at a private high school with a graduating class of 24 this year: each person in my grade received *highly* personal college counseling from the school’s guidance counselors, and many of my teachers have PhDs and are teaching advanced courses (my math teacher, for example, has a PhD and has said that he’d even multivariate calculus if there were enough students for it). That’s not to say I didn’t work hard - I absolutely had to! - but my access to more resources was certainly facilitated by my high school. While I will be attending a top university this fall, I’m more than aware of the support I’ve received from my school as well as my family, and it’s part of my mentality on how the education system works. Because these elite high schools and colleges often churn out highly successful alumni (which tend to be rich as a result), they gain the ability to provide the same heightened resources to their children which is a self-reinforcing cycle.
As a kid who goes to one of these elite ivy feeders, I fully agree with this video. While he does not highlight the student’s hard work and effort as much as he probably should to make a more accurate video, privilege absolutely is a huge factor in getting to a good school. In order to get the best education, there is an absolute need for money. Thank you for making this video for everyone but on a personal level I would like to thank you. I never thought about the privileges I have that other students might not. This video really shines a bright light on it, so thank you.
My town growing up was close to RCDS and a lot of other prestigious private schools. Hell, my cousin went to one of these because apparently a math teacher bullied her out of public school (I never got the full story and I had already graduated high school by the time she got in) but to make a long story short, I knew a lot of kids who got into Ivy Leagues and other prestigious schools, and not gonna lie, I know some of them only got in due to… other influences. One kid I remember vividly, I had to explain the difference between to and too to him, as well as there, their, and they’re, and your and you’re. Our English teacher always made me partner with him because of this -.- he got into Dartmouth, and that’s the last I heard of him.
I was lucky enough to go to an IB charter school from middle to highschool through a lottery system, but despite my good scores, none of them applied to what I wanted to do, and even if they did, I couldn't even afford the schools even with the highest amount of financial aid offered to me, I'd still be at least 40k in debt per year, and that didn't include cost of living or food, travel, etc. It really woke me up to that fact that sometimes, merit can only get you so far, it was a rough realization;;
As someone who went to a private high school, I can verify many of these points - better class selection, involved teachers who go above and beyond, and also just the "school reputation" factor. Grade inflation is sort of a thing, but it's complicated. One issue I had: some families are so wealthy that they hire tutors and other aids on top of sending their children to private school. When these students are so far ahead, the school feels compelled to accelerate their curriculum even further, leaving the less wealthy (though still wealthy by all accounts) and scholarship kids behind. I don't think the "guidance counselor crafts a perfect application" part is completely accurate (at least it wasn't at my school). While the guidance counselor(s) are certainly more accessible than at many public schools, their advice is pretty standard. I basically didn't listen to mine at all. While I think the "wealth = better chance of getting in" part is true, I think some people might conflate this with "you only got in because of money." While this is occasionally true, the large majority of students at private schools aren't wealthy enough for their money to be a contributing factor. The wealth buys better education, and better prepares students for college. It buys teachers who care and will put effort into recommendation letters. It does not straight up buy a spot (USUALLY, there are of course the building donors, but that's an outlier case). I say this because the narrative that these students are stupid and didn't have to work at all kind of misses the point. I'm currently at a "top" university (though I don't like this term), and it is rare that I find someone as smart as the average person at my high school (including those who did not end up getting into "elite" universities). For comparison - I was a B+ student at my high school, and have pretty much straight A's here in college. As for feeder schools - it really depends on the university. I know that for a lot of the NYC private schools, Columbia and U Chicago tend to be the easiest of the "elite" universities to get into. But other schools are actually incredibly difficult. Brown, Princeton, Stanford and MIT come to mind. Only the top of the class gets into these schools, and only sometimes. I'm not sure what this all implies. I think on average, private school students are in fact better applicants. But that's because they had the opportunity to go to such schools and have many other things provided for them. It's not fair to other students who didn't have these chances, but what should the university do?
Thank you for touching on her comment on addiction and how tone deaf and privileged it was/is. I myself struggled with addiction very, very much for many years, with it consuming my youth and tainting my innocence through near death experiences and scary men. So, comments like her's hurt me greatly, and caused me to fall deeper and deeper into bad situations, as I thought it was all my fault, and that I was already a lost cause "on my way to becoming another statistic" after my many overdoses and close calls. Now that I have been sober for a few years (albeit, I am on MAT, but I still consider myself sober as I don't do street substances), I can look back and consider all the outside factors, as well as my diagnosed mental health conditions, and blame myself less, which has helped me a lot in my healing journey. I will always appreciate people like you, who may not have struggled with this specific problem in their own live's, putting people like "Gab" in her place. You have gained a new subscriber in me!!
I went to a public school in a stupidly wealthy area (North Chicago Suburbs) and classes like AP Computer Science, Chinese, Ceramics and Sculpture, ect. were just normal to me, hell, I had a class where juniors taught a preschool and moved on to student teach in a local elementary school. If you weren't taking at least 2 AP classes by Juinor year you were considered "lesser". The amount of privilege I had was astounding and kind of gross.
it's not gross. having good things is GOOD. the bad thing is other people NOT having them, not the fact that you have them. don't let anyone make you feel bad about having an environment conducive to your development. did you harm someone to get there? no. just be happy! i was in poverty my entire adult life until last month and i approve this message haha... i WANT people to have nice things, and while i may be jealous of rich people, it would be a straight up lie to say i don't wish i were rich! enjoy it!!!!
As someone who is very lucky to be privileged enough to not have to worry about costs of education, it feels guilty buying things that help boost my resume because I'm most likely taking away a spot of someone who worked harder but was not as privileged as me
watching this video made me truly realize how lucky i am going to a large high school. we have major programs (technology major, art major), and many AP courses. now we only have 3 languages, but i never realized that special art classes like sculpture and ceramics classes were so uncommon.
As someone who just got into four ivies yesterday (including my dream school) this hits hard. I think even of those accepted, there are people like me who get so little aid they can’t go, causing the actual Ivy class makeup to be even more stratified than admissions officers attempted.
In Chile we have a single universal university admission test, sort of like the SATs, but only the score of that test, your grades and your GPA ranking in your own school are considered. There's no interview or essay, no connections that you can use. Some universities do ask for additional testing in programs that are more practical and less academic, such as theater or music, but that's it. And tho I have a lot of complaints about the test its self and what does it actually measure, and ofcourse high schools with more money can prepare their students better for it, I still think is the most democratic way of selecting the students.
@@fbrunodr LMAO these comments are actually hilarious. You people have spent too much time watching American news and have what we can call "America Derangement Syndrome." First, you do realize the US is the only country to consider economic status when applying? In Brazil or Chile or Greece, if you're poor, you are judged the same as a rich person, even if you had way less resources. In America, this is accounted for. Not to mention Latin American/European universities are absolute garbage compared to their American counterparts. MIT has an endowment 5% of Chile's entire GDP. That is insane. Finally, if you are poor, you don't pay for college in the US. There is incredibly generous financial aid, and if you're a good student, you end up getting paid to go to university. Why do you think the American education system has produced the most powerful and prosperous country in the world? Do you know a single rational person who'd rather live in Chile or Brazil or Greece than the US. With the other education systems, you end up with students who can study for exams, and they can do nothing else. Look at what China has produced in the last 20 years compared to the US, despite having a much larger talent pool. Look at India. They have people who can clear exams, and do nothing else with their lives. Cry about it all you like.
This was such a good video! I would say I went to a really good public school, and recognize my privilege, and the area I grew up in. Though I have friends that are incredibly smart and talented that didn’t get into a lot of their top choices. I’m able to notice the difference between kids who went to a private school and are now at an elite school, versus kids who went to public school. There’s no judgement in going to a boarding school, but I feel like people in those situations don’t realize their privilege. Anyways this video was amazing!!
6:30 I was going to mention Charter Schools. My little brother and sister went to those in NYC and definitely had a better education than I did. My sister was in middle school learning at a college level. She was also able to easily get in since our brother went there; Siblings have spots held for them. The closet I ever came to that was catholic school for about $5,500 a year in 2004.
I love this comment. I’m from NYC and went to a private high school and an Ivy for undergrad. I have family members in charter schools, friends from my college who went to charter schools in NYC. I have to say if you’re from NYC and didn’t get into a Specialized High School or the equivalent (Hunter, Townsend Harris, etc.), a charter school OR, in some cases, an honors program at a public high school is pretty much the only way to have access to the resources that would allow you to be as competitive an applicant as your private school counter parts. I don’t know why when people talk about public/charter school education in the US they generalize. There are nuances is every state, city, and county.
@@KhallelaB. So true. I went to a public high school that was new and had funding from all sorts of people. I was even in a music club and played bass and piano, and performed for some people on the upper east side in their townhouse where they invited their rich friends to support us. Some other students went to China. It was definitely an experience. I was just a horrible student when it came to my grades but undid have a passion for music. But if I was academically fine, I would’ve benefitted.
Story time: I know a set of twins (their mom is a close lifelong family friend with mine) who both got into and attend a certain USA university that isn't an Ivy but is at the same level of prestige, even consistently outranking several Ivies. It's got somewhere around an 8% acceptance rate or lower. Their mom went there and has been HIGHLY involved as an alumnus. Like, SUPER engaged with her alma mater since her graduation decades ago. I can't recall the specific titles/positions/roles she has with the university, but she's very firmly connected and active far beyond most alumni. Their family is also quite wealthy due to both parents' high-power jobs, and the twins were given TONS of resources and support from their mom throughout their whole k-12 education. Their mom, who is really smart, played a very active role in helping them on their schoolwork, whether doing things herself or paying for expensive tutors. This includes pricey top-quality ACT/SAT prep courses they started INSANELY early and kept up with literally until the day they were done with their exams. Her life's biggest mission was to ensure the twins got top grades on Every. Single. Thing. There was no greater priority in her life than making sure the twins got accepted to her alma mater. I guess her neurotic management of the twins' entire school careers is somewhat of advantage in its own right, as she ensured the twins would NEVER do poorly on anything. I'd say their mom was responsible for about 30% of their GPAs, which were both well above 4.0 due to AP courses. Their mom was HIGHLY involved in their schoolwork. I remember seeing one of their middle-school poster board presentations at their house, which my aunt proudly displayed and proclaimed that it earned a perfect grade. SO much money was clearly put into this one class project. Probably more than what every lower-class honor student in a class would spend altogether on that same project. It was the most extra poster board I'd ever seen, and it was beautiful. The folding cardboard was entirely covered in VELVET, for god's sake. And it was decorated elaborately to suit the subject of the project, which I'm pretty sure was a book report. I can't remember exactly, but I recall being impressed at how the aesthetic of the presentation was PERFECT for its topic. The twins' mom would also proofread all their writing assignments. Knowing her modus operandi, she most likely edited them as well. Or at the very least, closely directed them through the editing process; anything the twins turned in would be thoroughly checked and corrected by her no matter what. Now don't get me wrong, the twins are really smart. They each chose really impressive majors in fields that demand the highest level of expertise. One is going into aerospace engineering, AKA literal rocket science. They are kind of pretentious (that's just how they were raised, so I don't judge them for it) but both have really passionate and cool interests. They're definitely going to be really successful in life. I'm happy for them as they reach the stars and I'm am eager to see what great things they do. However, I don't know if they would be where they are without all of the advantages they had. Statistics indicate that legacies are about 45% more likely to be accepted than non-legacies. It's possible their legacy status was the deciding factor for them getting in. I just wonder a lot whether they would be in the place they are if they'd gone through their education without their mom's substantial influence and privilege. I had neither the financial advantages nor any legacy status, just like most other students. Like the majority of students, I never had the money to invest in ACT/SAT prep tutoring; all I had to invest was my own time and hard work, studying and practicing on my own from free online resources and ACT/SAT prep books from the library. And last time either of my parents helped me on schoolwork (which WASN'T just giving me answers or doing any work for me) was like, second grade. I was on my own; the twins hardly did anything without their mom's zealous tutelage. Like the majority of students in the country, I was the only one responsible for my performance and the only resources I had were textbooks, teachers, classmate study buddies, the internet, and the library. Luckily, I'm a nerd and have always been passionate about academics, which is the only "asset" I had, if you can call it that. But my parents are NOTHING like the twins' mom. Most parents aren't as extreme as she is, but mine provide a stark contrast, so I'll use my circumstances as an example. In spite of having nothing but my own motivation and effort, I am grateful to say I managed to get top 5% scores on both the ACT and SAT...which I had to spend MY OWN money to take. In contrast, the twins' parents never hesitated to spend thousands and thousands on their education, not even counting college. The twins were fortunate, never having to contribute a penny. Meanwhile, I didn't have a job other than occasionally tutoring peers and petsitting, so paying for exams meant everything to me. My parents covered my first ACT and SAT tries, but I had to cover retakes with the very little money I had because they thought my first scores were plenty high enough and that retakes were unnecessary. If I wanted to take them again, it was my responsibility to pay. With hardly any income, this wasn't easy. One of my birthday gifts was taking the SAT a second time. It was worth it though, as my scores on both improved. My parents gave me the lecture I'd heard over and over: they were WAY more concerned that I was being too much of a perfectionist than they were with how high my scores were. The twins' mom, on the other hand, was a perfectionist by proxy for her twins and programed them to be perfectionists as well. My parents also only agreed to pay for a few of my AP exams, and I had to cover the cost of any additional ones I wanted to take. I couldn't afford to pay for the exams for all my AP classes, so I had to weed out which ones I wouldn't be able to take despite how hard I'd prepped for them all. Their reasoning was that they thought I was obsessively pushing myself too hard by taking a rigorous course load and a bunch of extracurriculars. I would even get yelled at if my mom discovered me staying up really late working! The twins would be praised for doing the same thing; they were encouraged to put grades before anything else. In other words, my parents are the POLAR OPPOSITE of the twins' mom, who pushed them to the extreme nearly since they could walk. If I recall correctly, at least one of the twins took the SAT like five times because their mom didn't want to stop until their scores were as close to perfect as they could get up until college applications were submitted. Expense never mattered one bit. All that mattered to her was the twins attending her prestigious alma mater. Maybe the twins would have achieved the same things they have if they'd been in my shoes, but it's impossible to know. And maybe I would have gotten into Yale, my dream school, if I was in THEIR shoes. My early application was deferred, but ultimately rejected. Their early app to their university was accepted right away, an outcome for which there was very little doubt would happen. The trajectory of their futures has always been lined up perfectly for them. I envy their justified confidence that things will go smoothly for them with little anxiety throughout the process. Their lives have been set up in a way that steadily makes goals into expectations, and expectations into reality. _Side note, comment if you feel the same way: I honestly wish I'd been rejected the first time because the deferral left me anxiously waiting for months with that little bit of hope, dying to hear "yes" or "no" instead of the "maybe" that comes with deferral. The suspense of the possibilities had me breathlessly awaiting the final for months, and that interval of uncertainty was pretty excruciating._ Perhaps if I had that extra boost like the twins, I would have made it, and all students like me would have made it into their dream schools, too.
This comment is great, because it points out the kind of privilege many people don't think about. Having a parent who is super invested in their kid's life is not something many people have experienced.
I loved reading this comment! While it is true that privilege always gives an edge, hard work such as yours will definitely be recognized and rewarded. Just keep going you've got this!! Also you're a prolific writer I was hooked on from the very first line✨️
As a teacher, some of these private schools having single digit student to teacher ratios is absolutely absurd. I know many teachers that would fight to the death for a position like that.
Life is never a fair game. Nothing wrong with being able to afford going to a private school. The current public k-12 education system in the US is broken. Compared to the coursework for the average kid attending a public high school in France/Germany/Korea/China/Japan/many other countries, what a kid can learn from 4 years of public high school experience is extremely limited. If the US wants to become academically competitive again globally, every single college applicant should take the same set of college entrance exams which are supposed to be intellectually challenging for the average student. By distributing easy academic passes to public high schoolers, the public education system is designed to fail them at the college level.
I had gone to a charter school where applications were lottery based, and the parents did not need to spend money to send their kid there. It was a curious experience, since the school was actually specialized for college courses and college prep, so every students’ curriculum had AP classes. In fact, you could not graduate high school without taking AP Calculus, something which is unthinkable in a regular school. The curriculum itself was incredibly rigid, and the students who could not keep up simply dropped out and transferred to online/went to a different school. The students are mostly nice, and there was practically no drugs/violence and not too much petty drama. However, there was also no mental health support, and though we have an on-call counselor, nobody knows about them. Though the school received some government funding, they also relied on donations to help pay for the teachers’ salaries Most of the students were Asian >70 percent, including myself, which I think is mainly to do with the STEM curriculum and personal references to go there rather than the cost of the school (which was nil). Asian culture puts a much larger focus on higher education. Funnily enough, there was little to no money spared for sports. No one knew who was on the sports teams and it’s been relegated to an elective. I haven’t exercised in like six years lol.
I had a very similar experience at my highschool! Lottery based system, but you had to have had good middle school grades to get in. AP Bio, Calc, and macro/micro economics were all required, and the pressure was insane 😭 Most of the teachers were nice but the student body could be toxic as hell, not to mention the complete lack of anything sports related. There were good art classes, but there wasn't an auditorium or theater department.
i feel like i’ve commented this multiple times before but i love commentary youtube and i especially love your videos because nobody i subscribe to talks about the topics you do! you’re always so original
I attended a private University, in fact I am graduating this May debt free thanks to government aid and full ride scholarship, I didn't live in the dorm (too expensive) so I commuted from home to University, and of course when the pandemic happened, I have Zoom classes, currently having a hybrid class (in-person and Zoom). I have a high GPU from high school but average SAT score, I did better with reading/writing than math, and I took SAT twice, I also remember attending paid SAT training classes so my score did increase in the second SAT testing. Funny thing is, my private University is actually right there with Harvard campus, so many times when I am walking around my University campus, I can easily walk on Harvard campus, and it feels like a different world, just seeing so many Harvard brands and buildings. I even had a Harvard professor taught a class in my University. The private University was my top pick and actually is the most expensive college of other 9 colleges I picked, but I was accepted for my art portfolio, I worked closely with strict feedback from my art teachers back in high school. I am from a working class family, living paycheck to paycheck with little to no savings. I would definitely say I lucked out, put in a lot of hard work, took advantage of my available resources and I am grateful for the opportunity to study my 3D Animation career, I got to do many internships and currently applying to different jobs. That's my personal experience with attending a private University, so many amazing students and Professors. I also have a disability (hearing loss) but I got accommodations quickly, which helped me a lot in classes.
Listened to my asian parents and nearly applied to a bunch of elite schools that wouldn't have accepted me anyway (my essays were terrible), with a major I would have hated. So glad I listened to myself and plan to go somewhere that specializes in the field I love!
I completely agree with all the points made here . My son got into Cornell and U Chicago, as well as USC with a presidential scholarship and several other top 50 schools . While he worked super hard and deserves all the credit , I definitely think that a big part of his success was all the support I as an educator gave his - we brainstormed essay topics together , I proofread his essays, paid for SAT prep and gave him lots of guidance. As much as I am proud of my son, I don’t know if he wouldhave been accepted without all the help. Going to a great public school also helped ! Elite colleges certainly help first generation students, but as always, it’s the middle class kids who are stuck in the middle - without the big $$$ and connections and without the first generation / diversity / poverty aspect
To be honest, going into debt and having to pay loans to get to an expensive university vs go to a community college, state university after it to get a 4 year degree. If you don't know what you are doing then take a gap year to find your passion. I did and found I enjoy working with the government. I only taking community college to help myself to have some "degree" to be good on my resume. I don't think many places care where you go to school. I now have a college fund for my future kid because I spent so little on it. I will go back to college if that will help me get a promotion. There isn't just one path for everyone so take the right one for you.
maybe i'm cynical but why are you assuming these students worked hard? it's a system, elite college admissions, designed to benefit the scions of wealthy families. does it matter if johnny worked hard when everything is set up for him anyway?
I think he meant SOME of them do? Like, the statistic was that 20% of kids from these private schools get into ivies, the other 80% are probably the ones that didn't work hard. Not that I'm defending rich people or anything lmao but you can still have a strong work ethic even if you're privileged. I get being cynical though, the extent to which they "worked hard" is probably nothing compared to low income/working class students
i agree and im far from not acknowledging someone’s hard work but it’s the reality that the life you were handed before college does effect what college u would go to and how prepared you are, some people are just lucky
So my perspective is a little different as I'm coming from the UK so some of the stuff that applies in the usa doesn't apply here and vica versa. But it's generally better to think of those schools as work amplifiers. The kids in prestigious schools still need to work hard, they still need to study, and understand, and learn and none of that is easy for anyone. But having better teachers, smaller classes, more options for extra curriculars ect, all of that means for every unit of effort those students put in, they get more back out than a student without those advantages. It doesn't mean they can put no effort in. And of course this is compounded by the amount of effort poorer students need to put into just surviving (ie getting part time jobs, caring for siblings, not getting enough to eat or even things as simple as having a poorly heated house). If your energy isn't being eaten up by those things you can put more energy into your education. I was very privileged to go to a private school that while not a full on Oxbridge feeder school, definitely wanted to be one, and the amount of work I put in was phenomenal. I worked harder during my a-levels than I did while working a 60 hour week at a physically active job while also doing a full time university course. It was a lot and I'm now in my mid twenties and only barely beginning to recover from the burnout I got at 17. Those prestigious schools will emphasize the importance of hard work and constant grind really hard, because they know their students are the product and the better grades the better the product. So in a lot of these schools kids are indeed working insanely hard. At my school I knew only 1 person who didn't have a mental breakdown at some point in their final 2 years. And I wasn't even at a full on feeder school, I'm sure a lot of them are even worse for their students. So you can see how some of my more sheltered classmates got the idea that the *only* reason they did well academically was through their hard work. Because they genuinely were working really hard, and if you've never interacted with people less fortunate than yourself you don't realise that your hard work was enabled and rewarded in ways that are unique to the wealthy.
@@yeehawbeehaw Same, he has to say that though or else all the wealthy people will attack him for generalizing. Everyone knows money = freedom, and freedom means happiness. It’s a lot easier to learn and socialize when you’re happy and your needs are already taken care of, so I doubt any of these kids seriously had to “work hard”.
The nepotism and elitism is insane. For example, I went to a good public high school. The valedictorian who did everything "right" was denied from Harvard. He spent summer courses there, had a professor write him a letter, etc. He showed immense interest for years, had insane stats, and obviously was first in the class. He got rejected. Another girl in his grade, who wasn't even in the top 50, mysteriously got into Harvard. Academically, she did decently well, but wasn't very impressive. A few months later most kids around the school found out that her parents donate millions to Harvard. What's annoying is that my high school has her come back to speak to students about her experience, advice, etc. It makes me super frustrated. Just wanted to let people know about personal info I have and that this privilege cannot be ignored!! Don't beat yourself up about rejections please
she probably had better essay and extracurriculars
@@tysonn3 who knows? Maybe yes maybe no. Maybe it was the money
@@tysonn3 Don't be ridiculous.
@@tysonn3 let’s be honest, 1 in the class is gonna have better stats then girl not even in the top 50
@@tysonn3 don’t be ridiculous.
Hey guys I just got accepted into my favorite university because my essay! Now yes I know my father owns the school and I promised him to do the dishes for once if he let me in his but I promise it was just my amazing essay!!!
i got into that school too! my essay was also amazing just like yours, not just because of the world renowned college advisors who helped me, it was all me!!! also, i hope your father enjoys the new science building my parents donated as well, which don’t get me wrong, didn’t affect my acceptance into the school!
The essay is just a screenshot of a text message like "chill daddy I'll do the dishes when I'm back from Paris 😭😭😭😭😭"
Unrealistic. Their cleaner does the disher. She just needs to (pretend to) stay off drugs
And Daddy knows someone who used to write articles for the New Yorker who helped "edit" my essay, but ...
Lol same
the sentence "single digit student to teacher ratio" is just incomprehensible to my public school graduate brain
Right??? Even at the public school I went to, which had the IB program and was pretty well funded, classes were still mostly 20-30 people. The thought of being in a high school classroom with less than 10 classmates is wild to me
If only 15 people applied it meant no course at all at my school
In my highschool (be it it is a special case, you apply to go here) it is 30 max per class and they fill in the capacity.
Some people change schools, but generaly the number is arouns 25-30 kids. Now each seminar for the 7th year of the 8 yesr program and 3rd year for the 4 year program requiers I BELIEVE 8-10 kids MINIMUM to open. The 8 applies to stuff like art or music because it generaly is a low-pick, but when the students pick it, they usualy need it because they target an art uni or smt like that.
Srsly. Half the time they have to shift students away from seminars bcs they are full and top capacity. This is ridiculous. And I live in a country w a decent student to teacher ratio.
My public school’s ratio was 12 and that was considered excellent for the area. Private schools are their own world
The only place I ever got to experience something close to that was in philosophy class, which had 11 students to a teacher in my last year, and that because 1. we had an unusually small year 2. no one in my year wanted to do philosophy 3. people kept dropping out of school, condensing the small class even further
We had a great time and sometimes just straight-up heckled the teacher if we didn't agree. To have that kind of environment in every course would be mind-blowing.
As an English teacher who has his seniors do college essays - her (full) essay felt…empty and vapid. It’s screams “I’m privileged and have nothing to offer.” There’s so soul
You almost know nobody read it, they just glanced at the school she went too and bam she was in.
One kid in my class was into making candles and soap and she literally just wrote about that and got into the school she wanted.
Even if you just wrote about soap 😂😂🤷♂️ real passion and clear vision for the future stand out a lot
@@kamilareeder1493 Yeah, that gal's essay was about twitter though
😢 feels so bad. I don't wanna start college
@@andyc9902 ☝️🤷♂️😮 whats the scary part ?
I took 17 AP classes in High School, had a GPA of 4.657, had an SAT of 1530, and was filled with excitement for the college admissions process. I applied to 17 schools, and most of them were reaches or near-reaches. I only got accepted into 3 of them, and have never felt more crushed in my life. The sheer weight of wasting my teenage years under constant stress to end up at my state school was depressing... until I realized I would've been more miserable around elitist ivy-league students anyway. For anyone currently experiencing self doubt after the latest college decisions, I truly believe once you get to your college of choice, you'll be glad they rejected you.
I was crushed when I didn't get into my dream school. Then I got a full ride scholarship to a private out of state school. I worked my ass off there and landed an internship at Johns Hopkins where I surprisingly ended up interning with many of my peers who'd been accepted to my dream school. I took a different route but ended up at the same location.
Moral of the Story: life is what you make it. Grow where ever you are planted. Trust me, it all works out in the end.
Also, life is just beginning for you. Work hard, but remember to play hard too.
My psychologist in HS told me not to aim for Ivy leagues; not bc he thought I couldn’t do it, but bc if I did do it I’d be immensely discouraged by being “a small fish in a big pond.” And I would run a very good chance of fucking up my perception of college by being surrounded by the smartest people to go to college, meanwhile I’m a slightly above-average type person.
Funny thing about that is that if you are really smart like you say are most close colleges won't admit you because they think you can do hetter
I completely feel this comment in my bones! For the longest time I thought that my high GPA would be enough to get me into an Ivy League but recently I’ve been listening to the student experience at these schools and it seems that the students lack actual perspective and joy in what they do. I thought a state school would make me less worthy as a student because they weren’t as selective but then I got this piece of great advice. “Education is what you make of it.” Regardless of where you go, be active in student events and look for internships and work experience in your field and your resume out of college will speak for itself.
No employer will really be able to recognize what college you went to unless it’s an Ivy League, but that’s okay! Tons of people don’t go to Ivy leagues and they still have successful careers with much less debt. Don’t be discouraged by their rejection! And make sure the schools you are applying to are schools you can actually see yourself in.
I had a 4.5 with multiple CS classes taken and heavy involvement in a robotics team and still couldn’t get into any of the good UCs
It’s sad because we all know wealth helps people get into college, but the wealthy students will almost always deny it and just say they worked hard. I don’t doubt the hard work, but it’s just so much easier to work hard on school when your housing, health, water, and food are never one or two paychecks away from being lost. They don’t understand the setbacks middle to lower class people face.
and they live in prime neighborhoods right next to the school and have access to multiple private tutors. They get to vacation a few times a year and destress over break and make friendships partying.
I go to a private school (albeit, not a super "bougie" one, and it's not in the US, definitely not an Ivy feeder). And I agree with everything said in the video. But not one person at my school denies their privilege. Yes--there are awful people like these who try and hide away from their privilege, but I have a hard time believing that's the majority. Every day I feel incredibly thankful--almost guilty--about my privilege. I understand where your statement comes from. And there's no denying people in the world think like how you described (i.e., being blind to the setbacks of working class) but I cannot help but feel as if you are making some sweeping generalizations here. "They" as in, the wealthy students, covers a HUGE range of people. I think instead of just using wealth as a measure of ignorance, we should use actual ignorance as a measure of ignorance. Sure, wealth makes your more sheltered and thus more susceptible to it, but not every rich person is living under a rock to the realities of the middle-working classes. Anyways, sorry for the long rant. I hope this doesn't come off as an effort to defend people like the girl in the video.
@@lulupollitt1797 For me I don't mind the ignorance as much as the fact that the financial system is setup so someone's overall level of success is mostly set at birth. Sure there's exceptions, but for the most part a person stays in the income bracket they're born into. To me that really makes the whole system lose a lot of legitimacy and have a lot less value.
@@lulupollitt1797 i agree completely! i, too, often feel thankful yet guilty about my privilege. 'wealthy students' are not ignorant, ignorant wealthy students are ignorant. most of my friends in similar positions recognise our privilege and the fact that our systems are broken in a way that makes it easier for certain groups to navigate ivies. the original comment makes complete sense - wealth helps people get into college, but a small minority of ignorant people deny it.
Not just US, it also happens in my country i think most of parents and high school students here knows that if you can invest big amount of money into the university they will accept you regardless of your essay. Essay is just for formality.
There's also the factor of financial aid offers (or lack thereof) from the Ivy league schools. A girl in my graduating class got into Yale, and she absolutely deserved it, but she had to reject them because they didn't offer her ANY grants or scholarships. Even when non-legacy students get in, taking on tens of thousands of dollars in loans is just too much for a lot of them. When these colleges accept legacy students and kids from private schools, they KNOW they'll get that money.
Yep, 100%! Not only that, but these loans and scholarships are taxed to the recipient. So, if you receive scholarships, be prepared to pay that tax. I knew someone who had to turn down a scholarship because he couldn't pay those taxes, plus living on the mainland away from his parents and social structure (Hawaii)
Very good point. Financial aid plays a really big role in decision making.
crazy that this happens when Yale claims to meet 100% financial need. it works fantastic for low-income students like me coming from households making
@@grass666 fax, my parents make a solid amount of money but not nearly enough to pay full price for these schools, my parents are willing to pay for about half of what my top schools are charging😭.
Absolutely. Not to mention that international students typically pay full tuition. Hence the shift away from the SAT as a key determiner for admission.
You're absolutely right, Robert. 36% of Harvard's students are legacy students, i.e., someone in their family has attended Harvard. Their average acceptance rate is around 5%. The admissions process is highly subjective and nebulous, and it has led to a guild system at these universities. HBS even considers if a parent is in an upper management position or CEO in a top company, because they know that the incoming student is much likely to "succeed" in their parent's company.
Edit: The acceptance rate for Harvard for legacy students is 33%, as opposed to 6% for the others
Of course the percentage of Harvard students of any group is likely larger than the percentage of students that get in. A better stat would be comparing the acceptance rate of legacy students that apply compared to other groups (not sure what that stat is). Did you know over 50% of Harvard students are on some form of financial aid? I’m speaking from experience. I recently graduated from Harvard and a significant majority were on financial aid and many were paying 0$ to go there because their families were unable to financially support them due to being low income. Sure some kids there were rich and some were legacy, but it was far from the majority.
Edit: I’m only talking about Harvard college because I have experience there. Not commenting on Harvard Business School or other Ivy schools where what you’re saying could very well be true.
@@so3594 The acceptance rate for Harvard for legacy students is 33%, as opposed to 6% for the others
@@mulholandalcoholic I’m not sure where this stat is from. Maybe it’s an average of across the years? I just looked it up and saw one now that says 36% of class of 2022 was legacy but the more recent class of 2025 was only 16% and class of 2025 was 12%. Not sure if this is a downward trend or coincidence as I haven’t looked into a ton of stats. And I think they’re defining legacy as any relative in your family that has previously gone to Harvard including grandparents and such. Compare that to the class of 2025 (which again had 16% legacy) which has 18.6% of the class being first Gen college students. Just to clarify I’m not saying being legacy wouldn’t help. I’m sure it does in multiple ways other than what is seen on the application (access to more resources etc.) but I just don’t want people to think that Harvard is mostly filled by rich legacy kids when those people only make up a small percentage.
Wait- being 36% of the student body means something way different than just having a 36% acceptance rate. Might wanna change your wording in the beginning if you’re just talking about acceptance rate and not how much of the student population they comprise.
@@so3594 You can't really look at it by class of x, because there's too many factors that inflate or deflate the stats (i.e, biggest one being each major takes different amount of years to complete a BA or MA, etc, students taking different amount of years to complete, etc). That's why people look at the yearly acceptance rates instead, which for Harvard legacy seems to be around 33% on a regular basis. No educator or counselor in higher ed ever weighs stats by Class of X unless the statistics specifically revolves on graduation rates, which in this case it doesn't because it's solely the rate of admission acceptance.
My best friend in high school literally had the most insane stats. Perfect SAT, 4.4 GPA, Valedictorian, played on the football team with me as a starting linebacker and plenty of other extra circular. He got rejected from ever single IVY. Another girl from our grade, smart but did no extra cuticular stuff and generally a mean girl, got accepted to Princeton and surprise surprise,both of her parents went there!!
Additionally, the students who have to work part-time during high school simply don't have the same amount of time to for academic pursuits than those who don't. Don't get me wrong, many hard-working students have worked and received high scores thorough high school, but it's certainly a privilege to not have to think about earning money.
I had to work part time in high school at a job I hated for a long time, one of my parents passed when I was younger and the other was out of the picture; lived with extended family. You basically NEED a car where I live so that's what I had to work for so I could live a normal life. Sure I had good grades, but it was a struggle.
This is so True. I'm from Poland and we have university education for free, but I had to move for my studies and this meant I had to pay for place to live, take care of food and anything else with small allowance my mum was able to send me plus what I earned myself. I needed money, so I coudn't really do free internships above what was required by my course. My ex, who was in the same university (although diffrent course) didn't had to worry abour living expenses (he was local and could live with his rather wealthy family), so he did some work for free for big company and even goverment. Guess who was better off in the end of the day, him with Ministery of finance in his resume, or me with some contract and part time Jobs including freaking KFC and DVD rental? Later on we both worked in bank sector, I in consumer service, dealing with clients, him in headquarters, doing some analytic job for 5 Times my salary. What option you had early in your life, really set you up or/and limit you for the rest of your life. And I was not really that bad off, I still had some help from home, I was Lucky to be born in the country, where I at least didn't had to go into debt, to get my degree.
That made me angry@@kasia2750
@@midori9566my family is not in the financial status to pay for my future schooling so I needed to get a part time job and you need a car to literally go to the neighbors house and to go to the only middle/high school basically in the area,so I can relate some. Its definitely possible, but the struggle is real
I can't believe how many American teenagers work nearly full time during high school. And the parent think the 'work ethic' will help them.
I go to a VERY underfunded, understaffed, poorly rated public high school that is infamously known to be dangerous (fights, gangs, etc.) The teachers try their best but we honestly have no resources because our donated funding gets pulled out when the news covers the bad things that happen at school. My one school friend is genuinely the smartest girl Ive ever met. She is naturally just genius- valedictorian, class president, insanely good sat score, and kindest person ever. She recently got accepted to Columbia and it makes me so mad to see that she has dedicated her whole life thus far to her education in hopes of achieving that goal, yet some other students can be given a free pass for being rich or more privileged while she struggles to be able to find money for the tuition after working her ass of for 18 years
college isn't the end goal. it's just a tool to get what you want.
I am so happy you acknowledge your friend’s effort, u are a real one
Free pass? 🤣. I don’t know where you assume that private high school is easy. Where I go, students frequently will sleep through class or during free periods because of the workload. I myself have already had 5 sleepless nights this school year and around 25 where I got less then 6 hours. Now if I didn’t do sports I would get sleep every day, but activities like sports are mandatory for 1/3 of the year where I go to school. And to graduate you have to average about 7/8 class blocks filled to get the credits. I’m not even close to being the valedictorian and I have it easy as I live a block away from the school. Bust some students commute an hour a day on top of the workload. Students will often drink energy drinks during clases to stay engaged. It’s not easy.
@@TysonIke sounds like the same thing I do in public school😑
@@aman-qj5sx it's justified because they got an almost free pass for being rich, and even after college, their rich influence will always get them what they want. It's not like once college is over they are like everyone else. No, they are still insanely rich and can do whatever they please.
Hearing the selection of “AP computer science, AP Chinese, ceramics” made me realize the privilege of my public school.
yeah same, gives me more appreciation for the school i take for granted
I truly didn't realize how good I had it
True shit I was very lucky to live near a rich area and be able to go for free; but the school treated underprivileged students very badly socially and systematically I was bullied by staff and principals for being poor or Lgbt+, im very lucky to have had the opportunity to go to that school but overall It was a shit show if you weren't rich and white
Same. My high school didn’t have AP Chinese but we did have AP Comp Sci and Ceramics.
@@sara-os5yz what do you guys do in ceramics? I just find it odd how theres a whole class on it 😭
at my NYC "college prep" public high school, where each graduating student was mandated to apply to at least 10 colleges, the very few POC were told by the college counsellor that many of their colleges were too much of a reach. she dissuaded them from applying to "better" schools because she thought they couldn't get in, and if they didn't go to college right out of high school, it would hurt the school's statistics.
my best friend was put in this horrible, racist situation, and she applied anyway. she got into her top "reach" school, ended up an honors student, and spoke at her graduation.
Same thing happened to me at an nyc public school
What a trash human, she should be fired.
@@lgfuad4lyf nyc has the most segregated school system in the country!
Same here, when I said I wanted to be a psychologist, I was told to “start smaller” and that it might be too much for me. I can’t help but wonder if said this to me bc I’m a poc
Same, I went to Asa Randolph high school.
I went to an elite university over 25 years ago as a public school kid. It also translates to the school itself where the richest kids socialize with each other, join expensive fraternities and sororities and vacation together in spring break. I worked and graduated early to save money and didn’t get any of the “connections” you supposedly get from an elite school.
As a person from good school I still feel alienated in my elite university. It is just two different worlds socially.
The privilege is unmatched. I don't know how to socialise with people when we literally had different experiences for the whole life and different upbringing.
I feel like I won't be able to make great connections and It's better to transfer to my local uni
social identity theory is so bad for rich people i swear the most boring and nothing in common people just latch onto each other for being rich
I’m from a public school but sad because my essay was really good and I knew it,, the college i chose to go to even sent me a handwritten letter from admissions praising my essay and offering an even higher scholarship than the Ivy,, learned I was one of the only to get that kind of recognition from the university,, instantly knew I wanted to go to a college where I felt seen and I have never regretted choosing the smaller university because I feel like im with students who I can actually relate to and are far more compassionate
Same, but I used to be charter school student. And let me explain to you, it wasn't that good enough because charter school I've experienced there was a racism surrounding me. I got sent to public school in 8th grade. I was offered to go bls but got rejected because of my special needs. So they sent me to school where low income people struggled and I considered myself upper middle class(my dad was a clothing business and my mother used to actress(I will follow my mom's footsteps in the future), now she's training to be businesswomen like my dad). I didn't get enough respect by everyone because I'm different
Also I got scholarship from high school and I offered to go any college
what was your essay about? do u have any tips
It’s difficult. I remember being so excited when I was informed that I’d been accepted into Cornell. But then financials came into play and I realized there was no way in hell I could manage, and Cornell doesn’t offer merit scholarships. 59,000 for a year is insane. Let alone four years.
So I went to my state school instead. I received a full scholarship for all four years and never had to pay a single dime for my education. Cornell certainly has better academics and provides more opportunities to make important connections in your respective field of study, but the overall price wasn’t worth it to me. Anyways, I want to go to either medical school or graduate school. Both of these paths are extremely pricey, but I’d rather go into them both debt-free instead of adding on to any pre-existing debt.
If you are going to grad school or med school, debt-free could be a great choice! It plays a lot in mental health and early on finance. Wish all the best for you.
Doesn't Cornel give really generous need based aid? For a lot of people it is cheaper than state schools.
I’m so torn on this exact same issue. I really want to attend an Ivy League, because that’s what is expected of me and I’m no one if not a people-pleaser. However, the tuition is just so *expensive*. I’d never be able to afford it. I’m currently in high school on a full ride scholarship, so I don’t doubt my ability to get a scholarship at a state school. Of course, I’m not obliged to make a decision for a little bit, but I’m starting to get questions and it’s really freaking me out.
@@yukijames1321 Yes, and private schools seem to be better for the middle class. At some public schools for out of state they treat earning $100,000 a year the same as earning $1,000,000 a year.
@@fluffyunicorn57 for low income students that may be true but for middle income students, you're fucked. Your parents make enough money to not be in poverty but not enough to pay for your college.
i went to a public NYC high school, and it was considered a "college preparatory school." it's on the upper east side of manhattan, a notoriously rich section of the city that mostly comes from old money.
nyc has the most segregated school system, because the public high school (and middle school) system is application-based. you could go to your zoned school, but nobody wanted to unless it was their last choice. schools like mine were only open to application, and that is the norm. the vast majority of the student populace at my school was white, and the school restricts admissions to highly prioritize those who live close by.
i was one of the only students in my grade who was from another borough (brooklyn), and since my year the admissions process has gotten even more stringent. the school is poised to take in rich, white students, many of which went to private elementary and middle schools and lived their entire lives within a five-block radius.
i had an awful time. the principal only cared about school retention/graduation rate, testing scores, and what colleges the graduating seniors went to. the culture was hostile to anyone experiencing hardship, not only from the principal but from many of the teachers and most of the students as well. i had a friend who was (unofficially, of course) kicked out of the school because he was not performing to the arbitrary standards set forth. his mom had died and once he began to act out, the adults around him pigeonholed him into that identity instead of giving him empathy and compassion.
the school mandated that every graduating senior apply to AT LEAST ten colleges. it was hellish to make that list. there were SAT/ACT after school classes, but you had to pay to be in them. the way the school was set up only afforded these luxuries to the kids who already had private tutors and college prep since they were in middle school. we were not poor, but it was too expensive for our family. my peers had credit cards & unlimited funds, and they didn't understand when i couldn't pay them back for gum because i only got a set amount of lunch money a week.
i ended up going to an ivy-adjacent school, and again i had a horrible experience. i have always struggled with mental health issues, and my father died right before i went away. i had trouble keeping up with schoolwork, and every semester my financial aid was so convoluted and last-minute that i was restricted from registering for classes. there are so many roadblocks built into school systems, both public and private. much of it is deeply classist and racist, meant to maintain the current caste systems.
academia is a scam-in order to enter and succeed in the realm of higher education, you must already be of that echelon. it is a privilege to be able to get into and attend these schools. there is another layer that is often not discussed, though. when someone slips through the cracks into that echelon, they are not equipped with the requisite skills to thrive there. there's an expectation that students not only arrive with the proper etiquette and (arbitrary) prerequisite knowledge, but that their families can pay for textbooks, housing, food, tuition, and amenities. or that students even have families to support them.
if anyone has read this, thank you. i expected to write a paragraph but it turned into an essay! maybe i can sell it to someone to use on the common app 🥴
Sounds terrible! Hopefully they paid for those 10 application fees- those aren't cheap
@@DonnaDoveWinters they absolutely didn't! :)
@@tangyferbreze Good lord! This story got worse
Wtff I much rather graduate into community college!!! I'm a senior and if I were in your position, I'd be eaten alive :.(
Damn, I stuck on that part that these rich ass kids expected you to pay them back for gum. 😂 If I had unlimited funds, I would've definitely adopted my financially disabled but brilliant friends and try to pay their way through school 😭😂
I remember my older brother getting into one of the top universities in my country (not America to clarify) and when asked by other people what everyone was like there, he described by saying "There's two types of people there: ones who are got there by being the best, or their family is rich."
I got into one of the top five universities in my country produced many influential people from national artist, ceos , governors, secretaries of the president to presidents themselves, ect ect and i gotta say i agree mfers are either stinking rich or really hard working i find the latter to be the most prevalent although it is not to say i don’t see the former fuck im friends with alot of them lol
If I was an admissions counselor and a student even mentioned Twitter in the first paragraph, I wouldn’t even finish it lol. Definitely not what got her in…
I'm a low income high school senior. I just got accepted to UPenn and was accepted to NYU yesterday, and was waitlisted or rejected from every other Ivy. The UPenn acceptance was really surprising for me, but I'm set on NYU. But NYU is crazy expensive and definitely the most expensive after aid from all my acceptances...but I still really want to go there.
Update: I've decided to go to UPenn!! They gave me a full ride 🥳
Congrats!
What is your intended field of study? Is there a reason you are shying away from Penn. I can imagine they will give you a generous financial package and NYU is notorious for overcharging their students to attend.
@@richardberman8342 political science, but the reason isn't because of my major.it's mostly because NYU is my dream school and I didn't expect to get into UPenn so I already planned out going to college in New York 😓 I'ts closer to where I live and I have multiple friends going there. UPenn is a great school obviously but I guess it just scares me more bc its so different than what I'm used to
@@bryanna9458 do not go to a certain school just because it’s a dream school and your friends are nearby please UPenn has a great program for what you want to do and it provides better aid you’ll make amazing friends there
Please please please go with the option that puts you in the least amount of debt.
its very true, robert. the luck of the draw admissions doesn't even begin at ivy league colleges, it starts with the schools too. I went to a public charter school by luck. My name was placed in a random bingo-like drawing by my mom, and i got in.
For context, i live below the poverty line in a poor, below average scoring parish. None of the public schools here had opportunities and above adequate schooling...except this one charter school.
I experienced hardships learning-wise, yes, but a harder part of it was simply existing among my wealthy peers as a poor student in an upper-class setting.
All kids brought their lunch, a select few ate the school's free lunches. People would giggle if you were in line for your meal. 4 out of 5 class days i didn't get lunch to avoid the humiliation. one semester i was outright refused lunch because the lunch lady "saw me bringing my own" and thought i was faking, in reality i was eating a friend's boxed lunch they generously offered to me.
There were large admission fees. The lottery didnt pay for my schooling. Many times she spoke with the Dean, explaining how broke we were, arranging payment plans.
Students bought our own expensive uniforms from a single shop. When my only two shirts got massively stained with bleach, i couldn't get new ones. every time a teacher saw it, i was dress-coded for wearing "a distracting altered uniform." and sent to the office.
My principal was highly upset I didn't come on the class trips. She couldn't understand why i didn't spend 200, 500, up to 1k on the various class trips. Told her I couldn't afford them. She then suggested i set up a loan or payment plan with the school instead. When i still refused, she made me write a 8 page report on wherever the class went and why i didn't go there. I failed a final because i didn't go on a "final trip" that was really just an attendance grade for a fieldtrip WE had to pay.
I've since graduated from that school in 2020 and am now a sophomore in college. and I don't miss the experience one bit. Schools like that painted the experience as "equal for all", but there should be asterisk after that. It's equal only if you're willing to pay up. the majority of my school was white, with the rest being black students. I am white, so i do have inherent privilege in my case. I'm still so grateful i attended and graduated from there, dont get me wrong. While my experience was tough, i can't image how much harder it was from my poor black friends who attended as well. i'll never know how that felt, so it's not my place to speak on that.
Even when the disadvantaged make it, they still have a ways to go. the door is open, but they have to fight to stay inside. Its not just getting in, its staying in as well. thank you for this video robert
“Its not just getting in, its staying in as well” well said! Hope youre doing better now
I hope youre doing better, its so not okay to have this type of corruption in education
Damn that's such bullshit, glad you did what you had to do and graduated!
@@ggchiu7400 thank you for the kind words! I’m def doing better in college now
@@espeon871 im much better now !! I’m just one of many who nearly was screwed over by the charter school system
Hot take: college level education, particularly Ivy League type schools, are going to become outdated unless they can reform how it’s structured. We keep hearing these stories of how you just take on unnecessary debt for no reason, stress to the point of suicide and extreme mental illness, unfairness in the selection process, profit over quality, look at how these colleges responded to the pandemic. Students weren’t allowed on campus and yet look how many students received no amount of tuition reduction. the list really goes on.
Ik that's right
Funny enough, some of my scholarships were actually REDUCED because of the pandemic. I had to pay more for tuition specifically because we couldn’t go on campus!!
The debt and even the time wasted.
In Europe, people with master degres can't find jobs and sometimes end up changing their field.
There is no point killing yourself for a useless degree. Better to have free time.
Honestly these schools ARENT WORTH IT. I am only get degrees so set my self in a position to be over qualified for a job I want as many view my hearing loss as a disadvantage to the field. I honestly have a few recommendations to people interest in careers like the FBI, Public safety Law Enforcement Fire and EMS .
- Become a volunteer first.. typically you get free training and lot of of it I am going to get fire fighter 2 Hazmat and tech rescue
-Go to community college tends to be cheap help you figure things out and gain connections...my professors were high level NYPD
-Learn wide variety of skills
Their plenty other tips but takes as many civil service exams as well
I feel like this won't affect the wealthy very much but create more of a problem for the less fortunate--like most of our human history. Yay, classism.
This is why I’m so glad the Australian university admission process is so simple. You only need a score and it’s guaranteed entry- no essay, no extracurriculars required etc.
Yeah I’m glad it’s far more clear than the American system, although due to scaling the school you go to can make a huge impact on your overall ATAR
Same in india,even with the competiton in india it's simply based on an exam and you get a seat.
Same here in Peru
@@-BarathKumarSSure, but the JEE and NEET take it way, way too far.
And I'm not even Indian and I still know how brutal those exams are (not inherently difficult but still doable like Oxbridge tests, but designed just to be sadistic to the student from the start)
I men, it works the same way in America. Most colleges aren't super uptight about what you have to do, or what the quality of your work has to be. Almost anyone who actually tries to get into a college will get into one. It's the "elite" schools that are quite literally for the elite. Anyone else has to work their assess off, and have a good amount of luck to get in.
My brother won the dad lottery (trust fund who married an heiress after my mom divorced him) & went to an insanely expensive boarding school. Even so his GPA was to low to get into his sch of choice, but luckily for him, his dad & gradfather went there so he got in as an legacy admission. (I def pulled the short stick with my dad since I got the drunk deadbeat dad who nvr paid child support.) But my brother is a great guy. He even just bought me and my kid a house.
easy to hate , 90% of it is hard work you can give people all the tools to succeed, all the money but only some rage through
I'm glad your brother supports you! Hope you're doing well❤
Which boarding school?
@@Bingskii I forget the name but it’s in Ojai, CA. I just remember it being stupid expensive but it was beautiful. He got a horse to care for while he was there and was able to ride on a trail that took him down to the beach & up a mountain.
@@greenthinggg it’s especially amazing since we weren’t raised together past the first two years of his life. It’s a long and sad story but a big part of him buying me and my kid a house is bc I took care of our mom after she suffered a head injury causing predementia, & while she suffered from a chronic disease that ultimately took her from us way to soon. He was very appreciative of me taking on the work and emotional labor. He had very young children & lived over 2k miles away so him taking care of mom was unfeasible.
I dropped out of catholic high school. my brother got Harvard letters. he's going to a normal college because he wants to study computer software and be close to home. he's neurotypical and I'm autistic and lemme fucking tell you, private schools have ZERO idea how to handle special needs kids. at all. no special Ed class either, just shitty accommodations I had to fight for tooth and nail and a world of bullying and guilt tripping. it's bullshit. it was a good school for "normal" kids but they treated kids who were different like they're broken
That's unfortunately common in our ableist society. I'm so sorry for what you and your brother endured, hopefully you understand that comments like that aren't your fault and you don't need to change a single thing about yourselves!
No offense, but getting letters from Harvard or any top university doesn’t mean that you will be accepted or that they even want you as a student. It costs them much less to send you a letter than it does for you to apply (application fee to each college) so those letters are more of a financial benefit to them than an indication of merit of the recipient.
@@sallystories yeah I know. But he got a perfect score on his pre-college test (I forgot what it's called) so a lot of ivy league schools were interested
Omg i dealt w this as well!! I have chronic illness and had to switch schools because my catholic school punished me for missing days and needing extra help. I felt so alienated and awful about myself being there. I went to a good public high school and had a much better experience, literally saved my life
I feel like public schools don’t really know how to make accommodations either. I just have these blanket accommodations that don’t really specifically help me, but they’re so broad that they kinda help. I guess public schools and private schools are at polar opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to accommodations. Public gives too much and private gives too little. It’s so disheartening to hear that private schools(that you have to pay for) can’t even make proper accommodations for a neurodivergent person.
As someone at a top 20 university, I 100% agree - not enough people here understand how their privilege gave them opportunities to outshine their less-advantaged peers. As soon as you bring it up, they take it as an accusation that they didn’t work for their place at the university. But when there’s an abundance of qualified applicants with the proper grades and test scores to do well at these universities, hallmarks of privilege like fancy internships or research with your dad’s colleagues, are what make an application stand out. While in my average suburb in the Midwest, I could’ve easily been considered upper middle class, the distortion surrounding class and wealth is so extreme here that I come off as middle class to lower middle class to some of my peers when that is definitely not the case. I can only imagine how much more difficult this web is to navigate for my peers that are actually from low-SES backgrounds
I am kind of shocked by this, I got accepted to Cornell even offered a scholarship. My family not rich at all we actually live with my grandparents. I was gonna purse Engineering and my grades were average A's and B's I honestly didn't know it was an Ivy league school. I honestly think it was partly cause of my grades and essay, which was about be a volunteer fire fighter with hearing loss and my goal to help others. I know my Uncle was a Highschool drop had his GED and still went to Cornell farrier program. But I never mentioned it on my application. I decided to go to community college and purse homeland security but I honestly think they only accepted me to meet diversity quotas. I know a lot big school do this they deny certain people based on skin color and gender I believe it might've been Harvard but they were in a lawsuit where they were rejecting people because they were Asian to allow other POC into the college. I believe they lost but form my understanding a lot other groups like the FDNY and NYPD also implented diversity quotas which is great but also can cause people that are more qualified to lose a spot to someone less qualified
@@chinookh4713 I think you missed the point in my comment. of course some people who are on paper less qualified might get chosen over more qualified people - this must be so if we don’t want elite schools to be filled with only the privileged children of the top 5-10%. Those children had the opportunity to become more qualified through fancy internships and research opportunities through their connections, while less privileged applicants don’t even get the chance to become nearly as “qualified” before college. That doesn’t mean they aren’t as- if not more - capable as their wealthier peers - they simply didn’t have the chance to show it.
I went to a feeder school for 10 years (it was prek-12) and I dropped out in my freshman year due to the horrible mental health problems the environment gave me and the cost, as my family fell on hard times. While I was extremely fortunate to get the education I did from them (I graduated from my local public school), a lot of the kids really were oblivious to the privilege they had and the reality of the world. When I was trying to leave, I had guidance councilors and even the dean of students pull me aside and berate me; calling me lazy and wasting potential. The administration fed the reasons I was leaving to the staff and even other parents and it led to kids looking up my local public school and bullying me during free periods.
I had already felt alienated in that environment and whenever I think about my time there, I remember all of the terrible stuff that got brushed under the rug to "protect" the male students futures over "mistakes" they made towards their female peers. I think about the bullying they encouraged towards students who had less disposable income and the attitude they just had towards public school and the students/teachers there.
Case in point, I am glad that someone has done research on this and talked about it. I struggled to get into college and I had a former peer's parents tell me that it's what I "got" for leaving. Those videos weren't sitting right with me and that makes a lot more sense now.
also imagine: these are gonna be some of the most powerful people in the world when they grow up and this is what they teach them from such a young age on.. no wonder the world is the place it is right now :(
@@meladversity It is really upsetting! A lot of those kids did/do have potential, but a lot of them were kept in bubbles and spoiled rotten (not all of course, like my best friend graduated from there and she's very down to earth and genuinely brilliant).
I think a few of my former peers were involved with that college admissions scandal, and truthfully I have to wonder where they are now.
you deserved it imo
get counseling you probably have at least mild cptsd
@@SpecialBlanket I've heard of cptsd before but never put much thought into it. I have some diagnosed mental health issues and a quick google search resonated a bit? I was taken off my previous medications cold turkey a while ago and it's been worse. Maybe if I get the courage to go through diagnosis again to get meds I can look into it.
Though I guess it's not impossible 😅
i go to a private school, and while it's by no means an ivy training school, i never realized how good i had it until i started talking about it with my gf who goes to public school. they are so much more qualified than i am but oh my god my college application experience was so much easier than theirs. while i've already been aware of my privilege, this really helped contextualize it, great video!
same!! i went to private school, but i went to the cheapest one in my area by FAR. i transferred from public to said private school freshman year and the difference in privileges between the two astounded me. i had a specialized college counselor as there were only 27 people in my grade!! my public school had over 600 and no way to fund that same privilege for everyone. anyway, i totally get where you're coming from. glad someone else gets it :)
All my friends went to the same private school, while I went to a public highschool. Almost all of them went to private/prestigious colleges while I had no choice but to go to a state school. Not only were their English classes geared towards writing college application essays while mine were geared towards basic reading comprehension, but my school was known throughout the country as a "bad school" basically meaning that my gpa was marked down simply bc of the district I came from (kind of like the inverse of a feeder school). Even if I had got in, I simply can't afford the ridiculous tuition or plane tickets to go anywhere but a state school.
What is insane is I was valedictorian (albeit I went to a severely underfunded school in Brooklyn, NY), I was a published writer in WSJ at 18, did sports, did band, took college courses in school, took AP courses, went test-optional, first-gen, and I had four internships and wrote a well-round essay, and I still got rejected. I tell the younger kids (I'm 21 now) that you must live your life. I threw away my high school experience to make my "academic" resume look pristine and marketable to these top-tier colleges. Although I attend NYU now, do not throw away your youth to impress these colleges. Primarily when kids work way less than you and still get in due to legacy, wealth, or access to more resources. It will never be enough when you, a student who needs aid to attend but is undoubtedly exceptional, are going against someone who can afford to make donations to the school or can pay out of pocket. Not to mention, I have a ton of college debt just after 2.5 years. It is definitely not worth it.
Be careful though, not too much longer, you will have another "life check" in your way, your first job after college is really important on how your career will end up in life, if you so chose the corporate America way of life. This is another place where knowing someone will really help.
This is always weird for me, I went to a top school, but I'm Black, and my mom is a lawyer, so the mix of class privilege and being Black in these spaces has led me to some real unpleasant experiences. But luckily I've turned it into writing/examination of all these axes of oppression. (Also lol she really thought that terrible essay was good.) UConn is fine tho!
Tbh I think the class status negates all the tangible effects of racial discrimination because at the end of the day you're still rich and nobody can take that from you.
@@Dim.g0v yeah dude that's really not true. But it might be true if I was like Blue Ivy level
@@justingerald It is true though. If all else goes wrong in life you have a solid safety net to fall back on. The luxury of failure without dire consequences is a privilege that's hard to understand from your position. For the average black person in the states it's make it or be homeless/destitute. Your qualms are tertiary.
@@Dim.g0v I mean. That's why the axes intersect. Things other than money matter. I'm also disabled. So let's not make sweeping statements
@@justingerald Disabled with money. Which is a lot more livable than the alternative. It always comes back to class no matter what. People with money are the ones who try to pivot and move the goal posts when that point is made.
“My opinion on that essay is not that it was bad”… I’ll say it, it was kind of bad :/ especially as an essay she’s trying to “show off”
yeah... i don't doubt that she got in with that essay, seeing as most college essays (not all, but most I'd say) are shit by merit of being written by teenagers, even the ones that get you into top schools. but it's absolutely not something to show off. and it most definitely wasn't the thing that got you in.
i'm gnna be extra horrible, that essay is seriously shit
This is so interesting coming from a Canadian perspective, or at least more specifically from my province (Ontario). It's sort of an unspoken understanding that private school students run the risk of Ontario's top universities actually looking at them in a WORSE light than public school students. The rumour is that schools like U of T and Waterloo will take the GPA/average of a student (we go with %) and knock it down ~5% if they're from a private school. Because private schools are funded by parents paying tuition for the most part, if their kids get less than stellar grades, they might take their kids elsewhere. Essentially, where I'm from, private schools are notorious for having a much easier curriculum than public schools to keep parents paying for tuition, so universities take that into account when looking at your overall grade average.
Great video by the way!!!
It's the same in Croatia. Private colleges are seen for stupid rich kids that were not bright enough to get into regular, public, one. And the only majors you can get at private colleges are usually business, graphic design or some other easier subject. Their curriculum is much easier and you can buy exams. They are definitively not as valued as public ones.
I go to a private school in Ontario. I used to go to a public high school, so I have experienced both worlds. About 80% of our student population ends up at UofT, Mcmaster, Waterloo or Queens. I think it honestly depends on the reputation of the individual school. Some are parent-sponsored wealth pots, and others are genuinely academically rigorous environments. There's definitely an element of truth to what you're saying, but most of the COSSOT schools in Toronto I wouldn't place as being "easier than public schools". Every friend I still have at public school is shocked at the level of difficulty our school pushes us to achieve. Taking multiple classes a year ahead is a requirement, not dropping STEM subjects is a requirement; it's not uncommon to have 3 hours of homework in 1 night. Anyways, point is: I wouldn't allow a schools private or public status to determine its rigour. I think it's an honest case-by-case basis.
Might have its own wrinkles, but what can you add to the nepotism aspect of it all?
Because rather or not a nation state’s public or private education is better or worse than privets institutions does that mean admission processes for either system intrinsically more fair?
Genuine question, for you and other replies.
Sounds similar to rumors I've heard years ago. Lot of my friends (especially esl kids) did g12 eng in private schools since it was basically a guaranteed 90. Some smarter and richer kids will take multiple courses in private school since it bumps up their average allowing them to get scholarships which more or less offset the private school tuition cost.
Also heard rumors that Unis will knock up/down depending on which HS you went to public or private included.
I would have loved an easy curriculum in my private school. While I think maybe some schools are like that, I wouldn't generalize this idea over all private schools. I think it is very dependent on the school and the students. I don't think going to a private school guarantees you success in life. Lots of my friends had scholarships to go to my school. Some would have been successful no matter where they went to school. I ended up at UofT and I was no way more prepared than my friends who went to public or catholic schools.
Remember brothers and sisters, nothing wrong with starting at community college, saves you so much money and time :) ( just make sure classes transfer)
I remember when I was touring Cornell back in the early 2010s the tour guide kept talking about how something like 30% (can't remember exact number) of their students were recieving some form of financial aid. They said this like it was a brag and proof that anyone can get into Cornell and it was a true meritocracy, but i kept thinking like only 1% of the population could affort to attend this school with literaly 0 financial aid so like 1% of the population represents 70% of your students...
hahahahahah
I wrote a story about a frog that somehow got into my bathroom and was next to my toilet at 5am and it looked like a rat cuz it was covered with hair and I saved it’s life. I did it sort of a joke to my literature teacher who said it was a good idea but didn’t seem like it to me, but I got accepted into 2 colleges with decently competitive acceptance rates, and I have mid/avg a-c grades… I think they thought it was funny and different. It’s true they don’t like sob stories and u have a greater chance putting something kinda funny but also meaningful to your character!
Edit: Rephrased some things since some people decided to attack my character because I didn’t word it *perfectly*
Also wanted to add some advice if you want to try and write something funny-
- make sure it is telling of your character and not just a comedy script
- add funny descriptors and reactions you had
😭😭💅💅
😂😂💀
Legend
Chad move
I really personally don’t find that much to brag about. Many students are not privileged enough to be able to take their application essays as jokes. Congratulations on getting in, but considering how much effort some put into their applications, being accepted with minimal effort is nothing to brag about.
I wish a video like this existed in 2013-2014 when I was applying to college. Don’t get me wrong I come from a place of immense privilege, I went to a public school in a wealthy town in New Jersey; but they added so much pressure on me to attend a big name school. Almost so much I felt lesser than if I couldn’t “be someone” and the only way I could do that was through a great college. It would’ve been nice to know so much of this was out of my control.
And the end of the day, I feel like where you went for college doesn't really determine your success as a working professional or even where you work after finishing college. I'm working with a mix of people who went to local colleges/state colleges as well as with those who went to Harvard and MIT.
As an Australian, it’s absolute bonkers to me how much pressure there is to go to a “Big name school” in the US. To me, at least in my circle, you can still make good money without a degree.
If you have that privilege use it to it full advantage if I were you I would probably apply to a ivy school
I'm going myself to community college since I can't afford state college but if you have money I don't blame you tbh if it for good intentions
@@trawrtster6097 I mean it only didn’t matter because I got into a kickass grad program
@@Kekoa552 girl what? I wouldn’t have gotten into an Ivy League and if I did I wouldn’t be able to afford it not every privileged person is at the top 1%
Feeder schools are real. And that’s the tip of the iceberg. Sincerely, a former private school student and teacher.
What’s at the bottom?
@@andynonymous6769 Best to start with why the schools exist in the first place. The older the better.
@@cmg25 sorry can you give us more info?
@@cmg25 Is it because of segregation?
Do tell more, Carli...👀
I see a lot of people online who think rich kids are faking learning disabilities to get extra time on tests. And I feel like we’re not getting mad enough about the fact that most normal, functioning, smart kids *without* learning disabilities aren’t able to finish the SATs in time provided. We should be less mad about rich kids getting the accommodations they need and more mad about everyone else NOT getting the accommodations they need.
As a non-American I'm so confused by half of the verbiage in this video.
Code words for admitting into the rich people club.
then why bother watching?
@@dfdf-rj8jr there's nothing is wrong with them maybe being curious, or bored and clicking the first video they saw
Thanks for this! I know my public school was pretty decent (AP psychology, AP art history, AP computer science,,,) but it is NOWHERE near the level of the private highschool on the hilltop nearby. Ive been on the campus several times and it's like a small university, it's insane (observatory, aquarium with a shark and a stingray, 2 gyms, I could go on). They have college coaches there and a better student-teacher ratio and for me who did merely okay in highschool (I'm a senior) and is planning on going to community college, this video really helped! Even at my public school, it's kind of assumed that you're going to go to a 4-year. Honestly, you should make a video in the future about the grip these elite schools have on highschoolers. I know multiple people who are fully obsessed and dream of going to these schools...I mean, I never understood the concept of a "dream school" anyways. You're going there to do homework and maybe go to a party once in a while, which you can do at pretty much any college for a much better price.
I knew a guy who was more obsessed with getting into an Ivy League school than what he was going to study when he got there.
@@AB-py6jl damn...kinda sad honestly
your last part, i fully agree!! i think our education system completely overhypes the idea of how a prestigious college is the pinnacle of success and the college experience. at most, your dream school should be such because of its location, or the program it can offer you, not because of it’s name that you are paying upwards of 60k a YEAR for (which is already an insane price even for people that get in but cannot afford). i genuinely know some people that completely base college prestige off of the name, while bashing other great, affordable colleges as well. saying that even the ivy leagues are what you should expect to get in, while bashing even the “mid-tier uc’s”. like why are we doing this? college education in america is honestly all the same experience. i swear, some people just like the high of the name™️ that “rejected everyone else except me”
I totally resonate with your last point! I’m planning on attending community college as well, not only because the price for things is overall cheaper, but because of a grant that was given to students in my school district that covers massive amounts of tuition costs. This has saved me from a lot about going to college.
@@afterglcw5050 totally agree. when I tell people I'm going to community college (a decision I had already made before my sophomore year), I get mostly positive responses from people saying "Good for you! that's the smartest way to get your education" but there's always a few who just assume that I'm going to jc to take it slow bc I "couldn't handle" a more rigorous school, or because I'm just lazy and want to stay at home with parents. neither could be further from the truth, but even so, whats wrong with wanting your first years to be a little easier, or wanting the ease of living at home? it really just seems to me that people simply have a desire to judge others, and they use community college students to do that.
I feel like I already knew this was the case with ivy league schools and I appreciate the research you must have done to put together this video. Really interesting stuff.
MUTAHAR
HI MUTAHAR BIG FAN
The US collage system seems so ridiculous to me as an Aussie. It’s different in each Australian state but in NSW we do our exams called the HSC and get an ATAR, which is a ranking of everyone in the state. Below 30 is a mystery mark (you don’t know what you get) and the highest mark is 99.95. We basically just select the uni courses we want to do and apply with our ATAR score. Each course has different marks required, eg a bachelor or Arts might be a 75 ATAR acceptance mark. There are also lots of opportunities for early entry into university. I applied for early entry and got into the course I wanted despite not getting the marks I needed. There also isn’t this level of prestige with university. Some are considered better than others, or better for specific areas of study, but no one cares at all where you go to uni
We really don't care where people go to college in the US either. The universities in this video make up a tiny portion of schools here and they aren't a good representation of college/university life in the rest of the country. All of these "prestigious" schools only exist along the east coast and this Ivy League mindset doesn't exist outside of that region.
I've never met anyone who attended an ivy league school, and I live in a fairly metropolitan area of the USA. It's fairly easy to make it into your University of choice and even college of choice, in my experience, but I suppose that's variable based on where you live, etc.
Your HSC aggregated mark is a combined score of your final higher school certificate marks and assessment marks through your final year of school. You apply for 6 degree programs via UAC. A difference between the USA and Australia is that you go straight into a degree program when you go to university so many students will apply for say electrical engineering or nursing or teaching or finance at 6 universities in locations that they can get to from home or can live cheaply at. Most university students live with parents due to the high cost of living in Australian cities unless they are rural and then they will live on campus. Though we have arts degrees the majority of students are applying for a specific professional degree. Most degree programs don’t have access through portfolios, interviews, essays or preliminary course work with exceptions for visual arts, medicine and acting or for mature aged students applying years after doing the HSC. Once you are in a degree program changing your course of study is a pain. Our bachelor degree is 3 years with exceptions for allied health and health degrees. Masters are 2 years and PHDs generally 2 years full time. The idea of starting in an arts program for 4 years before working out what you want to do is pretty foreign to Australian students unless they are current Liberal politicians (though most of them did law or in the case of the prime minister marketing). Having spent time in the states, it’s odd to us that colleges are often chosen before degrees even for students not looking for ivies. We are aware that cost often come into it that state colleges are cheaper for students in that state but for example that you’d be like I’m applying to Penn state and Wisconsin and Tulane before you’d decided on architecture, biomedical engineering, psychology or tourism and hospitality management seems a kind of nuts. But then the USA seems to think of university as a right if passage and a cultural experience rather than accreditation for employment.
@@ajwashere8996 And some people don't even care to go to Uni because we also have a thing called TAFE. You don't need a mark to enter TAFE and it's more hands on with their courses, so you can do things like hairdressing and nursing with some courses from Uni also being there too. We also have a thing where our last 2 year's of high school is optional but if you go, they allow you to do TAFE courses while attending.
Basically, Aussies get given plenty of options of what you want to do in your adulthood. TAFE, Uni and even just going straight to the workforce are all valid, well the last option is only possible once you complete the legal amount of schooling and marks.
Not to mention our university tuition is affordable for everyone regardless of your socioeconomic background, thanks to the government loan program (HECS). They also recently reduced some degrees, for example nursing is only $3700 aud a year now.
Fun thing:
When my older sister was little, she had a best friend who was her age. That girl’s mother decided to send her to only private religious schools k-12. My mother was never into that and my sister and I were sent to public schools k-12. We couldn’t afford it anyways. (My parents were not college graduates either btw) My mother hoped that encouraging us through our time at public school would get us to college. She hoped we wouldn’t fall behind my sister’s friend.
My sister and I are both UCSD/UCSB grads in STEM fields and my sister has a doctorate from USC. The friend also did well, but got a masters from a decent school. So, we did just fine. Our hard work got us to where we are and yes, some privilege too.
Btw me discussing this isn’t discounting privilege at all. Privilege is enormous in academia. I’m just grateful my sister and I managed to beat the odds that were in the favor of our family friend.
I'm glad you beat the odds you worked hard, studied hard and you do acknowledge that privilege is existing that is a rare thing most of the time if anybody thinks that they worked hard and that's all that got them to be successful they don't really recognize the privilege.
Almost all of us are privileged in some form or another but it does vary by degree. I'm privileged because I have good health and privilege because I have a normal to high intelligence. I'm privileged because I live in a country that is fairly stable that has plenty of opportunities.
But I also have a lot of stuff that I am not privileged with either. Having a learning disability, coming from a working class home etc.
But in many ways I hate the obstacles I've had to face, but in a way they make me appreciate my success more. And make me understand and empathize with others because I wasn't as privileged as some people could be. The problem of privilege is it makes it hard for us to truly empathize and have compassion for others especially without belittling them or treating them in a way that they come across as not as human. And in some ways I think it actually kind of made me smarter and wiser. I realize that now as I get older that even my obstacles were in some ways a lesson, and weren't just unfair.
As someone that goes to one of these private schools, I can confirm this is all true. We all work very hard, so it’s not that we’re just getting a free ride, but we have access to so many more opportunities and knowledge. Private college coaches will charge an entire year’s worth of tuition at my school for their advice. I can also confirm that certain especially wealthy parents can pay their child’s way into top schools *without* their kid needing to work hard :/
Wait, people still think anything in life is based on merit, not money and connections? I would love to be so naïve.
it's both. not everyone has dad's money. I'm a doctor from legit the ground up. stop justifying your failures by thinking everyone successful didn't work hard for it. work harder. realize the world is unfair and suck it up butter cup. yes it does suck people have connections, but far more people don't have connections than do. change your mentality.
@@MayurUPatel bros a doctor but can’t understand obvious satire 🫃
When I didnt get into college on my 9th try on 3 years it destroyed my entire life. My depression was so intense I just wanted to ef myslef but couldnt cause I was literally catatonic.
I'm so sorry you went through that. I didn't get in anywhere my first time applying and I had a 3.8 GPA and only applied to public schools. You are more than what college you did or didn't go to and I'm sorry societal pressures made you feel so depressed. I hope you're doing better now.
I'm really sorry you had to go through that and I hope your in a better place now
you cant place so much importance on something so arbitrary and classicist and elitist. college doesnt matter. and grades have no correlation to intelligence. i will never understand why people do this.
I'm a recent high school graduate and have been going to my local community college for nearly a year. Don't let people convince you not to go to one because it's not as prestigious or valuable!! It is completely worth it as it can be way more affordable and a good start in taking your required classes! I'm not sure if this happens in all cc's but as a low income full-time student I am given extra aid every semester along with FAFSA. Please consider community college y'all, it could save you so much time and money.
Here in India the prestigious colleges are publically funded (the private ones are looked down upon) and take admissions based on standardised tests - there are three of these based on your career choice but they're trying to merge them all into a gaokao like exam. It ensures connections play no factor into which college you get into but it's also a bit annoying since you're judged based on one 3 hour MCQ test with a fixed curriculum that you have to memorize, not to mention the ridiculous acceptance rates where 10k people qualify from 1.8 million + applicants with the rest just taking drop years to keep giving the exam in hopes of qualifying some day.
In India you’re auto-accepted if you meet a certain score threshold. Rich people game that test to get into India’s top schools. There’s a reason most people don’t know about them internationally-it doesn’t promote creativity and research, which is why most of them leave to do PhDs/grad degrees at US schools.
@@Jacosmi This is idiotic, rich people can't game that system unless they cheat (It does happen but it's done by desperate rich people not elites like in the U.S). BTW low scorers love to say "muh test is about memorization" it isn't. You can look at pyq's the questions measure your
1) Knowledge
2)Speed
3) Creativity through making questions tricky
4) Your knowledge application skills
Obviously most people who actually do score great come from the rich background (rich compared to the median). since, rich people in general have more IQ
The reason most people don't know these schools is the exact same reason people cannot name elite colleges of brazil or south africa or heck I don't even think 90% of Americans would be able to name top schools of China
"It doesn't promote creativity and research"
Man I don't know what to say to you but you are delusional if you think even the top 0.1%tile of High schoolers are legit researching most of the high schoolers doing their "research at NASA/Govt agencies/top tier private institutions" are actually leveraging their parent's resources to the fullest. The fact is Indian grad school system is more fair and just, it even has 10% reservation for people from poor background, and 50% reservation for people from historically oppressed communities
"Which is why most of them leave to do PhDs/grad degrees at U.S schools"
This is because they want to earn in $$$s and need a better lifestyle don't you realise India is poverty ridden country? and most of the elites be it intellectual or wealthy want to leave this country. GDP per capita of India is 15 times smaller than the U.S
This is a foolish comment delete it lmao
@@Jacosmiimean without marks you can't get into any top schools in india
Add in reservations as well .Be someone of the lower caste and get into the best colleges of the country while general candidates at double the marks take drop years lmao.
I heard the opening sentence and rolled my eyes. Just had flashbacks to some of the essays I've had to grade over the years.
I went on her TikTok to hear the rest of part one. It. Got. Worse. I went to public school in Canada. I’ve peer edited my classmates' essays during university bound English in 11th and 12th grades. None of them were this bad. Now this has me questioning what kind of education American private schools actually offer. Either this girl didn’t apply herself in English class or they were lenient not to upset the rich parents who expect their kids to bring good grades with the amount they’re paying.
this video is making me have a meltdown bc I've been trying to get my sister to REALLY work at our podunk public high school, dreaming of her going to an amazing college, potentially even ivy leagues, and just knowing the private high school stamp gets you so ahead of the game is so frustrating!!! this country goes on and on about how Anyone Can Make It but people with generational wealth have made it before they're ever born. they have the resources and connections to do anything they want & we're left questioning every decision about our futures. how is this fair at all? how is that meritocracy? how is that democracy?
i had no idea languages besides spanish (sometimes french) were even offered at other schools. all those AP classes, the college tutors, the guaranteed work after school.......growing up poor has rippling effects on my self confidence to this day. i swear public institutions in the US are forever underfunded so the wealthy can look at private institutions and say look, private ownership is better! personally i'm fucking over it. imagine the poorest school you can think of getting budgets like this. it's always "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" and never "maybe the people born millionaires shouldn't get everything they want without trying"
It’s not just to self confidence, it has very real world effects that make upward mobility incredibly difficult. When you’re poor, you have to put in much more effort than your privileged counterparts and it often isn’t enough unless you’re lucky. It’s generational too.
Hang in there don't lose hope. Not all private high schools have this advantage. Just a handful of feeder and target private schools and magnet public schools. If you want your blood to boil more, The feeder and target high school kids are just one of several preferred constituencies that elite and Ivy League schools are giving preference to. Recruited athletes, often we'll to do field hickey and water pool players with great stats are shoe ins. Underrepresented minorities, some of them children of presidents, get a massive boost, then come the legacies, donors, political favor kids, geniuses who cured disease or won an oscar at 14, rich overseas boarding school kids and finally elite high school feeders. And that's how 65% of the class is accounted for. The rest are fighting for 35% of spots. But a grinder with less means can always shine through. Seek resources such as Questbridge for low income applicants. There are college admissions private counselors who do incredible work for free for those who Cole from disadvantaged backgrounds and encourage your sister to look beyond her high school and take college level courses to convince these schools that she is academically prepared.
Is it getting her into the name brand schools that you’re worried about or just any school? I heard the less stressful path is just doing your best in high school (but not killing your mental health over it), then of course applying to the schools you hope to get in. If that doesn’t work, don’t stress it. Apply to the no name schools. Get in, do your year and transfer in second year to the brand school if she still wants to go there.
As a person who just started their first job out of college, to be honest, where you go to school doesn't really matter in terms of jobs you can land out of college. What really matter are GPA (should aim for 3.5 or higher) and internship experiences. I work with a mix of people who went to local/state colleges as well as some who went to MIT and Harvard.
@@trawrtster6097 it doesn’t matter in terms of jobs (though it might. Idk) but if you are low income and get into a private university, they will cover your full tuition. I went to Columbia for cheaper than my friends who went to the state university.
My Public highschool had no extracurriculars till my senior year. Having a interest in art meant that for most of the time, I was drawing during a few regular classes.
Luckily I’m now taking my major in the college of choice. Feeling wanted by any university was fairly hard when my scores didn’t save me nor did having an art portfolio when no one told me about what needed to be in it. I even decribed my situation to one university and they really just didn’t care.
When all seems lost, if you know you tried your best to get through school. Tell your story since it wouldn’t hurt. Maybe some schools will understand.
Keep drawing 💪💪💪💪💪💪
Keep drawing, definitely! Am at this odd 8 year program thats 4 years of elementary + all years of highschool. I am targetting an art uni after this and let me tell you, the seminars for art barely ever open. I pray it opens this year, but srsly, I am losing faith. Theres 4 of us from 2 classes, the other two classes we dont know. I pray I get in, I need it to be able to apply to an artschool.
Fortunately, if it doesn't open, the art teachers offered us individual plans as we all want to go to art school as a serious thing and she doesnt want to let us down. Wish us luck, cuz if it doesnt open, gosh.
You're 100% right. I was lucky enough to go to public school my first two years of highschool, and private school the last two years of highschool. Not from a wealthy family, my private school provided a lot of need-based financial aid that allowed me to go *(as opposed to merit based, need based was just based on how much you/your family can pay). Anyway, this is the difference in art classes available between the two schools I went to:
Public School:
Art
Choir
Private School:
Painting and drawing
Glassblowing
Siversmithing
Blacksmithing 1
Blacksmithing 2
Blacksmithing 3
Pottery
3D Game Design
Beggining Music
Intermediate Music
Advanced Music
Senior Music *(Only for seniors who could play at an "Advanced" level)
Portfolio *(only for seniors who wanted to apply to art colleges)
@09CZS This will most likely help someone else, I make portfolios now in my major for varying art courses. I just always describe what I’ve been through cause after I was denied I felt like really giving up on my passions all because some school just couldn’t take me.
Mine told me “it’s such a shame, you weren’t born in this country, right? You could have gotten into any college if you’d worked harder” in NINTH GRADE after getting a C in AP Government 😩🤣 she was a pile of pure trash.
i don’t go to a private school, and i have a standard middle class 50k single parent income, but my school is top ranked and really prepares you for college. i also live in an area where there are lots of extremely wealthy kids. i’m more understanding of my privilege after watching this video and didn’t realize the full extent of the advantages my school gives out because i’ve been conditioned to think of it as just a regular education. thank you for the insightful video
I really like how you presented your ideas and also how you were careful not to exaggerate or present any superiority over anyone. Great thoughts, humble guy.
I was so lost in high school. The college counselor put her eggs in a couple of baskets and didn’t pay the rest of us any mind. I once traded my essay for an extracurricular program for a list of scholarships with my college counselor, absolutely crazy. She wanted her son to get in to the same program and was willing to trade info 🤪😭 I got into my reach (without help) and couldn’t afford it, no $ offered and didn’t know how to ask for money, I ended up going to school out of state which is still an achievement. Grad school was a better story, but still not great 😬
I’m so low income, I didn’t even attempt to go to college. For what I wanted vs what was available, I had to take a completely different path.
Same.
What about Europe? It s really cheap in some countries.
@@teodora3 Yeah but getting to europe isnt cheap for a lotta folks.
There’s the military. And state schools. Fuck Ivy leafuez
Same. I *”could”* go to college but I literally don’t have a lot of money back if I applied. Graduated from my high school last year with a 3.8 GPA but I don’t have the mindset and lost my motivation since COVID hit. I could go to a vocational school but I’ll probably have to pay class since I’m no longer a high school student (high school students don’t have to pay since for the ones applied, they have a half day of high school and vocational school in a certain county.)
So many great points 👏 not to mention there are so many high school students that have to also work to support themselves and their families, which can take a lot of crucial time away from studying, extracurriculars, volunteering, etc.
Reminder: Most US states don't have Ivy league schools, and the great majority of Americans don't give a damn about these institutions.
Then again I grew up low income. Public schools/universities all my life. I still have a pretty good and privileged life now.
The irony is that your sister will probably also use her legacy status to help her own kids get into Brown one day.
When life gives you privileges, use them.
I think the point is though to recognize your privileges instead of descending into such a deluded state that you'd think this trite nonsense is what actually got you accepted into Columbia U.
Legacy only matters if there is a donation history. Most legacies do not have donation histories meaning they got a nonexistent boost and benefitted because their parents cared enough to help get their kids into the ivies.
Facts
I got into an Ivy League school for graduate school but attended public school K-12 and a state university for undergrad. There’s definitely a lot of truth to this, a lot of people think they got in on 100% their own merit but really they had access to the best resources. The world works in weird ways, if you didn’t go to an elite high school then it can almost seem random who gets in and who doesn’t.
nah man im broke as fuck but i just got accepted into cornell and brown for cs
Lol as a Columbia grad, we don’t claim Gab-she’s an embarrassment to the school.
Why?
If the numbers show anything you should be embarrassed of more people than, because Ivy Leagues is full of legacy students, rich people and foreign (specially China and India) with tons of cash.
@@user-zu6dd4qm3m first of all, she held an unmasked birthday party when COVID was at its peak in NYC (over 1k New York City residents died from COVID on the day of her party, for context) and then doubled down when she was called out and reported to the administration for violating COVID policies. She also said that addicts should just “stop doing drugs” and “buy Prada bags instead.”
@@katies6103 thanks for the response , she seems quite tone deaf.
Nope she's exactly what your school deserves
But would Hemingway consider twitter a proper use of his time?
For sale: Twitter handle. Never tweeted.
@@damnbro_idc tell me more
The “lazy” argument may be true sometimes but I do believe people are results of their material surroundings. When shit is harder people either have to work harder or they get discouraged, understandably so.
I did apply for admission to an Ivy League for the school year of 2003 - 2004. I did research to find out what I needed to apply and be considered for admission because I was a public school student in Louisiana. I played high school sports, I was active in volunteer work, and my grades were above 3.7 GPA. When it came time to submit the application with my essays, I was just a nervous wreck. It is very difficult to understand how much stress I had just to submit the application.
After some time, I received a reply. I was wait-listed. I was proud that I made it that far, but I also understood that I was most likely not going to get in from the wait list. However, I had applied for other universities and colleges. I knew that I would have been able to attend university. Now, I have an MBA in data analytics.
Where did you attend in the end,if you're comfortable sharing?
As an academic, this makes me so sad. This is why I root for the growth of Flagship state schools. They are excellent ways for students from diverse backgrounds to get access to larger communities. Although, even large Flagships are quite skewed to privileged students, it still provides better scholarship and tuition packages for those coming from low-income backgrounds.
In academia your PhD advisor and institution is what matters the most. While PhD admissions are somewhat random, they’re at least a bit more meritocratic/based on your skills, and they come with full funding.
I went to a local community college, and a local University and i turned out alright, mostly through grants and a mini loan. i have a job that i love. It's about affording college, not essay con-jobs.
This is a brilliant video. I came across this channel randomly, and I am definitely going to follow your work. Outcomes are hardly a pure function of your efforts. Luck, social standing, wealth, and connections all ultimately help propel these privileged individuals. For those who are in that lap of luxury, this is no knock on you; however, please be aware that there are variables for your standing.
Even up hmm mmm
K
That is an incredibly casual writing style. I was expecting an essay to enter a high profile academic institution to be academic. Somewhere between formal and semiformal language, with thesis statement, premises, cited arguements, and thought provoking conclusion/discussion.
I got into my dream music school, and I was so excited. When the financial aid award came through, I was crushed, because it is tens of thousands of dollars above my family's ability to contribute. I'm going to send in an appeal, but I'm not super hopeful about it.
I hope your appeal gets approved!
i wish you the best of luck !
Thank you both for the kind words!
Totally beside the point, but congratulations to Sabrina for getting into Brown! Hope classes are going well.
Well I can say this. Your style of narrating is very essay-like and I think it’s excellent. I actually prefer it to some of the Ivy League graduates who do this for a living.
I was really blessed to grow up in a Chinese immigrant community in Vancouver, Canada. Because of this my public highschool had AP Mandarin classes and a really good Mandarin teacher. On top of this, my public school was a French Immersion school (which in Canada students get entered into by lottery) so I got a "double dogwood diploma" when I graduated proving total fluency. I didn't end up going to an Ivy League because Canada doesn't really have those, but I did end up going to one of the highest ranked universities in the county, and got into a program that is extremely competitive. My overall grades weren't exceptional so I think that these language programs were the thing that set me apart from other applicants. I really agree with the premis of this video that funding has a huge influence on schooling but I think it can also come down to the culture and diversity of your town/city and taking advantage of those unsual opportunities available to you. I was the only non-Chinese person my Mandarin teacher had ever seen finish grade 12 Chinese, let alone ace and I ended up peer tutoring the grade 9 class in my senior year on top of that. If you go to a public school, I really recommend looking into any/all niche classes your school might have a narrowing in on that as much as you can.
All this isn't to diminish the absolutely necessary restructuring required to equalize public schooling in North America and hopefully eliminate for-profit schooling. This gap in opportunities is clearly a relic of systemic classism and needs to be destroyed.
Over the past few years I’ve realized a lot of the things stated in the video also apply to me. I’m in my final year at a private high school with a graduating class of 24 this year: each person in my grade received *highly* personal college counseling from the school’s guidance counselors, and many of my teachers have PhDs and are teaching advanced courses (my math teacher, for example, has a PhD and has said that he’d even multivariate calculus if there were enough students for it). That’s not to say I didn’t work hard - I absolutely had to! - but my access to more resources was certainly facilitated by my high school.
While I will be attending a top university this fall, I’m more than aware of the support I’ve received from my school as well as my family, and it’s part of my mentality on how the education system works. Because these elite high schools and colleges often churn out highly successful alumni (which tend to be rich as a result), they gain the ability to provide the same heightened resources to their children which is a self-reinforcing cycle.
As a kid who goes to one of these elite ivy feeders, I fully agree with this video. While he does not highlight the student’s hard work and effort as much as he probably should to make a more accurate video, privilege absolutely is a huge factor in getting to a good school. In order to get the best education, there is an absolute need for money. Thank you for making this video for everyone but on a personal level I would like to thank you. I never thought about the privileges I have that other students might not. This video really shines a bright light on it, so thank you.
My town growing up was close to RCDS and a lot of other prestigious private schools. Hell, my cousin went to one of these because apparently a math teacher bullied her out of public school (I never got the full story and I had already graduated high school by the time she got in) but to make a long story short, I knew a lot of kids who got into Ivy Leagues and other prestigious schools, and not gonna lie, I know some of them only got in due to… other influences. One kid I remember vividly, I had to explain the difference between to and too to him, as well as there, their, and they’re, and your and you’re. Our English teacher always made me partner with him because of this -.- he got into Dartmouth, and that’s the last I heard of him.
I didn't know you had a sister. You both seem very intelligent and put together.
I was lucky enough to go to an IB charter school from middle to highschool through a lottery system, but despite my good scores, none of them applied to what I wanted to do, and even if they did, I couldn't even afford the schools even with the highest amount of financial aid offered to me, I'd still be at least 40k in debt per year, and that didn't include cost of living or food, travel, etc. It really woke me up to that fact that sometimes, merit can only get you so far, it was a rough realization;;
As someone who went to a private high school, I can verify many of these points - better class selection, involved teachers who go above and beyond, and also just the "school reputation" factor. Grade inflation is sort of a thing, but it's complicated. One issue I had: some families are so wealthy that they hire tutors and other aids on top of sending their children to private school. When these students are so far ahead, the school feels compelled to accelerate their curriculum even further, leaving the less wealthy (though still wealthy by all accounts) and scholarship kids behind.
I don't think the "guidance counselor crafts a perfect application" part is completely accurate (at least it wasn't at my school). While the guidance counselor(s) are certainly more accessible than at many public schools, their advice is pretty standard. I basically didn't listen to mine at all.
While I think the "wealth = better chance of getting in" part is true, I think some people might conflate this with "you only got in because of money." While this is occasionally true, the large majority of students at private schools aren't wealthy enough for their money to be a contributing factor. The wealth buys better education, and better prepares students for college. It buys teachers who care and will put effort into recommendation letters. It does not straight up buy a spot (USUALLY, there are of course the building donors, but that's an outlier case). I say this because the narrative that these students are stupid and didn't have to work at all kind of misses the point. I'm currently at a "top" university (though I don't like this term), and it is rare that I find someone as smart as the average person at my high school (including those who did not end up getting into "elite" universities). For comparison - I was a B+ student at my high school, and have pretty much straight A's here in college.
As for feeder schools - it really depends on the university. I know that for a lot of the NYC private schools, Columbia and U Chicago tend to be the easiest of the "elite" universities to get into. But other schools are actually incredibly difficult. Brown, Princeton, Stanford and MIT come to mind. Only the top of the class gets into these schools, and only sometimes.
I'm not sure what this all implies. I think on average, private school students are in fact better applicants. But that's because they had the opportunity to go to such schools and have many other things provided for them. It's not fair to other students who didn't have these chances, but what should the university do?
Is everything in America about just money?!
Thank you for touching on her comment on addiction and how tone deaf and privileged it was/is. I myself struggled with addiction very, very much for many years, with it consuming my youth and tainting my innocence through near death experiences and scary men.
So, comments like her's hurt me greatly, and caused me to fall deeper and deeper into bad situations, as I thought it was all my fault, and that I was already a lost cause "on my way to becoming another statistic" after my many overdoses and close calls.
Now that I have been sober for a few years (albeit, I am on MAT, but I still consider myself sober as I don't do street substances), I can look back and consider all the outside factors, as well as my diagnosed mental health conditions, and blame myself less, which has helped me a lot in my healing journey.
I will always appreciate people like you, who may not have struggled with this specific problem in their own live's, putting people like "Gab" in her place. You have gained a new subscriber in me!!
I am so sorry you had to go through the various struggles of addiction. I'm glad you're on the road to healing, you've done amazing to come this far.
I went to a public school in a stupidly wealthy area (North Chicago Suburbs) and classes like AP Computer Science, Chinese, Ceramics and Sculpture, ect. were just normal to me, hell, I had a class where juniors taught a preschool and moved on to student teach in a local elementary school. If you weren't taking at least 2 AP classes by Juinor year you were considered "lesser".
The amount of privilege I had was astounding and kind of gross.
Stevenson? New Trier?
it's not gross. having good things is GOOD. the bad thing is other people NOT having them, not the fact that you have them. don't let anyone make you feel bad about having an environment conducive to your development. did you harm someone to get there? no. just be happy! i was in poverty my entire adult life until last month and i approve this message haha... i WANT people to have nice things, and while i may be jealous of rich people, it would be a straight up lie to say i don't wish i were rich! enjoy it!!!!
Having privilege is not inherently a bad thing.
how exactly is having a great foundation "gross"💀
your parents probably hard to overwork themselves to offer you privile, be grateful
My public school took away Calculus as a class because not enough students actually took it so the highest math i could attend was pre-calc
Wow! Just wow!? Did you find an alternative to get introduced to Calculus?
As someone who is very lucky to be privileged enough to not have to worry about costs of education, it feels guilty buying things that help boost my resume because I'm most likely taking away a spot of someone who worked harder but was not as privileged as me
watching this video made me truly realize how lucky i am going to a large high school. we have major programs (technology major, art major), and many AP courses. now we only have 3 languages, but i never realized that special art classes like sculpture and ceramics classes were so uncommon.
not a private school thought, just a large district outside the city.
I'm a first gen college graduate and I got in to my university of choice because of community College.
As someone who just got into four ivies yesterday (including my dream school) this hits hard. I think even of those accepted, there are people like me who get so little aid they can’t go, causing the actual Ivy class makeup to be even more stratified than admissions officers attempted.
Congrats though! I’m sure you worked hard and 110% deserve it.
In Chile we have a single universal university admission test, sort of like the SATs, but only the score of that test, your grades and your GPA ranking in your own school are considered. There's no interview or essay, no connections that you can use. Some universities do ask for additional testing in programs that are more practical and less academic, such as theater or music, but that's it. And tho I have a lot of complaints about the test its self and what does it actually measure, and ofcourse high schools with more money can prepare their students better for it, I still think is the most democratic way of selecting the students.
This is exactly how it is in Greece too and I agree that's A LOT more fair than whatever is going on in the US.
Same in Brazil
@@fbrunodr LMAO these comments are actually hilarious. You people have spent too much time watching American news and have what we can call "America Derangement Syndrome."
First, you do realize the US is the only country to consider economic status when applying? In Brazil or Chile or Greece, if you're poor, you are judged the same as a rich person, even if you had way less resources. In America, this is accounted for.
Not to mention Latin American/European universities are absolute garbage compared to their American counterparts. MIT has an endowment 5% of Chile's entire GDP. That is insane.
Finally, if you are poor, you don't pay for college in the US. There is incredibly generous financial aid, and if you're a good student, you end up getting paid to go to university.
Why do you think the American education system has produced the most powerful and prosperous country in the world? Do you know a single rational person who'd rather live in Chile or Brazil or Greece than the US.
With the other education systems, you end up with students who can study for exams, and they can do nothing else. Look at what China has produced in the last 20 years compared to the US, despite having a much larger talent pool. Look at India. They have people who can clear exams, and do nothing else with their lives.
Cry about it all you like.
This was such a good video! I would say I went to a really good public school, and recognize my privilege, and the area I grew up in. Though I have friends that are incredibly smart and talented that didn’t get into a lot of their top choices. I’m able to notice the difference between kids who went to a private school and are now at an elite school, versus kids who went to public school. There’s no judgement in going to a boarding school, but I feel like people in those situations don’t realize their privilege. Anyways this video was amazing!!
6:30 I was going to mention Charter Schools. My little brother and sister went to those in NYC and definitely had a better education than I did. My sister was in middle school learning at a college level. She was also able to easily get in since our brother went there; Siblings have spots held for them. The closet I ever came to that was catholic school for about $5,500 a year in 2004.
I love this comment. I’m from NYC and went to a private high school and an Ivy for undergrad. I have family members in charter schools, friends from my college who went to charter schools in NYC. I have to say if you’re from NYC and didn’t get into a Specialized High School or the equivalent (Hunter, Townsend Harris, etc.), a charter school OR, in some cases, an honors program at a public high school is pretty much the only way to have access to the resources that would allow you to be as competitive an applicant as your private school counter parts. I don’t know why when people talk about public/charter school education in the US they generalize. There are nuances is every state, city, and county.
@@KhallelaB. So true. I went to a public high school that was new and had funding from all sorts of people. I was even in a music club and played bass and piano, and performed for some people on the upper east side in their townhouse where they invited their rich friends to support us. Some other students went to China. It was definitely an experience. I was just a horrible student when it came to my grades but undid have a passion for music. But if I was academically fine, I would’ve benefitted.
being compared to twitter posts is what hemingway deserves honestly
I hope that’s a joke. The man dropped classics. Let’s show some respect.
@@eatass5627 Hemingway is known for writing in short, terse sentences, so the comparison kind of works
Hemingway was an abusive raging asshole who mastered brevity, he’d fit right in on Twitter.
tbh yeah
@@eatass5627 Think about it a little harder, it's kinda accurate though
Imagine paying 50k a year for 12 years. And I’m over here whining about a $20 copay at the doctor lol my kid is so screwed.
Story time: I know a set of twins (their mom is a close lifelong family friend with mine) who both got into and attend a certain USA university that isn't an Ivy but is at the same level of prestige, even consistently outranking several Ivies. It's got somewhere around an 8% acceptance rate or lower. Their mom went there and has been HIGHLY involved as an alumnus. Like, SUPER engaged with her alma mater since her graduation decades ago. I can't recall the specific titles/positions/roles she has with the university, but she's very firmly connected and active far beyond most alumni. Their family is also quite wealthy due to both parents' high-power jobs, and the twins were given TONS of resources and support from their mom throughout their whole k-12 education. Their mom, who is really smart, played a very active role in helping them on their schoolwork, whether doing things herself or paying for expensive tutors. This includes pricey top-quality ACT/SAT prep courses they started INSANELY early and kept up with literally until the day they were done with their exams. Her life's biggest mission was to ensure the twins got top grades on Every. Single. Thing. There was no greater priority in her life than making sure the twins got accepted to her alma mater. I guess her neurotic management of the twins' entire school careers is somewhat of advantage in its own right, as she ensured the twins would NEVER do poorly on anything.
I'd say their mom was responsible for about 30% of their GPAs, which were both well above 4.0 due to AP courses. Their mom was HIGHLY involved in their schoolwork. I remember seeing one of their middle-school poster board presentations at their house, which my aunt proudly displayed and proclaimed that it earned a perfect grade. SO much money was clearly put into this one class project. Probably more than what every lower-class honor student in a class would spend altogether on that same project. It was the most extra poster board I'd ever seen, and it was beautiful. The folding cardboard was entirely covered in VELVET, for god's sake. And it was decorated elaborately to suit the subject of the project, which I'm pretty sure was a book report. I can't remember exactly, but I recall being impressed at how the aesthetic of the presentation was PERFECT for its topic. The twins' mom would also proofread all their writing assignments. Knowing her modus operandi, she most likely edited them as well. Or at the very least, closely directed them through the editing process; anything the twins turned in would be thoroughly checked and corrected by her no matter what.
Now don't get me wrong, the twins are really smart. They each chose really impressive majors in fields that demand the highest level of expertise. One is going into aerospace engineering, AKA literal rocket science. They are kind of pretentious (that's just how they were raised, so I don't judge them for it) but both have really passionate and cool interests. They're definitely going to be really successful in life. I'm happy for them as they reach the stars and I'm am eager to see what great things they do. However, I don't know if they would be where they are without all of the advantages they had. Statistics indicate that legacies are about 45% more likely to be accepted than non-legacies. It's possible their legacy status was the deciding factor for them getting in. I just wonder a lot whether they would be in the place they are if they'd gone through their education without their mom's substantial influence and privilege. I had neither the financial advantages nor any legacy status, just like most other students. Like the majority of students, I never had the money to invest in ACT/SAT prep tutoring; all I had to invest was my own time and hard work, studying and practicing on my own from free online resources and ACT/SAT prep books from the library. And last time either of my parents helped me on schoolwork (which WASN'T just giving me answers or doing any work for me) was like, second grade. I was on my own; the twins hardly did anything without their mom's zealous tutelage.
Like the majority of students in the country, I was the only one responsible for my performance and the only resources I had were textbooks, teachers, classmate study buddies, the internet, and the library. Luckily, I'm a nerd and have always been passionate about academics, which is the only "asset" I had, if you can call it that. But my parents are NOTHING like the twins' mom. Most parents aren't as extreme as she is, but mine provide a stark contrast, so I'll use my circumstances as an example. In spite of having nothing but my own motivation and effort, I am grateful to say I managed to get top 5% scores on both the ACT and SAT...which I had to spend MY OWN money to take. In contrast, the twins' parents never hesitated to spend thousands and thousands on their education, not even counting college. The twins were fortunate, never having to contribute a penny. Meanwhile, I didn't have a job other than occasionally tutoring peers and petsitting, so paying for exams meant everything to me. My parents covered my first ACT and SAT tries, but I had to cover retakes with the very little money I had because they thought my first scores were plenty high enough and that retakes were unnecessary. If I wanted to take them again, it was my responsibility to pay. With hardly any income, this wasn't easy. One of my birthday gifts was taking the SAT a second time. It was worth it though, as my scores on both improved. My parents gave me the lecture I'd heard over and over: they were WAY more concerned that I was being too much of a perfectionist than they were with how high my scores were. The twins' mom, on the other hand, was a perfectionist by proxy for her twins and programed them to be perfectionists as well. My parents also only agreed to pay for a few of my AP exams, and I had to cover the cost of any additional ones I wanted to take. I couldn't afford to pay for the exams for all my AP classes, so I had to weed out which ones I wouldn't be able to take despite how hard I'd prepped for them all. Their reasoning was that they thought I was obsessively pushing myself too hard by taking a rigorous course load and a bunch of extracurriculars. I would even get yelled at if my mom discovered me staying up really late working! The twins would be praised for doing the same thing; they were encouraged to put grades before anything else. In other words, my parents are the POLAR OPPOSITE of the twins' mom, who pushed them to the extreme nearly since they could walk. If I recall correctly, at least one of the twins took the SAT like five times because their mom didn't want to stop until their scores were as close to perfect as they could get up until college applications were submitted. Expense never mattered one bit. All that mattered to her was the twins attending her prestigious alma mater.
Maybe the twins would have achieved the same things they have if they'd been in my shoes, but it's impossible to know. And maybe I would have gotten into Yale, my dream school, if I was in THEIR shoes. My early application was deferred, but ultimately rejected. Their early app to their university was accepted right away, an outcome for which there was very little doubt would happen. The trajectory of their futures has always been lined up perfectly for them. I envy their justified confidence that things will go smoothly for them with little anxiety throughout the process. Their lives have been set up in a way that steadily makes goals into expectations, and expectations into reality.
_Side note, comment if you feel the same way: I honestly wish I'd been rejected the first time because the deferral left me anxiously waiting for months with that little bit of hope, dying to hear "yes" or "no" instead of the "maybe" that comes with deferral. The suspense of the possibilities had me breathlessly awaiting the final for months, and that interval of uncertainty was pretty excruciating._
Perhaps if I had that extra boost like the twins, I would have made it, and all students like me would have made it into their dream schools, too.
This comment is great, because it points out the kind of privilege many people don't think about. Having a parent who is super invested in their kid's life is not something many people have experienced.
I loved reading this comment! While it is true that privilege always gives an edge, hard work such as yours will definitely be recognized and rewarded. Just keep going you've got this!!
Also you're a prolific writer I was hooked on from the very first line✨️
long ahhh comment
@@sourandsweet7694 Aww wow, thank you so much! That's so kind of you!
@@Aster_Risk Thank you so much!!!
As a teacher, some of these private schools having single digit student to teacher ratios is absolutely absurd. I know many teachers that would fight to the death for a position like that.
Life is never a fair game. Nothing wrong with being able to afford going to a private school. The current public k-12 education system in the US is broken. Compared to the coursework for the average kid attending a public high school in France/Germany/Korea/China/Japan/many other countries, what a kid can learn from 4 years of public high school experience is extremely limited. If the US wants to become academically competitive again globally, every single college applicant should take the same set of college entrance exams which are supposed to be intellectually challenging for the average student. By distributing easy academic passes to public high schoolers, the public education system is designed to fail them at the college level.
I had gone to a charter school where applications were lottery based, and the parents did not need to spend money to send their kid there. It was a curious experience, since the school was actually specialized for college courses and college prep, so every students’ curriculum had AP classes. In fact, you could not graduate high school without taking AP Calculus, something which is unthinkable in a regular school. The curriculum itself was incredibly rigid, and the students who could not keep up simply dropped out and transferred to online/went to a different school. The students are mostly nice, and there was practically no drugs/violence and not too much petty drama. However, there was also no mental health support, and though we have an on-call counselor, nobody knows about them. Though the school received some government funding, they also relied on donations to help pay for the teachers’ salaries
Most of the students were Asian >70 percent, including myself, which I think is mainly to do with the STEM curriculum and personal references to go there rather than the cost of the school (which was nil). Asian culture puts a much larger focus on higher education. Funnily enough, there was little to no money spared for sports. No one knew who was on the sports teams and it’s been relegated to an elective. I haven’t exercised in like six years lol.
I had a very similar experience at my highschool! Lottery based system, but you had to have had good middle school grades to get in. AP Bio, Calc, and macro/micro economics were all required, and the pressure was insane 😭 Most of the teachers were nice but the student body could be toxic as hell, not to mention the complete lack of anything sports related. There were good art classes, but there wasn't an auditorium or theater department.
@@appleworldinc.8937 you were forced to take econ too? 😩I’m wondering if we went to the same place
i feel like i’ve commented this multiple times before but i love commentary youtube and i especially love your videos because nobody i subscribe to talks about the topics you do! you’re always so original
I attended a private University, in fact I am graduating this May debt free thanks to government aid and full ride scholarship, I didn't live in the dorm (too expensive) so I commuted from home to University, and of course when the pandemic happened, I have Zoom classes, currently having a hybrid class (in-person and Zoom). I have a high GPU from high school but average SAT score, I did better with reading/writing than math, and I took SAT twice, I also remember attending paid SAT training classes so my score did increase in the second SAT testing. Funny thing is, my private University is actually right there with Harvard campus, so many times when I am walking around my University campus, I can easily walk on Harvard campus, and it feels like a different world, just seeing so many Harvard brands and buildings. I even had a Harvard professor taught a class in my University. The private University was my top pick and actually is the most expensive college of other 9 colleges I picked, but I was accepted for my art portfolio, I worked closely with strict feedback from my art teachers back in high school. I am from a working class family, living paycheck to paycheck with little to no savings. I would definitely say I lucked out, put in a lot of hard work, took advantage of my available resources and I am grateful for the opportunity to study my 3D Animation career, I got to do many internships and currently applying to different jobs. That's my personal experience with attending a private University, so many amazing students and Professors. I also have a disability (hearing loss) but I got accommodations quickly, which helped me a lot in classes.
Listened to my asian parents and nearly applied to a bunch of elite schools that wouldn't have accepted me anyway (my essays were terrible), with a major I would have hated. So glad I listened to myself and plan to go somewhere that specializes in the field I love!
I completely agree with all the points made here . My son got into Cornell and U Chicago, as well as USC with a presidential scholarship and several other top 50 schools . While he worked super hard and deserves all the credit , I definitely think that a big part of his success was all the support I as an educator gave his - we brainstormed essay topics together , I proofread his essays, paid for SAT prep and gave him lots of guidance. As much as I am proud of my son, I don’t know if he wouldhave been accepted without all the help. Going to a great public school also helped !
Elite colleges certainly help first generation students, but as always, it’s the middle class kids who are stuck in the middle - without the big $$$ and connections and without the first generation / diversity / poverty aspect
To be honest, going into debt and having to pay loans to get to an expensive university vs go to a community college, state university after it to get a 4 year degree. If you don't know what you are doing then take a gap year to find your passion. I did and found I enjoy working with the government. I only taking community college to help myself to have some "degree" to be good on my resume. I don't think many places care where you go to school. I now have a college fund for my future kid because I spent so little on it. I will go back to college if that will help me get a promotion. There isn't just one path for everyone so take the right one for you.
If I may ask, how were you able to work with thr government during your gap year ?
maybe i'm cynical but why are you assuming these students worked hard? it's a system, elite college admissions, designed to benefit the scions of wealthy families. does it matter if johnny worked hard when everything is set up for him anyway?
I think he meant SOME of them do? Like, the statistic was that 20% of kids from these private schools get into ivies, the other 80% are probably the ones that didn't work hard. Not that I'm defending rich people or anything lmao but you can still have a strong work ethic even if you're privileged. I get being cynical though, the extent to which they "worked hard" is probably nothing compared to low income/working class students
i agree and im far from not acknowledging someone’s hard work but it’s the reality that the life you were handed before college does effect what college u would go to and how prepared you are, some people are just lucky
personally i don't even think it's possible for them to "work hard" to get to where they are if they had their hand held and were lead the whole way
So my perspective is a little different as I'm coming from the UK so some of the stuff that applies in the usa doesn't apply here and vica versa.
But it's generally better to think of those schools as work amplifiers. The kids in prestigious schools still need to work hard, they still need to study, and understand, and learn and none of that is easy for anyone. But having better teachers, smaller classes, more options for extra curriculars ect, all of that means for every unit of effort those students put in, they get more back out than a student without those advantages. It doesn't mean they can put no effort in.
And of course this is compounded by the amount of effort poorer students need to put into just surviving (ie getting part time jobs, caring for siblings, not getting enough to eat or even things as simple as having a poorly heated house). If your energy isn't being eaten up by those things you can put more energy into your education.
I was very privileged to go to a private school that while not a full on Oxbridge feeder school, definitely wanted to be one, and the amount of work I put in was phenomenal. I worked harder during my a-levels than I did while working a 60 hour week at a physically active job while also doing a full time university course. It was a lot and I'm now in my mid twenties and only barely beginning to recover from the burnout I got at 17. Those prestigious schools will emphasize the importance of hard work and constant grind really hard, because they know their students are the product and the better grades the better the product. So in a lot of these schools kids are indeed working insanely hard. At my school I knew only 1 person who didn't have a mental breakdown at some point in their final 2 years. And I wasn't even at a full on feeder school, I'm sure a lot of them are even worse for their students.
So you can see how some of my more sheltered classmates got the idea that the *only* reason they did well academically was through their hard work. Because they genuinely were working really hard, and if you've never interacted with people less fortunate than yourself you don't realise that your hard work was enabled and rewarded in ways that are unique to the wealthy.
@@yeehawbeehaw Same, he has to say that though or else all the wealthy people will attack him for generalizing. Everyone knows money = freedom, and freedom means happiness. It’s a lot easier to learn and socialize when you’re happy and your needs are already taken care of, so I doubt any of these kids seriously had to “work hard”.