How has social media shaped the college application process? | UNLOCK

How has social media shaped the college application process?

You scroll through your Instagram feed, seeing your friends’ acceptances. Next, you check their bios: Politics at Yale’27, Pre-Med at Harvard’27, Computer Science at Princeton’27.

You check out Youtube, and college decision reactions pop up. So you decide to watch some of them. Then, inspired to record your reactions, you download a song titled Latch by Sam Smith Tik Tok remix, adding a piece of a song as background music.

You go to the Reddit forum ApplyingToCollege. Expectedly, someone brags about acceptance to a highly selective university.

Your lovely parents, close friends, and benign classmates keep asking about college decisions, hoping to receive good news.

The time has come. You are looking at the application portal website. You are about to receive a decision update. Due to anxiety, your heart rate is pushing up, but you need to view the decision anyway. Right after you click View update, you decide to close your eyes. Then, you open your eyes, trying to look for confetti, bulldogs dancing, or even students jumping around — any sign of being accepted. Finally, you start reading the letter: “The Admission Committee has completed its review of all applications… and I regret to inform you we are unable to offer you admission. You are devastated at this point: just a rejection. It is neither deferral nor waitlist.

Getting rejected has been a harrowing experience. You don’t know how to say this to your parents, friends, and classmates. You feel there is increasing tension between you and your family. Your buddies and peers have already been admitted to decent colleges; however, you have been left behind. Though you have spent days and nights working on your application, you think there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

Getting into a top school is to a very large extent purely based on dumb luck. There are tens of thousands of equally if not better qualified candidates who apply each year and don’t get in. But the lucky few who land those admits, their life changes in one very important way. The world around them starts seeing them differently.

Getting denied does not have to be the end of the world. College decisions are not going to define you as a person. You can thrive in this life without a degree from an Ivy League school.

Sincerely,
Sardor Pulatov
UNLOCK member

@unlockuz