Jolly Ranchers made me realize that, as a community, we try to fabricate our interests just to appeal to prestigious schools with low acceptance rates. But does a low acceptance rate always equate to prestige? Or do we live four years of our lives in delusion?
Jolly Ranchers used to be enough. A big bowl of them at the high school Club Fair, at least for me as a freshman, would grab my attention. While that first Jolly Rancher initiated the interest in my service club, Stairway, it was the work of the club that made me stay—I genuinely love getting the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of boys who used to live on the streets in the Philippines.
A couple of years later I became a leader in the club. So at this year’s club fair, I found myself on the other side of the candy bowl, trying to entice eager freshmen to join. One boy walked up, eying the Jolly Ranchers. I started my rehearsed pitch: "We’ve grown in recent years as more people have gotten involved—" and I was interrupted.
“I’d rather join a different club. Stairway seems so big it would be impossible to get an officer position.”
Why was this freshman already thinking about officer positions? And why would he choose a club just because of a university application four years away?
We let the illusion of boosting our chances for admission to selective, prestigious schools dictate our decisions. We play sports we don’t love, lead clubs we don’t believe in, and take classes we aren’t passionate about. It’s just what we do here. To be a Senior at SAS, you apply to the US and try to get into the most selective school possible.
By doing “less,” I somehow feel like less.
But that’s not the norm. In the US, only 5% of university students attend colleges that have acceptance rates below 20%, but it’s these prestigious American universities that seem to be all we as students can talk about and all we hear about from parents, friends, and TikTok. If you want to risk opening your email in front of all your friends in the cafeteria and rejoice together after reading the word “accepted,” you have to stand out: have the most unique Common App essay, be the president of a club (or even better, create a club to be president of), get all 5s on your AP exams, and get as close as you can to a 1600 on the SAT with the help of hours and hours of tutoring.
Anything less is just unacceptable.
The numbers prove it. Based on college counseling data, last year, 81% of SAS applications were to the US, which requires the SAT, the Common App, and piles of rec letters.
My applications will be part of the other 19%. For all but one school I’m applying to, I don’t have to write supplementals or submit an activity sheet: I simply submit my transcript, and AP scores are an added boost. By doing “less,” I somehow feel like less. I’ve been asked countless times why I don’t want to apply to the US, as if the universities in Canada that I am applying to are less than as well.
Sure, the University of Toronto, McGill University in Montreal, and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver have acceptance rates of 43%, 46%, and 52% respectively, while UCLA, NYU, Brown, and Princeton have acceptance rates of 9%, 8%, 5.6%, and 5.7%. It would seem that a less selective school would also provide a less valuable education, and opening their acceptance emails wouldn’t be as worth celebrating.
The fact is, McGill University is ranked 30th in the world, the University of Toronto 32nd, and the University of British Columbia 45th. Princeton, UCLA, NYU, and Brown are all ranked similarly (27th, 49th, 58th, and 66th respectively). It’s not to say one university is better than the other, and these numbers should be taken lightly as this ranking is from only one organization and doesn’t apply to specific programs. Nonetheless, from attending SAS for 12 years, I know that these American universities are seen as better because they’re more selective, yet these rankings say otherwise.
I can’t accept that kind of thinking, that the decisions we make in high school are only made to progress our journey of getting into selective universities. I’ve been able to love being in Stairway, love playing basketball, and love the courses I’m taking because I’m not worried about how prestigious I will seem when I open my decision letters. I wish that freshman had taken the Jolly Rancher and realized there’s more to life than your Common App.
