High School Student Bitterly Responds to College Rejections

Suzy Lee Weiss is a high school student with stellar academic records. A GPA of 4.5, an SAT score of 2120, and even an experience as a page for the US Senate. You'd think she'd be a shoo-in for colleges.

Well, she didn't get accepted to any of the Ivy League school that she applied to. But instead of being bitter in private like many of us would, Suzy Lee decided to pen a scathing op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, titled To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me:

Like me, millions of high-school seniors with sour grapes are asking themselves this week how they failed to get into the colleges of their dreams. It's simple: For years, they—we—were lied to.

Colleges tell you, "Just be yourself." That is great advice, as long as yourself has nine extracurriculars, six leadership positions, three varsity sports, killer SAT scores and two moms. Then by all means, be yourself! If you work at a local pizza shop and are the slowest person on the cross-country team, consider taking your business elsewhere.

What could I have done differently over the past years?

For starters, had I known two years ago what I know now, I would have gladly worn a headdress to school. Show me to any closet, and I would've happily come out of it. "Diversity!" I offer about as much diversity as a saltine cracker. If it were up to me, I would've been any of the diversities: Navajo, Pacific Islander, anything. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, I salute you and your 1/32 Cherokee heritage.

I also probably should have started a fake charity. Providing veterinary services for homeless people's pets. Collecting donations for the underprivileged chimpanzees of the Congo. Raising awareness for Chapped-Lips-in-the-Winter Syndrome. Fun-runs, dance-a-thons, bake sales—as long as you're using someone else's misfortunes to try to propel yourself into the Ivy League, you're golden.

Having a tiger mom helps, too. As the youngest of four daughters, I noticed long ago that my parents gave up on parenting me. It has been great in certain ways: Instead of "Be home by 11," it's "Don't wake us up when you come through the door, we're trying to sleep." But my parents also left me with a dearth of hobbies that make admissions committees salivate. I've never sat down at a piano, never plucked a violin. Karate lasted about a week and the swim team didn't last past the first lap. Why couldn't Amy Chua have adopted me as one of her cubs?

The reaction was swift: many people accused her of being a whiny, petulant child (and perhaps a racist). Others applauded her describing the brutal college admissions procedure and calling a spade a spade.

Link - via TODAY News

What do you think? Do you agree with Suzy Lee Weiss? Does the college admissions process unfairly penalize good students for being born with the (in this case) wrong skin color?


The article didn't mention whether she applied anywhere but an Ivy League school. You ALWAYS apply to a "safe" school that you know you'll get in. My kids are a couple of years away from college, and they already know that extracurricular activities and charity work counts, as well as attitude. Did no one ever give this girl any advice?
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Extracurricular activities show that the student is a well-rounded person. A job is nice, but not likely right out of high school. Except fast food, which every kid usually has. If the kid did something different, it may matter more.
They are looking for better, not just average. Grades, GPA, etc matters, but its not everything.
And no, I didn't go to an Ivy League school. I went to a smaller private college, not even close to Ivy League.
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How about learning to enjoy life while you're young enough to enjoy life? If you don't get into college, remind yourself that most of the world's most successful and wealthiest people dropped out of college anyway.
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The real truth here is that she lacked connections. Networking is what makes America go around these days. Connections are what lands you a $150k a year job. Hard work rarely does it anymore.

Call me jaded, but I can just about guarantee that if I were to apply to my company today that I would not be hired with the experience that I started with when I was hired many years ago. It's a sad state of affairs, but dad knowing Fred who plays poker with Joe on Thursday is what gets little Johnny his nice cushy job, not little Johnny having any sort of real experience or usefulness.
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I went to a very respected public school, and went through the college admission process a few years ago. What I think a lot of kids forget is when they apply to schools like Dartmouth or Harvard, BC, or Bates, they're not applying to just a school. They are applying to a private business. I was 'diverse', had great grades, blah blah, but it's not because of those reasons that any school owed me anything.
I definitely find her bitter. Rejection isn't a new thing, and those that are rejected by colleges just need to deal with it.
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I really hate that "it's because I'm white" attitude. Yes, she probably deserved to get into a good school with those grades and extracurriculars, but unless they wrote in the rejection letter "we're sorry, we already have too many white students," then how does she know that's not why she got in?
It's a stupid and prejudiced theory that shows she is at least partly racist.
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She's a bigot, and spoiled to boot. She just oozes entitlement. Just being smart, pretty, young and white (not to mention apparently being able to afford an Ivy League school) are not enough for her? She makes me sick.
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I read an article recently about how schools go about looking for incoming students. They say they look for the "well-rounded and diverse," but that doesn't mean they are looking for that in each student. They are crafting a "well-rounded and diverse" incoming class. So a school may want a particular student to fill their (dare i say) quota of sousaphone players or lacrosse stars or nursing majors or whatever. Unfortunately, that's a slot that a high-achiever with nothing else to offer won't get. Fortunately, there are plenty of other schools that will accept what that one person has to offer.
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It's not that you were lied to Suzy... In the words of Ray Bradbury, “you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.”

Miss Weiss treats the world as if it needs senior high school students like her "to go out and save it" by amassing a hodgepodge of skills and activities. Elite schools are looking for students who: question their place in a complex world; grapple with the idea that somehow they might find the drive and passion to make a dent, however insignificant, in that world; and then, ultimately, act on their introspection. Based on her writing here, she seems to think of the whole process like someone earning merit badges rather than crafting a thematic vision for achieving something substantial with her life.

Fundamentally, she's right, the modern college admissions game is brutal. But she spends so much time focusing on her own plight that she never takes the time to empathize with those making these decisions. Harvard is able to reduce their applicant pool from 45,000 to 15,000 applicants using GPA, high school reputation, and standardized test scores. If you make it through that first round, you are looking at roughly a 10% chance of getting in based solely on your hard-factors. Admissions officers rely on the soft-factors she lampoons to justify passing on 9 outstanding valedictorians for every 1 they can ultimately accept. The process is far from perfect, but come April 1st, decisions need to be made. In the world of endowment races, citation indexes, and US News Rankings, Harvard can't afford to miss the next "Facebook Founder."

I'm going to go with my gut on this one and say Suzy probably isn't as smug and querulous as she comes across here (and I question WSJ's motives in publishing this op-ed). Eventually, I think that the bitterness she feels is one that will temper with time, experience, and reflection. I'm sorry she didn't get into the Ivy League -the overwhelming majority of applicants don't- but this article shows that she may be missing out on a lot more than just an acceptance letter.
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That was so vicious, it could almost be classed as hate speech. On second thought, it is.
Never been a fan of affirmative action lowering the bar for select demographics, but wow. She has a huge chip on her shoulder.

Blaming everybody else for your problems is a teenage girl thing, I guess, but I get the feeling her parents were maybe more indulgent than neglectful.

I'm curious why the Wall Street Journal would allow something that hateful to be printed.
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Try not to dismiss me as a troll, when I say I have some sympathy for her. If she had applied to any of the Ivy League universities when I was going to college, her credentials would have assured her acceptance at all of them.

The problem is that they're not building any more such universities, despite screaming demand. She's not rich, or 'disadvantaged', and she refused (notice I didn't say "failed", her letter suggests she knew how the game was played) to pad her resume. What the admissions process says to students like Suzy is that she's middle class white bread, and that such students have nothing of value to add to their image of a 'diverse' campus. (College marketers and headhunters are using such imagery as a recruitment tool!)
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She's absolutely right. America's gotten stupid with affirmative action, going well beyond it's well-meaning original intent.

When I see people calling her spoiled or racist, I just see a group who are likely just envious.
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lol.
Spoiled OR racist? Surely, she could be both? There's a little diversity for you.

Sorry, but I don't know what there is to envy. I don't envy this type of fame. I'd hate to have the sort of reputation she's building for herself. And if her sister really works for the WSJ, she should have exercised a little more common sense in allowing her paper to print something so embarrassing for their family.

But, in this day and age, where being famous for doing the Harlem Shake is noteworthy, maybe a little notoriety is a good thing. Hopefully, she'll outgrow the attitude when she meets some non-whites at her school - unless, maybe, she joins a sorority.
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She may be spoiled, entitled, and even bigoted, but she is right about the game. I'm involved in the admissions process, and I have seen first hand that in the most competitive schools the process is not about finding the right individual, it is not about finding the best student or the best person, it is not even about getting the most money. It is about getting the right statistical student body, with the right number of minorities, the right test scores, and the right amount of student aid. It is about showing the admissions officers that you care about the politically correct issues of the day, or at least care about their opinions enough to fake that you do. It's about spending four years to create a persona that one can abandon the moment s/he gets in, or let's hope that s/he has the guts to abandon it because the persona required often produces the self-righteous prigs that are in many of the posts above.
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As a former admissions officer - yes, diversity is something colleges and universities want to build because it makes the campus a better place. And I'd speculate that the problem is not that she's not a minority, but that she didn't use her privilege to do more activities. You expect to see certain activities (or lack thereof) from rural kids (4H, for example) and kids from low-income and inner-city areas, and you also reasonably expect that a kid who has to work to help pay rent for the family to be involved with fewer extracurricular activities.

A student who presents a 4.5 GPA (sadly, not that hard to attain these days) and comes from a reasonably affluent family likely has the time and the money to be involved with a minimum number of activities. They don't have to scramble to get home because parents can't afford daycare or go straight to an after-school job or help out with a family business. They have the luxury to be involved with clubs, to pick up hobbies, and to do charitable work. That this student apparently didn't suggests that she might not be actively involved in a campus community - why would she be if she hasn't ever felt she should be? The high school she goes to offers a pre-engineering program and a Chinese language program, a fencing club, a literary magazine - all excellent opportunities that a student could easily access. When compared to a similar applicant, this is something that could be noted and the applicant who has done more with their time would be chosen first.

College admissions, these days, are a game. And if you don't play in the pre-season, you can't really expect to be asked to join the team.

On the other hand, perhaps she can now put 'satirist' on her resume. She'll be okay: she got into college. She's learned a good lesson, and she seems to be accepting of what's happened. I don't think she's got a bad attitude. She's encountered rejection for what was probably the first time in her life, and she's dealing with it. Life goes on.
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I'd like to welcome little Suzy to the real, grown-up world. Shit out here sucks, and life ain't fair (who told you it was?). Just wait till you graduate and have to find a "job." We all eagerly await your thoughts on that subject, Suzy.
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