Money. It's that time of the year again, and has been for a bit. It's time for affluent young men with 4.0 GPAs and perfect standardized test scores and a thousand different other things that only exist to pad their resume to complain about their shortcomings in an admissions process that has become infinitely more selective in present time thanks to the accessibility of online applications (and the rise of international applications, and the rise of a very hilarious culture amongst parents trying to vicariously live amongst their children which I will get to eventually). You will see these rather accomplished people and maybe share a little bit of sympathy for them. They've been working for their entire life towards this dream, only to have it be shattered in an instant-- it's pretty horrible-- at a surface level, that is. Other than their failure to acknowledge that their shortcomings would naturally come as a result of them applying to the most selective institutions in the fucking world with admissions officers with equally volatile beliefs of what makes any one applicant "good", you realize that it's really just a yuppie's temper tantrum stemming from the fact that he has to drive a Mercedes SUV instead of a Lamborghini. It's the biggest deal in the world to people who still believe that idpol plays some part in this; some white boy with a nonprofit or a bay area asian who placed first in a thousand different programming competitions you've never heard of is rooted in utter woke nonsense. It's a flawed system all around really, but it's gotten to a point where you have to stop and think whether the player or the game should be hated. Sending critical support towards hating the player.
The "player" is any individual indoctrinated in the hyper-competitive amphetamine culture instilled in rich parts of the United States which attempt to "game" the whole process. The gamification of the process essentially removes any sort of natural flair from one's application, which is supposed to be observed at a glance, in favor of shlock that was communicated to them by an "admissions counselor", which is a fancy word for "wage theft" and "stealing money from a bloodline devoid of any personal identity", which I guess makes the whole thing awesome in that regard... if it weren't at least somewhat effective. Because this sort of expensive application minmaxing is effective, the pre-existing divide between the haves and the have-nots grows exponentially, destroying the visage of "equity" and putting the whole thing in line with the rest of American society. "Personality" is frowned upon if not framed in a certain way, one's skills are useless if they cannot be viewed as useful (or profit-prospective in other words, which is a term I just made up) on an application, and that'll be $500. Expensive, homogenous, and retarded, all thanks to the observations of people with ideas of what they think is correct. The former can very well be attributed to the profiteering of the applications process by every facet of the "non-profit" organizations (namely the College Board and Common Application, the ACT is at least mask off) which perpetuate the entire process. Of course, there exists programs which essentially eliminate the cost for the poor-- one must acknowledge that most "poor" people aren't trying to apply to Princeton with a 4.0 GPA and a 1600 SAT-- it comes with the implication that opportunity is scarce and that whatever was done was done with ample hardship. Since these people (typically minorities) aren't guaranteed a proper glance with the repeal of affirmative action, it's nothing more than performatism-- see how Harvard is now free with anyone with a family income lower than $200,000-- how the fuck is anyone without rich parents getting into Harvard now anyway?