Grace Lin

The difficulty of achieving a competitive college application can drain out the passions of students.

In January, English 11 Honors classes read “The 9.9 Percent is the New American Aristocracy,” an article in the Atlantic by philosopher Matthew Stewart focusing on how America’s upper-middle class creates barriers restricting the advancement of those on lower rungs of the economic ladder. The reason? To enjoy even more wealth, better health benefits and safer neighborhoods.

Among all of the luxuries Stewart discusses, the most striking detail to me was his satirical swing at the attitudes toward college among the wealthy — from unnecessary and excessive spending on SAT tutors and college counselors to all the privileges of attending better public and private schools.

His ultimate conclusion is haunting: Young people are no longer judged on our ability to learn, but instead our ability to game the system.

In the Bay Area, the biggest flex isn’t having a $10,000 Rolex, a $100,000 Tesla or a $5 million house in a desirable neighborhood. Now and more than ever, the standard rests in raising a child who attends an Ivy League college or the equivalent — an expectation highly prominent in Saratoga. But even though this is accepted as unquestionable doctrine, it is self-destructive, contradicting the most fundamental ideas that have been instilled in students for the past decade.

“Do It Right”

I often find myself returning to a memory from 2019 — a year before the pandemic — where I’m standing in the kitchen and washing dishes. As any fifth-grader would, I sped through my chores hastily, scrubbing carelessly while my mind wandered to the paused Roblox game and Discord call waiting in my bedroom. 

I remember moving onto the last dish, a blue bowl crusted with cookie batter and slick with cooking oil. I gave little care to removing the actual grease. Drawn by the awaiting game, I put the half-cleaned bowl on the drying rack and sprinted back to my bedroom.

Only five minutes later, my dad shouted my name across the house while holding the blue bowl. He asked me why I left the bowl half-cleaned with grease — I explained why I was in a rush. 

My dad didn’t shout at me or lecture me heavily. Instead, he told me: “Don’t ever do something just to say you did it. If you’re doing it, do it right.”

It took a few hundred more repetitions of those words before I slowly began to live by them. But as I entered high school with this perspective, I found myself surrounded by students who, rather than doing things the right way — for the pursuit of knowledge and curiosity — seem to live to “learn” in a perfectly calculated fashion: “for college.” 

How high school has morphed into a cheatable game

The idea of high school is simple — avoid failure at all costs, because whether it’s a bad grade or an activity without a medal, any step short of success blemishes one’s college application. For some, the ideology emerges through sacrifice — dropping a passionate hobby to focus on classes. For others, it is extreme — such as cheating for an A rather than earning an honest B in a class. 

I have seen classmates who have become followers of such an approach. I’ve seen teammates give up on all sports because of their AP classes workload; I’ve seen robotics enthusiasts dragged away from a beloved program because of a “risky” time commitment; I’ve seen friends abandon hobbies that once elated them. 

And while they may have added value to their application as a result, they let fear of failing to meet the most elite college admissions requirements steer their high school destinies rather than their own abilities and passions.

Now in my junior year, chasing this ideal has never been more extreme. My parents stress the importance of building a solid college application almost daily. Whether it was hanging out with friends or playing sports for the school, my parents constantly remind me that they come second to grades.

This attitude isn’t exclusive to adults; it’s mirrored in what many of my classmates live by, viewing every choice as mutually exclusive: You can either play basketball or have good grades; you can either go to the Homecoming dance or score well on the “Beloved” essay; you can either celebrate Halloween or get an A on the math test the next week. 

It doesn’t help that the rising difficulty of getting into college in the last decade has inflated the penalties for perceived failure to be perfect. Out of worry, students can drop nearly all of their passions to focus on school. And for many, they end up sacrificing the process of learning for the satisfaction of completion — increasingly relying on AI to draft essays or generate lab reports to strive for a grade rather than the genuine learning a high grade should represent. 

Extracurriculars have transformed into boxes to check on a list instead of experiences to draw lifelong lessons from. Some sign up for clubs they barely care about, launch nonprofits they don’t intend to run and attend competitions they have nearly no interest in, just so they can say they “did something” beyond academics.

This same attitude comes at the expense of challenging oneself to achieve more and discover purpose. Instead of trying to handle the extra workload to maintain a beloved hobby, students put aside what they love for all four years of high school simply out of fear of missing out on a seat at their dream college.

To most, this philosophy is valid: Focus on school, get into a top college and be set for life. This is a  route that has resulted in tech professionals who have the ability to  earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. 

But chasing the superficiality of such jobs and the money that comes along with it aligns with the same critique of Matthew Stewart: Those in the 9.9% train themselves to follow a pre-written rubric. The mindset goes like this: Get into a good college, become an excellent employee and enjoy financial security for life.

Meanwhile, those who chase passion develop intrinsic motivation in their work, enjoy far more purpose in life; and if they work hard enough, can find just as much or if not more success financially. 

Ironically, some of the most transformative figures in tech, which the Bay Area stands for, didn’t follow through on their college years which are so sought after. Brendan Moody and Adarsh Hiremath, for example, dropped out of Harvard and Georgetown, respectively, to pursue their own business, creating Mercor and becoming the youngest self-made billionaires in history. And Steve Jobs was perhaps the nation’s most famous college dropout. 

While college brings us stable jobs, it removes our integrity and purpose

Chasing prestige as a society comes with an expense — it drains the importance of growth through failure and learning thoroughly and instead instills the idea that everything done in school only matters if it results in an A, a 1600 on the SAT or a national-level competition award. 

And in chasing those numbers, we forget why we’re doing any of it in the first place. We stop washing the bowl clean; we just make it clean enough to pass. In turn, we make ourselves seem qualified on paper, shiny and flawless for the sake of college admissions. 

In reality, we leave everything beneath the surface rough and unqualified, propelling ourselves into a never-ending drive to “pass” the next inspection — now it’s college, but in a year or two it’ll be a job, a promotion, a raise — and in turn, we’ll never find true satisfaction. 

It’s taken me years to understand what my dad meant that night in the kitchen, but now I try my best to incorporate it into my own life. There were times I refused to quit sports and faced the consequences through slipping grades. 

Other times, I wasn’t willing to give up on robotics, and my academic performance across the board suffered. But by staying true to myself, to my interests and to my development, I’ve come out of that suffering a better person. I’ve learned to handle a workload that would have crushed me last year; I’ve been able to manage my grades, robotics and track at the same time. 

And while I still am not where I want to be in some fields, I leave areas for growth for myself, hoping one day to perform in everything to the level I hope. 

When my father told me to do things “right,” he didn’t allude to perfection or prestige. Instead, I’ve learned that the right way is to commit to the process even when you know there are real risks of failure.

But can the system be changed — the same system that has grown so standard and entrenched over the years? In my eyes, this attitude stems from cultural values that thrive on relentless competition. To break from this norm, we must begin dismantling those ideals and set a new standard — one that measures students not by their ability to do everything perfectly, but by their willingness to take chances and engage in genuine learning.

I firmly believe if students stop rushing to fill the empty spaces on their resume and begin to pursue what they care for and enjoy doing, they would find more success, meaning and fulfillment in their lives as well.