The Manipulation of Scholars and How the College Industry Uses its Students

The Manipulation of Scholars and How the College Industry Uses its Students

Caleb Jones

    So you've been working all summer long, and your senior year is starting, you're prepped and ready to start turning in your college applications, you have them reviewed by all your teachers to help you and give you all the advice they can, and you send it off to your dream College in hopes of getting in. you apply to multiple colleges some big some small some very prestigious and a few safety schools. When you send in your application, is it really as simple as the world tells you? when a college reads your application, what do they really look for, and what do they really ignore? what did you do that got you into one college, and what did you do that did not get you into another? Many things happen when you send your application to a college. A majority of them are unfair to the majority of the applicants. Still, if you look closely, some interesting rules are at play that fluctuates immensely between the different colleges you apply to.

    Something critical that very few people think about is how much more freedom colleges have to do what they want with their students. let's take a step back and look at grade school; everyone must do it by law. Your state and the government control what exactly you learn, and when you learn it, everybody learns the same stuff. Everybody gets access to learn that stuff. And with that our government tries to give everybody the same quality of education. Now let's step into 9th grade. High School system's a little bit more lenient; you get to choose some classes, but some are required; you finally have the ability to truly branch out and begin focusing on what you like and joining the club's you want that reflect your lifestyle and your dreams. You make it to your senior year, and you start applying to colleges that you think will help you. Then you get accepted to a college, and everything is different. Colleges are not bound by any system of learning; they are free to teach what they want, and they're free to use their money how they want to teach you that. Suppose the college doesn't want to teach people about a certain subject. In that case, they'll focus more on others and market themselves to be an outstanding school on a certain group of subjects convincing certain students to go to that college for that reason. Still, something is going on here that very few people understand or notice.

    The majority of students at the top of their class tend to want to go to Ivy League or prestigious colleges to become more successful. Because of this, nowadays, it's becoming more commonly known that going to an amazing college doesn't necessarily mean you're guaranteed to have an amazing job after college or at that an outstanding education, which is a good start. Still, failure to see college as a business and industry will sometimes deceive students and Scholars in hopes to get the best education that they can. let's take a very broad view and look at college as a whole; you get out of high school, and you want to continue education; there's a couple of ways to do this, but the big one is simply applying to a college and getting accepted. Now when you choose a college to go to what do most people look for? what caused them to go to some and not to go to others? what tells students that this school is better and this other one is not. let's look at a very prestigious School like MIT now; let's assume that most people who would like to go to MIT are probably interested in science and technology. Most people know this is a solid school if you want an education in that. now when you apply to MIT, they have the choice to accept you or reject you.

     Now let's look at both of these options close. Let's ignore what you have on your application, and let's look at the numbers. For example, let’s say you get accepted. There are multiple reasons this could have been done; some benefit you as a student, and some don't, let's look at option one. You are a 4.0 student, and you scored above a 1500 on your test; when a college sees that they like it for one reason and one reason only you will reflect well on that school, you will be an exemplary student from that school the others will look at. And option two is that you showed skill or characteristics that a far more outstanding and for that reason you are allowed in with lower grades. Two main factors are at play that determine why a school is prestigious and popular; one is what special things does that school offer? do they have state-of-the-art labs and equipment? Do they have the brightest and best teachers at that school? most schools have this when you apply to prestigious schools. Those teachers and Facilities come more naturally to schools with so much more money to play with, but this is where you must dig deeper and look. why does that school have so much money? Well, this is the second factor of how a school becomes popular, and students are not happy to tell you that it comes out of their wallet. It is no small price, but still, students will pay that to go to such a college in hopes that they will get a much higher level of education but in reality, what is happening is you pay a premium to go to a premium school that makes you look like a premium student. going to a prestigious School Is like buying a costly watch. That school is going to look really good on your resume. However, it's still just going to teach you as a student. Suppose you only get accepted to your safety College. In that case, it's still going to teach you just like a normal watch is still going to tell the time, and wearing a shiny watch does not mean it tells time well, much like attending a prestigious college does not grant you your dream job.

    It’s very common for people to believe that if they can't get into a prestigious college and they can't be successful or they're going to a less prestigious College cannot be helpful for them to get a job because it doesn't put them out above others, but this is wrong to think it's important to understand that the reason that a college only wants the brightest and the best it's because then everybody thinks that if they go to that college, they will be the brightest and the best, that college becomes a statement piece. A nice college has got lots of bells and whistles, and because of that, students always assume that it just must be better. but the truth is high-rank colleges don't really care. It's already set up for you; when you go to college, you get to choose between individually run educational Industries and schools, and you can pay the big bucks to look better than others. However, in reality, you still just going to college.   

    Suppose you look at the acceptance rate of MIT. In that case, it is only a 7% acceptance rate, and this is a perfect example of this phenomenon of prestigious education. many people apply, but very few get in. Everybody wants to get into the best college. That college gets the luxury of getting to handpick the best of the best to make themselves look like the best of the best colleges. It's a continuous cycle of people believing that it's the best college, and because of that, colleges get to accept the best people who apply to it, creating huge amounts of money allowing them to make it incredibly expensive to go to their college and fueling a massive industry on education. let's jump deeper into some data and really see how this jumps out when you choose to look closely.

    Let's take a look at a couple of charts to join the acceptance rate between prestigious colleges and other colleges that some would consider being safety colleges. You look at the acceptance rate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you will notice that these vast majorities are students all have a 4.0, and all have 1500 and above test scores. When you look at people's rejected rate, the red dots really don't spread out much; they're all in the same place. Interestingly, every year's exact same audience is trying their luck at getting into what they think is the best school. The data shows the school only accepts the best of the best to boost their reputation in the elite and prestigious colleges' ranking. What's important for you as a student to understand is that that data tells you very little about the students, which is very important. In a TED Talk by Alex Chang, he talked about charts like this. He used a very effective analogy of the Blind Men and the Elephant. When you look at this data on the graph, we don't know anything about those students on a personal level or what their skills are or how those people are all individually special amongst themselves, but what a college see are numbers that spread those people into groups of people who work hard to look good.

    Chang's analogy goes like this: an elephant walks into a town, and multiple blind men go up to feel it to determine what an elephant is; each of the different men touches a different part of the elephant without being able to see the entire elephant and determinant what it is; one thinks the elephant is a rope because of its tail while another thinks of it as it is a tree because of its large feet and so on. This means to you as a student and applicant of colleges that you have to give colleges information on yourself and don't work hard to just put numbers on a page. Anybody can get good test scores, and when you look back on that data, it supports that even though so many people apply, very few get in. They all share the same traits, so what really separates these people is how each of those people is special. And this is something to think about when you apply to a prestigious College. When that college looks at you, do they look at you personally, or do they look at you for the numbers you can put down on paper? do they look at your individual skills? "high level" schools are looking at how well you can do a test; when a college accepts you, they believe that an investment in their time, and you will reflect well on them. Their name, they don't care what you apply to do or what program you want to get into; they want to make money by giving you a seat in a class over somebody else. They're going to choose the person that they think will shine the brightest in a classroom setting. look at when you will apply for a job. Why do you think you are going and taking an interview instead of sending them an application or resume? because if you apply for a job, they want to know who you are. They don't want to know what you can do. They don't want to know how well you have done; they want to know who are you, can you do the job and can you do it well, can you work with others, can you lead others, what is your attitude like towards your job. These are all tough traits to show colleges, and even when you show it, only some colleges take advantage of that. Just look at what kinds of people are accepted to large prestigious colleges.

    Looking back on Alex Chan's presentation, he goes over a small but eye-opening group of individuals that got into Harvard, each of them having extreme talent but maybe not amazing test scores and great GPAs. When a college finds those people and their extremely impressive individual strengths, the school accepts them because of how impressive they are to make the school look good. It further proves that you don't need to have amazing test scores to get in. You just need to look good enough and shiny enough that that school believes they will get a return from accepting you. So don’t cut yourself down if you can’t get into a “big school” because in reality schools are a money making machine and you just want the best education you can get.