To Whom It May Concern:

I will not waste time telling you my name or my story because I know that I will eventually just be minimized into meaningless numbers and acronyms that you’ve decided are the “secret recipe” to my college admissions.

I would like to start by saying that I hate you and everything that you represent. Nevertheless, I have fallen privy to this idea that you are my defining value. I have actually bought into idea that if I don’t get into a Ivy League or into a school with an acceptance rate lower than 20% that I am somehow less of a person. It’s your fault. It was you, in all of your generic information sessions, that told me that if I had more elusive research opportunities or mysterious “alumni connections,” I would be this successful person. From all of this, I somehow decided that my soul was worth selling for these things. They were indicative of me and my worth in some twisted ways.

Your system of admissions, the essay, the transcript, the test scores, and the letters of recommendation are unnecessarily demanding. In order to even appease you, I have to subject myself to a host of conflicting ideas:

Make sure that you are invested in school but not too invested that you do nothing else except for homework.

Make sure that you are balanced but not too balanced that you don’t excel at something oddly specific like “teaching fencing to blind goats” or “non-lethal sword swallowing in an academically rigorous circus program.”

Make sure to balance everything that you do but not too well because you shouldn’t be fake or disingenuous.

Make sure that you care about others but not too much that you wouldn’t be willing to submit an application to an insanely competitive institution.

It seems like you want some sort of mature robot (because let’s be honest, a teenage robot wouldn’t be able to handle this). Unfortunately, this is not me. Somewhere between the third and fifth physics test that I failed and proceeded to have mini-existential crises about, I began trying to separate myself. Not in the kind of way you want. You know, the one where I “distinguish myself” and convince you that you want me around. Instead, I decided that the things that you want aren’t things that are healthy for me.

I am just a teenage girl. I am not on the frontlines of cancer research or anywhere close to learning the  language of some endangered wildlife species. I am an imperfect being. Sometimes, I like to waste three hours of my life watching meaningless, admittedly dumb, episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. Sometimes, I hang out with my friends and all we do is gossip about people. Sometimes, I feel so overwhelmed that all that I can do when I get home is nap. I am, decidedly, not the reincarnation of Mother Teresa.

With all of that being said, I also possess some positive qualities. Sometimes, I cry because I am so proud of my friends. In most tests, I will bring four pencils just in case someone needs one. Even amidst all of these life changes, I have learned how to ask for help. I ask people how their days are going and genuinely want to know the answer. I say “thank you” to all of my teachers. I am not telling you this to brag or to flaunt my abilities (because you would think this was all about you). Instead, I am telling you the things that you won’t find in my application. I am telling you the things that you didn’t even think to ask. Instead, you ask for the essays that are even supposed to follow some mythical formula which will let you “get to know the real me.”

The worst part is that none of this really matters. I mean, if I just had a mom on Full House or a dad a dad on Shameless, I wouldn’t have to go through this. At the end of the day, all you want is the money that my parents have (or don’t have) tucked away into college savings accounts. The prestige of your university isn’t contingent on my extracurriculars or how many things I’m able to do without having a mental breakdown. No, the prestige of your university is based on the size of your endowment.

More than anything, more than the hate or the sadness, I wish that there was a better way. I wish high schoolers didn’t have to be subjected to a system that seems like it will determine your entire life. Somehow, going to a community college makes you a failure with a dead end career while going to Stanford seems to mean that you are the pinnacle of intelligence.

When admissions open up this fall, I will be there. You may overlook me, or you may decide that my list of numbers and the 500-750 word essay that I wrote appealed to you. I will press those submit buttons knowing full well that I am feeding into the very thing that I hate. Chances are, what you send me back will also impact how I see myself. I don’t want this future. Nevertheless, I have subscribed into the idea that not selling myself is worse than going through with something I don’t support.

In closing, I hope that you feel that guilt. The same type of profound sadness that consumes me after I get a B on a test. The same type of guilty anger I feel when I know that my best friend is interested in the same school as me. The same type of uncontrollable anxiety I feel when someone asks me what I got on my SAT. This is you. This is your doing, and I hate you for it.

Sincerely,

4.0, 5, 1600