A video...

My revelation on what to write about today came to me this evening. I just saw a video on YouTube that angered me a bit.

It was of some chump who ranked popular extracurricular activities in high school on a scale of 1-10 based on how good they look on an application. Already, the premise of the video is extremely generalized and reeks of clickbait. How is it possible to casually rank random, unorthodox extracurriculars on a frustratingly simplistic scale? (It's not). Chump, we're not ranking someone's looks. You're ranking activities with depth, layers, and complexities you didn't bother all to mention in your 1 minute video.

The chump claims they collected this information "based on years of direct conversations with admissions officers, thousands of real application files I’ve analyzed, and repeated patterns I’ve seen while helping students earn spots at top universities", but what I fail to understand is how the vast amount of alleged data they've gathered is adequately packaged into a one minute video and reflected across the mere 8 activities mentioned in the video. Regardless if her "advice" is good or not, it is misleading and shady to make a video essentially slamming some extracurricular with a simple line like "almost every above average student is in it". What if they've done considerable work while in it? What if they were in other activities alongside it? What if it was the only thing their school offered? None of this is considered, and the activity is simply ranked at a 3/10. I don't think it's fair to dismiss an activity you find generic or "boring" because a lot of people are in it. Again, even if it is generic, there wasn't enough in the video to discuss the layers or why it may be considered that way. Looking at it as a whole again, I don't understand the point of this video. Are you trying to instill fear in people that did 3/10 activities and cause unnecessary anxiety? Are you trying to brag about yourself by ranking activities you likely did at 10/10? Or are you just trying to make money and be an influencer?

One might argue that a smart, capable student (who obviously wishes to go to an Ivy League) is probably able to deduce that the specifics and exceptions are missing, but that doesn't dismiss the fact that the video itself is wholly unrepresentative of the true process of fleshing out one's extracurricular choices and how they choose to display that on the application. Seriously, what normal student looks at some stupid video from a chump on the internet and decide "Duuuuuuuuh... Guess I'm not doing that..."? (I hope you're able to tell that I'm being facetious).

Unrelated to this, you probably suspect that I disagree with a lot of the push to race for top colleges. If your portrayed journey on that application is untrue to yourself, your identity, and your being, then what's the damn point? Many of the comments on the video focused on the fact that you should do what you like and what truly represents you, because you shouldn't waste your years doing otherwise. I know some are going to disagree with me on this. I know that for some, getting into a dream school is pretty much their only purpose in life from birth to senior year, and whatever happens after is...unknown. That's okay. Please continue to have your opinion.

This is a short rant that I wanted to do just from that video. I think it goes back to the issues of short-form content that plenty of people have noticed, and in this particular case the unnecessary glamorization of college admission and this sort of mentality of one-size-fits-all in being admitted (This is this chump's entire online persona, and probably their personality for that fucking matter. For god sake, there is more to life than this, and really who are you as a person when you're suggesting people essentially give up their soul in a not-so-obvious-but-obvious manufactured "blueprint" of college admission journeys instead of just letting them grow themselves? Wow, it's ironically the most backwards and controlling thing to suggest something like that when the chump's supposed purpose is to encourage students to authenticate themselves and show that to colleges.). The fact that it's allowed to be up and circulating is kind of disheartening.

Above all else, be careful what and especially who you listen to—even me.