[I spent my freshman year of high school despairing that I hadn’t invented a synthetic human heart, launched a tech start-up, written an opera or raised $10 million for charity. I ran track, sang in a cathedral choir and taught little kids how to kayak in the school’s outdoor club. I was plenty busy. Where in the world had I gotten the idea that I was supposed to be doing those other things to get into college? Why did I think that I was running out of time – at age 14?
I don’t mean videos on essay writing tips, standardized test study hacks or the self-taped, quasi interviews attached to some applications. I’m talking about a specific subset rampant on YouTube and Instagram Reels, videos dealing only in analyses of college acceptances and rejections. The format has been perfected to keep people viewing and clicking.
In these videos, students or, far more often, content creators outline a student’s background. They lay out their activities, grades and test scores, inevitably stellar and impressive. Then comes the hook: They outline every single school the student was rejected from, one by one, and the schools that accepted them. Often, the rejections are in big, red boxes, and the acceptances in green. The rejections are almost always shown first – lengthy lists naming Harvard, Duke and Georgetown universities and the like.
I stopped watching those videos on YouTube entirely, but Instagram is a different story. It feels like there’s no escape. The videos load instantly when you’re scrolling. You don’t click on anything; they just start playing. So I began actively blocking the creators of these videos every time they came across my feed. For this article, I used other people’s Instagram accounts to view the reels, partly because most creators are blocked, but also because I didn’t want Instagram’s algorithm to think I wanted to see more of them.
I learned from Kyungyong Lim, the man behind @Limmytalks, that he doesn’t want his videos to make kids anxious. He suggests students block him if his videos create stress. “Take what you can that’s helpful, and call it at that,” he said via email. Lim stumbled into the world of college admissions videos by accident. He made some TikTok videos for an internship interview process. He didn’t get the job, but discovered he enjoyed making videos and started posting, hoping to “go viral once.”
My counselor tells me that in over 10 years of college counseling, today’s students seem more stressed than ever before. As I reflect on my experience, I realize that the comparisons can’t be eliminated entirely. The complex process of applying to college can be demoralizing, but my counselor says that in reality, there are many students who attend prestigious schools who aren’t necessarily genius, crazy-achievers, but just good students. They take the most rigorous classes, have a mix of service and activities inside and outside school, and work part-time jobs. They’re doing something significant, and while it may not be to cure cancer, it’s something that has changed the life of someone in the community.
Rationally, knowing that you’re only seeing a small, curated portion of the thousands who attend universities doesn’t completely eliminate the anxiety. I can rationalize all I like. I asked my counselor if it was always this way, and she said no, when she was going to college, students didn’t have the same level of information about which schools accepted or rejected applicants, and as a result, they didn’t have as much fear.
I grew up, and so did my friends who went through the process before me. We compare ourselves with others and seek validation, and while this may be natural, it can also be detrimental. What if, instead, we focused on our own goals and achievements, and stopped trying to measure up to others? The constant reminders of the college acceptance process can be suffocating, and sometimes the best solution is simply to look away, block, and move on.
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