UNIVERSITY DECISION REACTIONS 2024

(top 20, 30+ schools, competitive, no safeties, no sleep, no social life, stressful edition, watch to the end — emotional!)

Zoe Kalafatis Layout Designer

You click the YouTube thumbnail, a halo of prestigious university logos surrounds a frantically anxious teen as they stare into the camera, back at you. They add a disclaimer: admissions are all luck, where you go to school doesn’t matter, you can create opportunities anywhere, education is a privilege, etc. Then, after listing their grades and resumes, they get to the real meat of the video. Emails are opened and portals are logged onto one by one. It starts with an ear-splitting scream. Then they sob, calling their parents over to rejoice in the euphoria of prestigious acceptances or to comfort them in the wake of their dashed hopes. Finally, for a second time, they tell us to stress less– advice they clearly never took in high school– the perfect cap for their perfectly crafted humble facades. The video ends, and, instead of feeling more educated and confident about the admissions process, you are left in an even deeper hole of insecurity.

Overachievers monopolize this YouTube niche. After all, who wants to watch someone get rejected from every single school they applied to? Who would want to post their own visceral rejections and underwhelming results this candidly? Plus, isn’t watching reactions to acceptances in the most prestigious of prestigious programs way more aspirational, and way more entertaining? This volunteer bias creates exceedingly unrealistic expectations and standards for viewers. It is easy to feel inadequate when comparing yourself to the few students with 99% averages and thousands of volunteer hours, and when surrounded by these videos, it is easy to forget these students are the minority. When faced with these worries, it is easy to spiral into self-doubt and burnout. Yet we still tune in, because in a way, the inherent anxiousness in these videos is comforting. It is comforting to have our stresses validated by strangers on the internet, that satisfying feeling of knowing other people are going through the same things.

University acceptances are not the end all be all; however, these videos promote the opposite. We become trapped in this never-ending cycle of post-secondary stress, binging video after video.

So, next time one of these videos pops up on your recommended, don’t press play because, as cliche as it sounds, everything really will work out. We will all end up where we are meant to be. High school will be over before we know it, and as much as we look forward to our bright futures, it’s pretty nice to enjoy the present once in a while too. The world, and what we make of it, is in our hands, not those of admissions officers.